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US Ed Dept Demanding Principals Censor More
Toe, The writes "Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students' lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed to be harassment of some students. Under the new interpretation of civil rights laws, principals and their schools are legally liable if they fail to curb 'harassment' of students, even if it takes place outside the school, on Facebook or in private conversation. When children are concerned, where is the line between protection and censorship?"
On the one hand we teach kids about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. On the other hand, we tell them "Hey johhny - what you say can get you in trouble if you make fun of that fat kid in the playground...
Whatever happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?" Have we become such a bunch of pussies that we can't even deal with having people call us bad names? What ever happened to "hey - here's two pairs of boxing gloves - go behind the gym and work it out?"
And finally, doesn't the Dept of Ed have ANYTHING else to deal with besides this BS?
What kids do outside of school, in their own time with their own equipment, is no business of the schools. It's down to the parents.
Worked in (UK) education for 7 years. I offer advice and training to teachers to introduce safeguarding and online safety into the curriculum, and so far have positive feedback. What the kids do at home, however, isn't our business.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
This strikes me as a profoundly bad idea. While we're delegating parental responsibility over to the principal (which is weird), are we also going to hold them accountable if the kids aren't vaccinated or eating healthy enough?
It's always been difficult to learn about "the land of the free" in an institution where you (the students) are forced by law to go there whether you want to or not.
Excellent training ground for applied sarcasm and irony appreciation, though.
We keep on addressing effect after effect, when we need to be addressing the cause of the problems. Our problems don't stem from Facebook or music or video games, they come from the 'values' in our society. Our 'me first' attitude of competition is coming home to roost. Don't like bullying, well guess what, it's been taught to us from day one to 'win' and to kick someone when they're down so we can stay on top. From kids to corporate america to congress we need a values 'regime change'. Imagine what our country would be like if we were taught from day one to think of the other guy first.. and to help people succeed so that they can be around to help us when we're down. Negative reinforcement from the time we're kids to young adult hood to the workplace... and people wonder why everyone is always afraid these days. I think my boss summed it up for me one day when talking about the company.. he said "It's all punishment and no reward." seems like a fair assessment of our society.
When exactly did the USA remove the right of free speech from their constitution?
"Hello students, this is your principle seaking, I'd like to remind you that bullying will not be tolerated, in particular, calling Josh Smith a 'whiny little faggot' or 'a little bitch' because he complained about being bullied to school staff is not acceptable. Anyone seen beating him up after school behind the gym, which is out of line of sight from any teacher office, will be disciplined."
Whilst I agree whole-heartedly with the school being made responsible for stopping bullying (verbal or physical) during school time and on school grounds, they cannot realistically control what the children do outside of school. The only way to achieve this would be to change the rules by which FB operates. If you read FBs T- ..... ....."
"No information from children under age 13. If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register for Facebook or provide any personal information about yourself to us.
Parental participation. We strongly recommend that minors 13 years of age or older ask their parents for permission before sending any information about themselves to anyone over the Internet and we encourage parents to teach their children about safe internet use practices.
Maybe the way round this all is either;-
a) Anything posted by a person under the age of 18 (verifiable age by credit card or similar) MUST be approved by either a parent or their school before it goes live - lots of work, but it would mean employing at least 1 person in each school just to carry out this job.
b) Anyone signing up to FB must provide a credit card or similar proof or age. If they are under 18 then the parent/guardian provides this proof and take FULL responsibility for EVERYTHING that is posted by the child - from a legal as well as a moral standpoint. How many parents are going to allow their kids to post "Jonny's a fu$$ing fag and I'm gonna kill him" if they know that the law will come after them for inciting hatred or something similar.
Before the hysteria reaches epic proportions, the advisory itself can be found here (pdf). It's a pretty quick read, only 10 pages, and sadly enough lacks any mention of enforcing rules outside of school, forced indoctrination, political correctness, or secret Muslim plots. TFA however makes for some nice slanted coverage, if anyone is looking for a chuckle I encourage you to read it.
Oh yeah, kids have limited consitutional rights - especially in education.
Then again: letting kids choose not to go to school has to great a chance to have them go to crime or welfare once they are grown up. The autodidacts are a small group compared to the kids who would crash without school (and thus we should first be considerate of the greater group). It's sad they cannot function to their greatest potential, but sacrifices have to be made assuming you want to let all kids go to the same school.
If you'd have the autodidacts go to a Montessori school (I only know it from my education, I haven't been to one myself) you could have them blossom to their maximum capacity, but normal kid's can't function in a Montessori school.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Not really.
In the US, the Supreme Court upheld the right of free speech for students in Tinker vs. Des Moines School District. Students can express as much free speech as they want provided it does not disrupt the learning environment, so outside-of-class speech is protected.
Unfortunately, Bush's appointees have essentially punched a gigantic hole into the previous ruling with Morse v. Fredrick, where the Roberts Court determined that if the school officials have a seemingly good reason, they can abrogate free speech rights. This looks pretty easy to abuse, a school could claim to be protecting student safety and thus have license to patrol facebook and punish students accordingly.
