Do you have any evidence that there are people “morally averse to sexting”? (This as opposed to people who just think it’s very unwise.) What exactly would their moral objection be?
For the first one yes, she needs to practice basic data security, which would mean she needs to pick a good passcode and not let the kids see it. For the second one no, because there are a lot more steps of intermediate security involved.
Putting a passcode on a phone is one of the basic requirements of not exposing students to things on her phone. It is a teacher’s job not to leave an unsecured phone, laptop, or photo album with porn on it where kids can easily get into it. A phone or laptop is trivial to scroll through if there’s no access protection on it, and I don’t agree at all with the idea that leaving your electronic unlocked and unattended is ‘securing’ it.
FYI, I know teachers who have lots of NSFK pics on their phones. All of them find the idea of leaving the phone unsecured in a classroom to be completely stupid and irresponsible, and are aware that they would lose their job in the situation described.
Do high school kids these days really look through other people’s phones without asking?
There are a large number of Americans who still hold very puritanical values about sex. A majority of Americans believe viewing pornography is immoral, for example.
I assume that the basis of your question is that these particular images were supposedly taken for the teacher’s spouse, and that may make a different. But, first, many Americans believe any non-procreative sex act is immoral, spouses or not. And second, I think when there’s a moral panic over something (as there definitely is over teen sexting, if not adult married sexting), it tends to affect emotional judgments about adjacent but logically distinct situations.
I’m not aware of polling on the perceptions of morality of sexting among spouses. Are you?
Not aware of anything. But it doesn’t conform to any form of morality that is held by a large number of Americans, to my knowledge, so I wouldn’t assume that it exists without some strong basis.
It’s hard to understand a system of morality which allows for seeing the actual person naken but objects to pictures of them naked. I’m not aware that “many Americans believe any non-procreative sex act is immoral, spouses or not” and wouldn’t accept this either without evidence. And while I agree with you that moral panic (or panic generally) can create emotional and irrational judgements, that’s just a possible basis for such judgements but not a reason to believe they exist in a given instance.
ISTM that societal objections to sexting are on practical grounds and generaly related to concerns that women, and especially girls, will be victimized by them. I’ve not seen any evidence of these moral objections.
Nope, no problem with it at all. I may even have a friend who has participated in it. Yeah, that’s it, a friend.
But, let me put it this way.
If I had naked pictures of myself on my phone (I don’t), and I was working in a school (I often do), and one of the kids got a hold of my phone (has happened) and saw pictures of my dick, I would feel that even though the kid was being bratty/breaking rules by getting into my personal stuff, that I was responsible for having naked pictures of myself at school, in a place where a kid could easily get them if they wanted to. Not bringing porn to school seems like an obvious rule for teachers to abide by. ETA: (I get that it’s easy to forget that stuff might be on our phone, but that becomes the teacher’s responsibility. Bring your personal computer into the classroom on a regular basis, make sure it doesn’t have porn on it).
Well, that probably explains it. It is Catholic belief, but also common among some Evangelicals.
Skimming through that guy’s work it seems to be his own private interpretation of Catholic teaching, not the Church’s. Looking around briefly I encountered the Vatican’s position, which seems to object to doing these things outside of marriage (see #2352 & #2354).
Beyond that, and even if it were true that the official Catholic teachings are such, that doesn’t imply that these teachings are widely accepted in America, even among Catholics. (I believe Catholic rates of birth control usage and the like are pretty comparable to those of non-Catholics.)
I guess my fuddy-duddy stuck-in-the-pre-internet-world response is that all
My response is that it’s all relative. It’s like HIPAA; if you’ve taken reasonable measures to ensure security, then you’re probably ok. Of course, ‘reasonable’ is a soft target, but that’s how some things are.
I’d say naked pictures on an unlocked device is not taking reasonable precaution. Maybe a locked device is enough precaution; I could be swayed that way. But my initial feeling is that bringing porn into school in any medium is ‘obviously not right’ enough that even porn that is password protected is not reasonable to have in a school.
In the trunk of her car; to me that more than covers ‘reasonable precaution.’ I get your point that it is maybe an equal violation of privacy, but again, bringing porn into the classroom at all is an irresponsible risk, IMHO. Even if it’s under lock and key.
I’m going to say up front that I agree this kid is scum and I would have him expelled in a heartbeat.
But I also agree with the idea that the teacher is not blameless. In a perfect world, we could depend on everyone keep their hands to themselves. But this is not a perfect world. Everyone knows children are idiotic proto-criminals with no self control. It’s expected that the child will be a fuck-up.
A teacher leaving their phone out in class is like a person leaving their Honda unlocked in Waianae. At a certain point, it ceases to be an unexpected tragedy and becomes more of an inevitability.
The second problem is what to do with the child after they get expelled. As much as it would make me happy to just kick the little shits to the curb, this creates a number of problems. The state is obligated to educate the child, even if he is a cretin, so he has to go to school somewhere. What if the parents can’t afford to stay home with the child? Is he supposed to just wander the streets like a Victorian orphan? And what happens when he grows up with no education?
I don’t know if there is a good answer to this. The kid clearly deserves the strongest possible punishment, but there is a point at which punishing these kids just sets them on a path to being career criminals.
