I was sitting in a meeting of pre-school teachers and directors this morning. The presenter introduced the topic of new realities for children in a digital world. She asked the group discuss this and then report. I grew gradually more depressed as I heard speaker after speaker say how interaction with digital resources was (for want of a better word) making children not as good as they used to be. Though none of the comments surprised me: no attention span, unable to interact with each other, needing constant stimulation, I was distressed as it was clear that no one who spoke saw any positive effects of changes to our world. Shifting to a discussion of teaching digital citizenship, the speaker once again asked for thoughts. Time and again I heard variations of, “the digital world is destroying all decency, the best we can do is try to get them to retain some of our social skills.”
These responses were not new to me, nor were they indicative of a pre-school teaching mentality, for I have heard this from people in all parts of education and all walks of life.
Maybe the questions need to be framed differently. Instead of asking, “How are children different from what they were 10-20 years ago?” perhaps a more helpful question would be, “How are kids better today than they were 10-20 years ago?” I’m not certain that they are qualitatively better, but asking the question in the neutral way certainly seems to elicit nothing but how they are worse. I’m certain that the table discussions would have been very different. Frankly, I wonder if it also might make us look at children in a different way, how are they better?
As a followup to this in the area of digital citizenship, maybe the question shouldn’t be, “How are we going to teach them citizenship skills in the digital world?” a question that implies that the digital world is a lawless wasteland from which children need to be saved. What if we set our sites higher and asked, “How are we going to help students to become better, more human people through the use of digital tools?” or even, “How can we help students use digital tools to become even better citizens that we are?” I fear at times that we pay lip service to our aspirations for the children we teach. We should not aspire to merely protect them and make them as good as possible, as in any other type of education, our highest aspiration should be for them to surpass us.
Too often we ask questions that seem neutral but that have defeat written within. By asking questions in a different way, we might look for something that we haven’t before.
As always, I welcome your comments
Image: ‘Better Unanswered?‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/15923063@N00/3378422490 Found on flickrcc.net
What if the question were framed to focus on the adults, not the kids? Something like: How have we as teachers and school administrators and parents let children down when it comes to the digital world? What opportunities have we lost and what resources have we overlooked or misunderstood? How have our actions (or lack of action) limited their opportunities?
In general, I am suspicious of any line of dialogue that shifts the focus of scrutiny away from oneself, and I think that is particularly true when it comes to education.
What we fail to recognize is that not all students live in a “digital world.” Many are denied access because of economic reasons. Further, we all live in a “digital world”and a “non digital world.” We have worlds of politics, economics, nature, gender and the “digital world.” We may go to football games and watch the big screen. But we are still going to football games. We may be downloading digital music, but we are still listening to non-digital ideas and emotions and sounds.We must realize these other worlds exist, too. (I think C.P. Snow wrote about all of this many years ago.)
Danielle,
I like your comment very much…you are actually going farther than what I suggest.
My only thought is to phrase the question as how have we failed? is a continuation of the cycle of negativity with the underlying assumption that we (and they) are doomed to failure. It implies a helplessness and tends to encourage guilt rather than progress.
It’s all too Catholic for me 🙂
How about this: What are some of the ways people (kids and adults) use technology well and in ways that enhance or support creativity, literacy, human kindness, etc.? How can we encourage more of those uses? What do we do/not do that makes those uses more likely to happen? What can we do more/less of to extend those uses?
But I do think it’s important to also look at the failures because they are there and they matter, too.
I don’t disagree, but I think we are already very comfortable looking at failures…we are a failure oriented profession. There is also a very fine line between analyzing challenges and bitching about them 🙂
What I was going for here is sort of swinging the pendulum in then other direction, namely that you can learn from positive information as well as negative.