[Lorric]

Yet it's far easier than having the student's school hire a contractor to watch everyone and punish accordingly...

I don't think so. Plenty of parents don't care. Plenty of parents have no clue how these things work.

[Polpolion]

I don't think so. Plenty of parents don't care. Plenty of parents have no clue how these things work.

This is true, and also irrelevant.

[Lorric]

irrelevant.

No it's not.

[Polpolion]

irrelevant.

No it's not.

I do not think think people are more likely to know how maintain surveillance on a school district's worth of students across a battery of social networks than they are to know how to block and report people.

edit: Furthermore, the parents don't need to know anything about this. Basic internet usage (read: blocking people on social networks) could (and should) be part of your student's typical computer course.

[Lorric]

irrelevant.

No it's not.

I do not think think people are more likely to know how maintain surveillance on a school district's worth of students across a battery of social networks than they are to know how to block and report people.

Blocking and reporting alone won't solve the problem.

Even if you could make every kid understand, plenty would still engage with the bullies.

[Polpolion]

Blocking and reporting alone won't solve the problem.

Even if you could make every kid understand, plenty would still engage with the bullies.

And that's their prerogative. All schools should be expected to do to combat online bullying is 1) properly moderate whatever school network they host, and 2) teach kids that they don't need to engage with bullies and provide them the knowledge and ability to do so.

[Lorric]

Blocking and reporting alone won't solve the problem.

Even if you could make every kid understand, plenty would still engage with the bullies.

And that's their prerogative. All schools should be expected to do to combat online bullying is 1) properly moderate whatever school network they host, and 2) teach kids that they don't need to engage with bullies and provide them the knowledge and ability to do so.

Well I think you'd need to do a lot more than say "block and report." But prevention is always better than cure.

[Polpolion]

Well I think you'd need to do a lot more than say "block and report."

Obviously, but if you expect me to write up lesson plans I concede defeat right now.

But prevention is always better than cure.

So you'd advocate combating the problems that lead to bullying, and not spying on students in an effort to stem bullying? Good, that's all something that school should be tackling to begin with.

[Lorric]

Well I think you'd need to do a lot more than say "block and report."

Obviously, but if you expect me to write up lesson plans I concede defeat right now.

But prevention is always better than cure.

So you'd advocate combating the problems that lead to bullying, and not spying on students in an effort to stem bullying? Good, that's all something that school should be tackling to begin with.

The thing is I've never seen any kind of anti-bullying system on these lines. I've seen some isolated examples in single schools where they've somehow managed to get the kids to police themselves and deal with bullies themselves within schools, but these I'm sure require brilliant teachers. When you see the teachers talk, you can just see the passion they have for it, and that's unfortunately few and far between. Like I said earlier, the teachers didn't give a crap about bullying at my schools.

If you can get the kids to deal with the bullies themselves and give them the leeway to do it, that's the dream outcome imo. But at the same time, I don't think it's something you could create a system for to use in every school. The ones I saw where they did it, they gave certain responsibilities to certain kids, they became "buddies" that people could talk to who would help them, and an anti-bully mentality was instilled school-wide. The biggest obstacle to bullying is the "don't tell" culture that seems to exist in schools. Get rid of that and encourage everyone to go against the bullies and the bullies become the social outcasts, not their victims. But you need dedicated teachers to make a system like this work, to make the pupils believe in them and to choose the "buddies" correctly.

Cyber bullying, I've never seen a program of teaching the kids to deal with it before, which is why I wanted to know what you had in mind. Maybe it exists and I haven't seen it. But cyber bullying is still fairly new, and I get an impression people still don't really know how to deal with it. But get an effective prevention method going and I'll be behind it 100%. In the meantime, I'd rather see someone doing something than nothing.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Well I think you'd need to do a lot more than say "block and report."

Obviously, but if you expect me to write up lesson plans I concede defeat right now.

But prevention is always better than cure.

So you'd advocate combating the problems that lead to bullying, and not spying on students in an effort to stem bullying? Good, that's all something that school should be tackling to begin with.