When I saw the story was from Slate, I backed out because that website usually locks up my computer.
Whatever it said, my guess is that there’s more to the story than whatever appeared on the surface.
If your question begins “Do high school kids these days…” then the answer is almost entirely yes. Does nobody else remember the giant lack of self control present in the average 15 year old?
Depending on the reason for explusion, sometimes the kids go to “alternative” school, which is more like a prison facility than a school, where all the other kids that managed to get expelled end up. Dunno if sending the sexting smutgoblin to the same school as the guy that put his archenemy in the hospital at age 14 is a good idea (that may be hyperbole on my part, I don’t know the exact criteria, and I imagine it’s more like “got caught with weed”).
If the expelled kid doesn’t meet the criteria for an alternative school, they become the parents problem - figure out how to watch your kid during school hours, it’s that’s a problem then you should have raised your kid better. They can repeat the grade they got kicked out of next year.
This is like some student going thru a teacher’s unlocked purse and finding her birth control pills. She and her husband have a sexual relationship - gosh, how shocking. Tell the student to quit snooping in places where he should keep his cotton-picking nose to himself.
Absent any further facts, I would say that 99.9% of the blame goes on the snoopy student. The teacher has a reasonable expectation of privacy, in that she shouldn’t expect students to go snooping thru her phone.
Regards,
Shodan
Sure, just like even though a supermajority believe that viewing pornography is immoral, most of them still view it.
You seriously expect to leave an unlocked phone or laptop in multiple roomfuls of teenagers and have not a single one try to go through the phone? You apparently never dealt with the same teenagers I did growing up, or the same ones that my friends who are teachers do, because I don’t know anyone who thinks it’s reasonable to leave an unlocked phone with nude pics in a room of teenagers.
I really don’t think ‘put a password on it’ is an unreasonable of security to expect from a teacher that has sensitive information on their device.
I spoke in haste about this. I should have specified that yes, kids who simply received the photos shouldn’t automatically be punished, but ones who continue to share it and look at it during school should definitely face punishment. I can sympathize with the teacher, if she ever comes back to the school, it would be difficult to maintain composure knowing that most of your class has seen you naked. That’s when a strict policy of ensuring that the kids don’t continue to spread it and talk about it needs to be in place.
My impression of this situation is that when it comes to lurid things like sex, even if the teacher’s at no fault of their own, the administrators cave to hysterical parents. There have been more than one instance where a teacher’s porn or modeling past has been found out by the students, and instead of punishing the students for sharing pictures and websites, the school fires the teacher because they believe, erroneously and harmfully, “who wants a porn star to teach our kids?” If I were a parent, I wouldn’t care that the teacher had a sexual past. To me, such parents are projecting their insecurities because like many conservatives argue, they believe that the best way to stop kids from having sex, especially girls, is to pretend it doesn’t exist. Sex ed. is only abstinence, no talk about condoms or birth control, virginity pledges, all these things run counter to factual information and, most importantly, it doesn’t at all stop kids from having sex. So let a former porn star teach elementary school kids, so what?
I disagree that its similar to a photo album.
First, nobody would normally bring a private photo album into their place of work as an album usually invites looking. Second, everyone has phones now, so its not out of the ordinary that your personal phone is used for a mixture of work and play. Just because you bring a phone to work shouldn’t mean there shouldn’t be private info. What if the kid stole a credit card or house keys? Those are private too and brought to work all the time. And third, I believe the teacher’s being punished for simply having these pictures and that they are totally neglecting to prosecute the stolen nature of the incriminating artifacts. All the teacher really did was forget her phone in class without the password. Her punishment should be tied to forgetfulness, not what was in her private phone. If a prison guard forgets his weapon somewhere, he’d likely wouldn’t be the only one punished, nor punished so egregiously. And a weapon would hurt others, these pictures only harm herself (ignoring the cries of some parents that the teacher “exposed” herself to the students)
She should be able to leave a $100 bill on her desk when she leaves the room. Kids these days…
If wishes and buts were candy and nuts, what a wonderful Christmas we would have. In some abstract ‘perfect world’ sense we wouldn’t need passwords on sensitive information or locks on doors, but I’m talking about the real world here.
Let’s try a similar situation: You find out that your doctor’s office left a phone with your medical records pulled up on it sitting out in the waiting room without a password, and a person in the room looked through it, then published the embarrassing details to the people it’s most obnoxious and/or damaging to see them. Or you find that a government office left a laptop with all of your personal identifying information and salary history on it in their waiting room, and someone snagged a copy and used it to steal your identity.
Do you say that neither office should get in trouble, since they had an expectation of privacy in the device and the person who looked through it did wrong, or do you hold them responsible for not properly securing the information?
But naked pictures aren’t other’s people’s private information. If the teacher left a file full of confidential student information on the table, THAT would be a more egregious error, because a teacher does have a positive duty to protect confidential information that they are given. But I don’t have a positive duty to protect students from pictures of naked ladies. I ought not force them to look at them by, say, sticking prints of naked ladies on my walls or giving assignments that require students to go to naked lady sites, but having naked pictures on my phone is not that.