Ah, that explains much. Diogenes armed with a lamp that burns as bright as a thousand suns would not find a multidigit IQ.
Okay, I’ve slept.
Legally, technically, any other “ly” you can think of, the school has the right to impose bonehead rules on its students, I can accept that. What’s pissing me off is, just because they have the right to do this, doesn’t make it the right thing to do.
Sometimes I go whole months in the happy delusion that yeah, the world is pretty fucked up in a lot of ways, and stupid people run rampant and breed, but Common Sense will still prevail. Then I read about an entire school where Common Sense apparently packed its bags and bugged out, and I am irritated at the thought that Shitwittery and his cultural detache Dumbfuck have gained another base of operations.
Is it silly of me to hope that the parents’ organization consists of 6 people who are completely out of touch with reality, and the newspaper just isn’t quoting the 500 other parents who think Van Velzen should take his Internet policy and shove it up his ass?
I do agree that this rule is ill thought out and short-lived. I’m just gobsmacked that the doofuses that run the school had the audacity to think they should have The Power to write such a rule in the first place.
Private schools receive limited funding for such things as non-religious textbooks, lab equipment, and subsidized lunches. They must follow the state mandated guidelines as to the number of days a child must attend school, etc.
The public funding has no bearing on the student code of conduct.
The article referred to “Sr. Margaret Van Velzen” as in Sister Margaret Van Velzen.
I also note that, although the website for the school is www.sthugo.k12.mi.us, the actual school only has grades K through 8 (which was my memory of the place). There are no high school kids affected by this decision (as they tend to wander off to Brother Rice or Marian or Academy of the Sacred Heart or Cranbrook or other pricey prep schools).
Perhaps not. I’ve already said that i think it’s a stupid rule.
But, do you think it’s stupid if one particular set of parents decides to prohibit their son or daughter from using MySpace? And if not, why is it any different for a group of parents to decide collectively, in conjuntion with the school, to do the same thing?
Possibly.
The thing is, many private schools, especially ones based on particular worldviews (like, for example, Catholic schools), tend to attract people who subscribe to similar tenets regarding human behavior, morality, etc. There are probably thousands of parents in the United States who—for a variety of reasons—don’t allow their kids to have accounts on MySpace and similar social networking sites. Why should we be surprised, or alarmed, that one Catholic school happens to have a bunch of such parents?
If you concede that a parent has the right to determine what internet sites the child should use, and if you find out that the vast majority of parents at this school support the decision, then what’s the big deal?
But if it’s done in accordance with the parents’ wishes, then it’s no different in practice from the parents themselves making the rule.
Also, the attraction of private schools for many parents is precisely the fact that they get a more direct say in the running of the school than they would at a public school.
I would imagine that the reason the rule exists at all is because some kids were identifying their school on their MySpace account. Not only is it somewhat dangerous to identify your school (especially when you post salacious photographs of yourself in your school uniform, like some 8th graders did in my daughters’ class), but it also reflects negatively upon the school.
It would have been far easier for my daughter’s school to mandate a “No MySpace account” rule, but they actually went to the trouble of speaking to the parents individually. The accounts were closed and the problem was solved. (And the girls will undoubtedly end up knocked up in a few years and the parents will, once again, be surprised that their little princess. who posed like a porn star at the tender age of 12, actually had sex with a boy.)
My kids aren’t allowed to open MySpace accounts nor are they allowed to IM. There has been way too much controvery, both at the public and private schools, over both. Some of the IM transcripts that I’ve seen has raised the hair on the back of my head, it was so intensely cruel and/or raunchy.
Of course not. My house, my kid, my computer, my rules.
Because it’s not their house, their kid, their computer, or their rules. I have absolutely no problem with the school banning certain websites from school computers; they’ve got a whole bunch of little bundles of energy bouncing around the computer lab, and they have to have blanket rules to keep order. In my house I have one little bundle of energy bouncing around, and I’m pretty sure I can enforce my own house rules without having to have the school at my back threatening suspension of Little Susie doesn’t comply.
I think it is different; if not in practice, at least in spirit. It’s taking the authority to set HOUSE rules on Internet usage away from the parents and putting it in the hands of the school, where it doesn’t belong. Now instead of Mom and Dad growing a pair and saying, “Jimmy, I don’t want you going to this website. Here’s why. Now go to your room”, they get to be little Jimmy’s friend and say, “Oh, honey, you know if you go to that site you’re going to get suspended…I know, the mean old school…” And bang, here comes another generation of brain-dead little automatons that can’t think for themselves or solve any kind of problem without an appeal to Authority.
I can only hope that there’s an underground cadre of Goth 8th graders in that school planning a loud and obnoxious demonstration sometime soon.
[Bolding mine.] I think you made a typo.
Sorry, I was just reacting to the people who said “Catholic schools can make their own rules, who cares?” which is an equally useless comment as my own.
I’d really like to see how they attempt to enforce this “rule.” Maybe through confessional?
Father O’Malley: “Little Nancy, have you a MySpace.Com account you want to confess?”
Little Nancy: “Forgive me father, it has been two comments and a friend request since I have last confessed. . .”
:rolleyes:
Please, shelter our little ones from the real world before it’s too late. While we’re at it, let’s rid the world of war and show nothing but happy joy-joy on the television every night. Surely, that is the way to world peace. . .