The thing is I've never seen any kind of anti-bullying system on these lines. I've seen some isolated examples in single schools where they've somehow managed to get the kids to police themselves and deal with bullies themselves within schools, but these I'm sure require brilliant teachers. When you see the teachers talk, you can just see the passion they have for it, and that's unfortunately few and far between. Like I said earlier, the teachers didn't give a crap about bullying at my schools.

Here's the problem (IMO) with your reasoning: the quality of teaching is declining, because when you pay bananas, you get monkeys. This "solution" from the article is schools wasting MORE money on stupid garbage like shady third-party contractors instead of paying the teachers what they deserve and letting them do their jobs.

More education is the best answer. Funneling money away from that is not a good move.

EDIT: and no, giving schools more money is not the answer because the root of their problem is criminal mismanagement of funding.

[deathfun]

2) teach kids that they don't need to engage with bullies and provide them the knowledge and ability to do so.

I found that not engaging with the bullies is actually something that doesn't work. Threatening to shoot them however, does
Nobody bullies a crazy person

[Lorric]

Here's the problem (IMO) with your reasoning: the quality of teaching is declining, because when you pay bananas, you get monkeys. This "solution" from the article is schools wasting MORE money on stupid garbage like shady third-party contractors instead of paying the teachers what they deserve and letting them do their jobs.

More education is the best answer. Funneling money away from that is not a good move.

EDIT: and no, giving schools more money is not the answer because the root of their problem is criminal mismanagement of funding.

I am skeptical about whether a boost on teacher salary would boost teacher quality. Because you need so many teachers. I would have thought most of those who either take pleasure in teaching or are talented at teaching would already be in the profession, with a few diamonds sprinkled in among the rocks at public education, and the rest gravitating to higher paid teaching jobs in higher and private education and anywhere else where they can offer more money. Raise the wage in a particular school and they'll be able to increase the level of the staff they hire. But a country-wide boost to public school teacher salary? Where's the extra quality going to come from? It might inspire a few extra people to take up the job, but I don't think it would have a meaningful impact.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Here's the problem (IMO) with your reasoning: the quality of teaching is declining, because when you pay bananas, you get monkeys. This "solution" from the article is schools wasting MORE money on stupid garbage like shady third-party contractors instead of paying the teachers what they deserve and letting them do their jobs.

More education is the best answer. Funneling money away from that is not a good move.

EDIT: and no, giving schools more money is not the answer because the root of their problem is criminal mismanagement of funding.

I am skeptical about whether a boost on teacher salary would boost teacher quality. Because you need so many teachers. I would have thought most of those who either take pleasure in teaching or are talented at teaching would already be in the profession, with a few diamonds sprinkled in among the rocks at public education, and the rest gravitating to higher paid teaching jobs in higher and private education and anywhere else where they can offer more money. Raise the wage in a particular school and they'll be able to increase the level of the staff they hire. But a country-wide boost to public school teacher salary? Where's the extra quality going to come from? It might inspire a few extra people to take up the job, but I don't think it would have a meaningful impact.

I can guarantee that there is a significant number of people who would love to teach, and would be good at it, but cannot afford to because they need more money than teaching pays (and their skillset actually fetches that money, outside of a school environment).

[Lorric]

I wonder how you could ever know how many people there'd be and what impact they'd have.

What would be the best teacher salary vs. return on investment?

[Phantom Hoover]

I wonder how you could ever know how many people there'd be and what impact they'd have.

perhaps by having a broader experience and knowledge of life than a sheltered youth with no sense of perspective?

[MP-Ryan]

And once again you ignore the fact that we're dealing with children as young as 11 and not adults. Since when has any problem caused by children gone away completely by simply by having adults tell them what to do?  Expecting 11 year olds to act responsibly is a basic denial of what an 11 year old is. Sure the parent has to exercise some responsibility since their children can't, but expecting this problem to go away simply by telling children what they should and shouldn't do online is such a naive view of how parenting works that I'm amazed you can express it.

