School administrations should have less power than they have now, rather than more. If you let them be responsible for kids' actions outside of school, nothing good will come of it. They're not competent to take on that job.
- A student is being bullied. This bullying is happening using social media and or text messages. These messages are being sent at various times pseudo-anonymously but there's strong reason to know who it is.
Who, exactly, is the authority who we expect to look into this? Is it the police? Using what law/powers? Are social workers empowered? We're clearly not ok with the school doing it.
So is bullying that happens outside of school hours just a free-for-all? I'm genuinely asking. It is fine if everyone agrees that schools shouldn't and that it is authoritarian to do so, but then who exactly is the authority? If police are, then when the police slap handcuffs on a K-12 kid, everyone loses their mind about that too and asks "why is this a police matter?!" "Why are we criminalizing young people?!"
I'm not saying I have all the answers: Because I absolutely do not. But I am saying people need to think about the bigger picture about how this works and who is responsible for what.
The case was about one of the expelled students, their family lawyer arguing that they shouldn't have this incident on their student record because it occurred outside of school. I can't remember if they won the case or not, but the issue is complicated. When there is an issue between two students who only know each other from school, it can become a school issue whether it originated there or not.
I think the alternatives should be criminal record or student record.
"The only reason you know most of the people you did this to is... drum roll... because you are at the same school"
Parents, typically?
Police once it becomes harassment or assault (or threat of).
So if the issue is outside school, then the school is not the authority.
Is it bullying as in being mean or is it threats of violence? One of those is a crime that you can bring to police, the other is why you have a block button.
Pure cyberbullying can be pretty bad, but it's even worse when they're in your school, and you're forced to interact with them in that regard... and they can mess with you with no oversight outside school (and deniably).
For the most part, schools would rather not try and adjudicate things that happen outside school. But the reasonable interpretation of events between students, and the most reliable remedies, can be very different based on context from outside school.
Courts have held that schools have a lower threshold to justify a search, due to the need to maintain a safe environment that is conducive to learning.
Schools don't really want to be involved in the outside-school life of their students. But what happens on phones, etc, between students outside school hours absolutely affects the learning environment and how events at school should be interpreted.
Maybe schools should mind their own business instead of becoming totalitarian states that use permissive precedents to dig into everyone’s business.
If they want to play a foolish game, play it right back and watch them falter. My father had lots of fun doing this when I was in school, as most admin-level people don't know what truly is legal and what is not.
Here's a nice summary:
Maybe if we wanted people to believe that the political system of this country made sense and was worth protecting, we would structure our education system to reflect its alleged values.
The author points out that in different words that if the school is worried about bullying, etc, then the appropriate response is to protect first, not work out who to punish first.
Trying to come up with fake guis and hiding stuff is not how this sort of issue should be approached. The issue needs to be squashed, and firmly, so that it doesn't occur in the first place. Prevention is better than cure, or in the case of a fake gui, less than half a cure.
The word "privacy" does not appear in the Constitution - you have no explicit right to privacy in the US
At the end the only way to win this cat & mouse game is to stand your ground before it starts.
But it's simpler to let the police handle the problem and determine whether it's harassment, or if it's a case of crybullying.
A school's not going to be able to stop bullying. But with message tracking devices in everyone's hand and cameras everywhere, the SCHOOL's problems are solvable without having to go into childrens' phones.
Unless the school is paying for your kid's phone and plan, they should have exactly zero say in how it's set up.
In this hypothetical scheme (described above), a child complaining about anonymous abusive messages is ignored by the school. School's not responsible, because the child's phone is set up improperly. If phone were in order, phone would not receive anonymous messages.
A child receiving a traceable abusive message is quickly resolved, and presumably this kind of abuse is rare, for obvious reasons.
Everyone is happy. The school's happy because, under this scheme, they have virtually no work to do in connection with online harassment. The police are happy because fewer harassment cases are being opened (this is true only if most kids set their phone as instructed by the school). Kids are slightly less miserable because online bullying has been made more difficult to pull off.
Finally, sticklers like the parent are happy because they can continue to set up their phone "wrong" and receive anonymous abuse. Which the school won't look into and will presumably pass off to the police.
Kids reading this, don't give them a confession, police or school admins, take the 5th.
Don't Talk to the Police - https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE They want to take your money or put you in a cage.
