Cyberbullying Laws Raise Free Speech Questions

Chad_DeVoss writes "States across the country are working on laws to rein in cyberbullying, claiming that electronic harassment has led even to the suicides of some children. But what about the First Amendment? Surely schools can't control what kids say to one another? It's an easy argument to make, but the reality is more complicated. From the article: 'The issue is further complicated by questions about whether cyberbullying takes place on school property or not. School officials do not generally have control over what students do outside of school, but, as the First Amendment Center reports, even this issue is complicated. Students who threaten or harass other students using school equipment or during school time can most likely be sanctioned, but even students who do such things from home face the possibility of school discipline under the 'substantial disruption of the educational environment' ruling from the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case from 1969.'"

Comments

Here's a novel thought...

[DoctorPepper]

Make the parents culpable for what their nasty little whelps do. The vast majority of this stuff goes on either because the bully's parents don't know, or they just don't care. Either way, the parents aren't doing their job properly.

Perhaps if these parents had to pay some hefty fines and/or do some jail time for their offspring's indiscretions, they might be a bit more inclined to pay more attention to what their kids are doing.

Was I bullied? Yes, mercilessly. I was one of those skinny, geeky kids back in high school (science nerd), as were, I suspect, quite a few other Slashdotters. I am just thankful that was back in the 1970's, before computers and the Internet revolution. At least I was safe in my own home.

net id

[twitter]

You'll have to use a Pentium II or less. You should also avoid any commercial UNIX workstations as they've been embedding CPU IDs since the 1980s.

So? The OS does not have to return it to the net, does it? Binary blobs for network cards and "smart" networks bother me more. Everyting else should be able to return something random.

Re:Educators have been neutered

[Big_Al_B]

I too have a father who taught middle/junior and highschool mathematics for over 40 years until recently retiring. I had him for a teacher at one point and watching him work was amazing to me. By everyone's account he was an outstanding teacher. At reunions I have had both our class valedictorian and our class "discipline case" both seek me out to find out how my father is doing, and to tell me he was the best teacher they had.

So maybe that colors my perspective a bit. But, based on observing my dad and listening to his stories, I would argue that the ability to control a classroom is less a matter of instilling discipline than it is a matter of refocusing the right kids' energies.

Even if you dropped my dad in a brand new classroom environment, it would only take him several minutes to figure out which disruptive kids--there are always a few--he needed to deal with to keep control of a classroom. He would quickly gain control by engaging them immediately in whatever the lesson was, and by then having them play a key role in what he wanted the class to do.

For example, if the concept was "Averages", then he would perhaps create a lesson where everyone's shoe size was measured, and then they'd note the mean, median and mode shoe size and then even go on to correlate that with height or age or whatever. He'd split the class into groups, and then get the otherwise disruptive kids to each take resposibility for compiling the data for one of the groups. They always went for it, because it gave them the attention and control over their environment that they craved. With them on his side, it was easy to keep the whole class on task.

He very, very rarely had discipline problems of any sort, because kids never acted out much in his classes. The discipline case I mentioned from my own class specificly told me that he never gave my dad grief because my dad made him *want* to do well in his class.

I frequently apply what I learned from my dad's classroom skills in my professional life. I recently finished managing a large network deployment that involved people throughout our business. To get it done on well and on time I had to engage several people who have a well-earned reputation for hindering productivity. I gave them near-complete ownership of some aspects of the project, and they did a great job for me.

And, frankly, I do wonder why you're homeschooling your kids. You can't convince me that they are getting the education they need and deserve. Sorry.