Monday, April 14, 2008

Teen Beating

The March 30th attack on a 16 year old Florida girl by 6 other teens has sparked controversy over popular file sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace.

I firmly believe those involved should be treated as adults and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I fear that good intentions to prevent this from happening again will lead to knee jerk legislation prohibiting the free exchange of information over the web.

We as teachers, should focus on education not regulation. Only when social norms dictate online bullying is intolerable will these type of shock videos cease to be produced.

Does your school have a policy for online bullying? Is a clear message being communicated to the entire faculty and then disseminated to the student population?

If not, let's do what we do best...teach.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well stated. laws and rules are not even a band aid on the cut. They are parental/teacher short cuts that don't work.

The message to send out is one of no tolerence from their PEERS.