The two fully-grown adults who ran the security office were former police; judging by the 20+ department badges proudly displayed on their back wall, it looks like they'd been kicked out of every department. One wonders why!
I'm tired of Americans comparing anything bad to their geopolitical enemies, especially when Putin was backed by the CIA and MI6 as a useful wedge against communism. You don't get to fuck up the entire world with aggressive state interventions and then act like you're some bastion of democracy. Ask a Chilean what they think about US democracy. Or really anyone for that matter.
The government that most affects Americans day to day life are their state governments, many of which even allow for direct referendums.. of which the US has had thousands of. They are happening all the time, although they are usually local in interest and you usually won’t see them in our national news… unless they are particularly noteworthy:
Maybe you might remember the recent news of the Kansas referendum on abortion? Can’t get any more democratic than that.
(And by the way, several US states approved women’s suffrage before any country did.)
- 51% of people can do wrong against the other 49%.
- 51% of people can do wrong against themselves by making an uninformed decision.
- Tomorrow the 51% become the 49% and vice versa. If unchecked power was given to whoever was currently 51%, it would spell whiplash and chaos.
So you structure the whole thing into smaller deliberative bodies where people (who are periodically selected by 51% majorities) have better information and means to strike good compromises that are unattainable through raw public opinion. A fuller and more appropriate name for this is "a democratic republic", for which "democracy" is used as a shorthand.
Some of these bodies have authority only over local areas, because you can make a more tailored decision when you have fewer things to deal with. Some of these local bodies, as another commenter noted, may conduct referendums to decide whether to make a law. Other bodies have authority over the whole land, but only over coarse-grained topics with only highly limited authority over the smaller local bodies.
And at the highest level, there is one body where people's very local representatives have a vote and another body where people's region-wide representatives have a vote, and these bodies must agree in order to do most things.
And you make one small body almost completely insulated from public opinion so that you can task it with protecting not just 49% from the whims of 51%, but protecting one individual person (yes, even a guilty criminal individual) against the rest of the government and against whatsoever the remaining 330 million people may think of this person.
And yes, the vote for the president is not a raw popular vote. There is a level of indirection through another body that often does, but may not, yield the same result as a popular vote would. But it does not logically follow that Americans do not vote for their president.
And you don't let the president make laws or rule on cases or send the country to war.
The guiding principle is not to let one person or one group of people have too much power. A majority of Americans having consensus on a given issue is one such group whose power is intentionally limited.
Could the whole thing be designed better than it is? Of course. Will people always screw it up no matter how well designed it is? Of course.
Living in the United States now, as oppressive as it can be, is still living in one of the freest societies that's ever existed in history. You may think I'm saying that because I'm ignorant, but no, I am fully aware of all the ways the US is awful towards minorities of every stripe, of the poverty, of the gun crime, problems with access to healthcare, etc etc etc. I made my original post to criticize the US education system. I know about all of that and the United States is still better to live in than most of the world.
It doesn't mean I wouldn't like it to be better, that I'm not worried about how things are changing, or that everything - or even most things - the US has done are good. But we need to talk about the reality of the situation and you're not.
When my point is "the US should live up to its ideals", arguing "the US will never live up to its ideals no matter what" or "well, other people in X country don't like the US" is just unhelpful.
You may be confusing democracy with electoral democracy.
Or in other words, no different than Western society in general post-March 2020.
>we would structure our education system to reflect its alleged values
By our revealed preferences, the education system is a perfect reflection of our values.
Um... no? You need to provide more justification for that statement. (And a vague not towards COVID precautions isn't gonna do it.)
Sometimes overlaps (probably often)
But bullying can also just be being a jerk, it doesn't always fall under harassment laws.
According to the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the People have the right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". That is an explicit legal right to privacy, even if it doesn't use the literal word "privacy" in the text.
I would actually wonder why, since from what I hear, what you describe is the standard tactic for police. It gets confessions, so they do it.
Imagine if the police requested, but technically didn't mandate, that parents install location tracking apps on their children's phones, and that they then ignored missing persons reports for anyone who didn't do so.
It's a good thing.
Student mental health is pretty bad these days. Part of it is that everything is so high stakes: society tells kids any little slip up-- academic or behavioral-- will affect them forever.
