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Students Banned from Blogging
wayward writes "Students at Pope John XIII, a Catholic high school, were told to take down their blogs from sites like Xanga and MySpace or face suspension. Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators. Not too surprisingly, free speech advocates got more than a little concerned.
Well, there is this thing call anonymity.... Oh, don't forget free speech. Last time I checked, there is no clause in the Constitution saying anything about how old you have to be to qualify for the First Amendment. By the way, if you are in the DC area, you owe it to yourself to stop by the National Archives and see the Constitution. It had a surprisingly profound impact on this jaded science geek.
Back on topic: On legal grounds, because the school is a religious school, they can make certain requirements. For instance, I once dated a girl that was recruited from Norway to be on the BYU ski team. She accepted because of the scholarship even though she was not part of the "moral majority" there. Here is the deal though... they made her sign an "agreement" that she would not consume coffee or alcohol even while not on school grounds. She abided by that contract, and honored it. But when her parents came into town, she went to dinner with her family. She did not have any wine at dinner, while her parents did. Two days later, she was called into the Presidents office because someone had reported (ratted) her for being with people who were consuming alcohol. The deal is though, because this was a religious school, there are no personal rights issues at stake and she had no recourse. Her personal choice was to leave BYU and her scholarship behind because she was so offended.
Of course this is one of the major problems associated with federal funding of religious programs for charity or education. These charities can discriminate and there are no federal protections for these folks who are discriminated against even though the source of the funds are federal in nature. Shockingly, there have been discrimination cases based upon religion, race or appearance that are being upheld because "private" churches or schools can make any requirements on their "clubs" they want. Historically, the protection has been that any organization that receives federal funding cannot discriminate, but the new rules blow this away.
Don't get me wrong, I consider myself religious and was raised Catholic, but large organized religions have proven difficult for me to participate in.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Free speech advocates are concerned about the restriction of speech in a private high school? Shouldn't they be finishing up with China first?
How many jokes about Catholic priests "blessing" the tender young high school students, in poetic contrast to the concern of predators?
I say at least 10-12. Could be wrong.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Believe me, if they're going to a Catholic school, the students have a hell of a lot more to worry about than online predators.
Electric Monkey Pants
You just gave the principal A VALID REASON to protect his students from online predators!
(For those who can't see the parent, don't bother. it's a gnaa troll.)
And given the fact that most blogs - specially the blogger ones - have become a target for spamvertising, I couldn't agree more with him!
Blog anonymously? That should solve the problem.
OHHHHHHHHHH, THE IRONY!!
Wait! I've got it. Every day when the students arrive at school, they'll start by putting their hands on the school Bible and swearing that they haven't written a blog or violated any of the other 729 rules and regulations. Of course, they'll have to do it in very small groups so they can be properly monitored to make sure none of them are lip-synching the oath or crossing their fingers. By the time the students all finish all their mighty oath takings, it will be time to go home, and they can start again the next morning.
How's that for a proper religious education?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
We may as well close this thread. You've said it all.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If you want to protect students from on-line predators, have some adults that hang out in the online chat rooms. Just one lurking, trusted adult can put an end to a lot of crap in a chat room. Chat rooms aren't the only places to talk to kids on line though. Most on line games have a chat/messaging component. Because of some of the things that we've observed, our gaming clan has enacted really strict rules about this for our "junior league" members. Have adults that are privvy to all the conversations during on-line game play. Tell parents not to put the computer in the kid's bedroom. Have the parent install monitoring software and check up on what junior's up to on-line.
Major Super-Important Point - THE COMPUTER IS NOT A BABYSITTER. YOU MUST INTERACT WITH YOUR CHILD.
There are dozens of way more effective steps than taking down a blog or two. Explain to kids that real names and real places don't get used in blogs. Using someone's real name, or telling where they live, etc. should be cause for suspension.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
I see no problem with this sort of restriction in a private religious school, as long as they don't receive any tax dollars.
'doh!
Its unsafe to walk the streets for children. Lets ban walking!
Oh well. It's not like we cared about how their parents punished them for no reason, why they got detention, or about their terrible grades anyway.
Do you Gentoo?
Then they can start signing the loyalty oaths to get to the mess tent... I do so love it when the world starts emulating something that was once a "dystopian nightmare"
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
Amen!
I knew two schools in Louisville, KY. One, with nice, polite kids. Normal lives, the whole deal. The other was a girls school, and riding the bus home in the afternoons with them? Wow. Every cliche you could find in a Penthouse, they had in spades. Not in a good way, either. In that slimy, disgusting "no thanks, celibacy sounds great" way.
Oh, yeah, there's no free speech in school. How they plan to enforce this off campus is worth hearing.
How ironic that these angsty teenagers no longer have a place to whine about their opression... :P
Stop spouting the Post Anonymously crap, while I dont agree with the good Reverend he is objecting to blogs where the student post a picture, their name and other personal details.
serenity now!
My school tracks down your blog and reads it. If you say anything in it(such as drug or alcohol use) you must take a drug test or are suspended until you do(if you try to fight them in court you only have 21 days because if you are out of school longer then that you fail for the year no matter what your grades are). I dont even know what happens if you talk about attacking the school. Its funny though the only way they figure out your blog because they gave everyone laptops and kids goto them and blog.
Why students have "free speech"? Minors (that is, people under 18 years of age) aren't exactly privy to all the rights guaranteed under the Constitution. They don't enjoy (at least parts) of the Bill of Rights. And they certainly aren't "free". So why does every lawyer on the planet leap to minors' defense when their supposed "First amendment rights" are "violated"?
... wow, that must open some DOS attack potential. Blog using your friends/foes identity and get her suspended. Nice.
Who the FUCK are YOU!?
God Forbid the student's may run across people who might post ideas that run counter to the church.
In fact, some of them might not even be *gasp* Christian. The children might be promoted to *Horror* Question the Doctorine of the Church!
Please Someone Think Of The Children!
(Not anti-religion, just think that by highschool people should be making up their own minds about it. Shouldn't true belief and a relationship with whatever god(ess)(es) a person chooses to follow or not come from self reflection and soul serching instead of bullying, parental decree, and a lack of exposure to alternate viewpoints?)
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Not exactly the best way to show the young and impressionable how to deal with the world.
We are seeing similar treatment of students having personal blogs and websites in public schools in Canada.
Again, the argument is that the sites could be used for gathering information about the kids.
Discussions about the limits of school responsibilities in personal lives, the role of parental supervision, and the level of Internet education being provided to children seem to go nowhere.
It seems that any issue involving kid's safety has the effect of turning of brain cells in some school officials.
Hide your true identity while posting anything about your school! I can't believe how schools like thesep pulls-off a China. I guess it's the only place left where they have absolute power over others. Next thing we'll hear priest molesting students because he wants to make sure they don't want them pierced.
Whoever made that Chinese comment: Yeah figures. Go around policing the world, but don't look in your own backyard. Like so many people have pointed out, a private institution can do whatever it wants, but they better not be getting federal money. Unfortunately, that is often not the case (ie they do get federal money). This kind of crap makes me so mad. BYU is a school full of maniacs. Can't drink coffee? What the fuck? And if I want to drink alchohol, that's my fucking business. BYU is nothing more than a fucking "conversion camp". I know of international students who have received scholarships etc from BYU. And then basically, undergone 4 years of brainwashing and proselytizing. Luckily, these days, international students are more aware of places like BYU and stay away. Unfortunately, some people still get roped in, and then either have to convert in order to deal with the place, or end up going back home, completely traumatized. Organized religion. Makes me puke.
The idea of a private school regulating student activity outside of school is not unheard of and there is a long tradition in it...
Sigh. I went to private school. They never pulled a bullshit move like this. They did make suggestions on what we should and shouldn't be doing outside of school, but they never enforced it.
To me, this is like drug testing in school. Basically the school is saying what you do outside of school is our buisness. When, in reality, it is not their buisness in any way, shape, or form what a student does on their own free time. Any statements otherwise, such as the ones in this article, can, and will, be taken as a act of Facism and Retardism par the anti-freedom act of the Bush Administration (2004).
Welcome to Theocracy. Leave your open-mindedness and revolutionary scientific theories at the gates of Hitler.
You have entered the anti-Twilight Zone.
google.slashdot
Why aren't the freedom of speech advocates worried about the school's consitutional right to assembly?
Furthermore, why dont these so-called advocates read the ammendment and realize it's about congress making laws abridging the freedom of speech, not about private organizations determining who they can assemble with.
I had old buddies who went there.
Its a strict school. Backwards too I may add.
They have disciplinary problems in the schools out there and jersey has a high precentage of lawsuits. I wanted to go to Pope John because I was being bullied and harrased daily in elementry school and I was hoping they could protect me.
http://saveie6.com/
Funny you should say that. The South Park episode about Catholic priests* is airing.
*Well that and crapping out of one's mouth.
Once again the catholic church is covering their ass. (Man, I wish I could come up with something witty right now to turn that last sentence into something humorous.)
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
I'm confused. Can you elaborate? If you are saying that girls from all-girls schools turn into sex-crazy sluts (with exceptions of course), then yes, I can totally see that. It's really messed up. In India, there are a lot of all-girl or all-boy schools. Once these kids hit college, they respond in one of two ways: 1) Are completely unable to deal with or interact with the opposite sex or 2) Girls become uber-sluts, and boys become total sleazeballs. It's nice to see that their parents succeeded in their quest to raise such sweet, innoccent children. Idiots.
(I won't mention the name to protect the innocent yadda yadda). Here in Mexico the catholic way of life is quite different from the US - while in the US the catholics have (or had - VERY past tense) been kinda isolated from evangelical christians, here in Mexico, catholicism (at least the name) is the norm.
