In an effort to "keep the students safe," a Catholic school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. has ordered that the children delete their MySpace pages or leave the school.
The Oakland County Sheriff lauded the school’s decision, applauding its ability to eliminate the effect of “peer pressure.” That statement seems a bit vague to me; peer pressure to do what? Peer pressure to create a MySpace page? Peer pressure to engage with strangers through the medium? In any case, I don’t see how such a rule is doing anything to diminish peer pressure. If anything, the fact that the act of creating a page is prohibited should make it that much more attractive to kids—and make them that much more interested in impressing their friends with such an act of rebellion.
I also see an unavoidable conflict between school and home, as boundaries for administrators and parents become blurred. I know I certainly would not be OK with the school attempting to extend its control into my family’s private home. Will parents next be receiving guidelines about what they can and cannot serve their children for dinner? Or what vacation destination is acceptable, or not, for a family? How about guidelines for how parents should discipline their offspring? All in all, such a move by the school is a demonstrative of a blatant overstepping of boundaries into a territory in which parents are ultimately responsible. As a parent, I would personally feel utterly patronized.
Derick Vollrath @ Sun, 03/25/2007 - 7:53am
These are important issues, but it's important to remember that this school is a private school, and therefore they can attach whatever conditions they wish to enrollment (aside from discriminatory preferences and other things that have been deemed explicitly illegal). They really could attach conditions such as what vacation destinations are acceptable (NYU actually does this for their scholars program -- you HAVE to spend you spring break in Florence), what families can serve their children for dinner, etc. The solution is that if it gets too burdensome, parents will withdraw their students. A glorious free-market solution.
As for whether banning MySpace will reduce peer pressure, I certainly think it could help. Teenagers can be vicious and putting such things on the web is about a thousand times worse than murmering them in the halls.