While acknowledging the dangers associated with this practice, the LA Times editorial board argued in a Jan. 2 article that parents, not schools, bear primary responsibility for curtailing this type of abuse:
We feel for the Beverly Hills eighth-grader who complained that she had been described as "spoiled," a "brat" and a "slut" in a YouTube video posted by a classmate. But sympathetic school officials went too far in suspending the girl who produced the video. Punishing the student for behavior outside the school was illegal, wrote U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, "without any evidence that such speech caused a substantial disruption of the school's activities." &
Public schools rightly prevent students from insulting one another in the classroom, where even verbal disputes can interfere with a lesson, or elsewhere on school grounds, where conflicts can undermine discipline and order. ...Still, educators should recognize the reasonable limits of their authority and confine their discipline to girls and boys who are mean to one another -- or to their principal -- at school.
Labels: cyber-bullying, abuse, harassment
Posted By: Aspen/CRC