Catholic schools have been distinguished here for their strict morals, and I do feel grateful for my religion classes, despites their obvious shortcomings (I'd prefer the evangelical way - streamline, not creationist and the like - of teaching religion, i wish the religion classes had been more interactive and fun).
Anyway.
The problem with catholic schools is their own fame: Parents saw them as some kind of disciplinary schools. So what happens when you throw in a bunch of troublemakers, hoping a few teachers will put order in their little dirty minds?
All the bad words, dirty jokes and whatnot, I learned because of the students in the "best" school! And because I was a nerd (and shy) since I was little, I was always the target for bullies. Lesson: Bullying is OK, but getting even at bullies gets you reprimanded, a low grade on "conduct" and in the worst cases, kicked out. Of course, being good and earning the teachers' respect inside school, didn't save you from getting beaten OUTSIDE school on the way home!
Nice discipline, really (/sarcasm).
A few years later, this catholic high school became famous for the LACK of discipline by the students. I also feel grateful for having graduated before the decline of this particular school.
So, yes, the parent poster is right, the students have HELLUVALOT more to be worried about online predators.
Instead of ranting here, I just went and posted a simple question on their website: when were they going to ban students from going to public places since it's oh so much easier for a predator to _follow_ a student. I'm sure there are plenty of other creative suggestions that could be posted at http://www.popejohn.org/
Oh... I stumbled on the fact there seems to have been two Pope John XXIII (either the journalist left out an X or there are two Pope John High Schools in Sparta NJ). The first was also called an Anti-Pope and (thanks Wikipedia!) and later charged with piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest. Oh the irony, the irony!
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
What's the problem, from a religious organization's standpoint, with consuming coffee ? Alcohol is one thing, but coffee ?
Things like these convince me that Christian fundamentalism is very real.
The Raven
Imagine that, a private religious institution actually making rules for it's memebers! The next thing you know, Jews won't be eating shelfish and Muslims won't be able to drink and eat a big hearty breakfeast during Ramadan.
We are one step away from a nightmare scenario where there might even be clubs were men meet to wear aprons and learn secret handshakes. Clearly this is a case were the government needs to step in! The government always brings freedom!
Geez, I don't know what this church is thinking! Normally religions have few restrictions, and they are all quite reasonable!
I wonder if students were to setup blogs on another site, or on one that isn't a blog, and the principal found out: Who -really- is the predator students are being protected from?
Seriously, whoever modded that troll is living in fairyland.
See? You were right all along! It's universal.
Now go back to listen to more Zappa, it's all good.
John
I know I am feeding the trolls, but...
Rev. Kieran McHugh is an idiot. This probably has more to do with his fear of free speech about his school than Catholic doctrine. Naturally, he has probably made other obviously self-serving, startlingly ignorant, and morally reprehensible decisions that warrant journalistic investigation and exposure. However, no sane person would say...
"As ethically uplifting [as] the Constitution is, Jews prefer to follow a morally uplifting set of laws. Unfortunately, nowhere in there is speech said to be free. If they really wanted to be free, they certainly wouldn't be Jews."
Catholics, Jews, and Muslims are not Fascists in silver raiment. You probably are.
I have no love for the church or Abrahamic religion. I am a Hellenic Pagan. See http://www.hellenion.org/
Any ideas on how we can show our support for the kids? That school is about an hour away from me. I'd love to arrange a little meeting and give the principal a piece of my mind.
If they aren't doing whatever they're doing on school time and what they're doing is legal, then he should shut the fuck up. Because the school isn't the parents of these kids. Unfortunately, this is the direct result of what the fuck happened in America made parents thing they bear no responsibility to keep their kids from having contact with material they deem inappropriate. Once you begin to depend on other people to parent your children for you, they start to act like it really is their job.
Children aren't free to do whatever they want. They're more or less controlled by their guardian. Do you think the founding fathers passed the bill of rights with children in mind? The second amendment springs to mind as something not exactly intended to protect children. How about the fifth amendment, "...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...". Did you get a lawyer to defend you when your parents told you to go to bed, turn out the lights, or take away your toy?
It's ridiculous to assume that children share every right and protection the constitution grants us, simply because they're inapplicable. IMHO, children have (or should not have as the case may be) any freedom of speech. Granted, I think this because most of the shit my peers have to say is utter bullshit (and typically hippy-bandwagon rhetoric). Who cares what a ten year old with no life experience and an extremely limited understanding of ANYTHING thinks? Not liking a war because "daddy had to go away" might fly when you're in elementary school, but I would *hope* that the education system creates people more capable of free thought than that.
Total troll. If your request had any substance to it, you'd cite references of some so-called "left-wing" institution doing the same. You should be modded back to Freep, dweeb.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
...What's a "left-wing" school? Are you talking about universities? What's an example of one interfering with free speech? Is it really as henious as trying to regular a student's behavior outside their facilities and due jurisdiction?
Blog anonymously? That should solve the problem.
Obviously, the stated purpose is to protect the students from predators, so the problem appears to be "how to protect the students when they're on the internet". But - and I mean this with the utmost, non-flamebait sincerity - isn't a big part of Christianity the ability to control people and their behavior? And given that, is the problem instead, "how to maintain control over what the students say, think and do"?
To be fair, religion in general (not just Christianity) serves as a means of population control. It tells us when to be happy, when to be afraid, how to live, how not to live, how to treat each other, etc. And it keeps us all looking for the big payoff in the sky, instead of paying attention to the boring details of our mundane lives. But all of this is subjective and varies widely across different cultures, just like religion does.
I can't help but think part of this "student protection" plan is to in fact maintain a tighter hold on the students, including what they say and do on the internet.
Land of milk and funky 1420 BC Móshe
"Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators."
Apparently Catholic Priests don't want competition.
I went to a private Church run school, mixed, not single gender....the girls were much more sex crazy than in the public schools. Hell, one time, one older girl I knew who just about screwed me right in the hall. Didn't even ask, just came up to me and...well... The girls there were...just absolute succubi. I don't know what it is...but it's pretty true what they say about a lot of private school girls.
My sister's high school decided to do this as well, here's the story:
From: Round Rock ISD info@roundrockisd.org
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2005 9:12 AM
To: xxxxxxxx
Subject:MAV MAIL-a letter from the principal
October 20, 2005
Dear McNeil High School Parents and Guardians:
While technology has served to improve our lives in numerous ways, it also has some negative effects. It has come to our attention that some Round Rock ISD students are sharing personal information and photographs on web sites that could enable viewers to locate the students. Two of the sites found to include RRISD students were www.xanga.com and www.myspace.com. On some postings students listed their full names, school names, cities, and other identifying information. Several included pictures and commentary (about both students and teachers) that are discomforting, if not downright disturbing.
While many of the postings on these web sites are not necessarily alarming, we want you to be aware that some students are sharing information and photographs that could compromise their safety. Please talk with your student about the dangers of publishing identifiable information and photographs on the Internet. Please be aware of the online sites your student is visiting from home, and discuss with your student the harm that can be done by publishing inappropriate information or photographs of others without their consent or knowledge. You may also want to consider obtaining content-filtering or other parental control options for your Internet service.
Students who participate in extracurricular activities that require higher standards of conduct, such as cheerleading, band, and athletics, may face consequences for publishing inappropriate web photos or information that identify their role in the school.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me at 464-6300. We appreciate your assistance in maintaining safe and secure environments for our students.
Sincerely,
Nelson Coulter
Principal, McNeil High School
-----
Personally I believe that is a load of crap, There goes the right to free speech.
Joking aside, I think it is a bit unfair to suggest that a Catholic institution has no stake in protecting its students from online predators. This is like suggesting that a community (like say, a state such as MA) has no stake in protecting its citizens from murderers because the state has a certain percentage of murderers in it. Yes, there are predatory priests, but that does not define the Catholic church, nor its members.
Furthermore, Free Speech as provided by the First Ammendment, like so much of the Constitution, is completely misunderstood by a large portion of Americans, and a great deal of the rest of the world. There are pleanty of examples, not the least of which is the Dixie Chicks crying foul (and using the term censorship) when other free citizens decided to boycott their product. Free speech is for everyone, good and bad, and I'd argue that it is more important to protect the bad, since it needs the most protection. Having said that, and digressed, in this case the body silencing the speech is a private organization silencing its membership. That membership is neither a right, nor involuntary. They may do as they please legally, and the membership that doesn't like it can certainly leave.
Be careful what you wish for. If the fed gets control of what private organizations can do in every regard, its only a short put to your front door...your living room...your bedroom.
But hey...at least the term SPLOG wasn't used...
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
What's the difference between a catholic priest and zits (pimples)?
Pimples won't come on your face until you're 13.
they aren't minors or anything...oh wait :(
s elves-rhetoric...
Mmm...children-are-smart-enough-to-think-for-them
Unless the Catholic School installs a sniffer and other spywares on the student's computer, the student can simply plausibiliy deny that it's really him who posted that blog.
Did you even read the article? It's not about Internet usage. What crackhead mod(s) thinks this is insightful? It's offtopic people.
What do they mean by 'net predators' excatly? Pedophiles?
..
It was a catholic high school right?
There are two important things here. First of all, this is a private high school. The First Amendment does not apply to private organizations, and even more so to religious private organizations *. Nor should it have to. If there is a problem with free speech, they can go to some other, possibly public school.
Even if the student is not going to a Catholic school by choice, the First Amendment does not apply. Although the government cannot restrict the free speech of a minor, the parent can. Parents are all-powerful with regards to their children, with the exception of a few things like abortion.
All in all, if I were running the school, I'd be far more worried about the clergy molesting the children than some outsider reading a web site.
