School Coughs Up $70k In Damages For Invading 13 Year Old's Social Media Space

Privacy

from the everwhere-is-the-campus? dept

A couple of years ago, Tim Cushing wrote up the story of a Minnesota student who was forced to give her social media passwords to a school so they could snoop through her off-campus life and develop a couple of life-lessons for her. Those life lessons appeared to have essentially amounted to recognizing that school administrators too often see themselves as parents and they think students’ free speech rights end where an administrator’s interest in his/her students’ lives begin. Fortunately, a judge disabused them of their misconceptions, stating in no uncertain terms that forcing a student to give up their social media passwords is a violation of the First Amendment. Common sense, how little we see of ye.

And now, to bring some closure to this story, the school is coughing up $70,000 in damages and rewriting their policies to prevent further abuse.

Minnewaska Area Schools agreed to pay $70,000 in damages and rewrite its policies to limit how intrusive the school can be when searching a student’s e-mails and social media accounts created off school grounds. The federal court settlement comes just after Rogers High School senior Reid Sagehorn, a 17-year-old honor student and football captain, was suspended for seven weeks for a two-word Internet posting in a case that created a community uproar.

“A lot of schools, like the folks at Minnewaska, think that just because it’s easier to know what kids are saying off campus through social media somehow means the rules have changed, and you can punish them for what they say off campus,” said attorney Wallace Hilke, who helped lead Riley’s case from the Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

While it would be quite easy to see the restitution as an “all good” ending to this story, the article unfortunately then goes on to quote Minnewaska school district administrators who still can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that it isn’t their job to police students’ off-campus behavior. Chief amongst them is Greg Schmidt, Superintendent, who wasn’t in that position when the snooping occurred but did work on the settlement.

“Some people think schools go too far and I get that,” Schmidt said. “But we want to make kids aware that their actions outside school can be detrimental.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Schmidt, the general public doesn’t much care that he wants to teach kids all kinds of lessons about their personal lives. That isn’t a public school’s role, never has been, and never should be. Parents parent and schools…er, school? Regardless, getting involved in students’ private lives is a gross misstep. The student’s mother agrees.

“They never once told me they were going to bring her into the room and demand her Facebook password,” Sandra said. “I’m hoping schools kind of leave these things alone so parents can punish their own kids for things that happen off school grounds.”.

Hope? Hope!?! How about demand? While the new rules crafted by the district limit school’s from looking into social media exchanges unless there’s a “reasonable suspicion” they will find actions or speech that violates school rules, how quickly do you think we’ll hear a story about that leeway being abused? It’s high time for parents to insist that they be allowed to parent their own children and for schools to focus on teaching academics, rather than life lessons.

Filed Under: damages, parenting, schools, social media

DailyDirt: Good Parenting, Bad Parenting, Is There Really A Big Difference?

Ramblings

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Who can really say what effect parenting has on the development of a child? Presumably, the parents of Ted and David Kaczynski didn’t raise their sons in dramatically different ways, but these brothers ultimately live very different lives. It’s sometimes difficult to define what a good parent is, and it may seem like it’s easier to point out bad parents, but the distinctions may not be as clear-cut as everyone thinks. (Who is qualified to judge, anyway?) Here are just a few links on the topic of raising kids.

• Peter Lanza, Adam Lanza’s father, is now talking about his experience with his son before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Adam’s behavior, it may be that we don’t yet know how to predict or find the motives behind these mass murder events. [url]
• For some time now, there’s been a trend away from parenting with physical punishment. However, it looks like about 3 out of 4 parents yell/scream/shout at their kids at least once a month (and you gotta wonder what that 4th parent is doing, if not yelling). [url]
• If only parenting were as easy as this infographic makes it look. But maybe if everyone is more aware about what makes kids happy, we’ll all be happier somehow. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: adam lanza, child development, parenting, psychology, sandy hook tragedy, ted kaczynski

DailyDirt: Good Parenting

Studies

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Raising kids isn’t easy. Most parents want their kids to be successful, self-motivated, socially well-adjusted, smart, funny, artistic, good at sports, etc, etc…. But these kinds of parental requirements are enough to drive anyone a bit crazy — and it’s a bit unrealistic to think that parents have that much control over the personality and success of their kids. Still, parents want to try to provide the best opportunities for their children, but before parents out there try out the Tiger Mom method, check out a few of these links.

