Death to Creative Expression: Girl expelled for journal entry changes school

[jason]

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A 14-year-old student disciplined for writing a fictional account of a student who falls asleep in class and dreams of killing a teacher is moving to another school, her father told CNN Thursday. Rachel Boim was expelled from school after writing a fictional account of a student who falls asleep in class and dreams of killing a teacher.
Read the full text.

I don't know what to say about this except that KAT! should hide her flash vids when travelling. Seriously, what would happen if they saw the Project Achieve data files (luckily protected by ethical guidelines), or blog entries. Livejournal should, I guess be banned as dangerous by schools? That would go for instant messages too. School teachers should now have to teach "right-think" to everyone so that they will not have any bad thoughts about anyone any more, during school hours.

Comments

You can’t censor what children “imagine”, can you?

[jaguarxkr.livejournal.com]

Wow, “only in America” right?
Reading about Rachael made me wonder about the images that are shown throughout the media. For instance, how many times have we seen the Twin Towers tumble down? Or hear and see the graphic images of Columbine?
Makes me wonder, who is responsible for a teenager to have thoughts of killing, and feeling the need to express them? As I’m typing this, TBS-the SuperStation is showing nothing but The Matrix all evening long. Then there are movies such as The Terminator, which come out in the theaters, rated ‘R’ and is being shown at 6 o’clock on a Sunday evening! And what about action figures? They come out after a big flashy movie like The Terminator comes out, but how does the child know that he wants it, if the movie is rated ‘R’ and not yet out?
I’m going to have to quote Marshall McLuhan, because he obviously knew what he was saying: “The medium is the message”.

Good point

[n2daniel.livejournal.com]

I definitely do not agree with this. I'm wondering how anyone in the school came to see this FICTIONAL story. Of course this happened in the USA - nothing against the USA but they appear to have a serious fear of being killed. Since all of the shootings, etc. that have occurred in the past few years, I can somewhat understand why this would seem to be a threat. Keeping that in mind, yes, hide your personal work if it is violent in the slightest. This raises questions in my mind about freedom of expression however ambiguous the right is.

Re: Good point

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

:)
And think about your legal, moral and ethical responsibilities if a student of yours wrote fiction that could be confused as being violent.