Relax, our Governor will veto this as sure as my real name isn`t my username.
Except, and I`m in favor of the measure, when you checked out the book to begin with you agreed to return it by the due date.
I suppose it might be that way somewhere, but I’ve never heard of a high school or junior high doing that. At mine, the schedules were in fact made by a computer based on student preferences.
That glib slogan is no reason to deny them their privacy. You might say, just as accurately, that women aren’t beardless men and shouldn’t be treated as such… now what does that mean? That it’s OK to deny one group the rights that another group has, merely because they aren’t the same?
This isn’t a situation where a wiser adult is stepping in to prevent a naive youngster from harming himself… it’s a parent wanting to limit his kids’ intellectual pursuits, and asking someone else to be a party to it.
Of course, because the Bill of Rights only applies to the government. You have no 4th Amendment rights as far as your employer is concerned, but obviously that doesn’t mean your boss can call up the library and ask what you’ve read.
Football is a poor analogy, because practices and games take place outside regular school hours - signing up for football changes the hours he’ll be away from home.
Suppose Billy can’t keep his grades up while he’s in Advanced Basket Weaving, so his parents forbid him from taking it next year. He signs up anyway, and when his parents show up asking for him to be taken out, the receptionist apologizes and asks if there’s anything else she can help with. shrug Sounds fine to me.
School is there for the students’ benefit, not as a way for parents to punish or control their kids while they’re away at work. Parents make enough of the decisions as it is… which classes to take and which books to read should be left up to the kids.
You’re laboring under the assumption that it’s primarily parents with a nefarious reason that will be concerned with the material being obtained by their children. I don’t see any reason for making such an assumption.
You’re assuming that a child knows what is better for themselves, generally speaking, than the parent does WRT education. I strongly disagree.
As an additional note I disagree with the usage of the term “informant” to describe the hypothetical librarian who provides a list of materials checked out by the kid to the parent. Is the Blockbuster clerk an informant when they provide a list of movies that were checked out? Technically, I suppose so. The connotation of the word however is that the librarian is complicit in an unethical activity. The morality of this proposal has been assumed, not proven. It’s a charged word meant to evoke a reaction and it adds nothing to the substance of the discussion.
Bingo! THAT’s the answer I was looking for!
How would I even know if I checked out the book if they don’t tell me what it is? Sometimes I check out more then one book at a time and I tend to return them all in the same batch. Telling me I didn’t turn in a book without telling me which book it was might not help me locate it.
Marc
**
In some cases that is the truth. As long as I’m responsible for the general health and wellbeing of that child I will not treat him the same as I would an adult. I will set curfews, I will attempt to limit the kinds of people he can hang out with, and no doubt make plenty of other life altering decisions for him as he grows up.
Hey, if you want to talk about lowering the legal age of adulthood, fine. That’s another topic though. I refuse to treat a 6 year old as I would an adult.
As if the school is going to take enough interest in my child to ensure that he gets the most out of school.
Marc
Why would a parent need to get a list of books from the library, rather than just asking the kid for it, if not to limit the kid’s intellectual pursuits?
Nope. It isn’t an issue of “what’s better for themselves”, it’s an issue of how they’d prefer to spend the 6 hours they’re required to be at school. The law says students have to be at school learning something for a certain time, but the choice of precisely what to learn (other than general requirements) should be up to the students.
Unethical? I don’t think that’s a common connotation at all. A mob informant exposes unethical activity, he doesn’t take part in it by informing. What he does, however, is betray his associates, and a librarian would be betraying her patrons.
That’s up to you. But we aren’t talking about what you do to your kid in the privacy of your own home; we’re talking about what you want to force a library (or school) to do on your behalf.
Your complaints about the school system are no justification for interfering with your child’s choice of electives.
**
Force? How difficult would it be for them to tell me what books my child currently has checked out? I fail to see what’s so nefarious about this.
As long as I’m responsible for raising the child I’m going to interfere in his life in all sorts of ways. Isn’t that part of being a parent?
Marc
I’m not comfortable assuming that. It seems to take what is being asserted as a right (parental access to children’s library records) and treating it as a commodity (access to the records for those who can afford to pay for it).
It is also not clear to me that the bill as written allows libraries to continue to maintain records only on transactions that are still current.
Nor am I satisfied that the parents cited in Representative Albers’s anecdote really did encounter a policy that prevented them from finding out the title of a book they were supposed to be financially responsible for. A poorly-trained library clerk or volunteer answering the phone could have produced the impression that such a policy was in place.
If no Wisconsin lawyers can expound on whether checking out a library book constitutes an enforceable contract, perhaps whuckfistle could engage in an experiment for us. Check out a library book and keep it until you get an overdue notice. Then check the notice to see if the book’s title is listed, and report back to us.
I’ll just wait here . . .
