Should primary school teachers be engaged in the Facebook for students discussion. Despite the age restriction being 13 year olds it seems from this article that many Year 5/6 students also have a FB account or something similar.
There are reasons for the age restriction around who can have a facebook account and even in the FB terms and conditions refers to breaches being met with frozen accounts. Yet students continue to gain access with or without parental consent.
But then underage students get to see R16 and R18 movies, get access to porn, cigarettes and drugs, so where is the difference? As posted earlier, these vices continue to be an issue to every generation and parental vigilance is paramount in establishing the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate material.
Will ‘Educating the parents’ be the answer? How do we address this issue as a community? Surely we are singularly responsible for our own child’s limits and boundaries but how can we be sure that their ‘mate’ in school shares those core values and has those same limits and restrictions. Every generation of parent has, and will continue to, hear the mantra “It’s not fair, Johnny’s parents let HIM!”
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Discussion on: Facebook in Education.
Blog post on Facebook in Education.
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1 comment:
I think it is important to discuss the implications of social networking sites with our pupils. I taught a year 3/4 class last year, and at least four of my pupils had accounts on FB. As far as I know, this was with parental consent, and was primarily to access games such as FarmVille. I am pleased to see sites like SuperClubsPlus being advertised via TelstraClear although I don't know that this will 'solve' the problem of underage access to other sites. It is concerning.
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