• Psychologists have found that praising kids by saying, “you worked so hard on that” instead of “you’re so good at that” makes for more self-motivated kids when they grow up. The researchers studied kids 1-3yo and followed up with the same kids when they were 7-8yo, and the kids who were encouraged for their efforts were more likely to tackle challenges and believe that their personal abilities could change and be developed. [url]
• A study of ‘Tiger Mom’ parenting suggests that the kids of these parents get lower grades and feel more alienated from their parents. Being a supportive parent seems to produce kids that are high achievers and at low risk for depression, but there are more than just a handful of parenting styles (eg. Permissive, Authoritative, Authoritarian, Negligent…), and the outcomes are not always well defined. [url]
• Overparenting is a popular parenting style that’s based on the good intentions of parents not wanting to see their kids unhappy. But with parenting, “if you can’t stand to see your child unhappy, you are in the wrong business.” [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: children, education, motivation, overparenting, parenting, praise, tiger mom

DailyDirt: Parenting With Technology

Computers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Recently, the LA school district has had some problems with its adoption of iPads into its classrooms. Kids will be kids, and some of them figured out how to use their school-issued iPads for unsanctioned activities like watching movies, playing games and wasting time on Facebook. Clearly, there’s a bit of a learning curve for using technology as an educational tool as educators try to figure out how to lock down the devices and keep kids focused on using them solely for school-related work. Many parents with young kids want to encourage their children to use all kinds of technology, but the advice and recommendations from various experts can be a bit conflicting or almost useless. Here are just a few links on kids and screen time.

• According to recent surveys, technology is not at the top of the list of concerns that parents have about their newborn to 8yo kids. Parents who have grown up using technology are flexible in their own adoption of technology as a parenting tool — and not all of them use iPads as toddler pacifiers/babysitters. [url]
• Some prestigious pre-schools are handing iPads to 18mo kids, but not every parent agrees that barely-potty-trained kids should be interacting with a touchscreen instead of other humans. Also, you don’t want to touch that iPad after a kid who’s not potty trained has used it. [url]
• Plenty of folks are discussing the effects of screen time on kids. Apparently, some are making a distinction between “active” and “passive” screen time — but it’s still not clear if educational apps are actually educational. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: babysitter, computers, education, ipads, kids, mental development, parenting, pre-school, school, screen time, tools, trend

DailyDirt: Children Are The Future, Engineer Them Well, & Let Them Lead The Way

Bleeding Edge

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The movie GATTACA came out back in 1997, but the technology to breed better people is just now starting to become more practical. We’ve been able (through in vitro fertilization) to select a desired baby gender for years, so selecting other traits doesn’t seem that far off — even though gene expression is a pretty complicated process. Here are just a few more projects that could lead to designing our kids’ genes with more fine tuning.

• Zhao Bowen heads up a genetic research project at BGI Shenzhen that aims to crack the genetic code for intelligence by sequencing the genes of thousands of intelligent people around the world. The project boldly claims that it could boost the IQ of unborn children by 20 points. [url]
• Genetic research is finding possible links between genetic markers and some forms of autism, suggesting that there could be genetic therapies in the future. Mapping genetic mutations to particular brain traits isn’t a simple task, but with more data, brain research has the potential to make significant changes to society. [url]
• Professor Julian Savulescu argues that screening babies for genetic defects is simply responsible parenting. The debate over designer babies is far from over…. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: autism, babies, children, designer babies, dna sequencing, eugenics, gattaca, gene therapy, genetic engineering, intelligence, iq, julian savulescu, parenting, zhao bowen
Companies: bgi shenzhen

DailyDirt: Parenting Tips

Studies

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Parents apparently have no idea how to raise children. Parenting is tough, but no worries, there’s always the unsolicited advice from family and strangers about what they think is best for children, and there are tons of parenting books available that may or may not help. There’s also no shortage of contradictory studies out there that just leave parents utterly confused. Here are just a few recent findings on what’s supposedly good or bad for kids. Remember correlation isn’t causation, etc, etc.

• Young children need regular bedtimes, otherwise it can have a negative effect on their cognitive development. Kids who had irregular bedtimes at the age of 3 — a crucial age for mental development — scored lower on reading, math, and spatial awareness tests. [url]
• Kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can forget about using ADHD drugs to help them do better in school. More and more studies are finding that taking “cognitive enhancers” like Ritalin and Adderall really doesn’t make a difference in the long run for kids with ADHD. [url]
• Over-parenting is creating a generation of passive, disconnected, depressed, and anxious kids. These kids fail to find a “sense of self” and can’t cope with the real world because their well-meaning but misguided parents have been unnecessarily intervening in their lives, doing everything for them. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: adhd, advice, bedtime, cognitive development, correlation, education, helicopter parents, kids, learning, over-parenting, parenting, test scores

Dad Hires Digital Assassins To Murder His Son (Digitally)

Too Much Free Time

from the awwwwwww dept

While the overwhelming evidence continues to show that video games aren't responsible for turning children or adults into little murder monsters, that doesn't mean there are no negatives to gaming. I don't have children, but I imagine some parents can find it a pain to get their kids to take care of their responsibilities when all they want to do is play games. The question is what do you do about it?

