Schools Mandating Online Safety Education?Parents are responsible for their kids safety. Once again, people who are delegating that right to the schools, instead of handling it themselves, are in the news.
In Virginia, the schools are teaching mandatory Internet safety for all students in all grades. Virginia is not the only state doing this, either. Texas and Illinois are also teaching online safety to students, although as of this school year, Virginia is the only state where it's a mandate.
So how do you teach children about Internet safety? Virginia is using a varied approach rather than offering an actual class in Internet safety. There doesn't seem to be a lot of guidelines for this particular project, but the division of Educational Technology has prepared a 17-page pamphlet that teachers can use in elementary, middle, and high schools, although it seems heavy on suggestions and light on specifics.
It may work but its bothersome to continually ask our schools to pick up the slack. Especially when they don't know how to do it.
Parents, Mom and Dad should take the lead in online safety and teach it at home. IF the schools supplement it, all the better but it needs to be the right way, not a pamphlet.
I alos suspect many parents will just assume the school is doing it well and not addres it all at home. When the first child is trapped by an online predator the lawsuit will target the school and it's 17 page pamphlet program for its ineffectiveness.
...Hats off to
The Christian Science Monitor
