School District to Monitor Student Blogs

Wow, what an incredibly stupid idea. I see that the kneejerk stupid reactions to MySpace are continuing on schedule. Even if this was a good idea, don't schools have more important things to focus their resources on? Why do they think it's any of their business to punish kids for what they do outside of school?

"I don't think they need to police what students are doing online," [a parent]said. "That's my job."

Exactly. I'm all for parents monitoring what their kids do online, and I don't even have a problem if people at the school alert the parents if they come across something troubling, but there is no reason for a school to have any authority over what a kid does outside of school.

"The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," [Associate Superintendent Prentiss Lea ] said. "It is called the World Wide Web."

I actualy agree with this. I'll never understand why people post stuff online then expect it to be private. However, that's a completely different issue than whether the school should be able to punish kids for it.

And anyway, how the hell do you implement something like this? There's no way they can actively monitor (or even know about) every student's blog, which almost guarantees it will be enforced subjectively and unfairly. Anyway, this will just encourage the kids to be more secretive in what they post online. And if their names are not tied to the account, how can they be punished for it? They can always deny that it's them. And what if some kid is pissed at another kid, so throws up a fake page with that kid's name and a bunch of made up stuff on it? This is just ridiculous. Good luck trying to handle this mess, Community High School District 128.