Well, according to one dad in China, you murder the s%@$ out of you kid over and over and over again. Digitally, that is.

Frustrated by his adult son's incessant gaming habit, a man in China reportedly hired a number of in-game master “hitmen” to annihilate his son's avatar over and over again in an attempt to deter him from playing.

Quoting China's Sanqin Daily, Kotaku reports that the fed-up father, identified only as “Mr. Feng,” decided to embark on this cyber murder plot as his son seemed incapable of pulling himself away from the computer long enough to find a job.

I have to admit, I love this guy. Your kid likes to play games too much? Hire a bunch of better gamers to make his gaming life a digital nightmare. I imagine if the kid wouldn't stop playing basketball, Dad would get LeBron James on the phone and hire him to shadow the young man and block every shot he attempted.

Regardless, I think we may have to tip our hat to this guy. It would have been quite easy for him to blame the games, call it an addiction, or do any number of things to abdicate his responsibility as a parent. But no, Mr. Feng scrapped some money together and paid people to digitally shoot his son. That is parenting, people.

Filed Under: china, parenting, video games

Should Schools Be Involved In Disciplining Students For Off-Campus Bullying?

Culture

from the cyber-or-otherwise dept

The NY Times is running a long article looking at one of the favorite moral panics of the day: cyberbullying. The specific article questions how schools should be dealing with the issue, especially when it comes to activity that takes place entirely off-campus. The article actually focuses a lot of attention on the middle school principal we wrote about a couple months ago who sent a long email to parents telling them to ban all social networking from their kids — effectively taking the “head in sand” approach to dealing with these issues. To be fair, in this article, that principal comes off as a lot more reasonable, initially telling angry parents that off-campus activity really is outside of the domain of what the school should be involved in.

In reading through the article, though, part of what struck me is that it seems like some parents are simply trying to get the school to act because they’re unwilling to act themselves. Take, for example, this exchange towards the beginning of the article:

Punish him, insisted the parents.

“I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’ ” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.”

Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked.

Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together.

What about the police, Mr. Orsini asked.

A criminal investigation would be protracted, the parents had decided, its outcome uncertain. They wanted immediate action.

In other words, there were plenty of paths that the family could have taken, but they didn’t want to actually do anything. They wanted the school to act as parents for the kid because they were unwilling to do so. That’s not to say these things don’t create difficult situations, but it seems like a weak solution when parents just punt the issue and demand that schools handle it. And, of course, the article also highlights cases where parents also get (reasonably) upset when schools punish their kids for off-campus activity.

It’s no secret that kids can and will be mean. And with modern communication technology it’s easier for kids to be mean directly more often and in much more public ways. That’s a challenge, to be sure, but asking schools to handle those issues doesn’t seem like an effective or an efficient solution.

Filed Under: bullying, parenting, schools

Who Needs Parenting When Your ISP Uses The British Film Classification System?

Culture

from the protection-from-all-evil-for-just-twenty-pounds-a-month dept

A UK ISP has teamed up with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to create a new parental control and filtering system that’s based on the same classification system being used by the UK film industry. UK Wireless ISP Tibboh uses internet filter technology created by Netsweeper to classify websites under the BBFC’s rating system (U, PG, 12, 15 or 18). Facebook and Twitter are given a “12” rating (only suitable for those over twelve), Blogger and WordPress sites are given a “15” rating, while major news outlets are given a “U” certificate (suitable for everyone). The idea seems like a fusion of a bunch of ineffective and bad ideas. It’s based on Internet filters that, of course, will block some useful content, but which kids will be able to bypass anyway. The filter system adds a new wrinkle by pretending it’s possible to assign a valuable age restriction metric to information delivery platforms — as if your kid couldn’t possibly run into something foul via Twitter, in a blog, or in the news. The service provides the illusion of safety to people who’d rather pay twenty Pounds a month than pay attention to what their kids are doing — or talk to them face to face about smart technology use.

Filed Under: movies, parenting, united kingdom