Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
When I was in high school, I was blatantly told that I didn't have the full rights of an adult until I was 18. I don't know if this is true or not. I actually still don't know if this is true. But let me relate the events that I witnessed and took part in while attending a small town high school in Minnesota.
The grade ahead of me was full of punks. I don't mean 'punks' in the derogatory term, I mean punks that accepted anybody, didn't drink much, tried to skateboard, talked about anarchy, didn't cause too much trouble but liked their music loud and fast. Now, the grade before me had access to an industrial copying machine via one of their parents. What resulted was a 'zine. A punk zine for a school that was often folded 8 1/2 x 11 pages stapled together with images, music reviews, articles & basically anything and all things punk. Including, but not limited to, taking it to the man. The zine was fifty cents to cover copying costs.
I loved these people, everyone else was a tightly knit clique of 'in' crowds where the punks didn't care if I listened to The Beatles & read Sci-Fi Fantasy & lived in the country.
The zine was considered contraband by the teachers. If they found it on your person, they gave you detention. One of the articles in an early edition criticized the entire student body of the school. Foul language was not omitted in this underground publication. First amendment right? The teachers didn't think so.
Lastly, the T-Shirts that people would try to wear were often banned. You were made to turn them inside out or go home with detention. Shirts that said "F You" or even "I hate this hick town." were grounds for detention. In the end, the punks made artwork and screened it onto shirts where it looked like a cool design but if you hooked your thumb and forefinger in it and pulled it down to cover up the inner four inches or so, it said "FUCK YOU." That way, they could choose to display the image whenever they wanted to and a teacher wasn't around. They weren't threatening people with it or harassing people, it was just their response to life and everything. The teachers found it offensive (and some of the dimmer students probably did too) so it was censored.
So to answer your question about schools censoring what the students can say to each other, I experienced that prior to being 18 quite a bit.
My work here is dung.
Laws regulating conduct cannot possibly be enforced in an anonymous public sphere. What's needed is a trusted computing system that tracks who uses a computer, when, and what they're doing. Then software could limit activities to what's legal and appropriate! We're almost there...
- Unique hardware identifiers on all CPUs and motherboards
- Laws that make it illegal to circumvent security systems
- Laws which force ISPs to track customer communications
Don't worry. We'll make the Internet safe for you and your children. And the SonyBMIMicrosoftUniversalMGM corpglomerate.
Surely bullying should be dealt with at the level of teachers/parents? Putting these things into law just seems like asking for trouble - potentially making the minor incidents of growing up into major issues that will scar children for life.
Why can't they just use whatever standards they've always used, if any, to regulate off-school speech? THe fact that the speech occurs online shouldn't change anything.
Le français vous intéresse?
1st Amendment rights is one thing, but a variety of laws restrict freedom of speech if it slanders, intimidates or incites others. This is true in the real world and probably, as has already been pointed out, this applies even more in schools where you're trying to teach children to be responsible citizens.
That's the problem with trumpeting "freedom" as a great virtue. Too much freedom means that you would have to legalise a variety of evils such as child abuse and racial discrimination. Freedom to do something needs the proviso that it does not restrict the freedom of others, which is a bit more of a subtle concept.
Peter
While it may be perfectly legal for schools to censor students and sanction them on school time and with regard to school equipment, they should keep their noses out of what students say and do beyond the campus. Clearly, off campus issues are the realm of the students' parents and family. When schools start trying to assert authority outside of the school, it is just another intrusion by the state on parental authority and responsibility. And with respect to free speech, speech that makes direct threats against another person is not protected anyway. We already have laws covering that as a form of assault. There is no need for new and likely unconstitutional laws on this matter. Enforce the laws already on the books and let parents do what they are supposed to be doing.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Would you let another adult verbally torture someone? I don't think so.
Bullying is at best abuse and at worse it is outright torture. If we force children to goto school (and hence come into contact with kids who will bully them) then we must accept that we are in a sense damning these children to things none of us should ever have to face. Your "free speech" bullshit ends the moment you start using your free speech to put someone through complete hell for kicks.
I say the second any kid is caught bullying another he is sent to a prison for children. We're way past the stage where it's a bit of verbal abuse when we constantly hear kids are carrying knives (and even guns in some cases). These people are the bullys and by the time they're 13-14 they are acting like adult criminals. So lets make them act like adults and slap them in a prison the second they cross the line between "being kids" and "outright torture".
Internet or in the real world. Bullying is torture of another human being, it should be seen as such and not "just kids messing around".
I like muppets.
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.
No matter where you go... there you are.
I'd like to know where in the bill of rights there is a qualifier that says you must be above a certain age to have your god given rights given to you. Yes, they may be under age but they still have every damned right that adults have. This is just the govt's way of creating submissive idiots that don't understand their rights. "We never were able to say what we wanted" will continue into adult hood. Much like how recent high school graduates thought the 1st amendment gave "too much freedom"
Public schooling has created a nation of "do what my gov't says" lemmings.