*: Religious organizations, or more accurately non-profit organizations in general, really do have more freedom with their views. You can't fire someone from a normal job for saying "there is no heaven" (or another inoffensive but heretical statement). But you can certainly do that to your clergy. Freedom of speech and freedom of association both work this way.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
After reading the article and the replies here....
To me it sounds like Good Intentions, badly implemented. It's not a matter of censorship or religion or anything like that.
Posting personal details on the Web is a bad, stupid, dangerous thing to do, especially for kids.
I've drilled that into my kids, who are much younger than these.
What is needed, and perhaps should be part of whatever computing studies kids do nowdays (already is?) is basic Internet Awareness.
Safe Sex for the Net.
The school needs someone to come in and instruct both the kids and the teachers, to cut down on the bad actions by the kids, and dumb reactions by the teachers.
If Rev. Kieran McHugh is prohibiting students from posting online blogs to protect them from predators then the reason every other school is not doing the same is because either a) there's no problem with students posting blogs or b) he's wiser than all the other principals.
If it's really about protecting students I think he'd want educate them about the values of anonymity and the dangers of giving personal information when using the Internet.
Web page of the high school w/contact info. Give 'em a piece of your mind, /.ers
Timmy,
Report to my office BEFORE HOMEROOM Wednesday morning.
Don't be late.
-Principal O'Brien
No you can't have the right to express yourself online because 'we have to protect you from online predators'.
No you can't complain if you're detained for two weeks without reason and prohibitied from telling anyone because 'we have to protect you from terrorists'.
I'll take my f**king chances thankyou very much.
:wq
Anyone care to fill me in on how my running a blog would put me in danger from online predators? Maybe if they would have banned chat rooms or IM, but this is just moronic.
Maybe schools should start teaching people common sense instead of just banning things in a random manner like this one. Use a little common sense and these "online predators" aren't a problem anymore. But no, lets just lock all of the kids up in small padded rooms and totally seperate them from the rest of humanity. That will solve the problem. That will protect them!
Scott Swezey
Ironically, their school's FIRST robotics team's website (http://robotics.popejohn.org/) is still alive and kicking, and its full of pictures and contact information.
wtfsig?!11
I read your newest blog entry. Your soul is mine. Muaahahahahaaa.
Here are some examples to get you started. For more, Google "university campus speech codes".
with "protecting" children as lesbian porn has to do with lesbians. not that i've ever, you know, had personal experience with this.
Did anyone catch the tagline at the bottom the (entire discussion) page?
It reads:
What fools these morals be!
Of course, we all know this means they've kept those young Catholic students from talking to Jesus... ;]
http://blog.myspace.com/34861919
Will no one THINK of the TEACHERS?
From the school website:
"Teachers Sites
Mrs_Askin Mrs_Harrigan Mrs_Olsen
Mrs_Astor Mrs_Kalafsky Mrs_Partida
Mrs_Buniak Mr_Kenny Mr_Peck
Mrs_Covel Mrs_Morris Mrs_M.Ross
Ms_deVries Mr_Morro Mr_Vohden
Mr_Ferrise Mr_Nicholson
Mrs_Franc Mrs. O'Connell"
Look at all those websites! Surely, each and every one a target for the foul predators that lurk on the Internets!
Please, for their own good and safety, they must be PREVENTED from having their own websites!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Blogging is known to be potentially dangerous. In fact I have no doubt that no fewer than 2 sexual beings have looked at my blog in the past hour. And we all know that sex is bad, so sexual beings must be bad too.
But seriously, kids should not be blogging their thoughts in public anyway. It's different if they do it as a kind of job, but otherwise their blogs are just insipid surveys and risk taking opinions that people outside of their trusted social circles should not be entitled to read. Children don't know any better, and can't deal with the consequences when things go awry. They can't even sue someone for libel, or defend themselves directly in a libel suit.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
McNeil High School's full phone number is 512-464-6300. Be sure to call Nelson and explain why the school blog shouldn't list its home phone number, a list of its faculty, student events, and even pictures of students that pedophiles could use!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The point here should not be free speech. The constitution (with some minor exceptions) will grant us that.
Would you feel safe if anyone could chat with your younger sons?
Having a blog can expose your identity and your internet presence to anyone.
Younger people (but not only them) can be easily nobbled by older and more experienced people. You can read about the results in everyday newspaper.
Shutting down their blogs may not be the right move. Not at all actually. But something is to be done definitely.
Instead of talking about religion parties being more or less stupid, it could be great is someone of us could come out with some better idea to protect our sons!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
oh, would you mean like just about every case stated here??
yeah, if someone states a fact that is uncomfortable, its a troll.
i get how Slashdot groupthink works!
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
I have to wonder how they found out about the blogs in the first place, do they routinely go about spying on their students?
I think that this stems from some larger issues of social control than simply protection. If predators can find students on such sites then they must obviously be focal points of immorality as well?
Religious groups would prefer to have the ability to totally regulate the behavior of their congregations (for their own good, of course) but cannot normally do so because they have no ability to force compliance other than ousting someone from the congregation. Now they can leverage the money that the parents pay and the parental support of the school against the school's students. This way allows them to regulate moral behavior under the guise of protection, which will have parental support.
Granted, they cannot enforce across the entirety of the web, but by merely raising the specter of expulsion for personals ads placers and bloggers they can outsource a certain amount of it to parents - who may now be more watchful of their children and enforce the school's morality to save money!
Hit em where it hurts - in the wallet.
It's actually quite brilliant, if you consider it in that light.
Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators.
Knowing the Catholic church this ban probably isn't out of concern for the children, but out of jealousy.
Yep, I'm most likely going to Hell.
So what are they doing about the Priests? Lous Black made a hilarious statement on the Daily Show with Jon Stuart about only shipping them off to a different diesis.
So, it's my understanding that Zonk is on his way there to check out this situation first hand, what with all these cute young boys running around all confused.
BULL SHIT!!!!
I own and run the webstite TheOCSucks.com along with having a myspace just like the rest of the school and if they told us to take away our freedom of speech from public places i wouldnt, fuck them....
http://DiabloHeat.com | http://Kyle.TheOCSucks.com | http://TheOCSucks.com
Haha. Sweet dude.
No one expected the Spanish Inquisition!
:wq
I guess the Catholic Church knows all about sexual predators, don't they?
.. have kids expressing themselves and communicating publicly than them hiding out with shitheads lurking in their own neighborhoods.
Simple fix:
All American children, male and female, under the age of 21, should wear burkas. That will keep them anonimous and unidentifiable to any and all predators. They should all be called by the same name: Marklar. All Marklar should use the same SIN 42-42-42-42. Finally, since the teachers won't be able to tell them apart, grade scores will always be averaged so that all Marklar will score the same, to avoid all forms of discrimination.
There - a perfect solution to all American problems.
Oh well, what the hell...
On the other end of the spectrum, I suppose I can offer a small anecdote from my time in college. My freshman year, a new student group showed up on campus. Their entire purpose was to, once a year, host the display of a colossal metal tower featuring 12-foot-high images of aborted fetuses. Surrounding the tower were maybe 50 people who would shout at the passing students, and surrounding them was a metal fence. This display was put up far away from the area usually reserved for student groups, in the middle of a major thoroughfare, right next to the largest dormitory hall in the state. The accompanying texts on the boards and signs surrounding the tower for about a block portrayed pro-choice students as Nazis. They also pointed to a web site.
Upon visiting this web site, you were greeted with the name of our school, and the site was done up in our school colors. It looked like a student-run organization. Except that there was no way that even the wealthiest student organization on campus could afford this display. It was put up with a crane every morning, and taken down every night. It had its own security guards. This thing cost some big bucks. Turns out, the web site and the display were provided by a corporation created to tour this thing around many college campuses every year. In fact, it turns out that many of the people out there "protecting" the tower weren't students; they were volunteers from outside the school working with this company. This is where the "bias" comes in.
At the time, the rules were strictly against companies advertising or providing ad materials for students on campus to put up. This was intended to keep big companies from flooding the campus with ads without sponsoring a service (for example, the Coke machines around campus) or an event. And also to keep student groups recruiting and debating at roughly the same financial level. This company had clearly sought to get around that rule by pretending that their ad was created by the students - it was obvious they knew what they were doing wasn't allowed. But the University didn't take the display down, didn't tell the yellers to quiet down, didn't do anything to divert students around it. They politely asked the student sponsors to cover the parts of the display that showed the name of the company's web site. Which they did, with huge yellow posters decrying University "censorship."
Then they sued the school. Claiming that they were sort-of-censored because of the beliefs they were espousing, and not because they were doing it with a 12-foot-tall industrial ad display. They said that the school rules were inherently biased and didn't allow for truly free speech. And the funny thing is, they won. Somehow, just as their student group managed to construct a steel tower on student funds, they "just" managed to rally up enough legal clout to take on the state's biggest university. And it was no small coincidence that the new free speech code allowed big companies to start advertising on our huge, consumer-rich campus. It stank of money, especially when the next year they unveiled an only-8-foot-high version of the tower, designed to merely take up the majority of the space in the student groups' usual meeting area.
So basically, when I see a conservative group whine about only being given their own space where no one was allowed to post opposing views, about only being allowed to display a huge ad that could be seen from one end of the campus to the other, about only being able to harass other students from behind the safety of a metal fence, and about being given a slap on the wrist when they should have been kicked off the campus, I tend to think that all this whinging about "liberal bias" is just selfishness talking. Granted, they did make some students cry. I suppose the uni could be pissed about the counseling time.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
Whilst the good reverend is worried about online predators - the students giving out precious information on the internet, maybe he should follow his students around when they are on their cell phones at the mall, fast-food joint, or any where else. Talk about details revealed that could help any predator... pleeeaase. Perhaps this "education" should go futher than what to reveal or not online.
So will the good reverend ban the use of cell phones by his students outside of school hours?