We have the right to say whatever we like about whoever we like. PERIOD. Schools and governments would do well to re-read the basic framework of our nation.
Read the Morse v. Frederick decision. It is very specific in that it applies to promotion of the use of illegal drugs.
The only way it could tie into a claim of protecting the student safety is if the discussion was about illegal activities and even then the decision specificy states the reason it was valid was because it was done at a school function.
Or, alternatively, how about we teach them about how pointless and petty such things truly are? How about we teach them that words cannot hurt them unless they let themselves be 'hurt' by the words? Someone else's opinion of you matters little (no matter the amount of people that feel the same) and cannot actually harm you (unless they resorted to physical violence, in which case I would agree that intervention would be necessary). What we are doing is essentially placing them into a bubble that filters out everything that they don't wish to hear. They will never learn how pointless being offended by such things truly is, and when they are forced to leave that bubble, they will be lost. This is completely pointless and counterproductive if your goal is to raise a generation of free-thinking people who utilize logic in making their decisions, but from decisions such as this, I'm guessing that that isn't the goal at all.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
While I have no doubt that some power-tripping admin will manage to fuck it up somewhere, there is the convenient (in this context) fact that most schoolyard harassment is garden-variety apolitical nastiness, the suppression of which imperils the constitution approximately as much as your angry neighbors forcing you to keep your 3am party to below a certain level of noise...
Sections 1 and 2 of Article 3 wherein the Supreme Court is established and it's jurisdiction defined. That court has, in turn, interpreted the constitution and found that children are treated differently under the law. Consider for example Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District where the court "allow[ed] schools to forbid conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school." It is a murky legal area that reflects a complicated judical question about fundamental fairness.
In other words, it doesn't, but the same organization that said that growing wheat on one's own property for one's own use can be regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause has said it is, so there.
SSC
Until the Government's Department of Education became involved, I would've agreed with you.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Oh for crying out loud. This is what passes for news at lame wannabe Tucker Carlson's attempt to mimic Politico? The guidance letter was published in October 2010 and you can read it here: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201010.html
Let me just point out the "original article" here is pointing to a news editorial site run by Tucker Carlson. The actual website run by the government dealing with bullying is http://www.stopbullying.gov/
There is legislation pending in congress to make bullying more serious
(Full Text: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-540)
It has little to do with the "land of the free" thing. It has more to do with, as was mentioned, harassment and threats. This isn't much of a problem for adults, because there are laws out there to protect people from being stalked, threatened, or physically attacked. The behavior wouldn't be tolerated if I did those things to you in public or at work or, often, even online.
However, children aren't given the same benefit. If an adult smacks their spouse, it's a crime. If they smack their coworker, it's a crime. If they smack their own kid, it's your right to raise your kid how you like. If other kids in school or the neighborhood (even if they're much bigger, older, or in packs than your kid) do those things to a kid, it's just "kids being kids" and "character building - toughen up!".
The problem is that they are paying all this attention to "abuse" via the internet when they should be paying attention to the shit that goes on right in front of their own eyes in their own schools where kids are supposed to be receiving an academic education in safety. Teachers don't give a fuck and will (and always have) looked the other way as kids outright beat the fuck out of other students in many-on-one incidents in their own class rooms. Or in the hallways. I saw this shit happen all the time when I was in school. I even tried to step in a few times, but because I was a jock (outside of school; not through school provided activities), I usually put a swift end to things. And then *I* was the one in trouble. So I learned that helping someone even out the odds was a risky thing to do.
I can't even imagine how some of the kids I went to school with made it through all twelve years. Since I left earlier and began my career early, I didn't see how they turned out. For all I know, some of them may have dropped out because they couldn't take coming to school for the incessant daily abuse with the unspoken permissiveness of the administration that was paid to take care of them. Perhaps some of them killed themselves. Who knows?
Either way, the answer is to stop treating it like it's a "right of passage" *AND* to stop focusing on the fucking online bullshit. If they're "attacking" each other after school in person or online, they're doing far worse in the hallways and classrooms and nobody is stepping in to do shit about it.
And yeah, I'm all for weeding out the trouble makers early on. If you don't want to be in school, then fuck off. Let the kids who want to be there receive an uninterrupted education. The world always has plenty of demand for fry cooks and ditch diggers.
Well that document did give them the power to make those decisions.... so.... Yeah. There.
Not really, took over a hundred years and a bit of pretzle logic to get to that point. I expect the newer courts will wake up and realize that the ICC(interstate commerce clause) is not a catch all for whatever the govt. wants to do. See Thomas' dissent of Gonzales v. Raich.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
That won't work, beceause kids can lie about their age. I know one young person who listed her birth year as being in the early 1900s. Unless age verification is part of the process, that will never work.
