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19th May 2004

Some images just shouldn’t be seen

posted in christian, edtech, literacy |
Can you believe some school teachers have shown their students the Nick Berg beheading?! Has anyone ever heard of “digital discipline?”

As Charles Paul Freund’s commentary in the LA Times May 13th makes clear, the video of Nick Berg is an atrocity. I have not seen this video, and I do not want or plan to see it. Some images just shouldn’t be seen: some video sequences are not fit for anyone to view.

How sad to learn today, that some apparently thoughtless and likely immoral teachers in the Dallas area chose to show some of their students the video of the beheading.

I wonder what these educators thought might be gained by showing this video? Making the news? Getting suspended from their educational assignments? Maybe they were tired of teaching for the year and were ready for an early end of the semester….

Can they possibly have thought that a valid educational end would be served by watching this video themselves, much less showing it to students? Yet it seems to be human nature to try and see what happened when we pass a car accident on the highway…. but should we show a video of the accident itself to others? Especially children / young people?

I think this situation goes to the heart of vital issues concerning literacy and education in the 21st Century. Is the world a brutal place. Of course. Has it always been? Most certainly.

Given these realities, are we disciplining ourselves and teaching others to discipline themselves, when it comes to the images we put before our eyes?! The torture of prisoners by American soldiers and apparently intelligence agency civilian employees, as well as the Nick Berg beheading, clearly drive this point home. I have previously elaborated on this point.

My additional thought today is that we simply must address this idea of “digital discipline” for people of all ages. We live in a simultaneously scary and exciting world… one fraught with opportunity that has multiple facets. The influence of the global village seems virtually ubiquitous when it comes to things like this. Yet must it be so? Can we live in the world but not be shaped / manipulated / violated by it? I think so, but such a circumstance certainly does not happen by accident.

Intentional living…. what do I choose to see…. what do I choose this day to focus my mind upon? The choices are more diverse than ever. The consequences are probably the same.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2004 at 9:12 pm and is filed under christian, edtech, literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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