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https://theconversation.com/australias-social-media-ban-shows-how-extreme-the-technology-debate-has-become-theres-a-better-way-245123>
"The recent decision by the Australian government to introduce a ban on social
media for under-16s has been received with both praise and condemnation.
Those who approve of the proposal tend to consider that children are being
exploited by egregious levels of exposure to this technology. Opponents of the
ban argue that it is not proportionate to the potential harms of denying young
people appropriate access to what have become integral features of everyday
existence.
This somewhat adversarial situation falls prey to the twin perils of fatalism
and disasterism. It characterises the wider conversation about how we engage
with the digital world. Here, fatalism signifies a weary resignation and
disasterism suggests that we are all going to hell in a handcart. More
specifically, these impulses impinge directly on school policy making and
practice.
In our Economic and Social Research Council funded research project, Teaching
for Digital Citizenship, my colleagues and I have sought to uncover more
nuanced accounts of how young people engage with technology by collaborating
with them.
The students in our study pointed us away from an adversarial framing of the
issue and towards the need to foster more traditional forms of democratic
thought. These practices draw on a robust tradition of what’s known as
education for citizenship. That is, teaching students how to be active,
thoughtful and informed citizens in a democratic society.
Such a robust notion of education for citizenship has been championed by a
range of thinkers. Most notably, the British political theorist Bernard Crick
in the 1990s and the educational thinker Lawrence Stenhouse in the 1970s. They
both offered ideas about educational practices that rely not on the technology,
nor on corporations, but on older “analogue” traditions of critical thought and
engagement in subjects."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
