Balancing internet in education.
A world of screen based life
Schools are resorting increasingly to screen based learning – internet in education. I’m afraid this is blog post is perhaps not a barrel of laughs today. But I feel someone needs to say something, and it’s clear to me that parents and families are the only ones that might. It’s all about internet content, and how children are accessing internet in education, during apparently supervised, education hours.
https://thereisnoshouldbe.com/state-schools-are-needed/
Of course, internet in education can be a useful resource, as described here https://www.theasianschool.net/blog/role-of-internet-in-education/ . But when using it widely for the education of our youth, we must also exercise caution especially in settings of widespread availability. This is especially true considering the dark history of the web, where it was used as a vehicle for use and content spanning from illegal to depraved. You can read about this here: https://www.soscanhelp.com/blog/history-of-the-dark-web#theearlydays
Children have regular, if not permanent access to devices, apparently as a learning tool throughout the day, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. They have their phones on the way to school, use online ‘learning’ apps during long school hours, although many children managed to play games in-between moments of teacher engagement, and then head out at the end of the day, mobile phone firmly attached. Children live in a different world – a fabricated world of likeminded opinions that they want to hear – a world entirely accessed by their opposable thumbs alone.
Content
Protect innocence
The main reason I bring this up is not so much because of the hours of screen time, which is a totally separate issue, but because of the content children are meeting with using internet in education. It starts when they are tiny – at home, in the lounge or in a cafe; young children are exposed to examples of over sexualisation in most situations, be it a chocolate advert, a modern Disney film or even adverts on a bus stop shelter.
Impressionable children
As they grow, children are being exposed to indescribable adult content in the melting pot of school. Social prowess will inherently gravitate to lowest common denominator, to avoid risk of being a killjoy. Girls are see examples of behaviour, that should never become normal in day to day life, and do. Boys are being dragged into a world where women are no longer the sisters and mothers they can deeply appreciate. Online influence shows to boys that instead, women can be seen as a product that can be misused and discarded.
Online forums drag teenagers, and sometimes children into a world of forged ideologies, and bullying escalates out of any rational reach. Access to internet in education is one more avenue into this.
Effects of adolescents in relationships
Because of influence in entertainment, internet, and publicity and marketing, and because of the gradual breakdown of the family model, new lifestyles and moral systems amongst our young ones are emerging and generally accepted as normal. Of course our youth look up to those they see on the screen – they are idolised and role models for our children.
Children are entering into relationships younger than aged 12, and regardless of their own family background, what they can witness online with peers are not examples that anyone would choose for these impressionable teens. These adolescents can find themselves in highly compromised, sometimes dangerous situations.
This is so much so that over the last few years there have been several legislative changes to try and make sense of, and absorb, the criminal activity that is arising amongst adolescents. These include Claire’s law ‘the Right to Ask and the Right to Know’. And now, the age that person can legally be recognised as a domestic abuse victim is currently being reconsidered after the brutal murder of Holly Newton last January.
Adolescents are being allowed to engage in adult relationships – although they are not adults, theyare adolescents with enormous hormones surges, and in the long, complex and delicate restructuring process of their entire brain. Surely the risks and lack of appropriateness of these relationships during this delicate time doesn’t take long to consider – the nurture and guidance in their relationships that children and adolescents would require during this time.
Where are schools in this?
We now live in a society where schools are surely responsible for providing example, lifestyle and education to our children. The majority of our families rely on state provided child care and education, where on week days children spending the majority of their waking hours.
State obligation
Who in the state is going to say to young children that they are too young to be in relationships? Who in schools are going to draw a line for the children? Who is going to educate on boundaries in friendships, and in sexually charged relationships, self worth and ideas? Why is the state not providing education on red flags, rather than stopping at methods of contraception?
Excess energy
Our schools are increasingly becoming overrun and overstretched, requiring children to remain seated most of their days, with nowhere to release any hormone surges. Children take top place in the school hierarchy system, with teachers becoming increasingly powerless to hold children accountable for behaviour, nor have any system of discipline. Economically, it is very much in the institution’s favour to resort to computer and internet based learning. Internet in education could seem a useful resource. But children learning through hours of playing, building, breaking, and throwing themselves around with one another outside is vital. But with a ratio of one school teacher to 20-30 children, all with individual needs all day, especially in secondary education – this is just out of the question.
Where are youth supposed to go with all of this energy? Education, and especially internet in education is a very stationary, left hemisphere type of learning. And with children learning via AI, where is the challenge in creative thinking, empathic and relational input, and moral thinking.
School ethos
State schools each have their own ethos of ambition, resilience and recognition of achievements. They have mantras and slogans for how they are going to produce the most successful and high achieving candidates. It’ll say it, spread across the top of their website.
But the ethos of an education system has to be something far more than a set of morals. Children are being raised by the state. The ethos – the morals, values and beliefs – cannot absorbed into those of every individual child in the school system. That is not good education. There are words like ‘respect’, and ‘individuals’ and ‘care’, and these are all well and good. But children need to be taught to recognise behaviour and talk that does not need to be respected.
The educators must decide the morals and values, not support this infringement on innocence. You can bet that going into adulthood the child will make their own decisions in due course, when they’re old enough, hopefully after being well nurtured.
Risk assessment
For such a culture of health and safety, and for the risks involved, it amazes me that these questions haven’t been adequately addressed. It seems the main health and safety strategy is to avoid risk of offending the youth.
But I am unaware of any culture until now, where promiscuity was a supported part of education or beneficial lifestyle. It simply wasn’t safe. It still can’t be counted as safe. Particularly relationships amongst hormone raging, impressionable adolescents, where a considerable proportion can be accessing violent and appalling content on a daily basis – these relationships cannot be considered safe.
Someone ask these questions
However, as educators we must think and ask all the questions. We have seen how these contrived relationships are turning, and how the prevalence of these situations have led to various legislative changes to facilitate our societal changes.
But we must ask: Whose fault is it that children are being subjected to adult content? Can we continue to support them to engage in adult relationships? When will the education system, and the entertainment industry eventually stand up, assert moral values, and fight for the innocence of children.
They won’t – it’s not economically beneficial. The only people who will ever draw the line on behalf of our children are the parents – the families. Once again it is family values that must take priority as we navigate our choices for our children.
Here is briefly outline that children who rely heavily on internet for learning “may struggle to develop critical thinking and research skills.” https://instincthub.com/blog/the-influence-of-the-internet-on-education
Describing the difficulties children experience from the internet, here the advice is for the parents, but it children spend so much time with their educators, this is also where intervention must be present: https://www.logiscool.com/en-vn/blog/education/educate-children-to-be-discerning-harmful-content
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