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Thursday, May 8, 2008
Can schools fight cyberbullies?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One Georgia school system plans to put rules in place to curb “cyberbullying” — when students send threatening messages through the Internet and cell phones.
According to this story, Oconee County school board members will update the system’s code of conduct to include rules about these types of threats. The changes will warn students not to forward or print out and pass around these messages.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about kids who threaten and taunt others electronically. Those who say this is problem point to the tragic story of a 13-year-old girl from Missouri who committed suicide in 2006 after some cruel messages about her were posted on MySpace, the social networking site.
It makes sense to say more must be done to protect children, but what can schools really do? Schools have difficulty protecting students from physical bullying, should we expect them to fix this problem?
