CYBER BULLYING IN THE EYES OF A KENYAN TEACHER
This is a letter to a lead investigator on cyber-bullying Dr. Shaheen Shariff, a Professor at McGill University in Vancouver – Canada. The same can be seen in their website http://www.definetheline.ca/.
Dear Dr. Shaheen Shariff,
Greetings,
My name is Martin Mungai, I am secondary school teacher in a boys boarding school in Kenya – Nairobi School. I am currently in Japan, Hokkaido University of Education – Asahikawa Campus undertaking my studies in Education Technology with emphasis on Children and Information Media, under Prof. Ikuya MURATA.
In the course of my studies, I came across two of your books, Cyber Bullying; Issues and Solutions for the school, classroom and the home. And Confronting Cyber-bullying; What schools need to know to control misconduct and avoid legal consequences. I am due to make a presentation on Effects of Increased Internet accessibility to secondary school students in Kenya in August this year at Hiroshima University at a JSISE conference. I must say that your books were an eye opener into my area of study, indeed when I was coming to Japan, my motivation was driven by the need to do a research on Information technology in education having taught ICT and played the role of a systems administrator in Nairobi school for a period of close to 10 yrs. I was obviously aware of the challenges that are facing teachers, educators and administrators as well as parents in the fusion of ICT in education. I had already seen and experienced the gap in the areas of cyber-bullying and other Internet related anti-social behaviors being expressed by children in Kenyan schools.
Reading your book, Confronting cyber bullying, I could not help but draw parallels to the experiences that I have had both at first as a student and lately as a teacher. I noted with a lot of excitement that you actually went to a boarding school in Kenya! I went to a boys boarding high school (Thika High school) in the 90s and experienced bullying first hand and as you recount on your experiences in reading the book of Golding’s (1959) Lord of the flies about the tale of the ruthless Jack and the overweight Piggy, I boiled with excitement since a lot of what you said sounded just too familiar.
Again, teaching in Nairobi school has also brought me face to face with the conventional methods of bullying as well as the new version of cyber-bullying. Teaching ICT to the boys over the last couple of years, I have experienced completely new forms of bullying. I am well aware of the rapid advancement that has been in leaps and bounds in the technological field in computing and communication. Having had my 1st exposure to computers in 1994, where Ms DOS was the best operating system, and monochrome displays was the best technology we had then, to the now fast Internet accessibility at your fingers on a cell phone. I have seen boys using 1.44mb floppy drives to save pornographic pictures to using 12gb flash memory drives where they can downloads volumes of pornographic videos which they proudly share. I have seen boys evolve from drawing a teacher in class, on the chalkboard, toilet walls and on pieces of paper, to using photoshop where they cleverly make and post on their facebook walls for their friends and the world to see through what you would call antiauthority cyber expression.
One of the driving factors in my studies is the fact that, Kenya is classified amongst the developing nations, yet modern ICT knows no boundaries. We in Kenya are however facing a huge challenge because unlike Japan, US, Canada and other first worlds we do not have solid structures on our legal systems to tenaciously and legally address these emerging issues.
My program here in Japan lasts one year after which, I hope to join another university where I can pursue further educational opportunities to help me advance in my area of study and research. I must say I am particularly impressed by your work and I hope that someday to meet and work with you some more on this very interesting area. I am looking forward to reading many more of your works.
Thank you very much for your patience.
Yours faithfully,
Martin Mungai
20.05.2011
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