Basically, a 16 year old girl was punished by her school for calling administrators “douche bags” on her blog, which she wrote from home.
*Doninger’s digital disdain became a national cause after school authorities barred her from running for office at Lewis B. Mills High School in Burlington, Conn., where she had been class secretary as a junior. Her family believes the punishment was a violation of Doninger’s First Amendment rights and that the school “showed a phenomenal disregard for basic liberties,” her mother, Lauren Doninger, told FOXNews.com. *
Now the legislature is getting into the act.
How do Dopers land on this issue? Personally, as a public school teacher, I think her Free Speech rights in this instance have been abridged and the school district should be forced to pay damages and apologise, and change their ways. But as has been noted by the courts, digital communications are rewriting all the rules. Could go either way.
The purpose of schools is to educate. That cannot happen in an environment where students are allowed to flagrantly attacking the teachers, administrators, each other, and anything else. Some amount of order is necessary if the schools are to fulfill their function. Since this bill covers things that students would write at school, in classrooms, using computers owned by the school, it would have a negative effect on the climate in school. Teachers cannot teach and wage war with their students simultaneously.
On the other hand, the crazier things get in public schools, the more parents will turn to private schools or homeschooling, so maybe I should support this.
It’s her blog, and if it’s unrelated to school then it is unrelated to school. Showing respect in and environment of learning is different than saying what you think outside of school. I say it violates her rights to punish her for writing something outside of school.
Except, she wrote this on her blog and from home. How does this bill change that? I am pretty sure the school could already cut off her internet access within the school. Why would a new law be needed?
Students do not surrender their rights at the schoolhouse door, nor can the school reach bound its boundaries to tell kids what to do at home. If what she said was slanderous, then let those slandered take action. Otherwise, they should shut up and get back to their jobs.
I think she has every right in the world to say whatever she wants on her own time, etc.
At the same time, I don’t see a problem with the school including that in it’s criteria for whether a student can run for a school position. I would have a serious problem if they tried to shut down her blog.
I didn’t read the link, only the OP, but based on that the school did not try to tell the person what or what not to do at home, rather they basically said “what you do outside of school will be considered when we determine who can or can not run for student office.”
Don’t members of student government serve at the pleasure of the school’s administration? As far as I know, there’s no constitution-ish recognition of independent action.
Anyway, it’s high school. Doninger should get over it.
Which is telling a person what they can or can not do at home. Holding student office is considered to be a stepping stone for entrance to some colleges. Withholding the ability to hold such an office because of what the student does on their own time is controlling how they live their life. Whether or not she should have said what she did, or reconsidered her language, or any number of other things, let’s not play games with what is actually going on.
The student and those of her peers who are paying attention are learning a valuable lesson about power and what those who have it can do. Plus, if some school administrator gets upset at being called a douchebag in a blog, perhaps they need to find another line of work. I guarantee worse things are said about them every day.
From the article: “A state lawmaker is proposing legislation that would bar schools from punishing students for their electronic insults, even if they write them on class computers during school hours.”
For better or for worse, internet access has now been integrated into many classes and school activities. A law that prohibits teachers from having authority over internet postings, prohibits teachers from having authority within school, at least some of the time. For education to take place, students must have a degree of respect for the teacher. Without that, the teacher simply cannot accomplish anything.
Besides which, with current wireless devices cutting off internet access is not so easy.
But I also think the school would be entirely within their rights to put a provision in the student government charter that its members are not allowed to publicly insult, demean or undermine the authority of the school administration, whether they are in or out of school.
Except that lots of schools have criteria beyond voting for who holds student offices–though they don’t always make a big deal out of it to the students. I know that faculty recommendations carry meaningful weight at the school where I teach. If instead of forbidding her, the administration had allowed her to run, but strongly suggested to the faculty that they rate her low enough that winning was impossible–would that be ok?
Being a member of National Honor Society is a more important part of college admissions than Student Office. Would you be ok with this incident being used to forbid her entry or to kick her out if she were already a member?
I don’t know what I think about it. On one hand, free speech is important, and if it’s truly an elected position, it’s not really democracy if the candiates are hald-picked by The Man. On the other hand, there is something deeply tacky and hypocritical about trying to use an organization when it benefits you and then be disparaging of it otherwise. If, for example, a student on my Academic Decathlon team was talking smack about the program or her teammates, or, honestly, me, I’d be sorely tempted not to take them to competition and give their slot to someone who values what we do. It also depends on the duties of the class officers: if they represent the school at ceremonies and show visitors around and stuff like that, it’s an issue. You don’t want someone bad-mouthing the school they represent.