Patents #USAPATRIOT666 and #COPA101: using "it's for the safety of our citizens/children" as justification for controlling the population.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said." This coming from a catholic priest!! i can speak for a lot of raped altar boys that catholic schools themselves are a fertile ground for sexual predators, the predators being the demented priests. Its time the catholic church STFU with trying to divert the attention off their sicko clergy.
The question is, what right does the school have to limit what the students do at home, on their own time?
Is it within the school's rights to suspend anyone who watches an R-rated movie, even if their parents are present?
Suppose someone reads books not on the approved list -- at home? Plays D&D on the weekends? Dates someone of another religion (again, not on school time)? Eats junk food?
What gives the school the right to dictate the student's personal life when the student is not on school property or engaged in a school function? And if something does give them that right, where does it stop?
... protects citizens from GOVERNMENT-IMPOSED restraints on speech. Private institutions such as Catholic schools and private employers are immune.
Seriously. Look it up and then stop complaining about how CowboyNeal* is infringing on your rights.
* not a federal institution
How can we label people "free" and give them the rights free-thinking people deserve if we allow them to grow up totally ensconced in conservative ideology?
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. --attributed to Thomas Jefferson
But...teaching without both free access to different points of view, and the freedom to express your own point of view, is not real education, it is only indoctrination. If children aren't given the opportunity to receive all kinds of knowledge, they accept uncritically whatever traditional "values" their parents believe in simply because their parents are close to them. When parents are given total control of where their children can spend their time, the child's intellectual development is totally at the mercy of the parent. Adults can, if they make enough of an effort, completely shape a child's world. And yet, If we were to emancipate children from the grip of their parents, most of us would immediately force them into some other state institution (public schools, most likely) which would be a violation of both the liberty of the student, and the freedom of the parent to "own" their child.
Despite legal adulthood being set at 18, the age in which we are given full human rights is for the most part not well agreed upon in America. For example, various states in the US have different and conflicting age of consent laws that allow for sexual freedom anywhere form age 14 to 18. Many young teens (junior high or middle school age) have detailed enough knowledge and a strong enough sense of responsibility that I would trust them to vote or drive cars. There are many legal adults age 18 and up that don't deserve these privileges. Age is an unfair and inconsistent measure of whether one deserves human rights or social privileges. Also, please note that when I refer to children in this post, I mean any human under that age of 18, a large portion of which are more knowledgeable then an average adult especially regarding information technology. I am not just talking about little kids.
Children in America really are an oppressed group; parents here can use coercion to force feed their kids whatever sick ideals they stand for. The United States and Somalia are the only two nations to have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nearly American seams to end up having "Faith" (false conviction in unjustified propositions) in the same God that there parents did. Funny how our respect for parents "rights" to control their kids leads to the propagation of violent and idiotic ideas like Christian fundamentalism and racis
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Saturday, in reaction to The Natrat, the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity is holding a protest rally entitled "We Will be Heard" at the fence at 10am. The fraternity expects all minorities on campus to unite in support of racial harmony and civil rights.
Oh yeah, sounds like they're just rarin' to kill someone. You're seriously telling me that this is oppression? Yeah, you do something offensive, people get offended. The rally wasn't even started or sponsored by the school...so how are they involved in suppressing free speech again? What? They don't want to pay to print offensive material in the future? Those pinko hippie bastards!
Seriously...almost all of these objectionable "incidents" I hear about seem to involve other students getting offended at the conservative student and saying they are, at which point the conservative student gestures wildly at a vague Liberal Institution and yells, "Elp, elp ahm bein oppressed!"
Since these kids are under the age of 18, isn't this really a parental issue? I mean, can't a parent trump the school and allow their child to have a parental-monitored blog? I bet the school would allow this amendment to their harsh rule. You wanna talk about oppression? Take a look at the laws regarding who has rights over a human under the age of 18!!! ;-)
Horns are really just a broken halo.
"Hurr hurr, the Catholic Church shouldn't try to help kids avoid predators, 'cause they're PREDATORS ALREADY lol gimme five/karma"
"Hurr hurr, don't use a firewall on Windows because you are fucked anyways hahaha I am appreciative of people stuck using a certain os LOL I am so hot today gimme paw/money"
"Hurr hurr, don't bother eating or doing anything for that matter because you're going to die someday anyways LOL I so took the world by storm with that lol gimme cock"
Jesus, people. Get fucking lives.
This isn't to say I'm agreeing with censoring journals, but think before you splooge idiocy onto the Internet. This isn't the place for it. May I suggest the IMDb.
that's my highschool!...my highschool made slashdot? my world just got alot smaller. yeah pj99
Students are Presentation High School in San Jose, CA are having the same thing happen to them, except the administration goes one step further. Myspace and Xanga are blocked on the school firewall, and the administration actually holds meetings with parents telling them of the "evils" of blogging and Myspaces and Xangas. Of course, there's no opposing view that supports bloggers at these meetings, so the parents are fed story after story of some sexual predator stalking their children (which is a rare occurrence). As a result, the parents are paranoid and extend the school ban into the home. Some students have been suspended for not closing down their Myspaces.
Just goes to show how uneducated masses can be easily led by a falsified fear.
Instead of having parents force their kids to take down their blogs, the advice should be exactly the opposite. If parents read these blogs (not their own kids, but generally) they just might gain some non-BS insight about how kids in an age group like their own really think, act and express themselves in a setting that's unfiltered and honest.
I think that's a tremendous benefit that far outweighs chasing non-existent bogeymen around the internet. Practical advice about posting obviously identifiable info is good, but saying let's just take all the blogs down is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, no pun intended. And from what I've seen of teen-age blogs on the net, all use an alias and don't post overtly personal info such as home address, etc.
I don't suspect school administrators of having an ulterior motive here, or are attempting to regulate/eliminate free-speech, but I do suspect that they haven't given this as much thought as they should have.
Perhaps, but I don't see the universities telling students that in their own personal lives that they cannot express themselves. That is what differentiates this case from these. They gave examples of bias in class and in funding selection, but I did not see any rules that extended to the student's personal life.
Basically, I don't even find this comparable.
I wanted to go to Pope John because I was being bullied and harrased daily in elementry school and I was hoping they could protect me.
Everybody is bullied and harrassed daily in elementary school. That's part of growing up and, well, going to elementary school.
Don't think you're special.
No, not at all. That's a ridiculous (although not uncommon) caricature. I won't deny that occasionally Christianity has become a tool of the state, and in those cases it has become one of a number of means by which the state attempts to control its population, but control over the masses is really foreign to the Christian ethic. It's far more about the individual learning to control himself. When it becomes about controlling others, it devolves into a mere cult.
It indeed is intended to draw focus away from earthly things -- or rather, one earthly thing: the self. The only path to heaven is on earth, by doing good for others, treating them the way you would wish to be treated, giving what is needed. It is all about serving others. Most Christians do not forget the admonition in one of the Epistles that faith without works is dead.
If this is "population control", then so be it.
And the brethren went away edified.
There are alternatives to public blogging that would have allowed both sides to get what they wanted. For instance, require that students use livejournal (or some similar service) for all their blogging needs. Then all entries can be posted with a friends lock that allows only authorized friends to view entries. User info can be guarded the same way. Obviously, as with any compromise, some students are going to have make unwanted changes, but at least both sides are happy.
Frankly I think the principal did us all a favour, the less blogs written by students the better. I think the world will survive without another on-line diary telling us how Corey loves Ayesha, and why The O.C. is the best programme on TV.
Just like medieval eupean age...
Just write a mail http://www.bloggingbymail.com/
http://www.thefire.org/ is a good resource that does not try to pin ideology on these types of issues, however quite a few of them involve leftists imposing their ideology onto students and faculty.
Here are a couple of famous examples:
* Universities shutting down "Affirmative Action" bake sales
* The person who got booted out of a school for supporting corporal punishment
So to your statement that these things don't happen, I say hogwash. However, I can concede there are plenty of cries of "Wolf" amongst all the complaints. If a professor assigns some sort of assignment that requires a student to consider a different point of view, it is usually conservative students who whine and moan about not having their ideologies vomited out of the professor for them to munch up.
By all means, lets find examples on both sides of the political spectrum, but don't sit here and try to pretend it doesn't exist.
In the case of universities, students often times live at the unviersity, or barring that, spend quite a bit of their time there. Much social interaction occurs here, more so than just the herding and shuffling of students between classes in high school.
Why are these people whining "Waah! I'm catholic/christian/muslim/whatever and I'm treated poorly!"? Well you chose that yourself or didn't run from it while you had a chance, you can only blame yourself.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Instead of engaging in rebuttal, some people were more interested in, ironically so, censoring you for daring to point out that such censorship does exist in academia from different sides of the political spectrum and that it gets nil coverage here.
So do the moderators actually believe in free speech or was it more likely that they were offended by someone injecting some perspective into the discussion?
I do have a nephew, and if school rules said he couldn't participate in an out-of-school activity that I felt was creative and harmless when properly supervised, and I was willing to properly supervise him, then you betcha I'd be railing at the school officials in question and gathering up a gang of other mothers to talk some sense back into the idiots.
It's up to parents, not the government, to protect students from officious busybodies in the school system. There should be (if there isn't already) legal machinery/checks-and-balances in place to ensure that the parents get fair representation against a body of school officials, but it's really up to the parents to know their children, know what's going on in their children's schools and speak up for them.