And that's if I even agree with you that you can't abuse even fairly innocuous sounding comments. Not to mention that you're also forgetting that you're also going to have to edit anything said before people knew their children would have their posts data mined. In the case of the older kids that's several years worth of posts that need to be edited or removed.

This isn't an issue that needs to be (or even can be) solved by the parents, except by getting themselves a less idiotic school board.

I was going to leave this be after the Lorric mess started, but after thinking about it for a while here I think it is worth responding to.  Not because I think what you've said is necessarily wrong, but because it seems to reflect a significant difference of opinion.

You seem to be operating on the premise that these are young kids and therefore require careful handling because they know not what they do online.  However, each and every single one of these social media sites have age of consent requirements, most of which are set at 13 (13 also happens to be 1 year after most democratic countries make kids criminally responsible for their actions).  With parental consent.

I realize you are arguing pragmatically here - kids, like it or not, do not do what their parents tell them to and will create social media accounts, and really shouldn't be monitored by their school and experience social consequences for it.  I, on the other hand, am arguing threefold:  (1) young kids aren't actually legally allowed to have social media accounts without parental consent, (2) anyone who posts online should be fully prepared to experience social consequences of it, and (3) the social consequences really shouldn't be all that dire due to the nature of the information.

From a practical standpoint, if parents are not going to properly monitor their children online or offline, their children are going to readily feel the consequences of any unmonitored behaviour that crosses boundaries, be they social or criminal.  Some people appear to think that consequences are right and just when these kids do stupid things offline, yet online behaviour should get a pass.  I disagree.  As I keep saying, anyone can collect this information this school board will be collecting it.  Their peers will actually be a lot BETTER at collecting and using this information against a poster than will adults.  The child is likely to experience more negative consequences from their posting behaviour at the hands of their peers than any school monitoring system.  All of which goes back to the point that if parents leave their kids to their own devices, their kids are going to experience consequences of that.  This isn't a bad thing - we accept it readily enough in the offline realm, yet somehow parents get absolved of responsibility when their children go online.  Like it or not, until their child reaches age of majority, parents are responsible for the behaviour of their offspring - especially, I argue, their social media behaviour.  And being a parent, that means I do everything in my means to make sure my little monsters don't get themselves in ****, whether or not I like having that responsibility.  The "they're just kids" argument doesn't fly - kids have parents, parents are expected to obey the law (age of consent for social media) and be responsible for the actions of their kids.  And if they don't, then their kids are going to experience the consequences of that, and ultimately the parents.

So, if a child feels the consequences of some inappropriate public posts, unless those consequences are themselves criminal or civil violations, they are precisely the fault of the party that put the information out there - the kid, and by legal extension, their parents - and that is as it should be.  Just because they're kids doesn't mean they get a pass on the nastiness of the world in general, however unfortunate that reality may be.  Better this lesson is learned in a relatively mild context than with life-altering consequences as an adult.

I don't agree with the school board policy, but I also very much disagree that this is not an issue that should or can be solved by parents.  Parents have legal and moral responsibility for the actions of their children, regardless of how either party feels about that unfortunate reality.  Which is precisely why both of my little troublemaking monsters will be given free reign of the Internet right until the time they **** it up and break my rules, as I monitor them without them knowing about it.  The NSA has nothing on this father.  Fortunately, I have a few years yet before I have to start worrying about it

None of this should be taken as agreement with the position Lorric is presently arguing, however.  The policy should be shot down and shot down hard.  School boards have much better things to be spending their budgets on.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

And once again you ignore the fact that we're dealing with children as young as 11 and not adults. Since when has any problem caused by children gone away completely by simply by having adults tell them what to do?  Expecting 11 year olds to act responsibly is a basic denial of what an 11 year old is. Sure the parent has to exercise some responsibility since their children can't, but expecting this problem to go away simply by telling children what they should and shouldn't do online is such a naive view of how parenting works that I'm amazed you can express it.

And that's if I even agree with you that you can't abuse even fairly innocuous sounding comments. Not to mention that you're also forgetting that you're also going to have to edit anything said before people knew their children would have their posts data mined. In the case of the older kids that's several years worth of posts that need to be edited or removed.