Besides, if FB were taken out of the equation, more sites would pop up that cater to the youth culture. Then administrators would need to monitor even more sites.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Actually, the Constitution does not anywhere specify that the Supreme Court gets to interpret what is and what is not Constitutional. That is a power that the Supreme Court gave itself. Of course, considering that the Framers of the Constitution were still in government at the time and did not object to this understanding lends weight to it. Although the fact that the ruling in which it did so was in favor of the primary author of the Constitution probably has something to do with why that was the case.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You don't teach a child to swim by teaching them how to avoid water.
These kids are going to drown when the real world comes knocking on their door.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I'm not quite sure where you are projecting from; but my comment was a quite narrowly focused observation that childhood bullying was of the same 1st amendment salience as late-night disturbance of the peace: that is, extraordinarily minimal and well below the level of concern.
Now, that said, I have approximately zero confidence that school admin will be able to do much of anything based on this new mandate. In my school experience, adult authority figures were, without exception, useless or worse in dealing with bullies. I doubt that they've improved too much, and now their mandate is supposed to extend to the internet? Good luck with that one, guys.
However, I really must take exception to your tedious argument-from-cliche and your extraordinarily optimistic take on the level of persistence shown by bullies. Again, in my(admittedly anecdotal) experience, such behavior is far from transient and is, in fact, extremely stable over the 4 or so year horizon that a given school has to deal with. Bullies are sadistic animals and they do not respond to being ignored, or appeals to reason. Violence, however, surgically but intensely applied, had a 100% success rate. You have to speak to them in a language that they understand.
Raise your hand if you truly, sincerely believe that this will never be used to punish kids who gripe about their teachers or administration. After all, if Johnny tells his parents that Mrs. Smith is mean and picks on him, then he's clearly usurping her authority and disrupting her teaching and the school must put a stop to it.
Remember, "it's for the kids" is always a lie. Always. Without exception.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I agree with you when it comes to young kids where the label "petty shit" applies, but that's not the purpose of this action. What this is meant to address is the rising number of suicides by teens who are being persistently stalked and bullied beyond their ability to "roll it off". We're talking actual abuse here- intentional long-term malice which would result in criminal charges or restraining orders for adults. It may not be an ideal solution (educating kids to handle being picked on is probably more acceptable/constitutional in theory), but kids are dying and parents are right to be concerned about theirs, and schools are already strapped for cash without having to worry about lawsuits.
Because those different education methodologies will almost by nature have different costs per student. As a taxpayer, people feel like they have a right to expect that their kids have the same chance at the "better" education. And if their kid is in the regular old public school they shouldn't have to pay for the advanced education that the gifted students are receiving.
It's a bit of an issue right now in Massachusetts (US). Our public school system includes a number of publicly funded charter schools. Some of these schools are really great learning environments. The problem is that these schools are selective, and cost more per student to run than the public school system. Parents of kids who have been rejected from these schools are campaigning to eliminate these special schools or to bring their funding in line with the public system, which will effectively close them.
Unless we can guarantee that there will be an appropriate teaching tool for all the kids in the system, there will be resistance from the parents whose kids don't receive the specialized education.
I wouldn't have taken that comment sarcastically at all.
Seriously, one of the major functions of school systems is to allow kids to socialize and learn social behaviors. It is unfortunate when the social pressure to homogenize is unchecked, that socialization experience is really really important. Kids need to be able to express themselves, but they also need to learn when to keep their mouths shut and conform to social norms. The real world isn't a Breakfast Club utopia, kids need to learn when socially deviant behavior (bullying included) is inappropriate.
Anyway, a decent home school education is definitely valuable -- but there's something to be said for not spending most of your life stuck indoors with mommy.
100% agree with you there. I was fortunate to have a combination of a fairly normal/tolerant school and parents that kept teaching when I was at home. There's no reason to dichotomize home schooling or school schooling.
Supreme court precedence has ruled in loco parentis, effectively limiting childrens' consitutional rights while in custody of the school.
In true /. form, I have not RTFA yet. However, I can speak on this currently looks like in the real trenches of middle school. We have no interest in what kids do on the weekends or evenings, and little ability to monitor it. I am busy enough that even if I could scrape 400+ student Facebook pages, I would have no time to do so.
The only exception to this is when an online posting creates on-campus disruption. Then we do indeed act, using existing law. Nothing is allowed to disrupt the learning environment, plain and simple. New law is not needed to address this, in my opinion.
If your cyber life remains in the cyber realm, I don't care. If you disrupt or distract at my school, I'll handle it. It is essentially that simple.
In the scenario you describe, who bears responsibility for monitoring the "bad" employees' behavior? The harassed employee can report them. I would not tolerate a representative of my employer following me around or nosing into the "bad" employees social network posts just to find out if they are being bad.
If a student comes to the school administrations and lets them know that other students are harassing them (inside or outside of school), then the administration has some basis for following up with the alleged offenders. I don't ever want to see it codified that school administrators must dig around in kids' out-of-school lives to find potential abuse/mistreatment of others.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
So "might makes right"? What if one is significantly smaller than the bully? What if the bully always has friends around? I was physically abused by other students and was in several fights. They never helped. If I lost I got beat up again. If I won they went and got friends to help them next time. Fist fights by children is never a solution even temporary.