Education Law

Students ... Give Up Your Passwords? Parents ... Give Up Your Schools!

A private school in S.C. has passed a policy requiring students in the school to give school officials their social networking passwords upon request (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). The story (also on CNN video - a couple minutes in). Here's the local video:

I've thought about this for a couple days now, and I can't really think of a legal problem here (if you disagree, let me know, I would be happy to be proved wrong). The lawyer in the video says it is an invasion of privacy, but students don't really have many privacy rights and the fact this is at a private school gives them even less (if this was a public, it would be a search and seizure issue). The school really has no power to force students to reveal passwords if they don't want to, other than to threaten to kick the student out of the private school, so hopefully students are smart enough to see though this little charade.  

But, I think this just reinforces Scott McLeod's point from a few days ago. I just hope that parents who send their kids to schools like this realize the disadvantage they are putting their students at. While this school is busy scaring their students away from social networking, some other school in the city is integrating it into their curriculum. The world is not going to stop, no matter how much some traditionalists want it to, and the language of the age is social media. If your child is not speaking that language ... then you are putting them at a serious disadvantage. 

Full post as published by Edjurist on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).