About 300 eighth-graders at South Valley Junior High in Liberty, Mo., are blogging this fall about Guerrilla Season, a book about a 15-year-old living in Civil War-era Missouri.
The book’s author, Pat Hughes, is joining in the online discussion from her home in Philadelphia.
“I love being able to communicate with the author because it makes me feel like I can ask anything,” says Amy Lostroh, 13. “Most books you read you have to guess how the author named the characters, why they chose to write about the topic or what inspired them.” —Ashley Bleimes —Blogging Now Begins Young (USA Today (will expire))
Thanks for the link, Neha.
I’d love to see more secondary teachers who do this. If students have to wait until they get to college before they start working on developing an intellectual awareness of their online voice, it’s too late.
Here’s an unapproved comment an an angry MySpace user left on a blog entry in which one of my students wrote of the risks of posting on MySpace:
You are a f*cking faggot. MySpace is totally cool and it doesnt deserve to be trashed by adults 24/7. Just because they are getting older doesnt mean us kids cant live our lives freely and learn our mistakes for ourselves. This is the USA! So quit bagging on it and mind your own business. — Becky
(Asterisk added by me.) While Facebook had a good idea of limiting contact between older and younger users, young people who blog are not writing only for themselves. Attitudes like Becky’s are clear signs that young people need guidance. Becky’s teachers need to tell her that the First Amendment does guarantee the freedom of speech, but does not promise that the people who choose to exercise their right will be insulated from the consequences of breaking the law, breaking school rules, giving future potential employers reasons to throw their resume into the trash pile, etc.
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Will, that's a very helpful post.
A potential employer who checks a candidate's blog has proably already decided that this person looks good on paper, but the scenario I imagine is that they've got 15 people who look pretty good on paper, and they're looking for a reason -- any reason -- to whittle that list down to 5. And that picture of you with a beer in your hand an a lampshade on your head (or whatever) just might be the reason they're looking for.
Of course, I am mostly thinking of students who plan to be journalists or teachers -- people whose name is connected to their work in a close, public way, but in such a way that their personal lives (however they choose to live them, online or offline) aren't supposed to overshadow their professional accomplishments.
I appreciate your feedback, Will. When I present this lesson in class, I generally assign newspaper articles and then let the students talk to each other about what they conclude. The words I use on this blog aren't the ones I use in the classroom, but yes, I do push the idea that the First Amendment rights to free speech is not a magic powerup that makes it illegal for a principal or a boss to use what you choose to publish against you.
Mean? Uncivilized? Short-sighted? Yes, probably in most cases. I'd even say often it's unfair to judge someone who is 22 and on the job market by something he or she did at age 17.
If the student at least blogs under a pseudonym, and doesn't use the real names of companies or individuals who might be unhappy to be the target of vulgar or tasteless comments, then that shows some forethought and sense.
I keep trying to figure out why I find I find your writing about this subject so incredibly irritating, and I think I've finally hit it.
It's not that I disagree with your general subject. I think you're absolutely right to try again and again to make students aware of this. Dealing with employers is kind of like dealing with your dates parents - they're uptight, judgemental, and almost never tell you why they don't like you. They also want impossible things from you - they want you to be personable and get along with everyone, but they don't want you to do the things that your average person does in college. It's important that students realize that it can come back to bite them - especially because if it's costing them jobs, employers almost certainly won't tell them that that's why. If their online posting is the cause, the student will never have a chance to learn from their mistake because they'll never find out that's the reason.
People seem to post online with the feeling that their postings have privacy, even though they're publicly available for anyone who runs across them to read.
I think what irks me is the word "consequences". "Consequences" carries with it the implication, when I read it, of fair, just, and natural consequences. If you have $200 and spend it all on a new tv, and then don't have money left over for rent, that's a consequence of your actions. If you rob a bank and you go to jail, that's a consequence of your actions. If you don't pay attention while you're driving and you end up in the ditch, that's a consequence of your actions.
If you post about your personal life online and an employer runs across your profile and turns you down because you talk about how you had a party at your place last weekend and you're not looking forward to the drudgery of have a cubicle job...that's not fair, just or natural. The fact that you have to hide the very things that make you the "average, normal" person that the employer is looking for is hardly fair.
But it's something students have to deal with, and something they should learn about. I'm just trying to say that I know I would be more receptive to a message like "When hiring, companies are judgemental and having your most extreme moments on the internet for them to read about is a bad idea" than a message that reads like "If you write about fun stuff, you will naturally and justly be punished".
Obviously, this comment is my opinion, and I hope it's helpful and not offensive. :-)