Tripler
. . . and really, a safe, pacified, “informed” public is a good thing for the world at large. :smack:
I am not saying that I agree with this policy’s effectiveness at preventing whatever it is supposed to prevent, but I think many posters do not understand the operating protocols of SOME Catholic Schools.
I cannot speak for all of them, but many see the school as an extension of the family. For example, in my husband’s school, they had what was called 100% parental involvement every quarter. This meant every parent, Mom and Dad(if applicable), volunteered at that school at some point during the quarter (except for extenuating circumstances- deployed in the military, sick etc…) That is incredible if you think about it. There was a tremendous outcry when he was a Junior in high school and they started letting parents pay to “hire” someone else to cover their volunteered time. It was seen by many as classist and antithetical to their overall purpose, but the times were a-changing and the school adapted.
The nuns were known to show up at parties ON THE WEEKEND, if they heard about it and heard there was going to be drinking. They saw themselves as extensions of the parents and would rally their support if they heard drinking was involved. Some parents griped when their kids cried, but most WANTED this amount of care. How many teachers in public schools actually track down the students over the weekend and become involved? I would not want this, my husband surely did not when he was young, but his parents did and he respects them, and the women and men who cared ALOT about him.
Parents CHOOSE to have their kids sent there for that type treatment and care. A principal who “stood up” against paternalism would actually be going AGAINST the very essence of their job.
Thus, I am not saying don’t criticize the idea because that is our StraightDope heritage at work, just understand that these principals are not hired to take stands against these sorts of issues. There is no GESTAPO, because no one is forced (besides kids and that is a whole other ball of wax if you want to get into it and argue that parents don’t have the right to control children).
Oddly enough though, to lighten the mood, one of the articles in the underground paper at the school my husband attended actually put a Swastika on a picture of the principals head once (she was nun). Ohhhhh boy, was there an uproar.
Now, as for the second part of your statement, I agree. Forbidding things is NOT a good idea. Teaching about them and learning about them is much more effective. For the record, my husband’s school seemed much more enlightened. Although it had that “paternalistic” attitude, they were taught sex ed in 7th grade, contraception in 9th grade and they would have healthy and open discussions about hot topic issues like abortion. By no means doubt that they were a Catholic school and they taught Catholic doctrine, but the administrators of his schools seemed very open to the style of learning you outlined in your second paragraph.
While my husband went to Catholic school I went to rightist christian, pound me in the ass, protestant school. Holy shit, talk about oppression, intolerance and downright craziness. Thus, I can relate to how destructive forbidding behaviors without educating people is.
I’m pretty sure that is the one. Now, in deference to the court, there was clearly a fair amount of rights-stripping that had occurred in prior decisions, but my reading of that case, (where a totally separate argument would have sufficed to get to the same point), was that the majority was a bit too quick to keep pointing out all the rights that students do not have–especially given that there was no need for the courts to address the rights of students as students, to begin with.
That would be the Hazelwood decision I believe. The thing is, they are reaching too far, IMO. Limiting what students who are in extra curricular activities and the like can do, as in curfews is one thing. This, is another.
Isn’t this a lot like your boss tracking you down on the weekend to make sure that you’re not up to anything that they would have a problem with?
As long as it doesn’t affect your job (academic) performance and you’re not representing their company (school), it’s not their business. Do they follow the kids around on summer vacation to make sure they’re not staying out too late or partying too much?
That kind of involvement is at an oppressive level, and regardless of whether a parent wants the kid’s teacher to be spying on them 7 days a week, it oversteps the bounds of the teacher’s (and the school’s) job. It is no more the teacher’s business whether Johnny is at a party on Saturday than it is my boss’s business where and how I spend my weekends.
They did at my school. Their stance was that we students represented the school 24/7 and any of our behavior on-or-off campus reflected upon the school. I know of a boy who was expelled because one of the teachers saw him in a grocery store wearing a Metallica t-shirt. (Rock music or even music which sounded like rock was forbidden.) A girl was expelled because it was *rumored *that she had been pregnant and gotten an abortion. Parents were constantly calling the principal to tattle on other kids: “Little Suzy was over playing with my daughter Jane and while they were playing, I heard Suzy say a bad word!”
At my husband’s school, the nuns weren’t just looking for sins so they could punish. They were genuinely concerned about the kids. I see a world of difference in that.
Oppresive it may be, but these were both private schools, and we were free to say “screw this” at any time and walk away. If your boss is too nosy about your personal life, you’re free to do the same.
Exactly. I would even suggest that the school has more of a right to be involved with student activity outside the school, if that is what the majority of the parents want. The school is essentially a service business, and the parents are the customers. A smart private school will cater to the parents’ desires, in order to maintain their enrollment, as any business would cater to their customers. My husband also attended a Catholic school. The K-8 school seems like it was pretty on-par (in terms of rules) as the local public schools, but his HS was strict, both in terms of academic performance and behavior. He says that the parents liked it that way, and that was the reason that they paid to send their kids there.
There is a reason that such rules are covered by the concept of in loco parentis–the parents are just crazy).
(I will also point out for a second time, just because I am posting, that the rule, silly at it is, is aimed at kids in elementary school, not high schoolers.)
(Posters who know both Spanish and Latin may sit on their hands and not muck up the post.)
This is true, but does it make a difference?
While I agree the rule is silly, I have a harder time getting worked up over prohibiting MySpace accounts to kids in grade school than those in high school.