Freedom of speech faces greater challenges ...
a l-hearing-of-webloggers-from-holy.html
"The Lawyer of Farid Modarresi and Hossein Abdollah Pour declared on Friday that his clients are to be tried today for charges of insulting high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic (two members of the Expediency Council and the former President, Mohammad Khatami) and taking action against the national security. Earlier trials had taken place through the Qom Revolutionary Court branch in June and July, leading to convictions of up to 90-day jail terms for these webloggers. This trial is, thus, an appeal hearing."
taken from http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2005/10/appe
Regarding the original post, if a school doesn't want its pupils to blog, it can probably find ways to do so. In the same way, 20 yrs ago if you started printing unofficial newspapers/ student rags in your garage, your chool would be pissed off. As far as I am concerned it is a non-issue. The US and everyone else have bigger things to worry about and more prominent rights abuses
egIn the ACT education deparment they have their own censors 1) All schools should be using the expensive ED net access- even though the ED belives schools should be partially self govorning 2) If you use free software(ie OSS), you are marked down in IT audits 3) One cannot search for an images on google because it can grab porn (even though looking at porn is agaisnt the AUP) 4) Most uses of their filtering software SINA/myinternet will ban you from accessing your own email Also like one of the other posts, the way to make atheists is to send your smart kids to a catholic school.(Thats what happend to some of my associates, they went to a catholic school and hated religion once they left)
http://www.catholicism.org/ibank.barclays.co.uk/ol b/p/LoginMember.do/index.htm
I think there was more to it than just banning kids from blogging. Either he is protecting them or he's just plain ignorant and thinks messing with the internet is a sin.
Calling Xanga and MySpace blogs is an insult to the word "blog". "Students Banned From Posting On Their Craptacular Teenage Social-Networking Sites" would be more accurate (though not as catchy).
Seriously. MySpace?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
He meant to say, "prevent his students from reporting the inchurch predators to the online world."
I should include the caveat that my parent comment refers to public schools. I believe this was a private school.
Hence, while a public school might have to prove that its violations are for a higher purpose or stem from its in loco parentis responsibilities, a private school may set limits arbitrarily.
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_stud.html
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The Reverend also ordered that students would not be allowed on any publicly accessible land, indoors or outdoors. Environments such as malls, grocery stores, parks, and libraries are fertile ground for sexual predators to find children.
He concluded with a statement forbidding any student from approaching within 100 feet of a paved road, because some students have failed to look both ways before crossing.
Welcome to America :)
I don't mean to be stupid, but in the context of this ruling, what's a blog? I realize the principal in TFA singled out Xanga and MySpace as blogs, but could posting comments and stories to a site like /. be considered a blog?
Support the Chagossians
Thank you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, for showing that this is all about the SCHOOL'S CONTROL over what the student's do and say outside of school, rather than the "protection" that they claim they're doing.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Apparently the free speech which is the bandwagon of US is not really applicable to US citizens. Look at this Article as well. It's like the whole big bad world of child molestors, school kids beaters, abusive employers, abusive employees is breaking down. Hey wait a minute, is this the world my mom sent me to?
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
http://www.popejohn.org/content/feedback.htm everyone vioce your complaint.. if they get 100,000 slashdotter's complaining they might think twice about it.
This is a First Amendment issue that is unrelated to the public or private funding of the school. What's interesting is that most are arguing about it as a free speech issue, which it is not. It is a free press issue.
The "press" to which the Constitution refers is the printing press. It seems alien in the context of modern communication technology, but even in the early 20th century, there were only two ways to communicate a single idea to a large group of people. You could either stand on a box in the center of town and give a speech, or print and distribute your ideas via the printing press. These were the only mass media at the time of the Constitution.
The First Amendment does not attempt to construct vague interpretations of "speech", as many do today when seeking its protections. It explicitly protects all known mass media from censorship. It guarantees to every person the right to disseminate political opinion through all available media of the day. In effect, to the Constitution, everyone is a journalist.
An industrious student at the school should be blogging this entire event, the reactions of the school administration, teachers, parents, and students. Done well it would be fascinating journalism.
My wife teaches in public schools. In a school where she was a substitute teacher, some students were found to have blogs that criticised the teachers - in pretty nasty language. The teachers freaked out! Even when they were told by the principal that there is nothing they could do, they talked about law suits etc. Some clearly did not understand what the First Amendment is all about.
The funniest part was the complaint about my wife was that she gave too many essays. She thought this was the best thing her students could have written about an English teacher.
I think one way to identify some of the problems with our education system is to listen to what the students have to say. Saying it in a public forum will put real pressure on schools to improve.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I agree that the school has asked this of the school for one important reason. They can... they are a catholic school, and can ask their students to do this while at school. However I do disagree with the fact that these people cannot blog at home. At home is a whole other ball game, and the school has no jurisdiction there.
However while at school, the school can ask the students to not visit certain sites. Its not federally or state funded (at least most private catholic schools wouldn't be) so they can make up their rules as they wish, within state limits. Its the school's responsibility to keep the kids safe in the school environment... at home... the parents. So I am split on this.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Being a former resident of Sparta, I'm not surprised.
And actually it's Pope John XXIII (23rd) High School.
Go ahead kids, go back to Sparta High. It's still a 99th percentile school and they won't try to do anything because of your emoblog.
So why are catholic teachers on myspace finding these blogs anyways? Just some food for thought.
Shall I guess that all this happened in America? The *Free* Nation.... -_-
http://polaralex.blogspot.com http://www.polaralex.tk *Define Reality*..*
That's the price you pay for going to a private school. If you don't like it then hit the big yellow bus and go to public school (your parents are paying for it anyway).
The reason given was to "protect students" because blogs are "fertile ground for sexual predators". However, it's unclear why it's the school's responsibility to protect the students from their actions while off school property. You could give saftey reason for enforcing a "no walking outside" rule as well.
It's http://www.popejohn.org/
You might want to drop them an email and let them know what you think of their policy.
Some mods should check their sources.
Anyway.
As someone else has pointed (but I repeate it here because the other one posted as AC, while I have karma points and I hope they'll draw some attention) :
Freedom of speech *_IS_* a human right. To be precise, it's the 19th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
Although the Declaration it self is only this, a declaration, and not legally binding, it served as base for two other legally binding UN Covenant (which *are* legally binding) of which the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has the following Article 19 :
Translated in every-day language : as long as it's not hate speech (Incentive for violence like : My school are all dorks *and should all be killed* in a slow and painful way) or information critical for security, you have right to think whatever you want and express your thoughts wherever you want (You can express your hate : I *personally think* my school sucks because I'm not allowed to post on blogs).
The website has also the following list of countries where you can go and check each country's status for different convenant etc...
TIPS for Mods : You *must* check the facts before spending mod points, specially on critical subject like human rights.
BTW: Same goes for the "There's no such thing as a right to read" meme. See Article 13 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Its a private school - its a shitty thing that they are doing but if the students don't like it, they are free to switch schools, assuming that the parents coorperate.
I don't like it any more than you do, but any private school not funded by taxpayer dollars has the right to ban students from playing D&D, eating junk food, or wearing their watch on the right hand. Their parents are paying for all of this out of their own wallet. Conversely, the parents are perfectly in their right to pull the students out and send them to another school, private or public.
I for one, have no desire to send any of my future children to Catholic private schools, and this story solidifies by reasoning. But that is just me.
I wonder when will be released free speech (free as speech, not beer)
What, do I need a sig now?
Here in Norway, we've just had a discussion in the Cultural dep. and the official Datatilsynet (who looks after people's right) regarding young people posting pictures and personal information not able to get a job later on, since their would-be bosses check 'em out online.
I'm myself a blogger, and I take responsibility in what I write, but there are alot of young people who posts sensitive pictures (from parties etc.) that can harm them later on. Just think about the selecting of Judges to the Supreme Court in the US.
Still.. Is it fair that some party/-ies that I was photographed in denies me a job later on? I think not, and I'd sue the bastards if I was told that it was because of my blog.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
No, actually. Religion isn't about control. Religion draws people in who realize that they can get power over others by pretending to be more pious. It isn't that religion is meant to control people, it's that people abuse religion to control people. Religion is okay; religious PEOPLE can be bad. Further, if you don't like dogmatic beliefs, religion can be bad, while faith - a personal belief - is okay.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
You'd have more of a point if most student handbooks didn't have a line that essentially means that. My favorite one was the prohibition of "any gang or cult related attire" in the public high school I attended. Gang attire... that just covers everything from T-shirts to 3-piece suits now, doesn't it? And that was used several times while I attended school to arbitrarily single out students the administration didn't like.
Although my favorite was still the line in our college's student handbook where it stated that the University could not be held at fault for any incident whether or not it was in fact the fault of the school. That clause got snuck in the semester after a kid died in a house fire on campus and there were whispers going around that a large number of smoke detectors on campus didn't work and that maintenance requests to have them fixed had been largely ignored.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
It's a private school... it can set rules as it sees fit regarding on and off-campus behavior. Also, this isn't a "free speech" infringement any more than moderators deleting posts on a private forum. Free speech is protected from the government passing laws that would limit it, not from private institutions enacting their own rules. Don't like it? Switch schools.
The students could win this legal fight because of one technicality:
While Pope John's school handbook does not specifically forbid students from creating personal profiles on Web sites, it does prohibit students from posting anything on the Internet pertaining to the school, without the school's permission.
If they aren't explicitly banning bloging in their handbook, but they are doing it anyways, then they're NOT enforcing their rules - they're overstepping their bounds.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
If anything, the Catholic church are the TRUE predators.
--Mike--
..and this is thoroughly off-topic by this point, but hey..
St. John 20:
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you."
20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
21 (Jesus) said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit.
23 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."
Ergo, the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
SYS 64738
School's feedback page.
"I am appaled by the direction's decision to stop children from blogging. Please reconsider." and be sure to click - Please contact me as soon as possible regarding this matter.
The last time I checked, the catholic church is far more interested protecting it's predatory clergy than any children. And when confronted about such abuses and the ensuing coverups, the catholic church does what any major corrupt organisation would do: deny it, call them isolated incidents, white wash it, boldly lie about it, and most of all, refuse to do anything about it (not necessarily in that order).
