There’s been a bit of a stir on the blogosphere lately over substitute teacher Julie Amero of Connecticut, who was convicted earlier this year on four counts of endangering the welfare of a child. The computer in the classroom Amero was subbing for was found to have been exposed to pornographic material, which several of the 7th graders reportedly found. The central issue of the case was whether Amero had purposefully visited the websites, or if they were the result of spyware that had been inadvertently installed on the unprotected computer. She could be sentenced up to 40 years in prison.
Amero was granted a second trial recently, as certain evidence in the trail was proven to be faulty.
Since the judge has accused bloggers of skewing public opinion on the case, I will comment in two segments - one assuming that Amero visited the sites intentionally, the other assuming that she was the victim of spyware.
If she truly was porn-surfing in class, there obviously should be some sort of reprimand for Amero. But in the form of a talking to from the school’s superintendent or some other likewise official, not jailtime. The real issue here is that 7th graders were left unsupervised with unrestricted access to the internet. Because, let’s be honest here, you give 7th graders a computer, and they’ll eventually find a porn site, regardless of what websites had previously been accessed. She would be wrong to visit those sites at school where students could have seen, but I’d argue that the onslaught of curse words and slang insults shouted in the halls by other students do much more harm to 7th graders than one isolated incident of students breaking the rules, going onto the teacher’s computer and seeing some porn ads. Should they be given jail time as well?
2nd scenario: Amero’s only “crime” was not thinking far enough ahead not to leave children in a room with pornographic pop-up ads. She’s a substitute teacher, unfamiliar with computers and the station she was working at. She panicked when the computer received a pop-up attack, and was not given help from the school’s other teachers or tech support. In that case, it’s the school that needs a lesson in child-safety, not Amero.
Either way, any prison time is extremely excessive for this type of incident. I mean no disrespect to Amero’s intelligence, but the only requirement for subbing at my own high school is a high school diploma (they’re desperate for subs). They aren’t given training in what to do in that type of situation, nor in how deal with kids or warned about their technological curiosity in the classroom. Educators: use this experience to better educate yourselves and your schools about how to prevent this type of event from happening in the future. There’s no need for a scapegoat when no real damage was done.
Your thoughts?
via Washington Post
