Social Media to be Taught in Primary Schools?

On March 26th, netimperative published an article which started:

"Children under 11 will be taught how to use the social media such as Facebook and Twitter, under plans for a more technology focused primary school curriculum."

When I first read this, I wondered if it was some kind of joke. Facebook's terms of service alone would surely prevent it from being used by primary-age children in school. The article, it turns out, was in response to this piece published by The Guardian, who have apparently caught sight of leaked proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum. There seems to be no suggestion in The Guardian's article that Facebook is one of the products likely to be taught. Although I think Facebook is a marvellous social networking tool (and if I were at the BBC I'd feel compelled to remind you that other social networking tools are available), I believe the decision as to whether or not it's used by under 12s rests with parents and no-one else. Oh, and the terms of service.

Online news articles and associated readers' comments are centering around Twitter and Wikipedia as the web tools in the frame for being taught to primary school children - and the proposal that The Victorians (meh) and World War II (surely not!) are to be removed from the primary curriculum.

After a few deep breaths, a nice sit down, a cup of sweet tea and the sense of relief that poor Ms Gordon is not going to be compelled to teach my youngest how to set up his social networking profile I started to wonder if this move is not in fact a good thing - depending on how it's intended to be used.

The argument for teaching children to be digitally literate from a young age is surely a strong one. Likewise teaching about different communication methods and their appropriateness to different situations. I haven't seen the proposals themselves, but I can't imagine the inclusion of Twitter and Wikipedia is going to manifest itself in dedicated how-to lessons on using such tools. Hopefully, they've been presented as current examples of choices amongst many others of ways to communicate or conduct research. Perhaps the intention is to use these tools to help children make informed decisions about plausibility of information. Perhaps it's a signal that the people who set the curriculum have had a reality check and understand that to continue to teach as if the only social skills we need to be armed with involve face-to-face communication is naive.

If these developments are going to help this generation grow up as positive, considerate, safe citizens online as well as off, then I cautiously applaud them. I'll be watching this with great interest. Please though - don't remove too much history from the curriculum!