It's good that ordinary missteps can go away.
whether something happens inside or outside school should have no bearing on how it is treated. when it comes to messaging, a warrant should be needed either way.
This is true of most states, though the fact that your juvenile record was sealed and expunged may itself be a record.
Coursework in legal matters is part of educational leadership/administration programs and is a focus of professional development, in part because districts are incentivized to reduce litigation costs.
I share your apparent concern that districts, etc, screw up discipline often and unjust outcomes occur. However, doing nothing isn't an option, and I don't think punting more of school discipline to the police is likely to improve outcomes.
You'll find both administrators and SRO's abusing their powers, but I think the SRO potential for abuses are larger.
So has civil asset forfeiture but that doesn't actually make it constitutional.
When a agent of the government wants to search mine or the property of my child, I'm going to make them get a warrant every time. I have nothing to hide, but it's not worth the risk of something being misunderstood or misinterpreted and ending up with consequences from this fishing expedition. They can "particularly describe the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" along with their probable cause on the outset or not search at all. Terrorism isn't a sufficient reason to throw out the constitution, it's laughable to suggest name calling is.
My kid isn't old enough yet but stuff like this, monitoring software on laptop used for school (but purchased by parents) pushes me towards homeschooling.
Specifically in Mendoza vs Klein ISD (from the paper) we see that the continued search of the phone after confirmation of texting in class was ruled unconstitutional.
"My"
As in not the student.
MY phone.
Whether or not they have it is no excuse. It is MY device. MY rights have been firmly established.
I absolutely think it's relevant whether student A punched student B in the face at the park yesterday, when they're dealing with a dispute where student A seems to have done something that's in a grey area to student B. "Playful" jostling that student B doesn't appreciate is very different with the context of the prior punch in the face.
Of course, the problem schools face is that objective facts about what's happened between students-- in or out of school-- are frequently not known.
> Maybe schools should mind their own business instead of becoming totalitarian states that use permissive precedents to dig into everyone’s business.
Someone1234 posed some good questions above. I don't have all the answers.
I endured nearly a decade of terrible bullying because it was literally no one's business, though. Would not recommend.
That's right, but the solution is not to empower schools to operate their own investigation departments so that they can enforce their own laws on our children through a governance system best described as a Medieval lordship. There must be limits on their authority.
For children in abusive home environments, schools ought to refer these cases to the State. For children involved in bullying relationships, schools ought to refer these cases to the State. There are more adequate checks and balances on the actions of State than within the unelected fiat systems of governance in public schools. State and local governments can direct the appropriate responses of social workers and law enforcement. There is no rationale for protecting violent bullies from the law by adjudicating their behavior within the nonstandard and arbitrary discipline systems of schools.
Schools are not law enforcement and have powerful incentives to act capriciously to keep production moving: as you shared - they didn't look out for you and they didn't stop your bully.
The legal system is a really blunt tool to deal with things like this, and doesn't have the capacity to investigate problems like this either.
And we're pretty clearly not just talking about "violent" bullies, but often those with behavior that may be just barely on the side of legality. But not all legal behavior is (or should be) tolerated in a school community.
> There must be limits on their authority.
There are. The Fourth Amendment still applies, but courts have chosen a slightly more permissive standard for school administrators than police officers in view of in loco parentis and the needs of the school environment.
I think this is an interesting way the criticism was phrased about the electoral college. I mean, across world governments, it's pretty dang common for the executive of a government to not just be chosen by the populace.
The Electoral College does, in fact, always reflect the popular vote: The popular votes of each respective state.
Critics of the Electoral College fall flat and demonstrate their sheer ignorance because they keep trying to apply the nationwide popular vote when the election for President was never about that.
To explain in more detail for the uninitiated:
A state's Electoral College votes are determined by the state's popular vote, with the winner taking all (except for Oklahoma and Maine which split their EC votes proportionally).
The Electoral College itself is a facsimile of Congress: There are 538 electors because there are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, and an extra EC-only 2 Senators plus 1 Representative for Washington, D.C..
The Electoral College exists as a means to tally up each state's political will for President in a way that weighs each state's political power appropriately and keep Legislative influence out of an election concerning the Executive. Congress (aka the Legislative) only gets involved in the election if and only if the Electoral College fails to do its job.
