The Times technology section does a feature on message boards where high schoolers dish about other students and teachers. Schools are wondering what they can do (also worrying about legal ramifications for boards run off of school sites) as
Some say the reach of the Web magnifies the potential harm far beyond anything heard at school.
"In middle school and early high school, people are not able to discriminate what is real and what is fictitious" on the Internet or in printed media, said Joy Fopiano, an associate professor of school psychology and counseling at Southern Connecticut State University. "And once you've put something on a Web site, it makes the individual very vulnerable because the readership is so wide."
Gothamist argues that many past high school are unable to discriminate between the real and the fictitious, but that's another post for another time. The point is that kids are going to cruel no matter what. The big story recently was the "Powder Puff" football game in Chicago where high school senior girls haze the junior girls, and girls were taken to the hospital from the pushing, shoving, paint dousing, and feces throwing. Yes, feces. See video from WNBC.
It's only because of technology that suddenly adults are aware of kids being abused in school. Somehow, adults forget the crap of their high school years and are totally ignorant about their kids lives, on the whole. Teen movies that deal with high school cruelty: Heathers and Dazed and Confused (see Ben Affleck when he was burly). The best show about high school life recently has been Freaks and Geeks - let's hope it makes it to DVD. (My So-Called Life was good but it was all about Angela... Degrassi is another great show about junior high school life.) An antidote for all the high school angst? Clueless.
