Privacy No Problem for Digital Natives


According to Frieze magazine 75% of old or unused computers in America remain in the possession of their owners. They live out their days in cupboards, under stairs, in basements and garages.

I suspect the same is true in New Zealand. Do you have an old computer in your wardrobe? I do. And I have a shed full of them at my school.

Old computers are hard to throw away, not because they once cost a lot of money or that we shrink from adding to the trash mountain. We may tell ourselves we’re keeping the old computer to give to daughter or son when they leave home, but we know the last thing they want is a machine boasting Windows95 and possessing the memory capacity of a goldfish.

No, we hang onto our old computers because of the ghosts in the machine; the files that, like the adolescent tattoo or the packet of poems to a long lost lover, would make us squirm with embarrassment if they were revealed. In the wrong hands those files could frame us, defame us or publicly shame us. They could be used to steal our identities, strip our bank accounts, force us from our jobs and destroy our good standing in the community.

Sure, we could crank up that old machine and erase the files from the hard drive, but CSI has taught us that a shadow, an imprint, is always left behind and can be smoothly retrieved by a 12 year old hacker.

One thing I am sure of: the old computers of America and New Zealand do not belong to anybody under 30. They are the property of ‘digital immigrants’ like you and me, the generation for whom ICT was the unexpected complication on our journey, the mob of sheep that blundered into our headlights which we are wildly swerving to avoid.

Like a person who learns a second language late in life, our generation may acquire fluency with computers but very few of us ever gain the deep intuitive understanding that enables us to master the technology. I would never fiddle with the settings on my computer or cellphone as I see my daughters doing for fear that I’d become wedged in some tiny, dark corner of cyberspace and be forever lost.

Our children, the ‘digital natives’ who wear computer technology as comfortably as our grandmothers wore fur coats, have not only mastered this new language, they have also acquired distinctly different views about privacy. They seem delighted to display themselves and their lives in full view of the techno-public.

I was made aware of this by two recent experiences. The first was at the function Sylvia and I hosted for our daughter and her friends prior to the Ashburton College ball. We were struck by their eagerness to have themselves photographed. When I was 18 a photograph was something we shrank from. Photographs could embarrass and incriminate. They could pop up at your 21st and totally spoil the party or, at the very least, land you in trouble with your current partner.

Our children have shrugged off this restraint. They love being photographed and use all the resources at their command to publish their images: attaching them to emails, flicking them to friends via cellphone and posting them on the web.

The second experience was a job application. A teacher applied by email for a position at my school. Along with her CV and application form she encouraged me to visit her website, lodged on MySpace. MySpace is one of several interactive web-based platforms for capturing friendships. They enable users to talk, trade gossip, share stories and photographs.

My reaction to this young woman’s website was pure digital immigrant. I was embarrassed by her personal diary, by the photos of people with their heads down toilets, by her frank revelations of dreams and desires. I was intrigued to read her correspondence with the principal of another school to which she was also applying for a job. It was, simply, too much information.

I suppose the willingness of digital natives to live their lives in public springs not simply from the enabling technology. It arises from the ‘bare it all’ mentality of reality television and coffee table magazines.

But it puzzles me. Do the people who publish the intimacies of their lives on MySpace or Bebo really understand that the information is therefore in the public domain, accessible by anybody who cares to look? Or do they see it as a private transaction between themselves and whoever logs on?

To a digital immigrant it seems fraught with peril. You’ll never catch me revealing myself so publicly.

Plandemic Panning
2nd June 2007


When the Man from the Ministry arrived at the seminar he was so encumbered with baggage I thought he was on his way to or from the airport. Apart from the obligatory laptop – the modern manager’s bowler hat and brolly – he carried an oversize shoulder bag and a smaller briefcase.

As we watched – twenty-five primary school principals in a stuffy room on a slow Monday afternoon - he unpacked his bags, producing a data projector, two large speakers and a tangle of cables which he meticulously re-ordered, his face a study in concentration. We waited, trying to guess his purpose.

When all was prepared the Man from the Ministry delivered a short prologue – “You are about to see Operation Cruikshank” – and pressed Enter.

Operation Cruikshank flashed onto the big screen at the front of the room. There was a news desk, a brief opening title, and a severe young woman describing an outbreak of avian bird flu spreading through New Zealand. We crossed to the parliamentary reporter standing in front of the beehive, cut to pictures of soldiers sealing off streets and a selection of closeups showing boxes of medication and white-coated health workers with face masks.

Operation Cruikshank rolled out like a snore. Talking heads from government agencies and security services described how they will react when the pandemic – bird flu or other – reaches our shores. A slightly deranged traffic light flashed coloured security levels as the epidemic expanded – from orange to yellow and final, fatal red.

By the end of the afternoon the authors of Operation Cruikshank had convinced us that when the long-anticipated pandemic strikes we will talk the bloody thing to a standstill.

I have endured several pandemic planning presentations. There is a small, bilious corner of the public service dedicated to, nay, enthralled by the theatrical potential of disaster preparation. It is a bureaucrat’s dream, a fantasy of forms and regulations, of action plans, backups and contingencies, of Orders-In-Council and sirens in the streets.

Civil service planners seem unphased by some small realities: the much-anticipated bird flu pandemic shows no sign of rousing itself and even if it does their plans will never work. On one hand pandemic planning is a no-brainer, on the other it is a hospital pass.

The plans will never work because there seems to be no coherent set of responses to mitigate the effects of a determined virus.

Take the influenza pandemic of 1919, for example. Even with the country on a wartime footing the epidemic went where it pleased. The Man from the Ministry reminded us that we are far less well prepared today.

