Navigating the Dangerous Waters the Internet Provides

I think I can say without hesitation and with complete confidence that we all want the best for our children. And that means we want them to be safe both physically and emotionally. While the topic of anonymity is not new, it has been taken to an entirely new level and parents should be prepared. There is a new danger on the Internet. It seems like every week a new concept emerges and we are forced to think twice about how to properly safeguard our children. Formspring has definitely sprung and it is loaded for bear. It is a scary, vile vehicle that teens use to anonymously destroy their friends. Read this article and then come back to this blog and join the conversation. Rachel Simmons is the author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, a brilliant and sensitive book about raising girls with confidence. If you have not read it, please consider it.

I hope you can spend a few moments reading the article I linked above and learn more about Formspring. Below are a few thoughts to help you wrap your minds around the social lives our children are leading:

1) It is all too easy for children to attack one another socially in school. Why are we allowing it to become easier and now anonymously?

2) Every child enters school each day with the same great fear: embarrassment. Formspring ensures that each account owner will be embarrassed every day. I cannot think of anything worse for our children to endure each day. They have enough to worry about without the fear of being ridiculed anonymously by their peers.

3) Allowing children to send anonymous, hurtful messages condemns them to a world where they do not have to take responsibility for their own words. Through Formspring children can cowardly hide behind the computer screen and believe that their actions do not have consequences. As adults and educators, we know the opposite is true.

4) There have been too many teen suicides in the news recently to ignore it and believe that this is not a concern. As parents we need to educate our children about the damage that can be done by not choosing our words carefully or using them to hurt others.

Lastly, I love this quote regarding Formspring from the Simmons article above. “There is zero, and I mean zero, value in this website and no girl or boy should spend a minute on it. Formspring creates unnecessary emotional risks. It legitimizes cybercruelty and divorces kids from responsibility for their words. You can pretty much file Formspring along with wouldn’t-it-be-fun-to-stand-on the-railroad-tracks-and-jump-right-before-the-train-comes and I’m-sure-no-one-will-notice-if-I-just-pocket-this-one-mascara."

Below is an informal video of Rachel Simmons informing us all of a few reasons why we should teach our children about the dangers of Formspring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epA6n09JHNM

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Join Me in this Movement of Educational Reform

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This past week I was fortunate to play a role in a most important event at my school. Harbor Country Day School hosted a screening of Race To Nowhere, the nationally acclaimed documentary about our Nation’s educational system and the dramatic effect it is having on our children. By now my most trustworthy readers know this topic well. If you are new to The Wheel and have not heard of Race To Nowhere yet, please click on any one of the many links to their website in this post or on my sidebar for more information. While the movie was brilliant and certainly challenges us as champions of educational reform, as parents, as teachers, and as administrators, inspiration came from the panel discussion afterwards. We assembled an excellent group, to whom I am now indebted, that included heads of school, college admissions officers from the Harvard Graduate School and Stony Brook University, and an insightful and caring child psychologist. Each one spoke eloquently and directly at what should be some of our Nation’s highest priorities and what definitely are our parent’s deepest concerns. Both the panelists and the members of the audience spoke passionately about childhood depression, stress, the overscheduled child, homework, the “teaching to the test” teaching methodology, the college admissions process, the lack of 21st Century skills being taught in the public school and the way in which we as parents speak with our children. We did not set out to solve any issues, but we debated over the source of them. Did they begin with the college admissions process? Perhaps it all began with the bureaucratic school systems that are focused on funding as a result of test scores. We also examined our own family values and how the values of society seem to become more powerful the older our children become. Societal values eventually compete with our own family values in the household.

When I first saw Race To Nowhere, I felt helpless. I was determined that the goal of educational reform was too large, my Goliath. Desperate for a voice and challenged to find a suitable venue, we created a website dedicated to dynamic teaching, and gave voice to promoting a healthy lifestyle for our children. Harbor Currents is found on Harbor Country Day School’s website and is meant to be a warehouse of resources and an opportunity to speak. Ultimately, Harbor Currents should take off on the national spectrum. Ideally, it will be a collaborative effort with the added voices of guest bloggers. Have you written an article that would help further our mission? Do you have suggestions for websites, books or articles that I can link to the site as resources? I am searching for a collective voice to send our message. I believe that awareness is the first step and those bold enough will take the second step, which is one of action. Please join me and become one of the authors of Harbor Currents. You can email me at cpryor@hcdsny.org, if you would like to join the movement.

Westport, Connecticut