Archive for

Third-graders suspended because of porn.

A school district in Lake Stevens, Washington State, has suspended two third-graders after finding sexually explicit images on a district computer and shared them with classmates.

Austin Maxwell, the stepfather of one of the students suspended who allegedly typed in the search term that brought up the controversial result, told KING 5 he was furious, but doesn’t blame his child.

According to school administrators, somehow software designed to prevent students for viewing inappropriate materials failed to block it from happening. District officials sent an email home to parents suspending all student computer use until they discover and fix the problem.

Problems, slip-ups, and mistakes, are bound to happen in an imperfect world run by imperfect people; it’s just what it is to be human. As a parent, Maxwell wondered: “Is it a safe place for her [his daughter] to go back to?”

Is that a valid question to ask? It is certainly horrifying for a kid in the third grade to witness pornographic images. You’re robbing the child of innocence. Children seeing images of the pornographic nature can lead to obvious problems.

It would be one thing if the kid had other behavioral problems that were evident from other things going on. But in this case it seems like all involved recognize that this little girl was not the instigator and was not exhibiting some kind of deviant behaviors at the school. And yet the school authorities saw it appropriate in suspending.

What good is anyone doing expelling these students? Basically it ends up punishing them for being a victim at the school. Third grade students don’t understand what they’re sharing. To them it’s gross and just unbelievable, or whatever, and so they share it. It seems to me adults in the room and in the position of leadership, you’ve got do deal with the situation using common sense instead of knee-jerk-reactions. We shouldn’t be focused into reacting unrealistically like other news stories of late that suspended the student who makes his hand into a gun pointing his finger, or the kid who has an “imaginary” supper weapon, or the kid who brought to school his Pop-Tart gun. In these stories as with this one, we as a society have lost the opportunity of a valuable teachable moment.

If students are being punished in this case for a computer glitch, a problem with security designed to keep them safe, then isn’t the school district not only liable but responsible for the physiological trauma if any and open to punishment themselves? It makes no sense to punish the student for the PC lines we draw, if those same efforts also eliminate nurturing an education in common sense.