I was thinking about our discussion on Monday about Little Brother and how schools do use technology to spy on their students and take it to the extremes. The whole web cam thing that Mr. Bevill mentioned is beyond anything I have ever heard, and that is by far the most disturbing and worst story I have ever heard dealing with this subject. It really bothers me how schools do get away with some smaller acts of invading their students' privacy.
When I was in middle school in the seventh grade, we got a new principle. She had a reputation for being very strict, and she certainly lived up to that reputation. We had a bullying problem at the time, so the principle decided to take the consequences to another level if you were caught bullying someone else. However, it affected more than just the people involved in bullying situations. If you had your phone taken up at all during school, the principle would read all of your text messages, sent and received, whether they were sent during school hours or not. I think this is absolutely ridiculous and that the school has no right to read your texts. I guess they should be allowed to take up phones if they are being used during school hours, but they should not be allowed to go through the students' phones at all. I believe it is against the students' constitutional rights, and the school has no business going through their students' phones and invading their privacy like that.
Wow. I am surprised that your school actually did this. How did the situation end? I can only imagine the responses from students and others. I feel that the decision is pointless and just angers people. If students know that if there phone is taken up their texts will be read they will just delete their texts as they send and receive them. Also it seems as if it is almost just an empty threat. If they read a text message that think means your "bullying" what can they do? It would be so rare for the context to be clear enough that they could actually punish a student. Also it seems as if it would take too long. students could question why their principle in seeing his school has a problem would find it acceptable to waste that much time reading through that many text messages. It seems the principle should be busier than that.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing the students could do to make a statement is send ridiculous amounts of text messages about privacy and the constitution etc. and purposely get a large amount of students phones taken up.
Again very interesting situation I would love to hear more about it.
Thats crazy that the school would go through all the text messages when confiscated. What an invasion! You are right, they have no business doing that unless said person is endangering someone else...
ReplyDeleteI can not believe that happened!! This is totally an invasion of privacy for the student. It is very reasonable for schools to collect phones if they are becoming a distraction, but there is no way to justify them reading the texts. I'm planning on being a teacher and clearly the teachers want their students to be safe, but I would not feel comfortable reading through students texts.
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