“Oh, I dunno,” intoned a voice from the back of the room. “They may have had the army, but we have powerpoint.”

And sadly, we do. We have, through the miracle of information technology, the capacity to tie ourselves in knots.

I am exhorted by the Men from the Ministry to prepare a pandemic plan for my school. I am encouraged in this by the provision of hundreds of pages of forms
and spurred by the promise that the Education Review Office, the government’s pitbull, will audit my preparations on their next visit.

There are schools in New Zealand where pandemic planning runs to 40 pages of densely typed procedures, where committees and sub-committees have been formed, wardens appointed and students drilled to divert sneezes into their elbows. When pandemic strikes the students in these schools will be laid waste while staff decipher procedural point 44, sub-clause 23B.

Diligent schools hinge their preparation on sending work home to students. They conjure hopeful scenarios of teachers in their own homes emailing assignments to students, marking the completed returned work and generally carrying on as normal.

The Man from the Ministry burst that bubble. “Keep cyberspace free from unnecessary communications”, he said. With the population at home and the regular infrastructure curtailed the internet will be needed for essential communication. We must avoid overloading it with worksheets. Send home a few paper tasks when the kids leave and forget anything else.

As we suffer this plandemic I regret lost opportunities to join other, more vigorous, branches of the public service. I bet pandemic planning is more exciting for police or firefighters. I bet they don’t have to endure Operation Cruikshank. I imagine them throwing rings of steel around neighbourhoods, storming central city buildings, letting off smoke bombs, squirting fire hoses and shouting “bang! You’re dead!” All this while I sit on my backside in a stuffy room.

I’ve thought hard this week about pandemic preparations for my school. I’ve consulted staff and community and we’ve come up with a plan. It is simple and, we believe, effective.

1. Close the school.
2. Reopen when we’re told to.

That should do the trick.

Maori Kids Are Dumb, Mr V.
Saturday 21st April 2007


The message on the answerphone was brief. “Ollie won’t be back at school this term. Child, Youth and Family pulled the plug and sent him up north.”

Ollie came to our school in February; six years old, Maori, bursting out of his skin.

Ollie was a handful. He was one of those kids that you brace yourself for when you see him coming. His story is sad - and sadly common. His life veers between neglect and abuse, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. He has learned to mistrust the adults who move in and out of his life, and who demonstrate only infrequent and volatile love. His vocabulary is peppered with gang slogans, matched with a swagger masking deep insecurities.

His departure after only one term continues the ongoing disaster of his life. With a child like Ollie it takes at least a term just to calm him down. Now he has to begin that process all over again in a new town, a new home and a new school.

After a few more of these transitions – and there will be more – Ollie will be pretty much lost to education. Even the natural optimism of youth is no protection against constant disappointment and there will come a time when Ollie is no longer prepared to suspend his disbelief in a world that promises so much yet delivers so little.

Earlier this week, in a hotel in Mangere, South Auckland, I sat with 200 other primary and secondary school principals and listened to a speech from Apryll Parata, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary for Maori. She painted the familiar picture of Maori failure in education and chastised us for turning our backs on Maori students. The image was poignant. The streets around us teemed with young Maori and Pacific Islanders but the hotel’s windows faced inward to a courtyard garden and swimming pool.

Mrs Parata did not mince her words. Maori, she said, want the same things as pakeha. They want to live in the confidence of their culture, to actively participate as citizens of the world, to enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Why then, she asked, after 130 years of state-funded education, do we fail to provide young Maori with the means of achieving these goals?

Our failure is all the more regrettable for having one of the best education systems in the world. On average New Zealand students outperform almost all others. But our education system is also one of the most inequitable, with large numbers of students who fail to achieve, many of them Maori.

We sat in that conference room and squirmed under Mrs Parata’s words. There were murmurs of outrage: ‘it’s not our fault, we do our best, we need more resources.’

Mrs Parata was relentless. Maori achievement doesn’t need more resources, she said. It needs a shift of attitude. Maori students fail to achieve because they feel they don’t belong.

Actually, a student’s achievement or failure is determined by a whole lot of things. Schools often let themselves off the hook by blaming poor home life and lack of parenting skills. Parents blame schools for poor teaching and discriminatory practises. Everybody blames the government for poor funding and misguided policy.

In reality a heap of research shows that 50 percent of the variance in achievement among students is simply due to individual ability. If you are a bright kid you are much more likely to succeed regardless of all other factors.

The remaining 50 percent - the achievement factors over which parents, school and society might have some influence – are interesting.

Teachers who blame poor home life for poor achievement should think again. The home accounts for only 6 percent of variance in student achievement.

Parents who think sending their child to a ‘good school’ makes a big difference should think again. The school accounts for only 8 percent of variance in achievement.

The influence of a child’s peers accounts for a further 6 percent, as does the work of school principals. The remaining 25 percent is down to the teacher. A good teacher, it seems, is second only to a child’s natural ability in determining whether that child succeeds or fails in education.

These are generalised numbers and for some children the numbers must vary. Ollie’s chances of success in education are hugely influenced by his home life. It will be difficult for teachers to exert a positive influence on Ollie’s achievement if he continues to bounce from school to school.

Likewise, individual success relies on attitude as well as intellect. Apryll Parata told us that Maori students expect to fail at school, their families expect them to fail and pakeha expect them to fail.

Ollie confirmed that. A few days before the end of term I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I want to ride horses – race them. I prob’ly won’t though.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I’m dumb.”
“Why do you think you’re dumb, Ollie?”
Ollie looked at me.
“Cos Maori kids are dumb, Mr V.”