Driver’s Ed – Why Not Cyber Ed?

Jim Dillon has been an educator for over 35 years, including 20 years as a school administrator. While he was the principal of Lynnwood Elementary in New York, he developed the Peaceful School Bus Program, designed to prevent and reduce bullying, and subsequently published The Peaceful School Bus (Hazelden, 2008). The program is now being implemented in schools across the country. He is the author of No Place for Bullying: Leadership for schools that care for every student (Corwin, 2013). Jim is currently an educational consultant for Measurement Incorporated. He makes presentations and conducts workshops on a variety of educational topics, including instruction, classroom management, leadership, and supervision. Jim has presented at many local, state and national conferences. Jim's blog, The Peaceful School Bus is a Teach 100 blog.

]Parents of grown children would probably say that their most anxious moment was when they watched their son or daughter drive off on their own for the first time. Even if their child had taken driver’s education and easily passed the road test, the parents’ anxiety was not diminished as they watched the car pull out of the driveway. They accepted this anxiety, or at least managed it to the extent that they could let their son or daughter take this important and necessary step towards independence and adulthood. They had to trust that their children would drive safely and return home safely, and that it would become easier to watch them go over time. (Although as a parent of adult children who drive, I can state that there is always some degree of anxiety whenever you see your child drive off, even if it is to the corner store.)

This rite of passage happens in the midst of adolescence, a time when parents and children are often struggling over issues of independence, control and authority. It would almost make more sense to wait until kids were in their mid twenties and they had passed through this stage so that parents could trust them more easily. Not only do parents have to trust their children to be responsible drivers when they are not present, they also have to trust that there are other safe, responsible drivers on the roads where their children are driving.

How can parents let their children out on the road alone even after they have proven their competence as drivers? Part of the reason that parents can ultimately trust their children is that they are drivers themselves. They know what driving is from their own experience. They have also seen their children drive and have been able to “inspect” them prior to letting them go out on their own. They also know that although driving is dangerous, it is also something that is routine; that the roads are governed by sensible rules that the great majority of people comply with. Most importantly they know that their son or daughter is someone they can trust because they have seen him or her be trustworthy in many other ways prior to learning how to drive.

They know, although not at a conscious level, that they have been teaching their child to be a responsible driver from the first moment they strapped their infant in a car seat driving home from the hospital. Parents have been teaching their children to be responsible drivers long before their children could even think about driving. Parents who are safe and responsible drivers are showing their children “how to drive” in every car trip that they take together. Every time parents put on their safety belts, check their rearview mirrors, slow down at intersections, stop at red lights and stay within the speed limit, they are teaching their children how to be responsible drivers. This is a big reason why parents can give their inexperienced sons or daughters the keys to a vehicle that has the potential to cause great and even fatal damage if it is not used responsibly.

Stop and think about it --- the potential for damage, life threatening damage, is so much greater in letting our children drive cars on public streets than in what they can do digitally and technologically. Yet, in spite of this fact, there seems to be much more anxiety and fear connected to the digital world and students.

I think that the key difference between the two experiences, driving and interacting with social/digital media, is the fact that adults know that they know less about technology than their children do. At least every adult who lets their child drive independently knew what was it like to drive a car and knew on some level that they had been teaching their child how to drive for a long time. This tacit knowledge is the key reason why driving provokes less anxiety in adults even when rationally it should produce more. It is very scary for adults to have kids know more about something than they do. This is main reason for what Nancy Willard described as techno-panic: the “heightened level of concern about the use of contemporary technologies by young people that is disproportionate to the empirical data on the actual risk.”

However, there are many reasons not to panic when it comes to technology and children (I say children, not just adolescents, since students in elementary school use cell phones and communicate digitally on a regular basis now.) Considering how much time kids spend in front of screens and mobile devices, the great majority of students use it very responsibly. Adults must acknowledge this fact and students need to hear this acknowledged by them. I believe that the gap between what students know about technology and what adults know does not have to be the cause of techno-panic but rather can be a great opportunity for children and adults to work together and become partners in creating sensible rules and guidelines to help everyone be more responsible users of technology.

Just as driving is a means to an end -- a way from getting from one place to another place, technology is also a means to an end -- learning and communicating. It is in everyone’s self interest and the interest of the greater, common good to have reasonable limits, and to control how people use these “means” to necessary “ends”. Speed limits and traffic rules are not just attempts to control people; they are in place to help people. Most people see them that way and abide by them because they make sense, not because they fear getting caught. It is part of the unspoken social contract -- an agreement to limit individual freedom for the common good. That is why most everyone stops at a red light even when there is no other apparent traffic around.

I am proposing that we can take this same common sense approach with technology. We can accept the premise that our children and our students also want the technological world to work for everyone, and that they will accept reasonable limits and guidelines for individual use if they see that it will benefit the common good. Adults can operate from this positive assumption rather than from one of fear or panic. Here are some common sense points that educators and parents need to consider when thinking about young people and technology:

Acknowledge the presence of fear and anxiety and talk about it rather than have it drive our behavior. Having conversations like this with young people helps everyone involved and lessens everyone’s anxiety.
Be aware of the hidden story we convey when communicating with students. Don’t lead with fear and the assumption that students are one step away from being violators. Lead with the assumption that students are already responsible users and want to continue to be. Have the story we convey be a positive one: students are responsible users and are important players in creating a safe and responsible digital environment for everyone.
Rather than appear to want to control them or threaten them, adults should make it clear that they need young people to work with them to create reasonable limits, rules and guidelines for how to use technology. Involving young people in the process increases their ownership of whatever rules or guidelines are developed.
Use the knowledge/experience gap about technology to build greater trust between the adult world and the student world. This trust can then carry over to other areas of communication between adults and young people. Young people respond better to adults when they are in a one up position rather than a one down position. Young people are eager to help adults and are just waiting to be asked- it is a sign of respect.
Adults need to recognize that their ability to control or manipulate young people’s behavior technologically is very, very limited. They will get less respect and credibility from young people when they are heavy-handed in trying to do so.
If adults want to influence responsible behavior in young people they must realize the power and influence that peers have on each other. Rather than focusing on the few who might be irresponsible, it is better to focus on the many who are responsible and rely on them to influence the rest.

Most people would agree that speed limits and traffic regulations are an important part of keeping people safe, but ultimately we are all safer when there are more and more responsible drivers with good judgment and common sense on the road. This has been the main focus of driver ed and it should be the focus of cyber ed. (Remember it starts long before adolescence.)

Even though so much of education now seems to be focused on managing and controlling student behavior, most educators became educators not to police students but to help them become the people they are meant to be, to help them realize their potential. Education, I believe, still works, and it is what students really want and need from us. We can and must trust them. We must also trust that the education we give will bring out the best in them, as we send them off into the world on their own.

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