I have been thinking a lot about fear recently. Fear of technology specifically. As we near the end of 2009 and the start of a brand new decade, I cannot help but think back to the beginning of this decade and the dire warnings and threat of impending global destruction which were going to be brought about by the Millennium Bug as the clock struck midnight on 1st January 2000.

We were terrified that computers were going to destroy humanity. Looking back, it seems ridiculous that so many people thought this possible. I must admit, however, that it also seems a little quaint and very “20th century”.

The problem was that the bug never bit. Our fears, although astonishingly contagious, proved to be misjudged, overblown and unjustified .

In a way, we are lucky to be genetically predisposed to fear. Fear has kept us safe from danger and predators for hundreds of thousands of years. However, the fear which historically has served us so well to keep us safe in the real world is having an adverse effect on how educators and students perceive this virtual world of communication and collaboration which represents, in my opinion, one of the greatest leaps forward in civilisation, up there alongside the invention of writing and the Gutenberg press.

Despite this, the world wide web and social networks are often described and referred to as “crawling with predators” and “being fraught with danger”. This ancient rhetoric of fear is preventing us from highlighting and exploiting the benefits the word wide web has to offer us and our students, even though they substantially and overwhelmingly outweigh the risks.

Students should rightly be taught about certain dangers of social networking, such as giving away too much personal information or meeting up with strangers. I have no objection to this. It is, in fact, necessary that we teach this. After all, it is our job to teach our pupils well.

However, in my experience, students are seldom shown and taught how the world wide web can actually enhance their education and enrich their lives. Like in standard PSHE programmes, perhaps too much emphasis is given to the negative aspects and risks involved in surfing the web.

Not only does fear explain teachers’ expectations of how pupils should use technology, but it also dictates how they approach using technology in their lessons. Fear can either be paralysing or it can trigger two possible behavioural responses: fight or flight. Unfortunately, too many teachers are paralysed by fear or opt to flee from the perceived dangers of technology rather than to fight, persevere and overcome the fear. If only they realised that technology can be tamed.

In the meantime, in the real world, students all over the planet who are fortunate enough to have an internet connection have embraced the web, particularly social networking sites. This is how they communicate now. No phone calls, no email. This is how they do it.

Our initial response to this successful adoption of new technologies on the part of our students has been one of fear: we have blocked and filtered and fire-walled. We, as a profession, have evaded our duty to teach our students well and, by and large, have left them to their own devices using and misusing the tools and applications that the web has made available to us all.

We should not be proud of this. On the contrary. The current generation of school children is being inculcated with our irrational fear of the internet, even though children are statistically more likely be injured by a parent or be involved in a traffic accident, than to come to any actual physical harm as a direct consequence of their use of the internet.

I wonder then how long will it take for us to realise that this bug will not bite either, that our fears are mostly unjustified and that our misapprehensions are, in fact, causing our children more harm than that from which we are so eagerly trying to protect them?

How long before we realise that we must abandon this rhetoric of fear and adopt a more positive attitude towards teaching and learning using the tools of the 21st century?

What do you think?

Photo by stuant63

This post is tagged 21st century, fear, views and opinions