Journal #7

“Should Schools Regulate Offsite Online Behavior?”
By: Nancy E. Willard and Lynn Wietecha

This article discusses both sides of the question “Should Schools Regulate Offsite Online Behavior?” Nancy E. Willard thinks that schools should regulate online behavior. She rephrased the question to say “Should, or can, school officials respond to harmful student off-campus Internet postings?” She says that sometimes online postings are not harmful and parents and kids should resolve the situation, but sometimes it is a lot worse. Nancy says that their have been incidences where a girl in Japan killed a fellow student because she was angry about what had been posted. There have also been incidences where students have committed suicide because of cyber bullying. Her opinion on this subject is that schools are involved with this and should take action because it affects the school environment and the learning environment. She states ways to help fix this problem. Lynn Wietecha says that schools shouldn’t regulate this behavior. She says that schools should teach students about safety, but it isn’t reasonable to take this outside of the classroom. She feels that this issue is hard to regulate and would cause the teachers to have more responsibility then is reasonable. She uses the following example to show her reasoning. “However, although a teacher can stress the importance of looking both ways before crossing a street, it is not reasonable to expect that teacher to walk everywhere with each student and assist at all street crossings.” Both serve valid points.

Q: Which side do you agree with?
A: I agree with Lynn’s side. I think that it would be impossible to regulate every student’s online behavior. It is important to teach kids safety about this issue in school but it would be unreasonable to watch all outside activities.

Q: Is there any other way to regulate this?
A: I think that parents should be more informed of what is going on. There could be more information provided for parents so they can regulate this.