Thanks to Christopher Harris for this amazing quote

Saw this quote on Twitter and it really got me thinking about filtering. Some people are spending more time filtering as opposed to teaching students good digital citizenship and responsibility. I guess I equate it to when I was younger and we had magazines.

There were all types of magazines, and for some reason teachers didn’t like when I brought in my Transworld or Thrasher magazines. For those of you who were not skateboarding in the 1980s, those magazines highlighted the stories and accomplishments of skaters. Anyway, teachers who did not understand the magazines or failed to take time to actually read them, made it their purpose to confiscate them and assign detentions. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the phrase, “Put that away or I will take it!” What lesson was I learning besides compliance?

Put that away or I will take it! All I learned was compliance….

In hindsight, I wish that someone would have taken the time to read the magazine with me, or better yet use it as a learning experience for projects including math, LAL, science, physical education or social studies. Nope. Put it away or I will confiscate it. Sometimes when I hear about (I even experience it as a Principal) the web filtering and blocking of sites it makes me think back to those days in the 1980s. Sometimes there is such a disconnect between students, teachers and learning.