You might recall my recent nano-controversy (or micro-kerfuffle, as I said here, and the initial story was here) about Tiny Terror's computer teacher setting all of her young charges up with Yahoo! e-mail accounts.
My beef at the time was the teacher seemed not really to understand such things should be done with the parents' permission, and that she was definitely NOT any child's legal guardian, and further that Yahoo! is adult-oriented. It's much too easy to find unkidfriendly content on the various Personals sites, and that should have been pretty obvious up front.
Well, I wrote a nice note to everyone (teacher, computer teacher, principal, school tech guy), and although I did get a response from the computer teacher, I never really felt as though I got any sort of acknowledgement that yes, maybe things could have been done a bit better so as to avoid all this. I realize they get calls and letters from cranks all the time--I've been on two different private school boards of trustees and Miss Reba ran a daycare at a school, so I know cranks--but it would have been nice (since I was nice and calm and not the least bit crankish) to have had some sense that SOMEthing would be done differently in the future.
I let it slide, although it still nagged at me a bit, but then while I was rummaging through Cat's backpack last night taking out all the wads of paper, I found an interesting note from the computer teacher:
Exciting things are happening in [the school's] computer lab! Students are setting up personal email accounts through Gaggle.net, a kid-friendly email site. This is a school-oriented email service in which teachers monitor content. Before activating an account for [the school], Gaggle verified that we were a functioning school and I was a certified teacher. [Explanation of the classwork to be done] We began our lessons using Yahoo email accounts. However, it was discovered that access to unsuitable content wa a possibility on Yahoo sites. [Emphasis mine] All Yahoo accounts that were established have been cancelled and will no longer be accessible. [Remainder of letter lectures parents on Internet security for their kids]
Well, how about that.Still, I am not undissatisfied.
Mainly it was the tone--the passive voice "it was discovered" makes it sound as though it wasn't bloody obvious from the start that SOMEONE herself wasn't quite up to speed on the pitfalls associated with the Internet, and then the remainder of the letter's wording was just a bit off-putting. I know some parents don't know these things, but the teacher obviously didn't seem to understand them, either. It would have been nice to not act so uppity about it and admit that the whole thing was a learning process for EVERYone involved.
Reminds me of an old bit that I believe was told by Jerry Clower--there was a fellow who liked to tell everyone how smart he was, and one day he was with a bunch of guys watching a man make horseshoes. He picked up one that was still hot and burned his hand and dropped it suddenly, and the guys started picking on him and asking him if it was hot. "Naw--I just didn't want to look at it that long."
Anyway, I'm glad they did decide to do something, and I'm satisfied about what they did do, and hopefully the kids will learn a little something. And hopefully the adults will learn that until they run that horseshoe down in the water bucket it's best not to grab on to it.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at October 20, 2006 11:22 AM