In Bob we trust.
here collates stories of Protestant abuse as well.
SYS 64738
Aside from telling them to take down their blogs he also asked that they take down their pants.
* Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes *
Why dont they just start new blogs with different screen names? I mean come on, if it's your real name they will find you, but if it's fuzzybunny43 and you tell your friends, it's the same thing isn't it? kids these days... cant think outside the box!
Mrs. Askin CONTACT phone: 973-729-6125 email: erinaskin@popejohn.org Catherine Astor catherineastor@popejohn.org Mrs. Elizabeth N. Buniak elizabethbuniak@popejohn.org Never mind the T&A in the cheerleader photos, these people are just begging to be signed up for all kinds of mailing lists. Shining example, folks. Carry on.
This whole issue is not about safety, not about precaution, and definitely not about education. It is about control. Religion is not content to being a part of a person's life; as an organization it seeks to dominate all influences to the person. Hence why we have such an outcry from the religious right for things such as prayer in schools, banning of abortion, banning of homosexual relationships, et cetera ad infinitum. These people are not content to live their own lives, but feel a great desire to dominate the lives of others because they really can't play well with the other children. Now in this situation in Sparta, Reverend McHugh has simply seen a way to infiltrate his students' lives outside of school and has taken action on it, assured that the parents will not risk protecting their children from this social predator because of the cash they blow on tuition and the social ramifications of being ostricized in the catholic 'community' for disagreeing with the clergy.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Anyone else think that a policy like this would be horribly easy to abuse?
Student: *create new blog*
"hi! My name is (name of person that cut in front of me in the lunch line yesterday). My school sucks and the principal is a gay child molester."
Principal: "What you say?!" *expel*
Given that there always a few students who don't fit in for various reasons, do any of your school's students use their blogs to bad mouth other students?
Are blogs used by bullies to intimidate other students or does this just not happen?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
when we all start dropping from the avian flu, are we supposed to blame terrorists, internet piracy, or online predators? I know everything bad in the world is caused by one of those three groups, but I forget who we're supposed to blame for avian flu.
What are the odds, 1 in 1,000,000,000 of being molested by an online predator because of your blog, OR 1 in 10 of being sexually molested by a catholic priest?
My blog was recently shutdown by my parents because the school (public) called and complained about it. The reason for this was because someone threatened my life in a comment. I wouldn't be suprised if my school told me to take it down for good.
Umm, this story is about privacy... And it turns into a Catholic bashing session? Come on folks, EVERY religon has its faults. But I believe people should have the choice whether to believe in a Supreme being or not. If are you an aethist that is your choice, but please don't critize people becuase the the choice they have made... About how gravitating back to the original meaning of the story? I believe it was about Freedom of Speech...
... from a simple mind.
Thanks for the public service denouncement.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
equal Competition.
Annonymity does a lot less for protection from predators when the predators are your peers.
I see this as a problem without a very good solution. I actually have my students create anonymous blogs in my classes and I go through the dangers of putting personal information online. I prefer a "teach discernment and good judgement in a relatively safe environment" rather than a reactionary approach, but it's still not a perfect solution.
I could see why a school might resort banning blogs if they have some of the worse problems. Still, it's a difficult rule to enforce. Actually, it might be a good test. If it's anonymous enough that no one can find it, then you don't need to shut it down. /kidding. :)
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
I am certain that if this got to court, the school would backpedal like madman on steroids.
I know if I were a priest in a Catholic school I wouldn't want to share my kids with other online predators. Posted anonymously to not get suspended.
Almost, but not quite true. Certain civil rights are inviolable, even by private institutions. However, your overall point is on the mark, because free speech isn't one of those rights.
Teapot tempest; move along....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
...is paved with good intentions - or so my Grandmother taught me. They say that their goal is to protect the students, but consider a similar situation:
Teenagers are (as they have been for time out of mind) engaged in sexual activity, but that's a potentially destructive behavior if approached irresponsibly. Even though some studies suggest more teenagers seem to be abstaining longer, you still have an underlying problem. You don't try to suspend students for having sex (or shouldn't anyway - I don't know if this happens or not - how could they?) So you teach them that the best thing to do is abstain, but if that doesn't work you teach responsibility. And by the way, here's a handful of condoms from the nurse's office.
Blogging can be a great outlet for a teen, but I do see some inherent dangers, even if in this case they may have been overblown a bit. Teach responsibility. Inform parents. If you can't control a thing, then you shouldn't try, lest you spend your time enforcing a stupid rule without creating a real (or at the very least marginally better) solution.
My sig sucks.
I mean come on! If you really wanted to protect children from sexual predators would you really send them to a catholic school? Perhaps the Priests just don't like the competition.
2) The power to forgive was granted to the apostles, and likewise their successors (re: John 20). If this were not the case regarding their successors, then could not St. Matthew and St. Paul forgive, but the other 11 could?
It all boils down to this. It is only through Christ and His Sacrifice that sins may be forgiven. He granted the apostles and their successors this gift. So in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, it is Christ who forgives the sin - but he does so through the ministry of the priest.
This is a very basic and rudimentary overview. If you want more meat, go here and here.
SYS 64738
i think this is more to do with the increasing rates of depression for teens, and their "lashing out", even OMG SATANISM! they must not like the dark minds of some....
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
What chaps my ass about this is that the handbook admits that the school can seek criticism -- --but the prinicpal announces at the assembly that they're really protecting against "predators."
Guys. Please. Stop lying to your kids. Don't justify your actions with fear. Come out and say it: you're enforcing the rules that everybody agrees to when they join the school. That's all you have to say!
Having a heavy-handed but fair administration is more desirable than having an administration that has to make up reasons to justify its actions. The kids deserve to know by what rules everybody plays.
Bad example: actually, it would. If I recall, doing so would be a violation of Vatican policy; the ceremony is normally open to all, building size permitting and the rare private family service aside. It's only the sacrament of the Eucharist (getting the cookies and cool-aid) that is restricted to practicing Catholics... which is probably what you were thinking of.
Of course, more liberal Catholic priests sometimes elect to quietly ignore the issue. When my older sister was in high school, one of her freinds was killed in a car crash — back in pre-MADD days when this was still utterly shocking. The victim had been Catholic, and so the funeral was held at a Catholic mass, and since she had been fairly popular as well, there were a lot of students from the high school who elected to go. I recall my sister later mentioning the incident when closed communion came up in my religious education with a snicker. Probably a dozen Jewish kids (and parents) got their First Communion that day, and probably less than half of those in attendance were Catholic. The church pastor was an eminiently sensible man, however, and elected not to raise an annoying issue of church doctrine to those in mourning.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Schools can tell students to shut up whenever and however they want. They do so without violating the First Ammendment rights of the less than 18 year olds because the court recognizes that they are acting "in loco parentis" which means "in place of parents." As my father was so fond of reminding me, his was not a democracy, but a benevolent dictatorship. I find it interesting in the extreme that a Catholic high school feels the need to explain itself at all. They usually just clam up and say no comment. And to predicate this on the excuse that they are "protecting children from sexual predators" is the very definition of irony given the Church's recen scandalous history.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Is anyone still surprised that students think censorship is a good thing? I mean, it protects you from people who lie about you, sexual predators, factual errors... what a great thing, to have someone else approve what you say before you say it? It make me feel so safe.
I had a brief stint in a catholic school here in the UK in my early teens - for all intents and purposes it was actually one of the best schools in the area, which was cool with me, despite the fact I'm not catholic (was anglican at the time, until I learned to think for myself).
However, I will never forget the day when quite possibly the funniest letter ever was sent home from school, detailing the fact that the head teacher had discovered that certain students were listening to satanic death metal music - apparently a grievous sin - and thereby banning it from the school.
At the time I was into regular heavy metal - Megadeth, Metallica, Iron Maiden and so on - and my friends and I didn't even believe that satanic death metal existed. We thought the head teacher guy was just really confused. That is until we went music shopping, and actually managed to purchase some Cradle Of Filth, who had just come out at the time. From there it was on to lots of far more intersting bands: Immortal, Dark Throne, Burzum, Rotting Christ, Impaled Nazarene and so on. Lovely stuff!
So yes, I was introduced to satanic death metal music by the head teacher of a catholic school!
If only I'd kept that letter... it would be in a frame on my wall! Rock on!!
(These days I'm into electronica, reggae and funk... LOL!)
Organic free-range music... yum!
Perhaps he's one of those people that assumes that everyone on the internet but him is an evil monster. Scary internet people.
where are the mod points when you need them...
hypocritical, dont you think?
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
Mind-control extends all the way towards one's feelings and sensation, and anything that does not conforms to the priests' directions (never mind what the bible says - the scatholic church has fought tooth and nail against the possibility of mere persons to be able to read it directly, hence it's insistence of using a dead language until about 40 years ago) has to be harshly suppressed. This is not for nothing that protestants were deemed heretics for translating the bible: it removed the middlemen between the bible and the people.
It is not for nothing that England and other protestant countries have enacted strict discriminatory and persecutive measures against scatholics; this was to prevent the brainrot that scatholicism is from wrecking the freedom and liberty of people.
As a matter of fact, of the scourge that shritsianity is, scatholicism is by far the worse kind.
Sheesh, blow a simple issue up to 1st Amendment status? Please. Try this. Your 15 year old daughter has a myspace account. She has posted pics of herself, info on where you live, where she attends school, her first and last name, and where they are all meeting at the movie on saturday. Ask me now I know. Yes, 99% of all I have seen on myspace is harmless, but there does seem to be a lot of pimpin your look going on. I am sure all you 1st Amendment sockbois will be getting all your daughters myspace accounts immdiately. Most all private schools have codes of conduct that are in force 24/7. You read and sign the student manual and pay good money to go there. Your choice. Save the rhetoric for Bush and the Patriot Act.
