Students paid for tattling on peers

[SillyGoose]

ATLANTA — Last month's school shooting in Minnesota has stirred interest in organized "snitch" programs that pay students for telling on classmates who carry guns or drugs or violate school rules.

Last week in central Georgia, the Houston County school board became the state's first school district to enroll in the national Student CrimeStoppers program, started in 1983. Students can earn up to $500 for alerting school officials about firearms. They can get up to $100 for fingering classmates involved in vandalism, theft or drugs.

(more)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-17-students-snitch_x.htm?csp=15

[Pachamama]

1. That's a slippery slope...just ask the folks in the former DDR-the STASI

the East German equivalent of the Secret Service or CIA would actually have whole family's or schools on their payroll...You'd have students spying on teachers and fellow students and vice versa and even Parents and kids spying and reporting on eachother...One of the biggest issues to "reconciliation" in the former communist East Germany is that with the release of many of the STASI files, people finding out that their own best friend or family member was reporting them and making money doing it...very little trust between people...

Gee, if the Bush Cabal seems to have no problem with paying off political shills like Armstrong Williams for propaganda, do you think they might not have a problem with starting programs like this and even taking it a step further and doing what the STASI did? :eyes:

[havocmom]

2. in a culturre where the only thing Really valued is $$, it is easy to

control people.

[goddess40]

3. There is a vast difference between tattling and doing the right thing

While I agree that paying someone for doing something they should do anyway- because it's the right thing to do as a decent person is soooo wrong. We need to make it clear that reporting crimes like bullying, drugs and weapons isn't tattling - pointing out that someone is picking their nose just to point out that you are better then someone else is tattling.

[rfkrfk]

4. aspiring finks need to become aware of the internet . n/t

[beyurslf]

5. I don't think this is "tattling." This is saving lives, and if that is an

incentive, then I am all for it. Paying kids to report cheaters or others who drink or smoke or have sex....that is tattling. But bringing guns to school.... There is a huge difference, and I don't see anything slippery about it.

[redqueen]

7. The slippery part is that people are people, and will lie for revenge.

If they don't like someone or have a 'beef' with them, they may plant evidence or just lie to get them in trouble. This was rampant in East Germany with the STASI.

It's all been done before.

Just as the war on drugs is a miserable failure, and we should have known, because it's been tried before (prohibition); this has been tried before, and it was a miserable failure.

[beyurslf]

8. If someone wants to lie to get you in trouble, they can do it anyway.

They can also plant to evidence anyway. Bringing a gun to school will get you expelled, even if the informant isn't paid. So that slippery slope already exists. It is a perfect revenge to get someone expelled.

[acmavm]

6. I have a big problem with any program that teaches kids that they should

be 'rewarded' for doing the right thing.

They need to be taught that doing what's right is a duty that we owe one another, not a commodity that's bought and sold. That just sooooo republican.

[Krupskaya]

9. You've got it.

The commodification of decency. Right-wing thinking in a nutshell.