The Socially Networked Classroom - Chapter 1 - The Writing is on the Screen

Chapter 1 of the book The Socially Networked Classroom by William Kist focused on how "connected" our students are, and how they are more in tune with their world than ever before thanks to social media.   What really stuck out to me when reading this interesting chapter was the section titled "The Myth of a "Safe" Adolescence."  It speaks of how only recently in our developed society have children been shielded from the world; children were often "left to fend for themselves" and had "very little schooling" and "puberty marked the moment when the fight for survival began in earnest" (Savage, 2007, as cited by Kist, p. 4).  The question we must ask ourselves is this: Why do we shield students from the world? 

I know that I am personally guilty of this.  When my students enter my classroom, I make sure the create a safe environment for them.  School, to me, is a safer representation of the world, where the outside world cannot touch us, that what is real is learning how to treat eachother kindly and learning from eachother.  The realities of the world are not allowed in, and any violence is spoken about during social studies as with Shay’s Rebellion. 

That is, until it’s “drill” day.

Drill day is one of the only days where the reality of our situation in that building is discussed.  What if there’s a shooter?  A fire?  What do we do once our safe place is no longer safe?

It is now that we explain to students to severity of a situation, providing scenarios and speaking of the real world.

The reality is, as expressed in this chapter, that children are not “better protected or any safer now than they were a century ago” given poverty, teen drinking, and sexual promiscuity (p. 5).  So treating these students as naïve humans that should be sheltered from reality is somewhat hypocritical to their situation.