You May Not Get to Read This Blog

Conversations continue about schools that block access to the blogosphere. I ran across an interesting comment last night, in my end of the day aggregator scan. It was in a blog post by Wesley Fryer (Censored for Relevance – April 11, 2006), that he said, “Are we living in the United States here, or totalitarian China?”

There are distinct differences between censorship in China and censorship in the U.S. In China, it is the government that is in a position of power, whereas, in the U.S. it is individuals and the mobs that they form that owns the power. But Fryer’s statement, I believe, is still a fair association. In both cases, censorship happens from the government’s fear of the people. China fears access to information that empowers people to challenge their authority. In the U.S. we fear challenge to the government’s ethicacy.

But the pivot point is not politics. It’s in the desperate belief that we can contain the information. It’s in our gatekeeper insistence that the information we do not want our children to have can be put on the highest shelves, hidden in the back of a closet, hidden within a brown paper wrapper, or rejected by editors and librarians,

The awful shame of it is that we have, as a result, convinced our children that their information is safe inside of their containers. Find your child’s MySpace writings and then question them. They will say, “That wasn’t for you.” “What are you doing in my space?” “How did you find that?” “How did you get there?” “I thought I was protected.” “I thought my information was containered for me and my friends.”

Because we still treat information as something that we can hide behind a wall, and we continue to teach that way to our children, they do not realize the dangers that their information represents to their personal safety and future well being.

Perhaps, we should stop thinking about the problem as something that we can cut off, like amputating a gangrenous arm. Instead, why not think of it as something that is integral to our culture — and treat it. What might we do to introduce a virus into MySpace.

“Ok students. This year, I’m going to be reading your MySpace writings and introducing topics that you write about in your space with our classroom discussions. We’ll use your information to learn.”

Posted later in the day
My final suggestion had an element of tongue in cheek, because the students would certainly find a way to evade our interest. This fact was just brought to my attention in Andy Carvin’s blog, Learning•Now, as he (MySpace Is Just So Last Year) points us to a story in the Witchata Eagle, describing how students are finding alternative social spaces. Carvin also, in another post (New Federal Legislation Would Ban Online Social Networks in Schools & Libraries), brings to our attention, a new bill being introduced in congress to force blocking of any social network web server for schools and libraries that are subsidized by federal dollars. GIVE ME A BREAK!

Photo Credits
Giuli@, “So Here We Are.” Giuli@’s Photostream. May 2, 2006. 11 May 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/giulia_rossa/139146844/>.

Travelinlibrarian, “Leid Public Library.” Travelinlibrarian’s Photostream. May 10, 2006. 11 May 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/travelinlibrarian/144280510/>.

19 thoughts on “You May Not Get to Read This Blog”

  1. I love the virus idea. While there is strong controversy on the topic of blocking MySpace, I think most people would agree on why most schools block it. Most schools block MySpace because students put information out there that should not be consumable by the general public. If teachers made the “Virus” statement, and used MySpace as a learning tool, I think we would see students putting less of the “dangerous information” out there. Perhaps with some professional development and time, this can happen. Right now if you would ask our teachers what MySpace was, most would say “that website that needs to be blocked”.

    Those of you in NC will appreciate this…. on an unnamed social networking site, Marshals were posting after prom photos of their underage drinking. And I thought Marshals would be smarter than that.

    This is the best censorship blog posting that I have read in a while. Most just irritate me. I find the “Schools are like China….We’ve got free speech dude!…Don’t let the man get get you down..” blogs tedious. Why? Well, I manage our schools’ filter, and I am not sure if they understand what that job is like.

    First, you always have in the back of your mind the idea that free speech is extremely important. You are depressed because you are driven to block a lot of things that you have mixed feelings about blocking.

    If you like e-rate dollars, and I do, you also have to be CIPA compliant. (How many people have seen photos on MySpace that the CIPA would not like? If you haven’t, either you don’t look around much, or you have just gotten lucky. They are so big, I don’t think they can enforce their own policies. )

    You have teachers, parents, administrators, and students…yes students. Giving you sites they think should be blocked.
    You have teachers, parents, administrators, and students. Giving you sites they think should be unblocked. (95% of the time they are correct!)

    Then you have the whole network security issue where you try to block harmful content. (Spyware, Viruses, Hacking Tools)
    Then you have the whole bandwidth management issue where you try to block advertising content and other items that tend to waste bandwidth.
    Then you have the whole cat and mouse game where you try to stop the students that have found ways around the filter. (I have to admit, I don’t have time to play that game much.)

    You do all of this trying to find a happy medium between being an IT Nazi and just opening the floodgates of HE Double Hockey-sticks.
    To put the icing on the cake, you are using tools that have their own bugs and quirks that make you want to pull your hair out.

    Thanks for the rant space. 🙂

    Reply

  2. Let me offer a clarification– in my post I was not ranting (complaining) about school district IT departments blocking MySpace– I agree with that decision and understand it, there is very little moderation / policing of what is on MySpace, and lots of bad stuff there. Yes, CIPA is the law. The point of my post Censored for Relevance was not that schools were blocking MySpace and that was bad, but that many districts are blocking ANY WEBSITE that includes the word “myspace” on it. That means that my own blog, on which I discuss social networking in many contexts, including MySpace, is blocked, and I have a problem with that.

    David you are right: Our politicos are not forcing IT departments to make all these decisions, there is a culture in IT that is generally conservative and from some perspectives, seems to oppose most innovation and creativity.

    My most significant thought on this is that we need to leverage students’ demonstrated motivation to socially network with digital tools. That is why schools need to utilize free tools like Think.com. Developers like you need to look at creating open-source versions of tools like this, David, because we need to help kids learn how to safely navigate these spaces! We can’t just ban everything, we also have to help students LEARN!!!!

    That was the theme of my latest podcast on Think.com and digital social networking.

    Reply
  3. Pingback: Infomancy » Dealing with DOPA

  4. I had a conversation with Vicki Davis (Coolcatteacher) about this sort of thing a while ago. We discussed the kneejerk tendency to block email accounts; blogs; web access; whatever when kids make inappropriate use of them. Funny thing is, no-one would dream of removing their paper and pens when they use them to write rude messages or draw obscene pictures. I believe that our mission (as both parents and teachers) with online tools is the same as our mission with anything else – we need to equip the children for appropriate use. That isn’t going to happen with the resource cupboard locked and barred.

    I was chatting to a teacher friend last night and he told me that they had blocked web access because they “couldn’t control what the kids were doing”. Wow! Control. Now there’s an interesting objective.

    We teach, we observe, we guide, we advise, we instruct, we reward, we prod, we discipline, we assess, we counsel, we comfort, we chastise, we warn, we encourage, we praise, we scold, we lead, we goad, we share, we edify, we equip, the list goes on… But control does not feature, as far as I know.

    Reply

  5. I agree with Karyn, we need others to realize that technology resources are tools like other tools we are all more familiar with, that can be used well or poorly. I think the fear that many people have over change and the unknown drives a lot of these reactionary responses. Many in higher education as well as K-12 live in “a fantasy land of perceived control and engagement” too, I think. If the room is quiet and students appear to be on task, then the teacher things that learning is necessarily occurring along with engagement. In reality, this is often not the case.

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  6. Pingback: Blog.Dan | Technology in Education » Banning Blogs

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