Political cartoon in response to Glendale Unified School
District's new monitoring policies
Recently, the Glendale School District in Los Angeles made a decision to start monitoring their students' online activity, a decision which ended up sparking a nationwide debate.They will monitor students by contracting a private company called Geo Listening, which will monitor the public feeds of students' social media. The company scans for such things as controlled substances, self-harm, disruption of class, hazing, hate speech, and racism, among other things. The school justifies this with the fact that it's posted publicly, saying, "...if they are advertising it in the public domain, it's no different than if they're standing in front of a teacher." Geo Listening stresses that it does not violate any privacy laws. Personally, I agree with student Young Cho, who said, "We all know social media is not a private place... but it is not the same as being in school." The argument of the students is all the same. The monitoring is an invasion of privacy, legal or not. The students don't see the school's power as extending any further than school campus. I understand that the school's job is to educate and keep students safe, but when taken off campus, I believe it's a little too far.
Self-promoting chart on Geo Listening's website
If this were to happen at San Ramon, I think many kids and parents would protest. Let's face it, kids do things on their own time that many teachers wouldn't approve of, but at high school age the kids' have to be accountable for themselves. The schools don't need to "protect" kids from their own decisions, nor be actively searching for things to get the students in trouble for. On campus, children are under the care of the school, but off campus they or their parents are responsible. The school's chief job is to educate, and I believe we should worry about fixing our education system before attacking the privacy of students.
If you are interested in learning more, here is just one of many videos on the subject:
