Tim from Assorted Stuff linked to this article about the school division in Illinois that has threatened to discipline students for things they publish to the Internet even outside of school hours. It is their way, they claim, to protect the students from themselves. So, students who post pictures of themselves smoking, drinking, or engaging in leud behavior may find themselves with detention or suspended from school. After all, more and more colleges, according to the school division, are investigating students on the web and this poor behavior could influence the rest of their lives. The article ends, “Better to think twice, then, about dancing naked on the bar after the prom ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù somebody out there may not see it as all that funny.”

I don’t disagree with that sentiment; after all, I always talk to my pre-service teachers about how to use blogs appropriately by using pseudonyms or otherwise masking their identity as well as the identities of those they are writing about. Their blog entries aren’t as much personal diary entries as they are journals of their journeys that may be useful to others who are considering education or also pursuing their degrees. So, by all means, we need to sit the kids down and have a long talk about what’s appropriate and what’s not and why. But, at some point, they have to decide what they are going to do. And, since it happens outside of the school day and isn’t published on school servers, it is none of the school’s business. They might, to be helpful, bring particularly bad sites to the attention of a student’s parents, but that’s it. We are trying to bolt 20th century ideas onto 21st century media, and it just doesn’t work. The school’s role is education, education, and more education, helping kids become savvy internet users who benefit from the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff. Let’s help them work to make good decisions, which certainly includes pointing out what we think might be bad decisions.