Okay, I admit it: there’s actually quite little I can think to say in regard to the scandal surrounding the US high school that installed backdoor programs on laptops issued to students which allowed school faculty to monitor students at random in their own homes. (Indeed, the scandal apparently broke because a student was disciplined, in school, for “inapproptiate behaviour in the home.”)
Though I suppose it would serve to note that it would be a safe bet indeed that a goodly number of the affected students probably kept their laptops in their bedrooms, which means it’s quite possible that watching faculty members probably, on occasion, chanced to see a student in some state of undress. I am not convinced that they would have, in that circumstance, immediately terminated the connection. Perhaps in most cases, but not in all. Somewhere out there, I am sure that screenshots of an entirely inapproptiate nature exist.
Now, to be fair, catechetical classes are not yet to the point where they require students to be issued laptops. But suppose for a moment that for some ostensibly education-related reason, a priest had installed similar software on the laptops of several of his young charges. Now…imagine the uproar. Imagine these events had transpired at a Catholic private school…and again, imagine the uproar. Firings (or ecclesial disnissals and defrockings, as the case may be) would ensue almost immediately! And criminal prosecutions would soon follow, not to mention lawsuits. These things would happen even if it could be proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that no untoward or sexually-driven motive had been behind the installation or use of the software.
Game over. Done.
Yet none of that seems, at present, to be happening in this particular scandal. About the most grave thing that has yet transpired is that an injunction has been issued barring school faculty from spying on students. To my knowledge, there have been no firings or criminal charges.
A double standard? Probably. Especially when one considers that, according to some statistics, American teachers are as much as 100 times more likely to abuse minors in their charge than are Catholic priests.
Just saying.
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Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: American News - Catholicism - Education - The Interwebs | Tags: Catholicism, Education, laptopgate, laptopquiddick, private school, sexual abuse, US, webcam
One comment so far.
March 14, 2010, at 3:56 pm
[...] the same time, that moderating effect only gets you so far. Witness the fact that, as I have previously mentioned, teachers are roughly 100 times as likely to commit sexual abuse against minors as are priests. And [...]