“CYBERBULLYING” OF PRINCIPAL IS ONLY “JUVENILE HUMOR”
News item: A middle school girl in Pennsylvania posted a photo of her principal online and described him as a “hairy sex addict” and a “pervert” who likes “hitting on students” in his office. The posting also included entries mocking the principal’s wife and children. The principal imposed a ten-day suspension on the girl. A week later, he was sued in federal court by the girl’s parents. The lawyers for the girl said that the “fake profile” of the principal was “juvenile humor” that should be ignored. The parents lost before a federal judge who called the material “vulgar and lewd”. But last summer the parents won before the full 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The 8-6 majority said the posting “caused no substantial disruption” at the school, and the courts do not “allow schools to punish students for off campus speech.” Doing so, the majority said, threatens “dangerously broad censorship” of students.
Quick, we need to install the “common sense” hotline that I have recommended in previous posts. Here is how the principal should have handled this situation. He should have quickly controlled his initial outrage, (remember, teachers and school officials must NEVER allow their emotions to enter into a decision). Whenever I found that a nasty comment about me was written on the bathroom wall at school, I never took it personally. In fact, as I would tell my student-teachers, you must look upon such a thing as a badge of honor. A strict disciplinarian like me was bound to offend some student.
The principal should have called the girl and her parents into his office along with the superintendent, a school board member, the district’s attorney, and a policeman. The school district’s lawyer should have explained the seriousness of slander, libel and any matter regarding false sexual allegations against school personnel. The lawyer, superintendent, school board member and the parents should have discussed a reasonable punishment.
Now I will explain what would have happened years ago when I was in school and before students and children had “rights” and before parents were expected to defend their children no matter how grievous there misbehavior. The principal and assistant principal would have called the girl and her parents into the office. The principal would have explained to the parents what had happened. The girl’s parents would have agreed with any punishment that the school imposed, and in addition the parents would have dealt very harshly with their darling daughter. The girl would have feared her parent’s punishment far worse than that of the school.
The United States was one of the first countries in the world to establish a legal system that promoted the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”. Almost every country had a legal system that assumed an accused person was guilty until they proved they were innocent. Innocent people rotted in jail all over the world because it was very difficult for them to prove their innocence while incarcerated.
Years ago, even in the United States, children never really were part of “innocent until proven guilty”. If a child misbehaved while at the house of a neighbor, the neighbor punished the child and the child was then punished again by his parents when he reached home. If a child was punished at school, they had an even worse fate awaiting them when they returned home. Children didn’t have ”rights”, they were CHILDREN, a sort of subspecies who would have to wait until adulthood to obtain legal protections and rights. People ASSUMED children would misbehave and adults had swift and immediate remedies for misbehavior. There was no appeals system, no attempt to prove innocence, it was an adult world. When I grew up, the most common phrase regarding children was, “children are to be seen and not heard”.
In the 1960′s, psychologists, pediatricians, school reformers, and a whole permissive generation of young adults decided that children should have just as many rights as adults. Since then, the permissive attitudes have strengthened, and today children seemingly have MORE rights than adults.
The modern parent and all the reformers that promoted rights for children seem to have forgotten one important aspect about rights. There is an old axiom, “with rights, comes responsibilities.” If children are to have as many rights as adults, then they must also be as responsible as adults. Common sense should tell us that’s not going to happen. They are children!
I had been teaching many years before I ran into an example of a student being placed on the same level as an adult authority figure. I had sent a very belligerent student to the office because of continued classroom disruptions. (One of only a few students I ever sent to the office in my career). When I went to the office, I found the student chatting with the principal in an amiable fashion as if they were old golfing buddies rehashing what happened on the ninth hole. I explained to the principal how the student had misbehaved. The principal then began his defense of the student with the following words,” but Jose says that you—-”, and then repeated the outright lies that the student must have told the principal as to why he was innocently accused. When I heard those words,”but Jose says that you—”, I wanted to strangle the principal until his eyeballs popped out! However, always being under control, I simply refuted the student’s story and calmly walked out of the office, knowing my retirement was only a year away and strangling the principal might have put my pension in jeopardy.
Good luck principals, teachers and school officials everywhere. In many cases you have allowed the inmates to run the asylum. Please remember, the students have rights, and watch out if you dare trample any of those rights, there’s a judge waiting somewhere that will straighten you out. Thank goodness the last of the disciplinarian dinosaurs like me are retired. That principal in Pennsylvania needs to retire. A ten-day suspension for a little slander and libel ? Maybe thirty years ago that would have been acceptable, not today! Then again, thirty years ago the parents would have handled the most severe disciplining of the child, no suspension would have been necessary.
