Read the articles posted below on cyber-bullying and student free speech. Then respond in a thoughtful post to the following questions:
How do you protect students from cyber-bullying and still protect students’ First Amendment Rights? Is it worth giving up some of your freedoms to ensure students are protected from the effects of bullying?
CONSIDER THESE WRITING TIPS BEFORE COMPOSING YOUR RESPONSE
* Outline the main points of each article
* Brainstorm reasons for your position
* Brainstorm reasons for the opposing position
* Briefly outline your argument – How can you distinguish yourself from other writers?
WHILE WRITING YOUR RESPONSE
* Consider your audience (teenagers like you)
* Write an engaging opening that hooks your reader
* Support your ideas with specific attributed material from articles or other material from unit (and attribute them). Choose the best details to support your argument.
* Briefly present one of the most compelling points of the opposing side and argue against it.
* Convince your reader with a compelling writing voice
* Write a roughly 300-500 word response in Word
* Spell check and proofread before copying and pasting your response in a comment to this post.
ARTICLES
Op-ed: Why Time Magazine is wrong about New Jersey’s cyberbullying law
Op-ed: NJ’s anti-bullying law should be model for other states
The First Amendment grants the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In other words, you have the freedom to say and write whatever you feel like without getting in trouble for it. But what happens when people are saying and writing hurtful things about other people? How do we protect kids or students from the modern “cyber-bullying” but still protect other kids or students’ right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press? Obviously you have to put restrictions on the type of language students are allowed to use on the internet, and establish a set of consequences when those restrictions are broken. Hazelwood grants school officials the right to censor something if they have an educational purpose for doing so. This only addresses such things as school newspapers, forums, and things of that nature. But what about the internet? Now the question becomes, “Is it worth giving up some of your freedoms to ensure protection from cyber-bullying?” I think that’s fair. You can have free speech and freedom of the press, but not at the expense of others. I know that defeats the purpose of the First Amendment basically, but I feel that it can be further amended. Maybe it can be changed to have a clause about schools. Maybe students can only have freedom of speech and freedom of the press as long as they don’t write anything about others. Now, that isn’t saying they can’t write something about other people. It will just make them accountable for whatever they are saying about whoever they are saying it about. They won’t be protected by the First Amendment, and maybe that will cause them to sensor themselves. It will make them think, “Hey, I can get in trouble for this.” And that right there is enough. Once we have kids thinking about the consequences, the battle is half over. Some kids will realize the consequences and not say hurtful things, while others will test the rules a little bit. But now, because you have changed the Amendment, you are allowed to punish them for it.
What really is considered bullying anymore? This is being debated much more lately and it’s very important to know when considering if someone is breaking first amendment rights. The problem is that you might think that you’re simply using your right to speak your mind and opinions, but someone else could take your words a different way and use it against you saying you’re bullying them. But I think the line between bullying and using your rights isn’t that difficult to separate.
I strongly believe bullying is wrong and that the government should be working to prevent this, but I am a realist and I know that it would be impossible to stop bullying as a whole. You can try to prevent cyber-bullying with all those rules and laws, but no amount of laws will really put it to an end. Bullying is something that the world has become soft to, in the past kids used to always be pushed around by a bully but in most cases the kid ended up alright and even became stronger from it. But the state put these new laws out to train teachers and counselors with no pay rise thinking that it would teach students that bullying is wrong. When really school systems could barely afford to put forth these new requirements, and will probably have to make lots of cuts in funds.
But if this law wasn’t in place how do you protect students from cyber-bullying and still protect students’ First Amendment Rights? Well there isn’t a real way to have both sides happy. If you really want to prevent bullying you’re going to need to have some restraint and give up some of your freedoms to ensure students are safe from the effects of bullying. It seems like now more than ever teenagers are being bullied to the point where they no longer see a point to living. Cases like Amanda Todd and Tyler Clementi are some of the biggest examples of why there needs to be laws protecting the victims of cyber-bullying and making sure that the number of deaths gets under control.
So while the new, ‘better’ law isn’t really the best law to help prevent bullying, it is contributing to the fight. I think that the state should come up with a less demanding law, less is more as they often say, the high standards of this law is putting too much pressure on the schools and it doesn’t think of the home situations that some students might have, like the argument in the article Frank LoMonte wrote. They just need to come at this issue with more of an open-mind and think of a less generic definition of bullying to end some of this controversy.