Doug Johnson

Format Bigotry

Head for the Edge, Nov/Dec 2009

When it comes to technology use in schools, every responsible educator’s first concern should be student safety. Therefore, we should immediately ban one of the most potentially harmful technologies now within our walls: the pencil. We must erase them from schools because:

• A student might use a pencil to poke out the eye of another student.
• A student might write a dirty word, a threatening note to another student, or test cheat sheet, with a pencil.
• One student might have a mechanical pencil, making those with wooden ones feel bad.
• The pencil might get stolen.
• Pencils break and need constant repair.
• Kids just use pencils to doodle instead of working on assignments or listening to the teacher.

I propose that congress take up legislation to protect our children right away. We could call the bill, “Just What’s the Point?”

These kind of questions drive me bonkers:

• Should we ban games from our library?
• Should we block social networking sites in our building?
• Should kids be allowed to access to video/audio streaming sites in our district?

Questions like that make about as much sense as asking:

• Should we be ban books from our libraries?
• Should we allow kids to have pencils and paper in our building?
• Should kids be allowed to watch DVDs in our district?

Why, when thinking about which resources schools give or ban student access, do adults so often start with format as opposed to the content of that format when determining appropriateness?

Banning a website based on the information’s container (game, social networking site, wiki, blog, or video stream) is as logical as saying, “Since Penthouse is published in a magazine format, we cannot allow students to read magazines in school.”

For some reason I’ve been asked a lot lately about gaming in school. I don’t know that much about games and haven’t been a big computer game player since Loderunner for the Apple IIe. But of course just because I am ignorant doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion (as with so many topics).  Here is my standard response: Let’s be clear that there are games and there are games — just like there are movies and there are movies; there are books and there are books. Games vary widely in type — from first person shoot em’ ups to skill attainment tutors with complex management programs. Games vary in taste, rating, maturity level, social values, and even factual accuracy. The question shouldn’t be “Do we permit students to play games?” but “Which games should we allow our students to play?”

Why are we as adults so ready to treat resources differently simply because of their format? It’s certainly faster to condemn an entire type of media or Internet site - none of that tedious, title-by-title evaluation. Administrators can be seen as Decisive. “Your children are now safe that we’ve blocked all social networking sites. And we oldies find these new fangled formats a little suspicious. “Hmmmm, microblogging – sure doesn’t sound like anything I would have done in my misbehavior-free childhood.”

Format bigotry, of course, extends beyond what is filtered on the Internet. Our adult prejudices against certain formats of entertainment, information and communication take many guises. You may be a format bigot if:

• You have different rules surrounding the checkout of videos and laptop computers than you do books.
• You allow voluntary free reading of books, but ban personal audio players with audio books.
• You believe reading novels is preferable to reading graphic novels.
• You accept research findings in print but not as a multimedia product.
• You ask kids to read something else when they’ve read one book multiple times, but you purchase movies just so you can watch them again and again.
• You require at least one “print’ reference in student research papers, but not at least one audiocast, video or blog reference.
• You allow, and even encourage kids come to the library to play chess on a chessboard, but not chess on a computer screen.

The chance of anyone who is reading this column is “literate” is pretty high. That is literate in the print sense anyway. Our own education focused on books, writing and oral communication. The chance of today’s educators being “media literate” is much lower. While we understand and respect the vocabulary, syntax and power of the written word, we are far less comfortable creating and learning from video, audio, and visual materials.

Forming an opinion of a resource based on its format makes about as much sense as forming an opinion about a person based on his ethnicity. We’ve got to get beyond format bigotry.

Kids have.



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