This isn't an issue that needs to be (or even can be) solved by the parents, except by getting themselves a less idiotic school board.

I was going to leave this be after the Lorric mess started, but after thinking about it for a while here I think it is worth responding to.  Not because I think what you've said is necessarily wrong, but because it seems to reflect a significant difference of opinion.

You seem to be operating on the premise that these are young kids and therefore require careful handling because they know not what they do online.  However, each and every single one of these social media sites have age of consent requirements, most of which are set at 13 (13 also happens to be 1 year after most democratic countries make kids criminally responsible for their actions).  With parental consent.

I realize you are arguing pragmatically here - kids, like it or not, do not do what their parents tell them to and will create social media accounts, and really shouldn't be monitored by their school and experience social consequences for it.  I, on the other hand, am arguing threefold:  (1) young kids aren't actually legally allowed to have social media accounts without parental consent, (2) anyone who posts online should be fully prepared to experience social consequences of it, and (3) the social consequences really shouldn't be all that dire due to the nature of the information.

From a practical standpoint, if parents are not going to properly monitor their children online or offline, their children are going to readily feel the consequences of any unmonitored behaviour that crosses boundaries, be they social or criminal.  Some people appear to think that consequences are right and just when these kids do stupid things offline, yet online behaviour should get a pass.  I disagree.  As I keep saying, anyone can collect this information this school board will be collecting it.  Their peers will actually be a lot BETTER at collecting and using this information against a poster than will adults.  The child is likely to experience more negative consequences from their posting behaviour at the hands of their peers than any school monitoring system.  All of which goes back to the point that if parents leave their kids to their own devices, their kids are going to experience consequences of that.  This isn't a bad thing - we accept it readily enough in the offline realm, yet somehow parents get absolved of responsibility when their children go online.  Like it or not, until their child reaches age of majority, parents are responsible for the behaviour of their offspring - especially, I argue, their social media behaviour.  And being a parent, that means I do everything in my means to make sure my little monsters don't get themselves in ****, whether or not I like having that responsibility.  The "they're just kids" argument doesn't fly - kids have parents, parents are expected to obey the law (age of consent for social media) and be responsible for the actions of their kids.  And if they don't, then their kids are going to experience the consequences of that, and ultimately the parents.

So, if a child feels the consequences of some inappropriate public posts, unless those consequences are themselves criminal or civil violations, they are precisely the fault of the party that put the information out there - the kid, and by legal extension, their parents - and that is as it should be.  Just because they're kids doesn't mean they get a pass on the nastiness of the world in general, however unfortunate that reality may be.  Better this lesson is learned in a relatively mild context than with life-altering consequences as an adult.

I don't agree with the school board policy, but I also very much disagree that this is not an issue that should or can be solved by parents.  Parents have legal and moral responsibility for the actions of their children, regardless of how either party feels about that unfortunate reality.  Which is precisely why both of my little troublemaking monsters will be given free reign of the Internet right until the time they **** it up and break my rules, as I monitor them without them knowing about it.  The NSA has nothing on this father.  Fortunately, I have a few years yet before I have to start worrying about it

None of this should be taken as agreement with the position Lorric is presently arguing, however.  The policy should be shot down and shot down hard.  School boards have much better things to be spending their budgets on.

Well said, and a sensible position overall. The bottom line is that it's a ridiculous idea and there are better ways for schools to spend money.

The following has nothing to do with the quoted post:
I think what I'm going to take away from the article in the OP is...why is there ALREADY a contractor specializing in collecting social media information from minors and who has been hiring them?

[Dragon]

They aren't specializing in minors. That's just a normal data-mining company, and it's a very lucrative business. Collecting data from students is just another job for them, with different targets and probably much easier than from more privacy-aware adults. While I agree with the idea, trusting a company like that with it is rather questionable. If this was government controlled from start to end, then it'd be less worrying, even if a contractor would've been implementing and operating the tech (that was the initial impression I've had). Even NSA has more accountability than those guys, outsourcing data collection to a corporation that (like all corporations) only cares about money might not be such a good idea.