Changing Definitions to Avoid Responsibility January 23, 2008
UPDATE: While my original concerns about adult attitudes still stands, the teacher I quoted below, Steven Maher, commented in this post and kindly pointed me to the original transcript of his full interview. Clearly, Frontline made an effort to edit his interview to the greatest effect. I’ve added the additional parts from his interview below that clarify his remarks.
Reality check. I’m currently watching Frontline’s latest episode, Growing Up Online. I’m less concerned about what I’m hearing coming out of the kids’ mouths and more what I’m hearing from the adults. If you haven’t seen the show, go here and select Chapter Two, skip to 3:47 and listen to what a supposed adult (a teacher no less) has to say about cheating, or sorry maybe it’s not cheating:
Steve Maher: You take it as a given that they’re gonna take stuff from Sparknotes and from other sources like that. The question is how we react to that. And we can react and say, “Ok, this is something we have to fight against.” The other way to react to it is to accept it as a reality and say that’s how the outside world works. If I can find someone who’s working in advertising and who knows how to push a product and they can collect information from other sources and borrow and steal and put it together and reshape it, isn’t that a skill that I want them to have?
Interviewer: Are you saying cheating is ok?
Steve Maher:
I’m not saying cheating is ok. {Sidenote: At this point I’m yelling at the television, “Yes you are!”}(Update: Sigh…comments taken out of context…I was wrong.)Steve Maher:
I’m saying that cheating is something you have to look at closer to say what is cheating, what’s not cheating.[Full text from original transcript: I'm not saying that cheating is OK. I'm saying that cheating is something you have to look at closer to say, what is cheating and what's not cheating? Copying another student's answer on a multiple-choice test is cheating. The way to deal with that is not to put a book between them and say, "Don't look at that other student's test." The way to deal with that is to replace the multiple-choice test and say that you're going to do something else that you can look at other people's projects, but the way I assess what you're doing is going to take into account that you're going to look at what other people are doing. Your work still has to be original, but to get inspiration from other people and to craft your work in response to theirs or alongside theirs is not something that's necessarily a problem. ...]
Huh? If borrowing, stealing even, doesn’t meet this teacher’s definition of cheating, then what does? Going beyond that, I’m listening to these parents wigging out about how immersed kids are in technology and the “dangerous” Internet. Here’s a suggestion: if you’re worried quit buying the technology. Yes, they may access it at school, a friend’s home, or Internet cafe, but don’t aid and abet then toss your hands up in dismay.
One kid had two monitors plus a flat panel television in his room. Then, his dad comes on screen shaking his head over how he always feels like he’s intruding or interrupting his son when he goes into his bedroom. Maybe you shouldn’t have purchased all the expensive gear. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this particular kid bought his toys with an allowance buoyed by inflation. Same thing with the cell phones. Parents can’t believe how the kids refuse to separate themselves, even when on vacation. Sigh. When did parents stop being parents? To clarify, I’m not advocating against technology. I am advocating for a little common sense.
Perhaps I’m stuck in a time warp, but I always felt that I had boundaries growing up. I knew what was acceptable and what would create consequences. I never had a computer in my room, and I didn’t get a cell phone until I turned 16, and only then because I was driving back and forth to basketball practice and games during early mornings and late nights. Based on the interviews that I saw this evening, I want to shake some of these parents. You’re buying the cell phones, putting computers in bedrooms, then wondering why your kids have created such separate lives that appall you. I keep hearing the argument that everyone’s doing it. That’s the same argument I used growing up, too, and it got me exactly no where. I must have missed when that logic suddenly became acceptable.
As part of the show, they also interviewed danah boyd, one of my favorite social media researchers. She makes the very valid point that the Internet and these other technologies are a part of daily lives. They aren’t going away, so adults need to learn and kids need to be taught how to deal with the issues surrounding them. However, she also advocates that individuals need to be responsible about their participation, something I didn’t hear from many people in the show.
Please watch all of Growing Up Online because I think it has revealed as much about the adults as it does about the kids. The language used blows me away. The rationalizations by some, and this idea that parents and other adults don’t play a role in what’s happening, is ludicrous. For example, allowing kids to believe that analytical thinking and reading can be replaced by technology or that it’s somehow a benefit to know how to borrow and steal does them a disservice. The words adults use, regardless of what kids may say, do register at some level. Changing the definitions, because we want to avoid the fight, isn’t the answer.
