A Good Way to Teach Kids?

Will Richardson has a good post about a recent article in the New York Times:

Here’s the lead from a New York Post article today titled MySpace Invaders for City Students:

City public-school students better beware what they blog when classes resume in September.
A revised draft version of the city Department of Education discipline code calls for harsh punishments – including expulsion – forstudents who post “libelous or defamatory material or literature” on the Internet.
Kindergartners to fifth-graders who disparage their teachers, principals or fellow students on the Web could face a finger-wagging parent conference or be suspended for up to 90 days, according to the proposed discipline code.
For students in sixth grade through high school, derogatory online postings would warrant an automatic suspension and could necessitate expulsion under the new rules.
Nowhere in the article does it mention anything about teaching kids appropriate and acceptable use, which doesn’t mean that they’re not doing that, but it makes you wonder. And this approach is just doomed to failure. It’s a “deal with it” moment where the city is choosing to do just the opposite.
Now I know I don’t have to say this, but I’m going to anyway. Welcome to the new world. Resistance is futile. Education is the only answer.

Just like anything else in this world, kids need to LEARN how to do things. They learn when to cross the street, not to talk to strangers, and come home before dark. Why is the Internet any different? Why is their so much propaganda about the Internet being “bad” without any mention of how to educate our kids to use it responsibly? Since it is still very new to many people, they are automatically scared of it and want to regualte it without looking at it with a trained eye. Hopefully, time will change all of that.