Emotional truancy

Lisa Stevens, who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time during TeachMeet08 at BETT, has blogged about ’emotional truancy’ recently. It’s an interesting subject…

According to Lisa (I couldn’t find the article on the TES website), Lord Puttnam – chairman of Futurelab – is quoted as saying:

Technology savvy children are switching off and becoming ’emotional truants’ because schools are not relevant in a digital age.

I see this all the time; it’s a form of disassociation. The ‘real me’ for them isn’t the person they are at school: that’s just the place where they jump through hoops. The closest thing I can liken it to, having watched Louis Theroux’s documentary on San Quentin prison, is that they see most teachers’ views as irrelevant, just as the prison inmates saw the wardens’ views as such.

As Lisa says, it’s a familiar cry to those in the edublogosphere. But we have to keep saying these things. Namely:

• To be a teacher in the 21st century you have to be able to use technology in an adept way.
• That face-to-face interaction is no more ‘real’ than interaction mediated by electronic devices.
• The emotional well-being of students is not hampered or diminished by the use of technology. Rather, it can help develop emotional literacy (John Griffiths told me at TeachMeet08 of how police in Sheffield are using Kar2ouche with young offenders. Marvellous!)

I hate to say it, but if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem… :p
http://lisibo.blogspot.com/2008/01/digital-generation-heralds-age-of.html

(Lisa Stevens)