sundries

[rm]

Apparently, the way to punish tweens for sexting is to threaten to charge them with child pornography and for them to take "re-education classes" on "what it means to be a girl." The boys who passed the photos around, of course, faced no consequences. Thank god for the ACLU.

Meanwhile, schools issued laptops to students and then used the computers to spy on their activities at home, ultimately punishing students for behavioral issues that transpired in their own houses. Thanks to regyt for alerting me to both this item and the one above.

More absurdity in the schools -- you have all heard by now about the 12-year-old handcuffed and escorted out by police for doodling on a desk?

You know, when I was a kid I had intensely overprotective parents. But at the same time, no one had a cell phone. No one had a laptop that was being used to spy on you and partof growing up was learning about lying -- how to get away with stuff ("I couldn't find a payphone.") and the very real consequences of lies when you got busted. Maybe less sneaky kids will make better business leaders. On the other hand, maybe less sneaky kids just produces a generation that expects to be policed into utter conformity. I don't know, but it sure does make me nervous (an aside: is Buffy the last teen-focused show that was a big hit where kids get away with stuff because everyone doesn't have a mobile?).

A small plane stolen from another airport was intentionally crashed into a building in Austin. What new, ineffective and possibly problematic restrictions will be imposed on general aviation as a result of this? Meanwhile we are told this was not a terrorist act (despite the fact that 199 IRS employees worked in the building and may have been the motive) because we all know Americans are never terrorists. Oklahoma City? What?

British broadcast admits on air to suffocating lover dying of AIDS with a pillow. He's subsequently been interviewed by police and released on bail. The whole thing is heart-breaking.

eumelia reports on two high profile rape-related news stories in Israel and the bill being proposed that allows anyone accused or rape to file counter-charges against the victim for provoking the rape. Yeah. Really.

Despite warnings, there is little evidence to suggest that location-based tweets have created a rise in burglaries.

Duane Reade has been sold and New Yorkers care. Mostly because we really, REALLY hate Duane Reade.

Comments

[kdsorceress.livejournal.com]

partof growing up was learning about lying -- how to get away with stuff

"My cell phone is out of batteries"

I know kids who would store formulae in their fancy graphing calculators, rather than memorizing them. I have trouble doing research online sometimes, because the useful information gets buried under a flood of papers-for-sale. When the school computers didn't allow the AIM program, people figured out and passed around the in-browser version.

Facebook is banned at every high school I've ever known. And at every high school I've ever known, kids have figured out how to get past that ban, and told each other. My sophomore year of high school, one of the actually computer-savvy seniors went ahead and hacked every computer in the library so that he could download firefox onto them.

My mom has friends who have grounded their kids because the kids were stupid enough to post about getting smashed in unlocked LJ posts. My favourite math teacher in high school came in one day and read aloud from a print-out of a students MySpace "I totally cheated on Mr. Smith's test". One of the girls in the drama club outed a (straight) boy and caused a total shitstorm that ended in the girl deleting her journal.

I am currently taking a computer course that I hate, but it's about how computers exist and teachers need to know how they work. We talk a lot about how to keep students off the websites that could get us fired, or arrested or worse.

Part of growing up is still learning how to lie, and how to get away with stuff. We just have to come up with more complex lies, and learn how to delete our browser history and set private our facebooks. I myself have livejournal filters that my mom's not on, and a secondary name for use on the internet when Sorcy hits too close to home. The state of childhood hasn't changed, just what tools we get to use.

~Sor