But a felony charge? Jail time? Ridiculous. I suppose that in this day and age, if a couple of teens uncover Dad’s hidden Playboy magazines in the store house in the back yard, that Dad will be facing jail time, too…

When did our society lose its common sense?

Internet filters easily reduce the responsibility of the supervising adults – ‘I don’t need to watch what they are doing, there’s a filter’.

The school should be charged – the kids should be reprimanded, perhaps they should be made to show their parents what they were looking at. But a felony charge?

porno and especially the crap featured on the internet is nothing more than vicious attacks against females….dehumanizing…demeaning…disturbing…..

.

charge them…..and the supposed adults that permitted the liddle boys to have computer time that was not supervised….

Hall Monitor
http://detentionslip.org

Many years ago, one of my students managed to get around the filters and printed out a photo of a very large naked woman, which he then proceded to tape to his pant leg. Not achieving quite all the attention he was after, he found a reason to go to the front of my room and wave his thigh around so everyone could enjoy.

I believe he was suspended for a few days and told to apologize to me personally for bringing pornography into my classroom. Perfectly appropriate for the situation, which was far more about being a goofy 16-year-old boy than anything else. I think the current consequence is suspending internet privs for the rest of the year and a few days of ISS.

(I was shocked, shocked, I tell you by the photo and scolded and huffed in class — I’m still laughing about it.)

I’d rather a double suspension than a felony conviction. Dunno, that’s just me, I guess.

Also, assuming that children will disobey any rule one makes does not lead to better discipline. I’d love to see a school which thinks about its rules, chooses the rules it needs, and then enforces those rules. Oh, and if rules are continually broken, looks into the expectations and procedures which the school put into place which make it difficult for schoolchildren to obey the rules.

Our school makes many rules, but enforces few, usually for people whom they don’t like. This is not a healthy atmosphere.

To return to the looming felony charge, I have yet to see anything, or read of anything, in educational opportunities available online, which make it worth the risk. If schools are making a habit of turning such incidents over to police and prosecutors to handle, then it’s just not worth it. Children are young monkeys. They are curious, and they will try to get around any system you set up. If they find anything interesting, they’ll show their buddies. If it’s useful to torment peers, they’ll try that. It’s in our nature to be curious and experiment, especially when young.

I have no faith in the justice system to use good judgement. Quite often, judges feel that they have little leeway under the law. The laws dealing with child pornography and abuse of minors can be draconian in their provisions. Prosecutors run for office, which means that they don’t want to be charge with being “soft on crime.” If such a case gets to the police, you’ve already lost time and money, and you’re very close to lifelong consequences for a child. I also do not agree with the common perception that mandated counseling is always helpful, or at least harmless. I like the internet, but the risk of such prosecutions is just too great.

The reporting laws tend to be a bit vague with regard to what has to be reported–workshops I attended stressed that it is not up to the adult who is aware of, or suspects, behavior to determine if abuse is actually occuring. Calling police sets in motion a chain of events that ends up with charges and going to court, etc. I wonder if the same is necessarily true if the report were made instead to the local Children’s Services organization. In my experience they are able to not only meet the reporting requirements, but also separate out kid on kid kinds of offenses as being a legitimate area for the adults involved (ie: school and parents) to handle.

Despite understanding some of the reasons why the adults are behaving in such a manner, I still have problems with it, and find it to be also symptomatic of a larger inability of schools to know how to deal with the things that fall into the category of “discipline.” Whether there is some dim belief that referral to another system is a way to get a kid some help (woefully untrue–juvenile justice has nowhere near the resources found within a school system), or an elitist belief that such things are beneath educators to have to deal with, or just simple ignorance and inability to respond based on knowledge of kids’ development, it seems as though more stuff is ending up being tossed out for police and judges to deal with. It worries me. When there are no means of responding to small problems, they tend to get much bigger.