When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Catholic school principal.
It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta, NJ will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.
Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.
While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, this order reaches into students' homes.
The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.
Is this for their own good? Or a violation of free speech?
Asbury Park Press
1 comment:
It is the parents job to teach children how to act on line, not the schools. The school is in the wrong IMO. I see no problem with children having blogs, but the parents should teach the children how to keep key info off of the web.
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