School board plans to monitor student blogs

cathyp writes “An article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail featured a high school in Illinois that is going to be requiring students that participate in extracurricular activities to sign a pledge agreeing to be held accountable for any illegal or inappropriate behaviour they write about online.”

May 25, 2006 by Uncategorized 5

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5 Responses

  1. Anonymous Patron says:
    May 25, 2006 at 11:54 pm

    Franklin Quote
    Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. — Ben Franklin

    Modified to read:
    Any student that would give up a little liberty to gain football, basketball, or other extracurricular activity will deserve neither.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous Patron says:
    May 26, 2006 at 12:24 am

    Conversely…
    Slandering others, or taking clandestine pics in the locker room, and posting them maliciously on Myspace, etc, etc, etc. These should not be countenanced either.

    It’s tough to be the victim of bullies nowadays, they can harass you 24-7, and have a much better grapevine thru the school. It’s possible for them to keep all of the pictures and stuff at home, or on things which aren’t accessible to school authorities. In the past when someone was being harassed you typically had kids passing something around in class – and a teacher or principal could intercept it, and hold onto it (since usually it was only one copy). Nowadays it’s different.

    I’m waiting for some slander, libel, privacy invasion, etc cases against the parents of some of these bullies. It’s going to start getting expensive quick, instead of being resolved at the school-level.

    — Ender, Duke_of_URL

    Reply
  3. lijemo says:
    May 26, 2006 at 1:40 am

    Re:Conversely…
    Then perhaps it SHOULD be dealt with above “school level”, when it gets that serious.

    The school should not be censoring what students say or do outside of school hours, off school property, with non-school equipment.

    However, once those activities meet the legal definition of harrassment, threat, or slander, that is ILLEGAL– and should be dealt with by the proper authorities.

    We seem to have an attitude in this country that a crime (short of murder) isn’t really a crime if both the victim and the perpatrator are underage. Asault isn’t assult, slander isn’t slander, harrassment isn’t harassment– it’s all just “harmless bullying”.

    Reply
  4. Turner says:
    May 26, 2006 at 9:09 am

    Disingenuous

    I think Associate Superintendant Prentiss Lea is being disingenuous ..the issue is not invasion of privacy..The issue is the punishing students by threatening their extra curricular activities for inappropriate behaviour…which is probably what ever
    Prentiss Lea thinks is inappropriate…she is an internet filter…the filter behind your eyes is always more dangerous than the filter in your computer.

    In my view his is the domain of parenting not the school board. Ifg it is insanely over the top well then it becomes a legal matter.

    You can’t be on the basketball team because you blogged something the Superintendant didn’t like…what is the relationship there ? ………………………………………….. ..

    “I don’t think they need to police what students are doing on-line,” she said. “That’s my job.”

    Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea rebuffed that criticism.

    “The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron,” he said. “It is called the World Wide Web.”

    Reply
  5. Anonymous Patron says:
    June 1, 2006 at 8:16 am

    Censoring non-school activities…
    I wasn’t talking about censoring non-school stuff. Some things I was alluding to, were things taken on school property.

    Also, we’re discussing different things. Anything that is legal shouldn’t be censored, or punished. We are discussing pulling school privileges for illegal behavior. Which is just a taste of the real-world. If you get caught with counterfeit bills, you may be doing federal jail time, and become a felon, and limited in what jobs you may take, in the fact that you can no longer qualify for loans, and can’t rent an apartment by yourself.

    Those are just the facts of life. Might as well get the kids started getting used to them.

    — Ender, Duke_of_URL

    Reply

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