I don't think it's possible to have negative brains.
I think what the principle did is WRONG , no if and or but. I think it would have been better to host a discussion with local law enforcment and techies on how to make their blogging safe ( ie not so much personally identifable information, which i have seen a lot of on myspace & yahoo 360).
I cannot deny there is corruption in the high clergy. But frankly, this is part of the catholic people's ignorance. If a priest abuses a child, he should be judged in court for a criminal offence.
Child molestation is a sin, but it's also a crime condemned by the State. Therefore, the State should be involved. As a catholic, i tell all the people around me that they should not hesitate in acusing this kind of priests with the police.
A responsible catholic MUST be a responsible citizen, too. There is no reason for Catholicism and government to be against each other, at least regarding the judging of crimes.
"Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators."
Thank God we have Catholic authorities to protect the children from all of the perverts out there in the world.
I suppose I should've known that one can't possible raise the specter of an ideological double standard without being modded "flamebait" within 30 seconds. Thus the irony is illustrated: proponents of free speech get all lathered up when someone tries to silence their dissent, yet when someone dissents with their ideology, that person is silenced, censored, ostracized, or -- in this case -- modded down into oblivion. Are those of you who modded this down really that oblivious to your own hypocrisy?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
the world would be such a better place without religion
Because as we all know, Blogs are the DEBIL!
Interesting to see how religion can overthrow the constitutional right to free speech, but I guess in a catholic school things are different. I wonder if www.popeblog.com is available...
And they said zombies weren't real!
This guy has no clue... He should be encouraging his students to use blogs as a way to promote creative writing, and get his students more involved with technology. This is what happens when older people have no idea about technology. They look for all the negative and don't see how much good it could do. What an idiot this guy is! If my kid was going to a school like this I'd transfer them right away.
Perhaps instead of implementing a blanket ban on posting, the principal could institute a program to educate the kids about the real dangers on the net (chat rooms, strangers asking to meet up somewhere) and how to avoid them and how to report such activity to the police.
The article incorrectly reports the name of the High School. It's named after Pope John the 23rd of Vatican II fame, not the John XIII.
I regard the school's actions as ludicrous.
They can learn more from being home schooled while going to a cyberschool, and the cyberschools provide the PC, printer, monitor, and internet connection to the student's home.
Not only will it save their parents $4000 a year,
they can see how the outside world really works,
and learn the other side of the story on Catholic world wide conquest,
(With apologies to the native people of Europe, Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and the Middle East.)
Step out of the 1400's and go boldly into the future!
What does it mean when I come across this story about a Catholic school, and it has 666 comments...?
What's with all of this online predator hysteria? It's not like someone can reach through your monitor and grab you. I honestly don't understand why people get so freaked out about publishing personal, identifying information on the Internet, but don't give a second thought to the school year books, phone books, presenting identification to purchase items, etc.
What are they worried about? Competition? With the track record of catholic priests in pedofile sexual abuse cases they should look for predators in their own meatspace instead of cyberspace or blogosphere...
Dictate any terms?
People persist in this strange belief that "private enterprise" can make up any damn terms it pleases, and such terms which are considered odious when performed by government are suddently acceptable. They aren't. Privatizing oppression just privatizes it, not justifies it. The relationship between private and public may have to be managed more delicately but the notion that normal rights are nullified by a corporate entity is silly.
There is the idea of "theoretical freedom", as in the existence, somewhere somehow, of some school/company that might concievably be lobbied to be acceptable, is reason and justification enough to allow all sorts of real-life intrusions on practical freedom, as in what really happens in peoples lives.
The example is obvious: "Whites only".
The legal justification: 9th Amendment.
What about employement: can they demand to snoop through your private files and financial records and political voting records before hiring you? Can they say "vote for Corporate Tool Republican or you're fired?"
Hint to young liberatrian geeks:
(1) the law, and its underlying ethical principles, are not algorithms.
(2) Ayn Rand is a skanky manipulative bitch who doesn't grok squat.
Heck, I'd be happy if the lawmakers just read the laws that they are passing. The PATRIOT Act was about 1000 pages, and the draft was not complete until the night before it was passed. There's no way ANY of them could have read it all. Unfortunately, the Constitution doesn't say the lawmakers have to actually KNOW what they're passing. It was just assumed that they would. It's a sad day when that assumption no longer holds true.
I'd be interested in hearing more about this "Read the Laws" movement. I'm of the opinion that we should be working to reduce the number of laws, not increase them. I think if you show people some of the stupid and complicated laws on the books, they could easily be convinced.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Has anyone ever actually seen a myspace page?
...
I mean, I don't care which Disney character you are, which ice cream flavour is your favourite (and, god, is that a quote from Kelis?!), or... well, you look good in lingerie, we'll just let that one slide. But you get the idea.
Seriously, I can't even fucking read most of these because of the fucking obnoxious backgrounds, and when I can, it's usually something about Jesus or otherwise irritating (why did you feel the urge to make marquees all over the damned place?).
Also wtf?
Anyway, my point was, no big loss to humanity if some high school kids can't post about OMFGZBOYZ. (Yes, I know, free speech issues, blah blah blah, but I think the rest of the Slashdot crowd already covered that angle. Besides, I think the general consensus among the better-informed is "if you post your picture, name, school, and how much PCP you did last night, we're probably gonna figure it out if we ever run across your page, assuming we can read it through all the ugly formatting", as opposed to "omfg no blog 4u".)
Screw it, let's all just go check out lingerie chick again.
push-down all those moralizing laws from the Federal Gov't and let each state pass laws about these subjects based on the opinions of the state residents...not what politicians think the whole country wants. All the broke-ass southern states can ban abortion and the coasties can leave it legal. Cali can legalize pot and Texas can give you the death penalty for a dime. Then, you just pick the state you want to live in.
This country is too diverse and divided to have one set of laws for all. The Federal gov't has far too much power.
Blar.
OK, then here's the simple shoot-down of your argument
The original poster wrote, "And, the First Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with this because it is not a federal law." Your response was, "How can you say that an amendment to the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES is not a federal law?"
Well, he didn't say that. He said that the statement made by the Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, isn't a federal law, and therefore it's not a First Amendment case.
Carry on.
Virg
The arguments on this article are all off-base. No institution public or private has the authority to deny you any constitutionally guaranteed right that you can enforce on your own time in your own place. While the school can deny the students from blogging on school computers or from accessing external blogs while at school, they cannot dictate your actions at your home or in a public library, or in a courthouse, et cetera.
What the school is doing is a violation of the students civil rights, unless the parents signed a contract specifically allowing the school to do such things.
While the school can certainly suspend or expel any child defying the rule, it would make a good civil suit case. However, if the school were smart it would then not allow the student back in the next year. However, this might also be cause for a suit.
While the argument that the Constitution only applies to public institutions is incredulous. If this were true, then Walmart security would be perfectly within their rights to kill shoplifters, or to deny you the right to buy a gun, in any store, because you are hispanic, or to forego jury trial if you commit a crime in a Walmart, et cetera et reductio ad absurdium.
Just what I was thinking (-:
No, Christianity is about obeying the commands of Jesus Christ. When you violate such commands (i.e., love your neighbors), you risk your salvation. In other words, Christianity is a set of defined morals and clear punishment for disobedience. You may (in fact, you have to) be entirely willing to submit yourself to this belief system, but don't delude yourself that this isn't an external control over your internal moral compass.
Put another way, faith is not about agreeing with Jesus Christ and therefore believing in his divinity. It's about believing in his divinity first, and then obeying him. Jesus Christ is not a philospher you can just choose to agree with or disagree with like Confucius or Plato.
Let me give you a most obvious example. The Bible states clearly that you shall not kill. Yet Christian soldiers fire their weapons when attacked, because at that moment something inside them says it's right (though perhaps not Christian) to kill. If there was such a thing as a truly Christian (i.e., turn the other cheek) nation, it would be colonized in zero time. This is one case where your internal sense overrides the litaral teachings of religion.
Atheism, on the other hand, is the ultimate form of self control. Without fear of hell and the lure of heaven, and therefore no external bound on moral behavior other than law, an atheist who doesn't always act purely on self interest is doing exactly what you were ascribing.
I pity you that your brand of Christianity operates through fear, as you attest. It is far better to aspire to heaven from love God.
And the brethren went away edified.
It would be kinda of fun if a lot of people on myspace said in their profiles that they go to that school. Then the school would waste a lot of time looking to suspend people who don't really go to their school
This is excellent training for Catholicism.
Learning to turn off brain and obey is important for religions.
Isn't literacy fun?
Seriously, this is a very short article, but from reading the responses on /. it appears no one was able to finish it. Thats really sad.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Is this the same Canada that ruled that referencing bible verses by number in a news paper constituted hate speech because those verses refer to homosexuality as an abomination? Just Checking.
The Catholic Church also told me that I wasn't allowed to masturbate, so I don't feel to worried about these kids' freedom of speech.
I think you need to lay off the coffee dude.
My point is, if you reject Jesus Christ as your savior, then certainly His teachings will not form external control over your behavior except to the extent where it coincides with local laws. But once you accept and believe him, his teachings bind your behavior. The most important point that I'm trying to make is that your choice in the matter stops at choosing Christ as your savior, after which His teachings come wholesale, non-negotiable.
That is, there is no room for internal synthesis of your own personal morality. You are not free to say that Jesus really dropped the ball on teaching X or Y, and you'll do the opposite but remain Christian, basically by definition. Freedom from external control, to me, means that you are allowed by right to absorb and synthesize your own conscience. Christians don't have that right, theoretically anyway, because they've accepted external control of their behavior.