Constructive criticism is always welcome, but there are reasons why things are done the way they are. The least anyone can do in the process of criticizing is first understand and respect what they are criticizing.
Define "appropriately" in the context of Wyoming and California.
Also explain what happens if only a single person votes for the same candidate in the 41 states and special districts wth the least EC representation,and 100% of the people in the remaining states vote for the other candidate.
The Electoral College is a hugely flawed mechanism both in terms of reflecting the will of the people vs the will of arbitrary land boundaries, and the actual division of "political power" due to forcing everything to round to the nearest integer and setting a (completely arbitrary) cap on the number of EC votes.
Appropriately as defined by the Constitution:
* Each state gets Representatives allocated to them according to population, with a minimum of 1 Representative, for proportional representation in the Lower House.
* Each state gets two Senators, for equal representation in the Upper House.
The number of Representatives used to increase on a semi-regular basis as population nationwide increased, but it has now been set to 435 Representatives due to physical constraints of fitting so many Representatives in one room.
The Senate currently has 100 seats to account for the 50 states currently in the union; the seats will increase or decrease anytime the number of states change.
Washington, D.C.'s presence in the Electoral College is a special case. D.C. does not have any representation in neither Houses of Congress because it is not a state, but the EC represents D.C. voters by allocating to it the equivalent number of Senators and Representatives as the smallest state in the union.
This means that, ironically to your arguments, the Electoral College is more representative than Congress because D.C. voters are represented.
>Also explain what happens if only a single person votes for the same candidate in the 41 states and special districts wth the least EC representation,and 100% of the people in the remaining states vote for the other candidate.
If the 41 states plus D.C. have more EC votes than the remaining 9 states, then the winner is whoever garnered those votes. Remember, the President is elected by and represents the states as a collective; the President does not represent the people directly, the people are represented directly by their state's Governor.
A nationwide popular vote removes power from the states, because it means one state's people can unilaterally override the people of another state. The USA is a federation of states, so that is simply not acceptable. Each state is sovereign and each state's will must be represented, so far the best compromise has been re-using Congressional seat appropriations which is something all states agree to work with.
>The Electoral College is a hugely flawed mechanism both in terms of reflecting the will of the people vs the will of arbitrary land boundaries, and the actual division of "political power" due to forcing everything to round to the nearest integer and setting a (completely arbitrary) cap on the number of EC votes.
The Electoral College reflects the will of the people of a given state, because remember: A state's EC votes are determined by the state's popular vote. Just because it doesn't reflect your will ("nationwide popular vote") does not make the Electoral College a "hugely flawed" system. In fact, with regards to working in a country comprising a federation of states, it works marvelously at bringing every state's opinions together.
Can a school have a policy about cyberbullying outside of school, and pursue a search in that case? This is untested.
As I said:
"The exact limits of a public school's authority to search mobile devices, to handle events that have partially occurred outside school, has not been established."
If the "speaking softly" isn't working, it's time for the stick.
My aunt had an exchange student in her care. At some point there was an altercation and a boy at school slapped the (female) exchange student.
School didn't want to do anything about it, was hemming and hawing.
So my aunt phoned the boys mother and explained the situation - and was met with a "well I can't do anything".
My aunt simply replied "Well I can have her at the police station this afternoon and file a report, with photos of her bruises. After that I'm going to call my lawyer."
Amazingly, the parent of the troublesome student suddenly found the ability to do something!
Speaking softly only works of you're willing to use the stick.
If I squint my eyes I can sort of see what you're getting at. But on the flip side, this aunt also called the parent to make sure their duty was done. So it would be hard to claim "discipline your child, please, else I will need to file a police report to stop your child's harassment" is extortion.
Then police.
In some regions, this is a bit unrealistic.
I grew up in a neighborhood where the bully's dad was the police captain. The bully would target brown kids and property of their parents (e.g. M80 down the chimney, among other atrocities). Everyone in town new the son acted with impunity. Kids our age knew it was worse: the dad actively encouraged his son, and gave him the M80s. No one would talk about it in public, less they be targeted as well.
I don't feel like semantic arguments. If an agent of the state engages in behavior that appellate courts have declared to be legal, you are unlikely to get redress by reporting this act to the police.
The school may be able to impose consequences for refusal to comply.
> Whether or not they have it is no excuse. It is MY device. MY rights have been firmly established.
