a rebel without a clue

Our plog hosting site is across the street. It's a bit like a library, but a little different. People can peruse the plogs, but also subscribe to them and have it sent directly to their home. Some plogs require registration to view or comment and others simply require a word verification code (It's a great device that may some day ward off robots. For now, though, it works great at keeping Phil the Town Drunk from writing obscene comments)

As we cross the road, we face a barricade sponsored by SiteSense, the same folks who keep us away from "unnecessary field trips."

He kindly tells us that the district has restricted us from this site and that we can go elsewhere, but he will not permit us to take any steps forward. I stare at his baton and assume he means business. The Paper World is full of such posturing and though I never test it out, I assume it is correct. Years ago, I would hand-write addresses incorrectly and the postal worker would send it back with a stern "You have performed an illegal operation." I kept expecting the Paper and Parcel Police to pound on my door and take me to prison.

On the way back, a student tells me that it's what she expected.

"Our district slogan is 'Learning for Life,' but life is the very thing they try to avoid."

"One of our values is community, yet we have huge walls that keep us in and the community out."

* * *

After school, I stop by the district office. The Assistant Superintendent of Paper-related Learning explains the issue to me.

"Oh yeah, you're supposed to publish all student work to the iSites. We paid good money and we're going to use it."

"Yes, but the Plogger site is free and easier to customize and kids can visit it when they aren't at school."

"But the iSites works with the iParchment and it flows seamlessly in a system. We know the company and we trust them. Besides, I heard that there might be pornographic plogs across the street. Gertrude was tell me a story about . . . "

"Look, I highly doubt it. But if there is, you can always fill out a Report Abuse card for the curator and she will throw the plog in the trash."

"Quite honestly, we are worried about your approach to safety. Your students never even signed the Fair Use policy."

"What do you mean?"

"We have a distinct code explaining how paper and pencil must be used."

"No one told me that."

"Well, you never asked."

"So, do they have a Fair Use Policy in the wood shop? I mean, it seems that they are much more likely to lose a hand in woodshop than, say, gouge out an eye using pencils."

"No, shop class doesn't have the same rules."

"Do we block the choir from singing at the town square? I mean, I heard there is drinking and gambling that goes on over there."

"But that is supervised, Mr. Johnson. Your students could be meandering through a site that SiteSense considers potentially dangerous. They have a scientific process . . ."

"Science is about reason and skepticism. It's about inquiry and exploration. This is hysteria. It's not science. Technology, perhaps, but not science."

I leave with a stack of Fair Use forms for students to hand out to their parents. I am struck by the notion that our community is afraid of all the wrong aspects of pencil and paper. No one questions the proper age and development of a child using a pencil. No one asks whether it is a good thing for a child to have a community audience. No one looks at the death of an oral culture when we embrace all things print-related.

I'm not opposed to having some guidelines or even some paperwork.  What scares me is that we get so hung up in creating structures of security that no one seems interested in protecting paper freedom.

(note: I was influenced on this post by a comment made by Josie)

field trip update

The principal pulls me aside and says, "So, your request to go to the university has been approved.  It looks like you'll be able to go on a field trip after all, Techno-Tommy."

"What happened?"

"Well, the district decided that the solution is not so much an issue of all sites being bad, but rather some of them needing to be restricted.  So, they outsourced it to a company called SiteSense. It searches out keywords and prevents teachers from allowing kids to wander to dangerous sites."

After investigating the SiteSense program, I'm a little skeptical.  I mailed out five searches and each were denied.  Apparently we can't visit with a lawyer, because of the use of the word "bar" in American Bar Association.  We can't listen to any music.  We cannot be present where anyone might access a Pen Pal network.

A student of mine decided to write a letter to the district:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a sixth grader who is concerned about your current field trip policy.  You are scared that I might use a Pen Pal network incorrectly.  However, instead of teaching me boundaries, you cut me off from any letters entirely.  You are worried about me listening to ragtime so you cut off music (and thus a major aspect of education) completely.

Can I go to a hospital and interview a doctor about breast cancer?  Nope, SiteSense says that any field trip that includes the word "breast" is banned.  Can I go to the botanical garden for botany research? Apparently, merely hearing the word pussy willow will turn me into a binge-drinking, amoral hedonist.

What if we tried this instead?  Teachers could use their own judgment and monitor field trips.  If a student wastes time passing a note on a Pen Pal network, perhaps the field trip wasn't as valuable of a learning experience as one had assumed.  If a child wanders over to a baseball game instead of going to the museum, perhaps the child individually needs to be reprimanded.

We are a nation built on the notion of civil liberties.  Your district vision includes "model citizens" and "lifelong learning."  Why not treat field trips as a chance to model critical thinking and citizenship?  Instead of punishing everyone, what if you trust us to navigate field trips with the guidance of our teacher instead of a SiteSense that rarely makes any sense at all.

Sincerely:

Sarah

blocking sites

I know this has nothing to do with pencil integration, but there's something else I wanted to share:

Mr. Brown pulled me aside to discuss our field trip plans.  "They cancelled both of our field trips, Tom. Can you believe it?  We planned out our lessons to fit those particular sites and out of nowhere, they just blocked the sites."

"They can't do that.  We had parent permission slips.  We spent our time developing whole projects around it."

"Yeah, apparently a kid in another school wandered off to another site.  I guess they were in main street and he ran off to see the baseball game. He started talking to kids at another school."

"So, what does that mean for us?"

"We can't go anywhere, pretty much.  You know how we wanted to go to a motion picture, right?"

"Yeah, there's a short film about the Arctic."

"Well, they're worried that kids might wander off and try and see a peep show instead."

"Isn't that an issue of classroom management?"

"Yeah, you would think.  You might think that teacher whose kids snuck off should get some training or maybe the kid should be banned from going on field trips, but instead they are banning all motion pictures.  It gets worse, though.  You know how we were going to take them to see the orchestra, right?"

"They're cancelling that?"

"Turns out the orchestra is next to a place that plays rag time and rag time is dangerous stuff."

"Seriously? There's more sex and violence in Shakespeare and yet kids are forced to read his plays. Okay, okay.  So, what about the museum.  We get to go there, right?"

"Nope.  It turns out that as the kids wander around and search the images they can stumble upon some of that dangerous Renaissance art that has nudity."

"Can't a teacher filter out the experience so that they go to the correct images."

"Well, the corridors are still open and so the district is worried about it.  These are Victorian times, my friend.  Everything has to be hyper-clean to the point of censoring anything authentic to life. In fact, they're talking about cancelling all field trips for fear that a kid would run into a predator in public."

"Is that why my students have been completely banned from passing notes at recess?"

"Exactly."

"Wow, Victorian times indeed!"