School District to watch over students' blogs
A day after writing that I've been finding very little to blog about lately, today I found plenty. Read on.
The Community High School District 128 school board in Lake County, Illinois, recently voted to require any student participating in extracurricular activities to sign a pledge agreeing to the stipulation that "evidence of `illegal or inappropriate' behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action."
The policy, which will take effect at the start of the school year this fall, includes student blogs and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
District officials say they won't be regularly trolling students' sites, but what they will do is more troubling. According to the policy, sites will be monitored "if they get a worrisome tip from another student, a parent or a community member."
Free speech and privacy rights arguments don't hold water with Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea, who stated that "The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron. It is called the World Wide Web."
posted by Amy at 9:13 PM
2 Comments:
Hmm... I wonder what exactly is "inappropriate behavior"...
I'm also wondering how many students are going to report on what they read in other students' blogs. And of course it begs the question you mentioned, what is inappropriate and offensive and just how offensive does a post have to be for the school to step in? It's a huge gray area to say the least. Look for the ACLU to step in at some point. I smell a lawsuit.
Post a Comment
<< Home