A Teenager Killed Himself After Being Outed as Bisexual. His Family Wants Justice.; The New York Times, September 30, 2019

Emily S. Rueb, The New York Times;

A Teenager Killed Himself After Being Outed as Bisexual. His Family Wants Justice.

The family and classmates of Channing Smith, a high school junior, said his death was a result of “social media bullying” and called for a thorough investigation.

"Channing’s death underscores the challenges of combating cyberbullying, which has proliferated in recent years. According to a report last year from the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of teenagers said they had been bullied or harassed online — and many of them thought teachers, social media companies and politicians were failing to help.

In schools across the country, L.G.B.T. students are more likely to be bullied and experience depression than their straight peers, studies have found."

Elon Musk's secretive LA private school doesn't just teach spelling and math — it also asks students ethics and critical thinking puzzles you usually don't see elsewhere; Business Insider, September 3, 2018

Andy Kiersz, Business Insider; Elon Musk's secretive LA private school doesn't just teach spelling and math — it also asks students ethics and critical thinking puzzles you usually don't see elsewhere

"Elon Musk's secretive LA private school, Ad Astra, has developed a new tool for teachers and students.

Educational software developer ClassDojo is partnering up with Ad Astra to develop a set of critical thinking puzzles called "Conundrums" that they'll release to teachers and students this fall. The tools are meant to offer the type of critical thinking espoused by Ad Astra, although Ad Astra is not using this specific tool.

The Conundrums pose open-ended critical thinking or ethical problems for the students, who are then encouraged to discuss the issues among themselves and reason out a solution. They tend to pose somewhat more nuanced and complicated questions than most elementary or middle school curricula address."

4 Philosophy Professors Weigh In on Why The Good Place Is So Forking Funny — and Important; Popsugar, February 28, 2018

Gwendolyn Purdom, Popsugar; 4 Philosophy Professors Weigh In on Why The Good Place Is So Forking Funny — and Important

"There's a scene in the second season of The Good Place where, in order to illustrate the classic moral dilemma known as The Trolley Problem, the characters are forced to live it. The famous thought experiment, which asks different variations of whether you would steer an unstoppable trolley into one person to avoid killing five, has long been a go-to for ethics scholars — but watching the show's hilariously gory take on it brought the lesson to life in a way Agnes Callard, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, hadn't considered before. "There's something very violent about the thought experiment itself, like, we're asking them to imagine murdering people," Callard told POPSUGAR. "And the show just takes that really seriously, like, 'OK, let's reallyimagine it.'"

It's just one of the ways tuning into the NBC sitcom has been a fun first for philosophy and ethics professors like Callard, who aren't used to seeing their area of expertise at the center of a hit network comedy. Callard and the three other philosophy professors/The Good Place fans we talked to said that while pop culture has always reflected on philosophical themes, they don't remember a show or movie ever examining specific theories and works this explicitly."

Academic Ethics: The Legal Tangle of ‘Trigger Warnings’; Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/13/16

Brian Leiter, Chronicle of Higher Education; Academic Ethics: The Legal Tangle of ‘Trigger Warnings’ :

"A report on trigger warnings by the American Association of University Professors identified similar cases, calling them "anti-intellectual and infantilizing," which many of them do seem to be. The AAUP pointed to a policy at Oberlin College (subsequently tabled) that listed the following as topics warranting trigger warnings: "racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression." The draft Oberlin report even cited Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart since it could "trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more."

There is plainly no legal or moral obligation to issue trigger warnings for these kinds of reasons, and there are strong moral reasons not to: The whole point of trigger warnings — as the real PTSD cases show — is to enable students to avoid engagement with materials. But how can that be compatible with the ethical imperative of educating young people? Students should, of course, engage with all facets of human experience in a serious education — including all the ghastly aspects of human experience — except to the extent that a documented medical condition makes that impossible...

Teachers should issue trigger warnings in the easy cases, but in all other cases, they ought to refrain from trying to shield students from serious study of the human experience, even when morally offensive. At the same time, teachers should discharge their fundamental duty — namely, helping students learn.

Sometimes discharging both tasks will require skill and sensitivity, but it is the ethical obligation of a serious teacher to develop both capacities."

The singular danger of Trump; Washington Post, 8/26/16

Dana Milbank, Washington Post; The singular danger of Trump:

"Next week, I’ll be talking about Trump, and how we speak to children about Trump, to teachers at my daughter’s school. The school is understandably wary about appearing to take sides in a political contest. But I’ll say such reluctance should be set aside, because Trump stands opposed to the civic values we teach children...

So how do we talk to children about Trump? We tell them what Holocaust survivors have told me: that what Trump is doing reminds them of 1930s Germany, and that grownups are not going to let that happen here."

‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools; Huffington Post, 4/13/16

Christina Wilkie, Huffington Post; ‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools:

"It was only a matter of time before kids started picking up the aggressive, divisive language that’s become a hallmark of the 2016 presidential campaign.

According to a new report by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center titled “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on our Nation’s Schools,” the race is stoking fears and racial tensions in America’s classrooms...

The report identified two troubling trends: more openly racist and vicious bullying of minorities, and more fear and anxiety among immigrants and minorities about what would happen to them if certain candidates for president are elected.

The survey did not name specific candidates, but teachers named Trump, the Republican front-runner, in more than 1,000 comments — five times more often than they mentioned any of the other candidates."

Texting, 'friending' a morass for educators; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/16/11

Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Texting, 'friending' a morass for educators:

"When Sidney Alvarez became Avonworth public relations director, he thought a Facebook page might be a simple way to spread the word about goings-on in the school district.

But as Mr. Alvarez and school employees nationwide have discovered, when it comes to students and social media, nothing is simple.

The school now has a robust Facebook presence, with updates every few hours that reach more than 700 students, parents and community members. But Mr. Alvarez and the Avonworth administration have had to make countless ethical and policy decisions balancing the ease of communication versus student safety and decorum. Should comments be allowed? What about student photos? Should the district allow its logo to be used on parent-created fan pages for sports teams?"