Do Facebook and YouTube belong in the classroom? Are schools right to ban popular social networking sites? Writer Nicholas Bramble tackles these questions in a recent Slate article, “Fifth Period is Facebook: Why Schools Should Stop Blocking Social Networking”:
Educators should stop thinking about how to repress the huge amounts of intellectual and social energy kids devote to social media and start thinking about how to channel that energy away from causing trouble and toward getting more out of their classes. After all, it’s not as if most kids are investing commensurate energy into, say, their math homework. Why not try to start bridging the worlds of Facebook, YouTube, and the classroom?
Bramble offers suggestions for how schools could safely use mainstream social networking for legitimate educational purposes, arguing that both teachers and students would benefit from the practices he suggests. But is his argument realistic and practical? Would such practices in truth put more kids at risk of distraction from studies at best and cyberbullying at worst? Worthwhile reading for parents and educators, with a final point that merits pondering:
A hundred years ago, John Dewey warned that when teachers suppress children’s natural interests in the classroom, they “substitute the adult for the child, and so weaken intellectual curiosity and alertness, suppress initiative, and deaden interest.” By locking social networking out of school, teachers and principals are making exactly that error. Instead, they should meet kids where they live: online.
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