Even in the pre-computer dark ages, writing a note at home didn't give students blanket protection against punishment. If we brought the note to school and passed it around and it said something like, "Mrs. So-an-So who teaches algebra ought to be met in the parking lot and beaten to within an inch of our life," too bad for us. We were out of there. That distinction still applies, which some of the "students have a First Amendment right" advocates don't seem to grasp:
Increasing crackdowns on what educators deem inappropriate online behavior have outraged students and free-speech advocates who see them as pursuing school rules too far beyond the classroom.
The issue is online journals, or blogs, and popular Web sites such as MySpace.com, where teens post comments about their daily lives — including school. School officials say such postings can be disruptive to education; critics say schools should not have the power to punish students for comments posted from a home computer.
Once upon a time, there was a difference between what you said in a public setting, like the classroom, and what you said to your best friend walking home from school. The Internet tends to blur the difference. It doesn't matter where you do the posting, it's where it ends up that matters, which is that it is avaialable to anybody, anywhere. That applies in the real-world setting of work as well. If I write something about my boss on the Web that he considers a firing offense, you think he's going to care whether I composed in on my home computer or at work? Come on.