It doesn’t matter how easy it would be for the library to give out their patrons’ history. They want to keep it confidential; you want to make them give it out. “Force” is an appropriate way to describe what the law does to libraries.
No, choosing your child’s academic interests is not part of being a parent, any more than choosing his friends or his career.
**
I have no problem with them keeping the confidentiality of their patrons. I just don’t think the confidentiality of their patrons should extend to minors when it comes to their parents or legal guardians.
Obviously we both have different ideas of what a parent’s roll in the development of their child should be. I think we’re better off calling it quits rather then continuing this debate.
Marc
Mr2001
The OP inspired late book is one example. Another example might be where their child has started to hang out with a questionable crowd. Their school work has started to slip and they have become uncommunicative with no apparent proximate cause. The parent is concerned about the mental and emotional health of their child and think that examining the list of books checked out might help them understand what’s going on. A third example might simply be a curious child with a taste for titillation. The parents know that the child may not be truthful with them regarding the material being checked out and the parents want to ensure that the child isn’t looking for “morally questionable” material.
I will agree that students should have a degree of choice with regard to the classes chosen (provided the student gets the required credits in the appropriate fields as necessary for graduation). The materials that the student views, including books (and especially outside of school), should certainly be controllable to a greater degree by the parent IMO.
One problem I’m having particular difficulty with is those who feel that minors should be given a greater range of rights without an apparent increase in responsibilities. It seems much more often (though still not common) that you hear people ask that minors be given more rights than to ask that the responsibilities of minors also increase. If you want to increase the rights of minors as they are explicitly indicated by law the only fair thing to do IMO is to likewise increase their level of accountability.
If you’re talking 8 year olds, yes, I see a role for parental oversight concerning the media to which the child is exposed.
High school students? No.
I agree that parents should be able to find out which books are late if they’re responsible for bringing them back, but a general policy of giving out the checkout history isn’t necessary for that. They just need to put book titles on the late notices.
Is there any reason to think their library history will be more enlightening than, say, their video rentals, their food purchases, the video games and TV shows they watch at their friends’ houses, or their conversations with friends at school? Do you believe there’s a limit to what third parties should be compelled to tell parents, in the vague interest of “understanding what’s going on”?
I don’t think that’s a valid reason at all. “Morally questionable” could include factual information about sexuality, drugs, politics, or religion. Teenagers are under a constant barrage of misinformation on those subjects (and others), and they need some way to learn about them, other than what authority figures want them to hear.
Well, I don’t think there’s anyone like that in this thread. Frankly I can’t even remember anyone taking that position in other youth rights threads, though it’s been a while since we had one. Care to give an example?
Keep in mind that the bill in the OP takes away a privacy protection that already existed - wouldn’t you say a decrease in rights should be matched with a decrease in responsibilities?
(OTOH, an increase/decrease in responsibilities is only appropriate if the current balance of rights and responsibilities is fair. That’s a subject for another thread.)
Grim Beaker:
What sort of materials in a public library are “morally questionable” other than in the eyes of folks whose own views are “questionable”.
What lack of responsibilities are we talking about in this case? children have always had the right to not have their library books reported to their parents and they’ve always had the responsibility to return them on time.
It is, and you`re welcome.
Mr2001
“Morally questionable” as I’m using the term doesn’t refer to inquiries of a factual nature but rather to fiction, poetry, literature etc. that glorifies violence, promiscuity, drug use, vandalism, suicide, etc.
Youth rights threads are indeed a rare bird. I’m relying on my (sometimes faulty) recollection that it seems that rights often gain more stage time than do responsibilities and accountability. It’s really tangential to the question at hand though so I’ll concede it as groundless for now.
It seems to me the issue isn’t really about the parent’s ability to find out what the child is checking out. As others have said, they already can do that–by searching for the books in the house, by going to the library with the child (either when they check out books in the first place or later, when the child will request the list and hand it over to the parent).
What is really desired here is the ability to find out what the child is checking out, but without the child being aware the parent doing so.
Could some of you supporters of this regulation explain to me why you feel such a need to keep children in the dark about how much oversight they are under? It seems to me that children generally turn out better if they know their parents are paying attention to their lives. Does being sneaky about watching over kids provide some added benefit I’m not aware of?
But I’m not keeping my kids in the dark about my seeing their library checkouts. They are voracious readers so we go to the library every week or so; I have 3 kids who check out an armful of books each time. The library uses peel-off “date due” stickers that have a terrible tendency to fall off. My 8 year old often has a stack of books with various return dates–she can’t remember which ones are due back when and I can’t remember due dates for all of us. Now, we could be more organized about this and only allow them to go to the library if they have finished all of their books–but going to the library is a treat for them & I’d like to keep it that way. Our current library system makes it simple for me to be sure that we are returning books on time BEFORE we make that trip.