Online Headaches for Educators

Aired Monday, December 4, 2006

By Jennifer Wing

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Anchor Lead: Texting on cell phones and saying outrageous things on websites like Myspace have replaced passing notes and talking on the phone for teenagers. Even though students are doing this outside of school, hurtful things that are written can cause trouble in the classroom. In the latest Learning Curve, we look at how new technology is taking rumors and bullying to a new level. KPLU's Jennifer Wing reports.

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Fred is 14 years old. He's smart kid, with a really great sense of humor. For most of the day he's been in class at Seattle's Garfield High School… a place that happens to ban one of his most favorite websites. So shortly after he walks through the front door of his house, he has a bite to eat and then jumps online to his own personal page on Myspace.com

Usually if I'm not doing something I check it every ten minutes or so.

In case you haven't heard, more than 60 percent of teenagers in the US have personal websites and the most popular place where this is done is on Myspace. Myspace members can blog, post pictures, share music and check out their list of friends and their websites, and their friends', friends Myspace pages. And, as Fred knows all to well, once you get going, it's hard to stop.

It's pretty addictive. It's kind of like a chat fest. They'll say something and you'll say something back and it never really ends so you just keep on doing it.

Fred has only been on Myspace for a few months, and for the most part, Fred finds it to be a pretty wholesome, virtual hangout.

Myspace technically is a G environment. There's no nudity, there's no obscene pictures allowed, you'll get banned.

That's not how middle school principal John Halfaker sees it. If Halfaker had to give the website a rating it would be an "R".

I see stuff that makes the hair on my neck go up.

Halfaker is the principal of Washington Middle school in Seattle's Central Area. Most of his students are between the ages of 11 and 14. Yet what he sees on their Myspace pages seems ripped from the biography of some burnt out Hollywood star.

Posting of sexual exploits, posting of drug and alcohol exploits. Just flat out mean rude, nasty crude stuff that's said about others or about themselves. I have to hope that it's fictional. That it's just, in a sense, creating a separate identity.

Nancy Willard, a lawyer in Eugene, Oregon, advises people like Halfaker on how to navigate through this uncharted territory. She says schools are too focused on protecting students from creepy grownups online. Willard has analyzed data from a study focused on online predators. But after looking at the numbers, she says the real problem is students going after each other.

Two thirds of those communications came from other teens. And teens never sexually harass each other right? So I think what that survey was picking up was typical, but unfortunate teen propositioning, NOT online sexual predation.

Harassment, mean jabs and rumors spread online from home often continue in the classrooms and hallways of school. The mess has to be cleaned up in the principal's office. Kids are often suspended or sometimes even expelled. John Halfaker says it's not always clear when schools can intervene. That legal line is very gray. There is no code out there for dealing with these kinds of things. It's not in a manual anywhere. It's not there.

After all students have free speech too, up to a point. Schools can limit expression if it disrupts the learning environment and takes the right to learn, away from others. But now that the problems are being generated off campus on websites like Myspace, and coming into the classroom is a dilemma the courts are struggling with. How much control should schools have over what students do outside the building? Anita Ramasatry, an associate law professor at The University of Washington, says in some cases, courts have sided with school districts, and in others, the student.

We had a student with a web page that was creating a fake obituary of a student classmate. And the court in that case said, off campus, it's not a school computer, so the student has first amendment rights to create such a parody site and we're going to protect him.

Free speech is one thing, making criminal threats and breaking defamation laws is another. Students have to remember they, and their parents can be held liable for what's created online.

You have cases where you have students showing pictures of decapitated teachers where their heads are cut off. And whether or not its real and asking for 20 dollar donations, to hire a hit man to actually take out a principal. When you see things like that, whether it's a teacher or a student, a school district is going to say hey wait a minute, we have to draw a line.

Ramasastry adds that even if students aren't pushing those limits, they might want to step back a little and take a second look at the image they're putting out there of themselves. The information is in the digital ether indefinitely, where it can be looked at again and again and again. What you write as a 15 year old you may not be as proud of when you are 30 looking for a new job, or running for office. JW 88.5 KPLU

The learning curve is an education reporting partnership between KPLU ans KCTS Public Television.