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MISTICA: Re: TIC y jovenes

From: D. Williams ([email protected])
Date: Thu Aug 28 2003 - 21:33:16 AST

I think perhaps we should approach these subjects - two, pornography and
paedophiles - a different way.
First of all I think we must bear responsibility collectively for the world
which our generation has created for our children to inherit, and admit
that responsibility.

Then we must think back to when we were adolescents. Most of us were very
curious about the changing bodies we were living in, and good quality
information was not always easy to find. The secondary school I attended
was single sex and very proper - bien educado- yet I can remember books
being surreptitiously circulated with whispered instructions about which
page or chapter to read. Our children just have - more.

And in case you misunderstand I find the "more" extremely offensive.
But it's the same as the news reports which say "and he learned how to make
the bomb on the internet" - when the same information is available in the
encyclopaedia, at the library, on television.

I don't believe that it is an "internet" problem per se, and I don't
believe we can stop it, or control it with filters.

We have to think of something else.
We can offer the needed information acceptably packaged. We can encourage
and help young people to do the research and offer the information
themselves. We can make it easy to find. We can answer questions and listen
to problems. We can try to instil a sense of what is acceptable - and what
isn't.

And the paedophiles?
They do not only happen on the internet, although, like us, they find it a
useful tool. It improves their communication capabilities, but surely it
can improve ours too.

We have to teach the children to evaluate people. It takes a lot more
effort and energy than installing a "nanny" filter, but it is also a lot
more effective. I consider that to be the most important part of my job - I
teach literature, and I try to teach about how words do not always mean
what they say, how people can misrepresent themselves, deliberately or by
accident, how you should ask questions, avoid accepting things at facevalue.
We can't keep the children safe inside a wall of innocence ? ignorance any
longer - the walls keep falling down - so we must arm them with knowledge
to keep themselves safe in this perilous world we have created. We cannot
make the child-molestors go away, so we will have to teach the children to
go away from them. The technology is after all only technology; the
information and communication are at least partly up to us.

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