If your student takes "your" backpack to school, and there's a reason to search it, the fact that it is "your" property will not affect things much.
This is a highly dubious legal theory. Fourth amendment decisions about search of property on one's person basically never have to do with actual ownership.
(There are some exceptions, but generally to the detriment of the rights of the person/property being searched).
But that isn't true for a mobile device that contains none-school contents. Eg, does a student bringing their phone to school mean that a school can search their financial records through their mobile banking app? Digital diary? Electronic health records?
The document that I have linked previously in this thread pretty clearly shows what circumstances have been judged appropriate to search from the outset, and where administrators have overstepped their bounds in continuing.
The specific case of social-media-outside-school-hours-but-relating-to-school is untested.
"• Assuming a search is justified, to avoid a constitutional violation, school officials must tailor the search to the specific circumstances that prompted the search. In other words, school officials cannot turn a justified search into a “fishing expedition” to discover evidence of wrongdoing. According to Mendoza v. Klein Independent School District (2011), “a continued search must be reasonable and related to the initial reason to search or to any additional ground uncovered during the initial search.”"
School officials can be representatives of the State in one moment and in loco parentis in the next. Operating as a chimera is not an appropriate or respectful way to deal with anyone, especially children. It's telling that the principal use case of in loco parentis is schools - maybe it's time for that to end universally as it ended in higher education.
You're not really proposing anything in its stead, though, as far as workable systems of schooling.
Schools owe it to their charges to make it a safe place for students to be and learn: after all, they're legally compelled to be there and most parents do not have other options. I believe understanding the totality of circumstances facing kids, including things that didn't happen at school, to the best of their ability, is necessary to make this work.
I suspect you might have some views that the student should "tough it out" or "solve the problem themselves". Adolescents do not have workable ways to deal with pseudo-anonymous abuse crossing over into environments they can't escape. Even adults would suffer badly under these pressures. Yes, the legal system is an option but it's not very accessible to students and not well-suited to address these kinds of problems.
I'm a teacher at a small idyllic private school. (view don't represent employer's). We have the benefit of a mostly supportive parental community and selective admissions. Today's era for youth is a less violent and more understanding one than when I grew up. Even so, the pressures and abuses from 24/7 engagement with peers through social media are huge. It's not surprising the outcomes overall in our society are trending bad.
It's unreasonable to request that I propose a workable alternative in this context.
> I suspect you might have some views that the student should "tough it out" or "solve the problem themselves".
That's not an accurate assumption.
I'm sorry, but I'll have to leave it there. I hope you have a good week this week.
A complaint that one thing is not good without sharing something more workable is troublesome. There's a bunch of other things people have said (students work it out; always involve the police; etc) that I don't think would work.
> I hope you have a good week this week.
Just frantically preparing a classroom here and thankful, that for the most part, these are issues I don't need to deal with.
You too.
> Everyone is accountable to someone. Escalate where needed.
Frankly, this isn't really true-- and shows our immense privilege that we can often act with this assumption and have it come true. Most people don't have this experience.
And especially a couple decades ago this was much less true for the type of circumstances we're discussing.
I take this to mean that you don't believe people are capable of understanding the system in which they live, nor advocating for systemic changes.
This said, I don't see how this tangent ties to addressing the fact that a community leader abuses their presumed power to protect a bullying child. Outside of doing nothing and letting bad behavior happen, one can address tears in the social contract through a variety of escalation approaches. But the key word is to act. I don't think any human system will protect you without your initiative.
I'm saying it takes enormous effort to escalate, and one's results in doing so are pretty closely tied to indicators of social class.
And then, there's litigation, which is expensive and out of reach of most. It's the only functional mechanism that prevents 55% of the population from oppressing some chunk.
edit: I misjudged which thread I was in, and had a bunch more of a reply here that isn't relevant.
For example, going to the press is an option.
A. Business owner discovers an employee has stolen property.
B. Business owner demands return of the property or the owner will notify police.
C. Employee pays, and business owner is charged with extortion or is found civilly liable for extortion.
No worries. I didn't see the response or anything.
When normal channels for escalation are prevented, abnormal channels with heavier consequences become cost-viable options. Reading through a history of Ireland's The Troubles is a reasonable place to consider without the baggage of most current political conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles