For young children we have always provided a highly protected learning environment as they start to gain skills and understandings about the big wide world. By the senior years we are used to the idea that they read adult literature and explore sophisticated and sometimes quite dark ideas - like some of the themes in Shakespeare. Throughout my career there has always been some tension between the notion of providing children in the middle years with an enclosed school environment - a walled garden - or engaging them more with the world. The internet has brought this tension to the foreground because it opens a great big window into the world from any computer, making it difficult to isolate the school from the wider world. Children can have more choices where they play and explore.
At home, most students have quite open access to the internet. I think this creates a real ethical dilemma for administrators and teachers. In who's interests is a walled garden approach to the internet? If their school's internet is a highly restricted walled garden then children will certainly be attracted to the lively forest over the wall.
Education departments and administrators justify the maintenance of very restricted internet access for students on the grounds that internet access including collaborative activities can lead to privacy risks, bullying and access to damaging material. This is said in full awareness of the fact that outside the school, children may well face all these risks with little protection. Experts in child safety are unanimous that the best protection against the risks mentioned above is child awareness and skills development. This can be done best by schools working in cooperation with parents. It seems to me that ethically, teachers should be focusing on what is best for the student and this is not served well by restricting the learning that can best occur in a classroom. If schools engage their students with sensible use of the internet this learning will help children in their home use of the internet. School administrators who support a highly restricted school environment often cite parent complain or litigation as risks. This is a hint that their actions may be more self-serving than being in the interests of their students. Students who are engaged in wide-ranging internet access will learn discrimination skills and selectivity. Students engaged in school social networking for learning will learn about managing their privacy and online safety measures. They will learn skills that help them in their online life at home.For a school to largely withdraw their students from engagement with the internet and some of its potential risks is to my mind ethically questionable when we know that a large majority of students from at least age 12 and beyond are actively engaged in this world out of school. Educators cannot use the argument that this is not the school's role because the internet is a dominant and growing medium in our society and in education.
Parents are likely to be very supportive of initiatives in this area. The boundaries of appropriate behaviour are not firm and teachers are well placed to help their students think through what is appropriate. The level of engagement with the internet I am supporting for middle years students includes password protected collaborative sites, engagement with peers and lightly filtered but monitored internet access: a walled garden but with a low wall.
Image http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walled_garden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_273916.jpg
