Barking up the wrong Tube

Article is found here: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/technologynews/view/261285/1/.html

Channel News Asia recently ran an article on how Australia’s Victoria state is taking up the futile challenge of curbing the Internet’s influence on its teenagers. Actually they say they will block Youtube on all school computers to clamp down on cyber-bullying, but it is essentially the same thing.

To give readers a bit of background history, a group of schoolboys sexually abused and humiliated a girl, then posted a video on Youtube. Public outcry ensued, and the education board felt it had to do something. Thus, they banned Youtube.

The first thing I thought when I read the article was whether the Education Minister Jacinta Allen, or whoever approved the ban, had actually thought before passing it. I wonder if he or she actually asked how banning Youtube in schools would prevent cyber-bullying. For example, would it have prevented the humiliation incident? Would the schoolboys, after filming, have gone to school just to upload the video? If they could not have uploaded it in school, would they have broken down and turned themselves in to the discipline master?

The reason for banning Youtube, according to Ms Allan, is that ‘All students have the right to learn in a safe and supportive learning environment -- this includes making students' experience of the virtual world of learning as safe and productive as possible.’ Also, ‘The (state) government has never tolerated bullying… approach extends to the online world.’

From this we can conclude that the government thinks banning Youtube will make students’ experience of the virtual world ‘safe and productive’, and send a zero tolerance signal to bullies.

The ‘productiveness’ part I understand; students are already barred from watching videos in class so that they can concentrate on work. However, I fail to see how it makes the virtual world safer. Perhaps it is just my lack of experience in this area, but if they assume that preventing students from viewing potentially ‘harmful’ videos, like the humiliation one, will make the virtual world safer, then I think they are wasting their time. They should put themselves in students’ shoes; wouldn’t they be smart enough not to view such videos under the noses of their teachers?

I also do not see how banning Youtube will send a zero tolerance message to bullies of any kind. I personally know bullying to have been around before Youtube was conceived. If the government has such a tough stance against bullying, they would have detected this humiliation case before it even got onto Youtube. That they only noticed it when it was posted on a public website shows how serious they are about eradicating bullying.

Perhaps it is time to rethink how we educate the young about bullying. Seeing how it is still prevalent, I think the current methods are not working. I am not going to lie and say I know how to stop bullying. All I know is there are ways to improve, and banning Youtube in schools is not one of them.

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