Thursday, February 05, 2009

Discipline and Disrespect At School

I'm a proponent of student free speech. I don't think schools can or should attempt to deal with off-campus (or outside-of-school-activities) activities of students. So usually, I'd support a law like this:

A state lawmaker is proposing legislation that would bar schools from punishing students for their electronic insults, even if they write them on class computers during school hours.

It's that last clause that's a show-stopper for me. Can students be sanctioned for verbal disrespect to a teacher, but be allowed to type the same disrespect--on school equipment--and get off scot free?

The lawmaker who's proposing this law is an idiot.

To me the situation is extremely clear--what kids say and do outside of school is their own business and, with very few exceptions, cannot be dealt with by school authority. What they say and do at school can be regulated by school authority.

Is that such an unreasonable position?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No, it isn´t if you are, like me, a fan of simplicity and fairness. But our stand today is, in this new world, a singularity. The old world was one of tents, campfires, hunting, fishing, farming and fair, simple deals with daily burdens galore, but the new world after Orwell is one created for the lawyer, manager or politician, which simply turns the new burdens to reckon with to pure paperwork and rhetoric bull, created and changed almost daily through computers.