How is cutting off internet access not easy? Sure, students could use internet capable devices in the bathroom or outside of the building, but I believe most schools frown on such activity during class. If the school does not want this kind of disrespectful activity coming from school provided computers, perhaps they should block internet access to those sites that cause trouble.
Also, I had a reading comprehension problem on the proposed legislation. It does the opposite of what I thought. My mistake. Still don’t see why this is an issue for state lawmakers.
Her rights have absolutely been violated BUT such goes on in schools all the time. Censorship of the student produced media, dress code/hair-style restrictions, random locker and body searches, random drug tests, restrictions on political, artistic, and religious expression, etc. The very compulsory nature of schooling is, imo, a violation.
Courts have pretty consistently ruled that minors HAVE no rights, or at least not many of the rights adult Americans usually take for granted. I have a serious problem with this, not only with the violations themselves but with the idea of our next generation(s) spending 12 yrs under this sort of system and the effect it may have on their understanding and appreciation of their basic rights as adults and what is and is not allowable in “the real world”. Can we rationally expect children to be conditioned to accept such violations as acceptable for their entire life then suddenly morph into free-thinking, Bill of Rights-defending adults at graduation? :dubious: I think it merely serves to produce a generation of sheep, willing to surrender their rights and those of others when an authority figure demands it for “public safety” and “order/peace”.
A school my son ( unschooled save for 1st grade until 7th grade age when he decided to try out school) attended briefly in Texas had a rule that no more than 3 students could walk down the hall as a group or sit together at lunch at any time (was considered “gang activity”:rolleyes:). My son stayed 6 weeks (during which time he made all A’s and did very well otherwise) His insights were very interesting. He noted that the school was more like a prison than a place of learning, the social aspects were bizarre (cliques and bullying and general immaturity), and it took up too much of his time for too little return (ironically or not, he found he had no time left to read or pursue his interests while in school).
FTR, he is currently in high school (in another state/system) and doing very well and enjoying it a lot. (his decision). He’s photo editor of the school paper and does creative writing and photography, dresses “very interestingly”, etc. and has yet to come up against any draconian limits, but we are in a pretty liberal area. It certainly varies.
I am as concerned with cases like this as I am with similar ones involving teachers or prospective employees who are persecuted because of creative or political or intellectual pursuits they engage in on their own time. I think we have become far too tolerant of this sort of thing, but I don’t see it changing until/unless we, as a society and as parents start demanding our childrens’ rights are honored in school and elsewhere.
PhP Proxies, it’s ridiculously easy to set up a free (or cheap, as some free are blocked) domain with the package (free from sourceforge) uploaded. The proxy in our school was a non-issue because if the site ever went down or was blocked we’d upload a new one, wasn’t much your average school IT admin could do about it.
There needs to be respect? You clearly haven’t stepped in a modern high school. Students respect good teachers, the learning takes place for respect to be established, beyond the modicum most people have for superiors by default. For example, everyone was respectful to my Chem teacher… until she proved herself utterly incompetent (trust me), then no one felt bad about slandering her skills on school grounds much less on the internet. Respect doesn’t cause learning, good teaching skills garner respect.
I agree with this though, the school government is a special case that I can tolerate having to stay quiet in order to stay in. If they tried to suspend her or take her blog down, then we’d have an issue.
Dear Og, more schools do this? My middle school, in my 8th grade year, instated a rule that said “no persons may be in a group of 6 or more at once.” It was called mobbing, under penalty of in-house suspension. Naturally everyone protested by gathering into a giant, undispersable group at lunch for a few days. :smack:
The rule is still in effect AFAIK, but completely unenforced, we made sure of that.
Well… the concept for the school system and the prison system came from the same person with the same original intention (and even similar schematics) iirc (is that an urban legend?) so…
Furthermore, forbidding someone from posting a malicious statement online (however well-deserved) does nothing to enforce respect. The student who would have otherwise posted a malicious statement can disrespect a teacher in his/her head all day long. Or to other students. In fact, the whole idea of “enforcing respect” is outlandish.
Yes, but you can enforce “behavior appropriate for the time and place”: I might complain about my boss all day long in conversation, but not on line and not to anyone I don’t know well–I make sure it’s not going to get back to him. I am sure my students complain about me at times, but they oughtn’t call me a douchebag where I can hear it, and if they do, I’ll reprimand them–even if it’s just a glare or a sharp word.
Now, school is different than life because it’s compulsory, and if they were trying to remove her from school because of her words I’d be incensed. But, depending on the role student council plays in the school, I can see a situation where this is appropriate.