There have been some warnings sent out from our local high schools this week about some disturbing content appearing on social media. The content appears to be enticing kids in with appealing images such as puppies, and once in they are then exposed to some very concerning images and video.
Some parents have made contact about this, naturally
concerned. It is a reminder that these types of events can happen randomly and
intermittently, We won’t always be able
to stop these things from happening or protect our children from ever seeing
them, so it is important that our young
people know how to recognise this harmful type of content and, even more
importantly, know how to deal with it. The
recent episodes of spam occurring on blogs is another example of this type of
hazard.
In 1999 I was working as a Social Studies contract
facilitator for the Ministry and my role was to help schools develop their long
term plans based on the recently released Social Studies – the purple document
that has since been superseded by the NZC.
One of the schools I worked with was a faith-based school where children
were highly protected from the nastier side of life. The teacher I was working with was very
opposed to using current events as part of the learning programme mainly
because he did not want the children exposed to events or opinions that were in
conflict with the values of the school. I, on the other hand, have always believed that current events pose
great opportunities for children and young people to develop understandings of
others’ perspectives and beliefs regardless of whether or not you believe them. Between us, we had some very strong debates
about what each of our beliefs meant for the children’s learning, and over the
year we worked together, we had this conversation repeatedly.
The point I felt very strongly about was that at some point the
young people in this school would discover that people are not always
well-intentioned and that they would
need to be able to understand and hold their own moral ground in the face of
opposition. If we, as teachers, didn’t
provide opportunities for them to discuss these issues and beliefs in a safe,
guided way, we would not be preparing them for the time when they would have to
cope with this independently. As much as we treasure the innocence of our
children and young people, they need to be prepared to face the realities of a
changing world in an informed and confident way. I remember speaking very
‘passionately’ about this towards the end of the year. At another meeting a few weeks later the
teacher had reflected on our discussion and had changed his point of view. He commented that it was the thought of not
preparing the children to face these things that overrode his determination to
protect them.
From the Maniakalani perspective, we now use the term
“empowering” to describe the same things I had been talking about with this
teacher. In the same way, we decided
that knowing about what was valued,
morally acceptable, and what was not in
their world view, we set them up for
success. This is exactly what we are now
faced with via online forums and platforms.
However we have much less control over when, and how, this exposure
occurs. So as educators, parents, and
whanau, we need to take the same approach and ensure that our young people know
what “good” and ‘appropriate “look like and give them the skills to deal with
anything that is not. And hope that
consistent, and supportive responses, empower rather than harm our kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment