BFTP: One Big Room
Saturday, July 23, 2011 at 07:05AM A weekend Blue Skunk feature will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post July 29, 2006. This post also appears as a column here. As more and more kids get unfiltered Internet access via cell phones, tablets, etc. via personal 3G connections, bypassing the school's filtered nework, this topic becomes even more timely.
Anyone who thinks he or she can control kids' access to online information or experiences is spitting in the wind. We are not facing a simple technical challenge. We are swimming against a cultural tide.
Neil Postman explains why in his book The Disapperance of Childhood (1982). It's been awhile since I have read this book, but as I remember, Postman's arguments go something like this. Childhood is a social construct. Before the Industrial Revolution, children were simply treated as small adults. They dressed like adults, they worked like adults, they lived where adults lived, and they saw what adults saw. Adults and children before the second half of the 19th century all lived pretty much in one big room.
The rise in industrialization gave rise to the concept of "childhood." Society started treating children differently than they did adults, separating them by dress, by activity and especially in experience. We kept kids in their own rooms with very limited access to adult rooms. For their own safety, of course.
Postman argued that with the ubiquity of mass media (pre-Internet days), society no longer has the ability to keep children away from adult venues and sights. We are all back into one big room, as it were. Kids will see and experience again what adults see and experience.
When I first started arguing against filtering back in 1994, I'd ask workshop participants if they felt these were appropriate materials for children to be seeing and reading:
- Sex After 35, Why It’s Different, Why it Can be Better
- Men & Sex - Their 7 Secret Wishes
- How Our Sex Life Was Saved
- Major New Sex Survey - What You Don’t Know...
- The Sexual Games of the American Male
- He Want’s What? Men’s 6 Biggest Sexual Fantasies
- The Sex Skill Men Adore (& How to Do It Well)
- The Hugh Grant Syndrome - Why Guys Pay for Sex
- Five Total Turn-ons Men Can’t Resist
Everyone agreed that these were not materials suitable for kids. And they should be denied access to them.
Too late, I'd say. Each of these were headlines splashed on the front cover of popular magazines easily found near the grocery store checkout lane (and last I checked things have not become less explicit.)
This cultural shift that is removing the wall between the kids' and adults' rooms is unnerving to say the least. Our natural inclination as parents and educators (and even politicians, I suppose) is to shelter and to protect. But responsible adults also recognize that it is in their children's best interest not to shelter, but to teach children how to protect themselves in the big, bad world.
As we are all pushed further and futher into the one big room, we don't have a choice. By blocking access to blogs and chat and other Internet resources in schools and homes, we are only denying access to kids in places where any actual adult instruction may occur. So just how ironic is that?
Reader Comments (2)
OK, I agree that digital citizenship should be an extension of good citizenship in general, but what do you think about the fact that kids often see their digital contact as different than actual contact. Saying and doing things they may not normally do in a face to face situation? I think maybe our job is to show them that their digital life is just an extension of their actual life and that they should act ethically in both? One of my main focuses last year was trying to teach the students to be ethical and in their use of media in their digital productions; what are some ways you suggest I could do that? What about safety? Do you think it's a school librarian's job to teach safety (I do)?
Hi Shawn,
You make a great point. I do agree there are enough differences (and new conditions) that the "digital" part of citizenship needs to be specifically addressed.
Thanks for the comment,
Doug