Do schools ever have the right to read private journals, looking for a students bad thoughts? Kimberly Swygert is on the offensive again, this time taking aim at Zero-Tolerance rules that lead to the expulsion of good students, for doing the kind of harmless things that kids do, like write fictional stories in their private journals.
If I were Rachel's parents, I'd sue the pants off everyone involved in this. This is absolutely bottom-of-the barrel, negative-IQ, no-judgment-involved thinking. Her father is absolutely right to say that her constitutional rights have been violated, although I'm amazed at the restraint her parents are displaying in this article. I would not have even ceded, as does her mother, that this extremely private literature should have been brought to the parents' attention.
Even if we give the teacher leeway for confiscating the journal, on the grounds that it was a non-class-related item being passed around during class, the teacher had no right to keep it and no right to read it. And then to summon the police in and expel a creative honors student for a private work of fiction? This young woman must feel like she's been raped. I would have, if a teacher took my private journal, read it, and then pressed criminal charges against me for what was in it, resulting in publicity which declared to the entire school, not to mention the world, what was in the journal.
Every time I assume that the zero-tolerance idiocies cannot get worse, they do. Next up, I assume, is that schools will move beyond regulating all thought, speech, and action within the school grounds and start prosecuting students for "crimes" committed off the grounds (in fact, since Rachel wrote the story at home, isn't that exactly what has happened here?). No kid in the public school system will be safe.
Why are teachers so mean.
Posted by: Ronney Frank | January 13, 2004 at 08:21 PM
i writing because my daughter is 15 this year and they have her in the 7th grade. She pasts her classes but when it come to the city wide test her focus is not there i think . and also i have as the schools for help with that matter but they never helped me . Instead last year they suspened her for something that i would have to show you because it very confusing. they had a hearing but i tried to get the autotape was blank they're doing a cover up.I asked the Brord of education and hearing Broad fo rthe transcript every sins 3/04 and it happen on 1/04 . i'm just finding out that the autotape is blank so her records will be cleared but they put her back in the 7th grade when she was out of school last year for 60days when i asded for homeschooling because for safety reasons. I live in the in a very bad place right now My daughter has went thought so much and i 'm in need of some help I would like it as soon as possible Thank You very much (718)784-8810
Posted by: Meshell Kemp | October 03, 2004 at 06:02 PM