Olav, thanks for your post. There are experts on education here, probably, who could answer your question with more authority than me, but from the perspective of a journalist who has covered education as well as online safety, I can tell you that online safety isn't part of school curricula nationwide. It varies from state to state (some are "top-down," governed by state education departments) and district to district (some states are "bottom up," where the local district determines what's taught in its schools). So it's hard to give a blanket answer. Only one state I know of now includes cyberbullying as a required topic in all its schools - Virginia - and other states are planning to follow suit. Some states have online safety ed statewide, taught from the outside by organizations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's NetSmartz program and i-Safe America, which was originally supported largely by the Dept. of Justice. I personally feel some of their messages are very law-enforcement-oriented and more about crime or criminology than childhood development. I would like to see more expertise from child psychologists, child dev't specialists, and at-risk adolescent behavior folded into any required curricula. Hope that starts to answer your question. All best,
Anne
--
Anne Collier
ConnectSafely co-director