I pity you that your brand of Christianity operates through fear, as you attest. It is far better to aspire to heaven from love God.
I'm not Christian, so my understanding may be off the mark. The carrot and the stick are both common forms of external control, and I'm pointing out to you that even if you don't think much of it, the threat of hell is plainly evident in Christian teachings. If someone says he loves God but has no fear of spending eternity in hell, does that even make sense?
They go to Catholic school, yeah? They arent forced to go to Catholic school. Move along.
Yes, the teachings of Christ bind your behavior, but there's very little that an external authority (like, for instance, a Catholic school) can do to make you adhere to them in the long run. You are conflating the coercive obedience imposed by authority with the voluntary obedience of someone following a respected teacher. They are not at all the same thing.
And the brethren went away edified.
What the fuck does any of this have to do with Ayn Rand bullshit?
:-)
This is not about Objectivism, business or anything else. My comment was solely about private schools. This is a private school; noone is forced to go there. If this school wants to do something crappy, its the parents right to take them out and put them into public school. Before you go and talk about corporations, business and all the other shit, remember that there are public schools readily available.
If you want to put your kids in a private Catholic school, then you have no right to cry "freedom of religion" if you get expelled for not participating in mass. If you send your kids to an Islamic school, they had better be prepared to pray five times a day. Similarly, these students have to deal with shitty ass directives from their headmaster.
Did you get picked on by Objectivists or something? And you are also a weenie for using the word 'grok'
I think you are confusing the following of a respected teacher (think Confucius or Plato) with the following of a religion (think Jesus or Mohammed). Both may influence your behavior, but the latter does not theoretically involve synthesis, only faith that it is the right path.
Don't get me wrong. I understand well that many Christians actually only practice the portion of teachings they agree with. For example, there are plenty of Christian soldiers not turning the other cheek when shot at. There are also plenty of Christians who practice birth control, or even abortion on occasion, not to mention failing to love their neighbors. What I'm pointing out is that none of this should have happened in theory, because faith requires full acceptance of the teachings. The fact that some Christians choose to disobey certain teachings (and may be punished either on earth or after death) indicates to me that religion is a form of external control on their behavior.
One final example: let's say there was a man in North Korea who happily embraces government control of his life choices. Does that mean there is no external control because he is willing? I don't think so. Like this hypothetical man, the hypothetical Christian gives up the right to synthesize his own moral belief in favor of an externally provided set of Christian behavioral guidelines.
So does the 1st amendment give people the right to associate with Al Quida as long as they don't actually commit any crimes?
My middle school cut MySpace a while back, after people started posting offensive stuff and some in-class pictures. The official anouncement gave students 24 hours to close their accounts, or face police action.
The primary difference between religious and philosphical systems of thought are that the religious derives its principles from what is believed to be divine revelation, while the philosophical does not. But the two are not otherwise grossly dissimilar. In both cases you can choose to reject one or more of the acknowledged practical consequences of the principles laid down by the teachers, but if the system is at all consistent this often involves rejecting the principle too. If you do this enough, at some point you cease to be a follower of that teacher in any meaningful sense.
Your example of the frequent disobedience actually demonstrates the opposite of what you hoped it would. Isn't it clear that Christians are perfectly free, in the practical sense, to disregard their religion's teachings? The more natural thing to conclude from that is that this religion has no power to enforce any particular code of behavior!
Yes, what you describe happens. We call these occasions "sins", and it's a rare Christian who seriously claims to be free of them. (Actually, making such a claim immediately falsifies it since it's ipso facto prideful.) It usually has nothing to do with whether or not one accepts the teachings, but everything to do with whether one is capable of impelling oneself to follow them. In the two-millennia long history of the Church, it has been observed that sin comes from inattention or weakness far more often than it does from willful disobedience, at least among sincere followers.
War is a sticky problem. It's obviously necessary at times for the defense of the state. But at the same time, while the Church (my Church, anyway) might bless the troops heading into battle (for the troops' sake), it also has a canon where a soldier who kills in combat is placed under a penance for several years, and decries war in general. We are sometimes placed in situations where no course seems wholly good. Then we do the best we can, and trust in God's mercy. That's true in many other instances besides a war. But I don't think your example holds water anyway. You have no way of knowing how many troops choose not to shoot back. We might reasonably guess that fewer of them come back to tell us about it than those who do.
Your example of the North Korean man doesn't work either. As long as he complies voluntarily with the state, he will never feel the state's coercive power. That will change the moment he stops complying. The same is not true of Christianity. Sin all you like: submission to the Church's discipline remains voluntary. It can impose no material punishment on its own. (This is true today, and ideally true always, no matter what was true on occasions when the Church was suborned as a tool of the state, or even worse, when the Church became a political power itself. Both are distortions of what the Church should be, so it should not be surprising that under those conditions it behaves in ways that are also distortions.) Whether or not you believe the consequences it says will arrive someday is also a voluntary matter, and many do reject. Or haven't you noticed how many seem to assume these days that everyone is going to heaven?
And the brethren went away edified.
Should everything that is considered "wrong" be illegal?
Before Mr "I Call BS" jumped down my throat with all of this Objectivism crap, my point was that stuff like this should be considered wrong, but should be legal - and the proper way to handle it is for the parents to realize that that the place is a shitty school and move their kids to a better school. That said, it should be recognized that the school has every right to do this. You cannot take away peoples' right to be assholes.
So where do you go to rant and complain online about your blog being taken down if your blog has been taken down?
Fox and Hound Computing Quite possibly the most pathetic geeks you will ever hire.
Student's Rights According to this it seems that even the Supreme Court upholds the Constitutional (including Free Speech) rights of kids in school.
*ker-plunk-BAM!*
That was the sound of many Slashdotter's "it's a private school it can do as it pleases" arguments falling to the ground, because they have nothing to stand on.
I think this sums your point up nicely, and I don't disagree that the real life Christian is quite a ways from the "real" Christian. Jesus Christ is a, to put it mildly, tough act to follow, and anybody who nonchalantly assumes they are headed for heaven is probably delusional. The point I was trying to make, however, is that if you really are Christian then His teachings (in totality) bind you. If they do not bind you, then you are hardly Christian. Indeed, today you usually have a choice whether to be Christian or not, but as I said once you make that choice you surrender the right to make up your own mind about what is moral or not, unless you want to be one of those "Christians" who pick and choose what to follow.
Put another way, to "real" Christians the religion is a form of external control. To those who would risk fire in hell, not so much. But that's no different than a man in a police state who doesn't fear torture, is it?
Yes, in theory the commandments of Christ should bind a believing Christian in everything he does. In practice everyone is less than fully successful at it, which is why we also hope for forgiveness. The moral teachings must be adhered to, but the impulse to do so comes from within, not without. The very radically devoted Christians (I speak from the viewpoint of an Orthodox Christian) are those who enter a monastery and thereby do accept a large degree of external control over their actions that is absent for everyone else. Even there, obedience is often more a goal than an achievement. And as the saying goes, the monastery gates are not locked.
And the brethren went away edified.
You obviously have no clue whatsoever about Catholicism, or you just got the idiot's course from somebody who wasn't very qualified to give it. Catholicism does have a lot of obeying in it. It also has a lot of defiance of authority in it too. You use your brain to determine which course to take on any given issue.
During the 4th century, the church laity saved what became conventional christianity by defying the hierarchy of the day's near universal embrace of Arianism. All sorts of thoughtful defiance has led the Church to a better appreciation of God's plan for us.
In my own case, I'm simultaneously on the rebel and orthodox side on a number of issues. I make an uncomfortable Catholic for my priest and my bishop at times. I'm currently drafting in my head a letter that will eventually go to 6 bishops and the Pope on a relatively obscure but I think important issue on the filioque. This is the first time I've had to go to Rome on an issue but I doubt it will be the last.
My priest will hate the letter (he's on one side), my bishop will like it (as he's on the other), and I suspect that several dioceses in Transylvania will become very uncomfortable with the results as if I am successful they're going to have to change how they say their Sunday liturgy. The project is likely to take me another six months before I'm satisfied with it enough to send it off and 3-7 years before Rome takes notice (whether that's via this pontiff or the next). The end result, I pray, is to bring forward the day of reunification of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, a division that has caused way to many corpses to litter battlefields, most recently in Kosovo.
Those corpses are the exterior result of a deep spiritual wound a millennium ago. Both the symptom and the underlying cause have to be cured. At least, that's what I think.
Quoth the good principal
The biggest misnomer is, 'Father, I know what my children are doing, I know where they are at all times,'" McHugh said. "Trust me, if they did know, their children would not be on Myspace.com for any length of time and viewing the drivel that's on there."
Bias? What bias?
either that, or is he including the posting of his own students amongst this "drivel"?
How about official Pope John XXIII handbooks, from before and after the internet was illegal?
Actually, for the record, parties are illegal too. And there was this one year they had us on lockdown indefinitely...
Incidentally, that clause lasted all of a week into the school year. One of my roommates publically challenged it when we returned from Winter break and we were issued new student handbooks without the clause within the week. Nevermore did we tease Greg about his powers of bitching, "If only they were used for good instead of evil..."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The name of the school in the article is certainly wrong. Pope John XIII was not a pope of note, while Pope John XXIII was one of the giants of the Catholic Papacy. School website bears out the latter: http://www.popejohn.org/
Further, if you don't like dogmatic beliefs, religion can be bad, while faith - a personal belief - is okay.
How and why is belief without evidence (faith) "okay"? Especially in a school setting?
Did you not read what I said? "Faith - a personal belief - is okay." Never do I mention a school setting. A personal belief is not harmful to anyone but the person who holds it. Nor are all personal beliefs harmful.
I am scientifically inaccurate.