Manitoba Teachers’ Society wants to keep YouTube in the classroom

Lillian Klausen with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society discusses the province’s proposal to ban YouTube in the classroom.

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS) is giving a failing grade to the prospect of banning YouTube in the classroom.

Earlier in the month, the Manitoba government said it’s looking at hiring a commissioner or regulator to enforce a ban on social media and AI chatbots for youth under 16. This would include a ban on YouTube in Manitoba classrooms—something MTS said would not be helpful for teachers.

MTS president Lillian Klausen said the issue is that many educators use YouTube as a teaching aid.

“[Teachers] have developed resources and materials that they use to supplement their lessons in a classroom,” she explained in an interview with Your Morning Winnipeg on Tuesday.

“We are certainly not wanting to take away any resources that teachers have been using over a length of time and to not have them replaced with anything that they can use in a classroom.”

Klausen said teachers use YouTube as an audio-visual tool, along with other apps like Seesaw, ClassDojo and Kahoot.

She noted these resources are used to help with lessons, adding it’s not a “free reign for students to use in a classroom from when they got there at 9 in the morning until they leave at 3:30.”

“These are very specific pieces that supplement lessons,” she said.

Klausen said teachers do agree that kids should not be on social media, especially for prolonged periods.

She noted that when students use devices for long periods of time, teachers notice a lack of social skills development.

“We don’t think that students should be given unlimited access to devices to do what they want,” she said.

“We understand that there are very harmful and negative effects to that.”

Going forward, Klausen said she would like the province to include educators in decisions involving education.

“If we are going to make some decisions that are provincewide or that are outright bans, we really need to be at the table with educators so that we can understand what’s happening in classrooms and what is used in classrooms and what needs to continue to be used in classrooms.”

• With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé