Lower Merion laptop spying

I'm sure most of you have heard about the rather big story of Lower Merion School District allegedly spying on students using laptops in their school issued machines. As more news comes out about this, I'm personally getting more and more disturbed by it.

I think my views are somewhat unpopular, but I have a real problem with the basic premise that high school students (or any students) are untrustworthy and need anything approaching the sort of monitoring that went on. Even if we assume for a moment that they only ever used it as claimed, to recover stolen laptops, it seems to me even this was aimed at keeping students honest by not allowing them to steal these machines and sell them. While I don't question that such a thing may happen, I believe that protecting against it in this manner is not ideal, at best.

The issue isn't just a few laptops, and even if we find this school district was in fact using this software to spy on other occasions, I think it goes much further than just this story. In the grand scheme, this isn't even important. What IS important is the slow erosion of rights of our students. Students today are told they essentially have no rights beyond the right to an education. This incident is just an implementation of this policy, of showing these kids that they really don't have any rights, in or out of school. Month after month, new stories surface of how students are being punished or at least spoken to for things they are doing outside of school, for posts they are posting on line, for pictures they are taking and sending to friends. Why is this tolerated still?

Our rights are not something to just let slip away, and teaching our youth that they are mutable and unimportant is no way to raise the next generation in this nation. This is a deep issue with national, and even worldwide implications, not just a few pictures from a students laptop. Amidst all the chaos around this issue, lets not forget the big picture.

These kids are tomorrows adults. Start treating them like it.