A few months ago, the blogosphere was abuzz with the Onion’s satire “Mom finds out about blog”. The ultimate embarrassing nightmare.
But this cool Mom not only knows about her 14-year-old daughter’s blog, she supports it fully… and in fact, considers her daughter better educated and informed thanks to blogging (via Imshin):
So even if she hadn’t received such an outpouring of support, I think Cecile’s regular stops in the blogosphere would have served as an antidote to what happened at school this past Friday. Certainly if a teacher implies a student is a racist idiot one day, and by the next some 200 smart and articulate adults have said she’s not and here’s why, that rather counteracts the original lesson plan. Now that so many teens have blogs, concerns about doctrinaire teachers may be passé. Our sons and our daughters are beyond their control.
I think she’s absolutely right. Kids are constantly warned about the dangers of the Internet and all the bad stuff that they can have access to. But what about the kids and teenagers who benefit from the Internet by having access to a multitude of viewpoints and perspectives on world events, political issues, and society? I happen to think that, all else being equal, the more access to information that students have, the better – at any age.
Now if only I could teach my mom how to program the VCR…