Free speech, what a crock! Not all forms of verbal behavior are covered by the first amendment. Is sexual harassment licensed by free speech? The real issue hear is the scope of the school's powers. Clearly, they are entitled to try to stop bullying that occurs on school property. We would be outraged if they didn't, whether that bullying was physical or verbal. The real question is to what extent they have they right to take action when something occurs away from school.
along with freedom of speech comes being responsible with what an individual says, why do people forget this simple rule...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I am constantly surprised by the number of Americans who have grown up and enjoyed the privileges, protections, and liberties of the wealthiest and most democratic society that humanity has ever seen, only to constantly complain about how bad they have it, how terrible their country is, and how oppressed they and their freedoms are.
To people throughout most of history, the inability to have an active voice in their government, and the strong possibility that they would be imprisoned or killed for voicing dissent with said government, was oppression.
To many Americans, seeking to discipline young people who attempt to belittle and humiliate their classmates with impunity shielded by the anonymity of the internet, is oppression.
If the one thing children learn from these laws is that freedom is not given, but must be earned (even if it was the previous generations that paid the price) and that therefore it demands a certain amount of vigilance from its benefactors to steward their freedoms in a responsible manner, instead of merely exploiting their freedoms for personal satisfaction, then all the better.
Even here on Slashdot, we see a range of reactions to this issue from "Childhood bullying is just a part of growing up" to "Any bully should be thrown in prison".
Reasonably, the response should be proportional to the offense. One child pushing another on the playground should provoke a different response than one child sending death threats to another.
As with any issue like this, blanket laws tend to remove the ability of those involved to deal with the issue in a proportional manner - instead requiring a Procrustean approach to determining what a violation is and handing out punishment.
While I share the concern over the increasing levels of school violence, and I acknowledge that children can be cruel to one another (I endured my own share of being bullied), I would caution against passing laws that remove the power of the responsible authorities (the parents and school administrators) to deal with the situation in a sane and appropriate manner.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Yes, you have the right of Free Speech protected under the First Amendment.. until what you say infringes on the right of someon else, which makes your speech unprotected.
Threatening another person, in my opinion, infringes on their rights and would not be protected under the First Amendment.... even if it's done on a myspace page.
But you also can't throw the book at every kid who says something.. kids will be kids. It's definitely a fine line to walk.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
My parents are both educators, and based on their stories about work, I've come to the conclusion that today's public school system, at least in New York state, is all about avoiding a lawsuit at all costs. All children pass every grade level, regardless of their academic achievement or ability or willingness to learn. Teachers are no longer permitted to so much as speak in anger while reprimanding a student, much less yell or put their hands on students. They have absolutely no control over their classrooms, and once the students figure this out, daily classes turn into chaos.
...and people wonder why my wife and I are homeschooling our children.
This is not fair for the students who actually have a desire to learn. Try learning something in a class where the students openly mock the teacher sometime, and see how much is accomplished in that short 30-40 minute period. It's like trying to be a Microsoft network administrator with a staff that downloads viruses and porn to their computers daily and expect you to fix it - nothing ever gets done. I've been told this issue is not just in New York, but other places as well, especially in the major cities.
How is it remotely possible for an administration that has been effectively neutered by mainstream society to stop cyber bullying?
On top of that, how many parents understand computers enough to be able to prevent their children from committing these deeds. After all, they are the only ones left with the authority to do so short of the local police.
And what would you do when given a bunch of doublespeak bullshit about "critical thinking" and yet asked to respond to authority as totalitarian as stalinist russia (without the shootings and disappearances, of course). It's a bit of an exaggeration but you'd be surprised at what kind of authority schools have over kids- and when they're in high school and just beginning to explore the world of being an adult, the rules become little more than an annoyance. They think "Why am I wasting my time sitting in an office for something that could be resolved with a slap on the wrist and a detention slip?"
Schools need to learn how much control over their students is acceptable. Having happy and safe students is more important than excellence. I speak from experience when a lot of my graduating class now pops meth to deal with their classes and skip days of sleep at a time.
The schools try so hard to get their grades up, they end up ripping out the kid's soul.
+5, Truth
I hear stuff like this all of the time and I can say that in the real world you don't have to put up with teasing and bullying. Lastly, bullying doesn't make victims stronger. It scars them, and many times it causes lasting trauma that can affect the victim's ability to function in the workplace. In fact, many people who have suffered long term abuse from bullies can't even have a real relationship with another human being. Not everyone is you, stop projecting your experiences and your abilities to cope on everyone else.
That's what high school is supposed to be - it's supposed to prepare the kids for the real life, and not just in terms of knowing how to do math. High school is hard at first because the kids are starting to realize that they don't get to just do whatever they want, whenever they want. It's always hard dealing with a controlling boss, but high school prepares you for that by giving you a controlling teacher. Life is hard, and high school is supposed to bridge the gap between life and an ideal, predictable, structured environment.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
I got an excellent and broad education, and you would be hard-pressed to convince me that it was inferior to that of a public school. Learning from a textbook is much harder for me that learning from a lecture (particularly for the hard sciences), but homeschooling was still extremely successful. To reiterate my previous point, the disadvantages of homeschooling are not educational. They are interpersonal.