Skip to content


School Bans Social Websites

This is week-and-a-half-old news, however it struck a nerve so I figured I’d post it. According to this article on App.com, Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, NJ is threatening students to make them stop participating in social networking with websites such as MySpace, Facebook and Xanga. The article states:

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John’s order reaches into students’ homes.

The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

While it seems like the school is trying to protect its students, they are going about it the wrong way. Its a violation of free speech to police the students in this way. Educating the students about the dangers of a web presence would be a more reasonable approach.

Posted in Blog, Random News.

Tagged with , , , , , , , .


205 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Uncle sam says

    All schools in my school distric have blck my space… But the code is so easy to break they dont even know it. We at school always find a way to get on my space. What the schools dont know is that a lot of kids are hakers and that can break the schools codes easily. They can even break into the principals computer.

    But i think that MySpace is being block because if it wasnt every single person on computer class will be on it and not doing their work… We all know that…

    And why get so pissed off, if they can never keep us of not loggin in into it. Like i said is easy to crak to codes.

  2. azavorin says

    Мастер с большим опытом работы предлагает наращивание ресниц. Наращенные ресницы не доставляют дискомфорт , не боятся влаги, температуры, т.к. используются качественный материал. Глаза выглядят выразительными, а ресницы естественными за счет того, что каждая ресничка наращивается к основанию Вашей ресничке. Процедура по наращиванию ресниц длится от 1 до 1,5 часов (КАЧЕСТВЕННО). Обслуживание на дому – 300 гр.
    Запись по тел. 8(067)600-42-75 Светлана

  3. mamo says

    i need girl

1 ... 3 4 5

Continuing the Discussion

  1. BorkWeb » Blog Archive » Subverting MySpace and Facebook Blocks With Proxies linked to this post on March 1, 2006

    [...] In November I blogged about Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta New Jersey and their forcing of students to stop using sites like MySpace, Xanga, and Facebook. Over the past few months I have seen a number of comment come in regarding…well…not threats from schools, but blocking of such sites by educational institutions. Now, its important to note that the blocking of these social sites seem to be localized to Elementary and High Schools, not higher education institutions. [...]

  2. BorkWeb » School Punishes Student For Blogging From Home linked to this post on May 25, 2006

    [...] Schools across the country are cracking down on student computer use; blocking social sites and proxy servers. Many schools are perfectly within their right to prevent teenagers from frequenting sites like MySpace, Facebook and Xanga while using school hardware. In all actuality, there is no real need for students to be on such social sites at school when it could impede on studying and perhaps pose a danger to the student (internet predators). [...]



Some HTML is OK

or, reply to this post via trackback.