Inappropriate Behaviour

To my mind, adults here are acting inappropriately, putting a mental straightjacket on students who wish to participate in any school activities. AP here. Sun Times here. Tribune:

In a move that has drawn national attention to this Lake County school district, the Community High School District 128 board unanimously passed rules changes Monday night that will hold students accountable for what they post on blogs and social-networking Web sites.

For Libertyville and Vernon Hills High Schools, the changes will mean that all students participating in extracurricular activities, including athletic teams, fine arts groups and school clubs, will have to sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Of course illegal activity of any kind in or outside of school is fair game for disciplinary action, but this is a blanket ban gone too far. The school thought police are out of control here. Who is to decide what is inappropriate? As one parent said, it's an invasion of privacy:

Lake Bluff resident Mary Greenberg, the only person to speak during the public comment period, told officials that the district is overstepping its bounds.

As parents, "we have to watch what they're doing," said Greenberg, who has a son at Libertyville High. "I don't think they need to police what students are doing online. That's my job."

This sounds like a healthy approach, doesn't it?

District officials will not regularly surf students' sites for rules violations, officials said. But they will monitor them if they get some indication--specifically, a tip from another student, a parent or a community member--pointing them in that direction.

School administrators would treat incriminating information found on the Web the same as they would any other evidence of wrongdoing, as pieces of a larger investigation into the offending behavior.

So we can assume then, that the district would be equally open to letting a parent question the curriculum or behavior of a teacher or administrator engaged in inappropriate behaviour or the advocacy of it in the classroom?

Just yesterday in the Sun Times there was a story about a school board member in Arlington Heights who during a routine review of assigned books in the curriculum questioned some that graphically discussed teen sex and drug abuse:

"We talk about the steady diet of trans fat and sugar, and we know the result is obesity and diabetes. But what are we feeding the minds of our students? They're getting a steady diet of foul language, violence and sexuality outside the classroom by the media. But when it comes to the classroom, isn't there something of a higher level to feed the minds of our children?" Pinney asked.

I remember at a PTA presidents' meeting, one of the elementary school principals raised the subject that too many parents were letting their children watch South Park, thinking it was just an innocent cartoon. While she had a point, at the time the district was allowing teachers to show R-rated movies for "educational purposes" during class time, and the middle school librarian to distribute the American Library Association's cheerful little pamphlet on banned books, which prominently featured the Joy of Sex and books about gang rapes of 10 year olds.

And then there was the middle school principal who decided to undergo a sex change over the summer and come back in the fall. Not to mention the Wilmette District #39 teacher who was recently arrested and convicted for having child pornography on his computer, featuring children the age of those he was teaching. Yes, he was fired.

Perhaps our schools are a little too agenda-driven in their quest to desensitize our children to sex, to "open their minds".

Some would say the books teachers assign in school have no relationship to this kind of behaviour.

There is legitimate concern about sites like MySpace being used by sexual predators to target children.

But what if it's your own teacher?

And too often the books assigned are rated by their political correctness, not their literary or scholarly merit, resulting in a lot of second rate fiction and in advocacy books.

Maybe parents will finally wake up and realize that the public schools do not always have their child's best interests at heart, not to mention respect for parents.

A proper discussion of inappropriate behaviour could include more accountability by schools, including whether more focus could be put on actual learning. More biology and calculus, less birds and the bees.

UPDATE: Plainfield School District threatens to expel student over rude remarks on his blog. For once the ACLU is on the right side. Sun Times here. The school is wrong.