Current Connection: 1.2

In a recent article by Stephen Ceasar, a writer for The Los Angeles Times, entitled "Glendale District Says Social Media Monitoring is for Student Safety," Ceasar confirms 1) why students are being monitored 2) how this circumstance will aid the facility and 3) the restraints and cautions of the program.

In the article, Ceasar states, "the district last year hired Hermosa Beach-based Geo Listening to piece together the cyber tidbits of its 14,000 or so middle and high school students. The effort, for which the district is paying $40,500, is aimed at unearthing the earliest signs of bullying and self-harm."  In relation to every other school facility, these institutions stress about safety and security towards the children.  Logically, education would eventually perish in this situation because the students’ state of mind will portray apprehension about being mistreated rather than progress and prosperity in education to accumulate success.

Young Cho, left, here with Hoover High classmate Christopher Chung.

For example, Ceasar also claims, “when [the analysts finds] posts they think should spur an intervention or anything that violates schools' student codes of conduct, the company alerts the campus.”  With this awareness displayed, the analysts and school faculty members also accentuate on the fact that students, the heart of the school, could potentially hurt themselves physically and mentally by the harsh, irrelevant comments exhibited in social networking.  As stated before, the environment of schools factor off of social networking now at days; the abhorrent remarks resonate through the pupil, affecting their performance in academics, depicting how education can become secondary in their priorities because all the pupil will worry about is being victimized in bullying.

In addition, Ceasar says, “students say the policing of their posts has stirred debate on campuses. Some are angry about what they see as an intrusion.”  To support my claim on the restraints and cautions of the program, as children, they will obviously disagree with the occurrence because of the invasion of privacy outside of school.  Ethologically, I must convey that the officials are enforcing this program because of educational purposes in an obvious perspective; they realize that this overwhelming social networking world is affecting the education of our generation of students.

Individually, this article reminds me of my Oral Communications Speech on Cyber Bullying because my speech emphasized on how cyber bullying affected people, education, and life generally.  In a textual view, this article consolidates with television documentaries I used to watch due to the fact that those shows would always mention bullying and education; most of the time, when I hear about bullying, nine times out of ten, I will hear about education as a followup after the discussion of bullying.  Globally, social networking, the satanic world of the Internet, is basically bullying because now at days, people do not ever have positive statements to quote on the Internet, so the predicaments downgrade peoples’ self-esteem.  In conclusion, as long as these victims are in school, education will be the last aspect they ponder on.

All in all, according to Caroline Kennedy, “the extent that we are all educated and informed, we will be more equipped to deal with issues that tend to divide us.”