An oldie but a goodie: me working hard in class last year.
My oh my, the weeks go fast. We’re almost halfway through the semester so it seems about right that I’ve finally got the hang of these symposium things! This week’s symposium addressed the education of network literacy in primary and secondary schooling (thanks Adrian!). Considering everyone sitting in the lecture hall was self taught – minus those pesky and useless word and powerpoint classes in primary school – it sparked a thought provoking and perfectly incomplete conversation. I say perfectly incomplete, because if the final answer were to be “yes, network literacy most definitely should be taught in a formal schooling environment”, then that would suggest that my generation and those prior are worse-off…. but if the answer had have been “no way, students should find their way through the internet independently just like we had to, it worked for us”, then that would be seen as ignorant and complacent in a world that “bows to the internet”. So with semi-conflicting opinions from the panel, the discussion (unsurprisingly) began to trail off into broader territories.
A member of the panel (failing to remember exactly who…) stated that blocking websites in schools is equivalent to not putting books on shelves at the library. This provocative statement really got me thinking. I kiiiiinnndd of agree, but at the same time, I feel as though school libraries are even more so restrictive and censored than the censored internet provided at schools. Each and every book is considered and selected to be stocked within the library. Censored internet, on the other hand, has just been explicitly told what not to show, but has not endured the process of being thoroughly reviewed, like the selection of books. This gives me some grand ole’ flashbacks of when the boys thought it was hilarious to google ‘blue waffle’ on school computers, which, to the blocking system, was just an unsuspicious coloured breakfast treat. (Don’t waste your time googling it if you haven’t already)
Considering most students year 7 and up are constantly on their 3G/4G smart phones, internet censoring in schools has become a bit pointless… but if it gives the IT people something to do and the parents association something to talk about, then hey, I’m not gonna be the one to stop them.
The somewhat-kinda-not-really fresh-outta-school girl in me was unusually gripped to the school-based discussions posed in the symposium. I don’t really know how or why it was relevant, but talk of the bell-curved results we all slaved towards in our final years of schooling came up, and I was left feeling a little hard-done-by, by the VCE system. Adrian claimed that bell curve results are artificial, having no relationship to your ability or to previous and future years. The whole ATAR system always frustrated me, but after suppressing my frustrations for the past 6 months, my emotions towards the stupid system resurfaced. There is no reason why my marks should be affected by anyone else’s. Or why my subjects should get marked down because I was never into science or languages. #justsayin. Well thats over now and I was pleasantly surprised by my marks so lets never talk about the demon again.
That’s all for now folks!
