Summary Of At Some Schools Big Brother By Kelly Wallace

Kelly Wallace, in her article “At Some Schools, ‘Big Brother’ is Watching”, describes a new phenomenon in schools; monitoring students’ social media. Wallace’s purpose is to inform students and parents of what schools are doing and how the schools are invading the privacy of students. Throughout the article, an indifferent attitude is placed upon the highly debated topic in order to educate the public of the measures schools are taking to monitor student activities. In the article, Wallace uses diction, imagery, and syntax to convey a neutral tone over this controversial subject.
Diction is used throughout the article to create a neutral tone. Words such as “ensuring safety”, “balance”, and “save” create a positive connotation of the schools

Wallace writes about a situations where a twelve year-old Florida girl ended her life because of repeated cyberbullying. Specific messages sent to the girls are described in the essay as well. Next, Wallace goes on to explain that the school was unaware of the cyberbullying situation off campus, but on campus the school had separated the girl and the students bullying her and had placed them in different classrooms. The purpose of the story of the little girl was to show that monitoring students’ activity on social media can be helpful; maybe if the school knew about the problem the outcome may have been different. Another situation is described in the article about a college student finding her younger sister’s Tumblr page. “Depressed but Well Dressed” was the title of the page; upon finding that page the little girl got the help she needed. Despite major negatives to monitoring students’ social media activity, there are positive aspects to the

Monetary values are repeated several times referring to the amount of money that schools pay to monitor the school’s students on social media. In one instance, a school in Los Angeles paid a firm “$40, 500 to monitor what the middle and high school students post publicly on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media” (Wallace). An amount of money so large like that could dramatically help a school; it could fund things such as new technology, new clubs, or sport teams. Tech firms such as Safe Outlook Corporation, charge between $4,000 and $9,000 dollars per year for their services and schools do pay that. Over time, costs can add up to staggering amounts of money that could have been used to benefit the students both academically and in extra curricular ways. Likewise, schools have had to pay enormous amounts of money in settlements. 70,000 dollars were paid to a Minnesota student for being forced to give up her passwords to her social media accounts. Such incredible amounts of money spent on monitoring students can be avoided by not monitoring students’ social media in the first