Opaque Lucidity

Computer As Blunt Object

The Lovely Kelli and I had an interesting conversation with my mom and dad earlier tonight. Dad's opinion is that the availability of computers to children is beginning to actually "dumb down" our society. I added an addendum to this: the easy availability of computers connected to the internet is making for "dumbed down" kids.

Kelli agreed to this with a caveat---strictly regulated internet access can be a great aid to education; it is the unregulated access so many children (especially teens) have at home that does the damage. She gave as her example her time as a student teacher earlier this year. Many of her students did not understand why they couldn't use websites as their primary sources for information. Most of them referred specifically to Wikipedia, an 'open source' encyclopedia which allows users to edit content on the assumption that large masses of people will result in self-corrected articles. Kelli does not allow the site to be used at all in her classroom. My dad's response to this was, "If they know the rules, why don't the just accept it and move on? Those are the rules...they should follow them." Dad is 75 and, as you can guess, hasn't stepped into a classroom in a long time. When he was in high school, the nuns and brothers could still hit a misbehaving student with no fear of lawsuits or screaming parents.

My contention is that teenagers, if left alone with a broadband connection, will do one of two things: contact their friends incessantly via instant messaging, MySpace, Facebook, etc. or look for pRon (the boys, mostly). But maybe I'm wrong. After all, my nieces and nephews seem to be very good netizens, but both of my sisters (my brothers' children are too young to be online alone) are strict disciplinarians. If left on their own, I don't know what they would do. I would like to think they would behave as they do now, but I think we all know the nature of young men and women.

What are your thoughts? Some of you reading this are raising teens, or have raised teens, or have children who will soon be teenagers. What are your rules concerning the internet in your home? Is the internet an educational tool necessary in today's world, or is it a hindrance to real learning?