p2pnet news | Politics:- The entertainment cartels have for years been flooding the on- and offline print and electronic media with spurious reports of the dangers presented to kids by online porn.

But these ‘initiatives,’ largely from the movie and music cartels and motivated entirely by corporate self interest, have done nothing to slow down acceptance of the Net.

That it’s now the source of communications in the digital 21st century has been tacitly acknowledged by the British government ,which is considering how parents could be “required” to provide their children with high-speed internet access, says Guardian Unlimited.

During an an interview, schools minister Jim Knight, said, “real-time reporting of a child’s progress, via a school intranet and/ or directly through each student’s designated personal tutor, would mean parents ‘can start to have a proper conversation and get properly involved in that child’s learning’,” says the story.

And Knight said he wants to “create a genuine personal alliance between parent and teacher, parent and tutor which can radically change the outcomes for children, particularly the most disadvantaged which is the biggest frustration that we have,” it goes on.

The hundreds of thousands of parents around the world who believe in educating their children at home are already ” properly involved” and the Net has for years been a primary source of education and information, keeping children in touch with each other and connecting them to unique learning environments locally and internationally.

In the UK, plans are bow being “drawn up by ministers in partnership with some of the country’s leading IT firms,” says the story.

Knight, “signalled that the government was putting pressure on IT firms to bring down the cost of equipment if internet connections are in effect made compulsory for nearly six million children,” says Guardian Unlimited, quoting Knight as saying:

“We need to get to a point where in the same way when they start school the expectation is you’ve [the parent] got to find a school uniform, provide them with something to write with and probably these days a calculator, and in secondary school some sports gear – well, you add to that some IT.

“Obviously you need to make that affordable, you need to make that universal otherwise you just advantage those who can afford it. To some extent that’s the case at the moment, where 50% of homes have got IT broadband, but they are hugely powerful educational tools … we know from the research evidence the difference that information technology can make.”

However, alarm bells should also be sounding in the background.

Knight is in talks with companies such as Microsoft, BT, Sky, Virgin and RM, “to help close the widening achievement gap between pupils from the richest and poorest families,” says the story.

It can, though, be safely assumed any involvement with Microsoft, et al, will in some form or another ultimately mean private and personal information on the children, their parents, activities, trends, and so on, will seep into corporate marketing data banks.

Slashdot it!

Also see:

Guardian Unlimited – Plan to give every child internet access at home, January 4, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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