Banning Myspace - Comments

Under the constitution it states that congress shall make no laws, etc. School boards are NOT congress and therefore any restriction of freedom of speech or expression by them is unconstitutional.

Personally I have no use for myspace, but it seems to be for the kids and kids will be kids. It's time for the school boards to grow up and allow the kids to develop as they will. In other words, they should get a life...

My school has blocked myspace but I found a way around it have you tried www.guardster.com, or atunnel.com these work for me to get around the block.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Fine for now, perhaps. But how long do you think it will take schools to block those sites as well?

I have heard law enforcement officials say it is better to teach students about online safety in a social networking, or other, site than to ban them. In this way they learn valuable lessons that will be useful in future years when they go online.

I think schools should go with the trend. Why not use the desire to blog and social network on MySpace in their classrooms?

How many of you had to write an autobiography as part of a high school assignment? Do it on MySpace instead, and suddenly the lesson becomes fun. Discussions about the legal ramifications of libel and safety/privacy issues connected with internet usage could be a great springboard to lessons in American History, English, and Civics.

The internet is not going to go away, so teaching high schoolers how to use it responsibly and safely could certainly be a valid classroom topic. And like you say to the right of your comment-field, spelling, punctuation, grammar and proper use of UPPER/lower case are important! Teach it!

While I don't agree that schools have the right to ban students from any activity that takes place after school hours, not on school property or during school activities, students that want to "be treated like an adult" should learn they need to act as an adult as well. Trying to find a way around a ban just so you can post a rant about the teacher that flunked you for not doing your school work isn't exactly a good use of time.

Other public organizations besides schools are concerned about MySpace. Many public libraries are blocking access to it from their public internet computers -- primarily because some of the material on MySpace is not suitable for children.
On the other hand, some public libraries are creating profiles for themselves on MySpace and trying to connect with teenagers.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may also find that retailers selling computers will block it. Apple had a problem with kids in stores monopolizing the computers, so they blocked Myspace.

Personally, I think that private schools do have the right to determine the activities that students can participate in. Going to a private school is a privilige, not a right. When you apply you agree to abide by the rules of the school. Public schools are in a different and more complicated situtation.

Attending a public school is a right and mandated by law. That being said it could be argued that these schools have no right to control students extra-curricular activities, however they are obliged to protect students from harm. Also, parents of students under 18 are legally responsible for their children's actions. So, the parents are responsible for making the decision.

As a Network Administrator for a Community College I support banning sites like myspace.com. Look at it this way, we pay over $5000 a month for internet access, and before we put the ban in place there were around 50% of the campus computers (these belong to the school) were surfing myspace. That is around 700+ out of 1400 PCs on campus. This took our network down so fast, which is a DS3! Teachers and legitimate students couldn't teach or research homework because the myspace users sucked up all the bandwidth.

Now I don't agree with making policies that state what someone can or can't do off of school computers.. and we even allow people that bring in their own laptops to surf myspace wirelessly and also have certain "Myspace Terminals" that are campus computers that are allowed to visit any site. My only concern is keeping the campus network running and fast enough for people to do legitimate work.

can you just tell me how can i get on myspace when it is banned from my school

EDITOR'S NOTE: Could it be... there's a good reason for NOT getting on Myspace at school?

Sure schools will always ban popular sites, but you can use a site like proxymy.com to get arouond these blocks and bans.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes... until that site is banned too.