Since 9/11 the mantra of “national security” has justified just about any action the power structure in Washington has wished to undertake. In educational circles the magical mantra has been “student safety”. The fear of online predators has been used to curtail, restrict, and prohibit the use of some of the most promising online educational technology tools.
In order to avoid an incident where a student is exposed to an online predator, “cyber-bullied” by classmates, or exposed to inappropriate material from the school’s Internet connection; educational leaders are routinely restricting the use of blogs, podcasts, e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and other promising Web 2.0 tools. We’ve even decided to ban student photos from our school web pages.
Maintaining the safety of the children in their charge is a major part of the social bargain between parents and schools. Parents, who drop off their most treasured possessions at the school’s doorstep, expect them to be returned safely, and more knowledgeable than when they left them.
There is another set “facts” that might put these fears into perspective.
A good place to start is to look at the steadily decreasing Child Sexual Abuse trends:
All forms of child abuse, not just sexual abuse, are undergoing a dramatic decline. Of course, you’d never know this from the hype the media is giving the cases of online related sexual abuse that they can trace back to MySpace or Facebook.
The picture painted by the media leaves the impression that child abuse and sexual abuse are increasing and that our children are under siege from online strangers using the Internet to snare their victims. The following chart puts some perspective on the threat from strangers, online, or not.
The amazing and sad statistic that is so often overlooked and rarely discussed is that 95% of Child Abuse and Sexual Abuse is perpetrated by family members. 79% of perpetrators are parents. Other relatives accounted for 7% and unmarried partners of parents and “other” accounted for 4% and 5% of abuse.
If we want to decrease child and sexual abuse, our efforts would be far more effective if we focused our attention on the families of our students rather than the few sensationalized online incidents that the media trumpets so loudly.
A great way for schools to reduce the incidence of child and sexual abuse is to train their staffs to identify the warning signs. Although educators report more abuse than any other sector of society, incidents continue to be severely under-reported.
Educational Personnel make the highest number of child abuse referrals.
The number of referrals and investigations is far lower than victimization rates.
Of the five percent (5%) of abuse perpetrated by those other than family members, the Internet is involved in only a small percentage. Definitive statistics on the prevalence of online cases is difficult to document.
It is also important to point out that 79% of reported online abuse occurred at the victim’s home, 9% happened at school, 5% happened at friend’s homes, and 5% happened at other places, including the library.
When we slice the “less than five percent pie” into these smaller pieces, the risk gets much, much smaller. Of course, statistics aren’t going to matter much if you are the parent of a child who has had an online incident, or the leader of school that has experienced one.
The question is, “Are we going to take a “zero risk” approach to using technology and the tools of the Web?”
We don’t take a “zero risk” approach with our sports programs where the chance of injury, paralysis, and, in rare cases, death, is always present. We don’t take that approach with field trips where students travel to museums and historical sites in locations where they might be touched by crime. We don’t take that approach with recess on our playgrounds, or transporting our kids to and from school.
We can never eliminate all risk; but there are ways to maximize our students’ safety while using these incredibly powerful tools. Each tool needs to be analyzed individually to ascertain its benefits and the specific risks it might present. From there, thoughtful people can find solutions to the student safety issues that may arise.
As educational leaders we need to be safety conscious. We need to be prudent, reasonable; but we won’t live in fear and we won’t act from fear.
It is by opening doors, not closing them that we create new possibilities for our children and new futures for ourselves.
Educational Personnel make the highest number of child abuse referrals.
The number of referrals and investigations is far lower than victimization rates.
