We've been very busy with AP exams this week, but I've had this article on my mind for several weeks. The issue is the internet and student privacy, and there are so many ways to look at it. In his own blog, a friend of mine recently suggested that our students - our sons and daughters - start developing private lives while in middle school and that there is nothing wrong with that. It is okay, he writes, for them to choose a friend to confide in rather than a parent, or it is okay for them to try and figure out a situation by themselves.
Technology, of course, complicates the privacy issue, and the Education Week article I referenced above, goes into more depth about that. However, I think the article is also important because it attempts to explain the way teenagers look at the internet and privacy issues, which is different from how we adults view it.
Maybe because my own daughter is out of college (and I don't have to deal with it now) that I tend to agree with my blogger friend: teenagers do have the right to expect some privacy, and I'd like to think that some trust is necessary. But I wish those same teenagers would understand that there really is no such thing as privacy when it comes to the internet, and at some point, someone out there may be able to find those pictures or those comments that they made. Then again, maybe that's my adult way of looking at things.
Maybe the most important line in the article is this: "We need to respect the world of teenagers," especially if we want to understand them.
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