Teen charged with threatening school official via MySpace Blog

I have some thoughts on school discipline. It's too bad that people
seem to have a "zero tolerance" "all or nothing" attitude about everything.

When I was in High School, some of us decided to bring toy guns to
school to stage a mock battle "to protest against war".
After we had our fun, I was walking down the hall with my gun,
the vice principal came up and said "whatcha got?"
I showed him my water gun. He took it, put it in his pocket
and walked away. "But.. my gun?", I whined. "Run along, you'll be
late for class", he said.

In those days, the doctrine was "in loco parentis". The teachers were
proxies for parents, and acted with parental authority. If they wanted
to search your locker for dope, they didn't need a warrant.
On the other hand, they would not feel obligated to involve
law enforcement, because it was not a public matter.
They would flush your dope and call your parents.

They need to get law enforcement out of the schools, and give broad
disciplinary discretion to the school. Teachers, kids and parents
need to fight it out without cops or lawyers. If they can't agree,
then god help us.
:cool:

Quote:

---

In those days, the doctrine was "in loco parentis". The teachers were
proxies for parents, and acted with parental authority. If they wanted
to search your locker for dope, they didn't need a warrant.
On the other hand, they would not feel obligated to involve
law enforcement, because it was not a public matter.
They would flush your dope and call your parents.

---

Funny how things get turned around, time was a healthy fear of the principal/headmaster usually kept things in check, as they would have the "parents" blessing to get tough if you have to, then along came the liberal 60's and while young adults were getting turned on and tuning out, the system started to change, they accused teachers of being too authoratarian, started to take corporal punishment (cane/strap) out of the schools, started to allow students more liberties/freedoms, all is good, soon parents saw teachers as a way to babysit their offspring, soon all is bad, nil supervision from all parties, teachers are afraid of litigation, won't interfere with a students home life wether that kid is obviously being abused at home or other problems, time was a teacher could tell these things, maybe even alert the authorities, or bring both parents in for a meeting with the principal, and we know as adults nobody likes that meeting... :rolleyes:

the schools want to control mentionof "illegal or inappropriate" activities? There's problems with both of these. Any stupid kid can say, when questioned by his school, "oh no I didn't actually do that graffiti or those drugs or steal thta loaf of bread", and the fact is the schools do not have the resources to spend hours upon hours proving the student did. Once it's been denied it's simply in the realm of "inappropriate", as it is then a lie.

An schools simply can't control inappropriate stuff online. They can't punish a student for use of bad language (pretty petty on the scale of things) or random gossip. Eventually they'll figure out that their lives are a lot easieer if they keep their hands out of students extracurricular life.

it all comes down to the simple fact that if my principle doesn't like the fact that I enjoyed terminator 3: rise of the machines, there's nothing he can do about it.

the schools want to control mentionof "illegal or inappropriate" activities? There's problems with both of these. Any stupid kid can say, when questioned by his school, "oh no I didn't actually do that graffiti or those drugs or steal thta loaf of bread", and the fact is the schools do not have the resources to spend hours upon hours proving the student did. Once it's been denied it's simply in the realm of "inappropriate", as it is then a lie.

An schools simply can't control inappropriate stuff online. They can't punish a student for use of bad language (pretty petty on the scale of things) or random gossip. Eventually they'll figure out that their lives are a lot easieer if they keep their hands out of students extracurricular life.

it all comes down to the simple fact that if my principle doesn't like the fact that I enjoyed terminator 3: rise of the machines, there's nothing he can do about it.

Then again, it's not a good idea to be disrespectful of your superiors too much when online. Many employees have lost their jobs because of their blog postings. If kids are always direspectful online they'll learn their lesson the hard way eventually. The schools can't hope for more than that.