Jess Calarco: This story about middle schoolers' vicious online impersonation of teachers is a troubling illustration of the power of privilege in schools, including its power in exempting affluent White kids from consequences and rules. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/t...

This story about middle schoolers' vicious online impersonation of teachers is a troubling illustration of the power of privilege in schools, including its power in exempting affluent White kids from consequences and rules. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/t...

Students Target Teachers in Group TikTok Attack, Shaking Their Schoolwww.nytimes.com Seventh and eighth graders in Malvern, Pa., impersonating their teachers posted disparaging, lewd, racist and homophobic videos in the first known mass attack of its kind in the U.S.

As I show in a 2020 @ASRJournal paper, public schools are often afraid to hold affluent White kids accountable to rules. Because they fear conflict with parents/kids with the power to hurt them personally or threaten the resources on which they depend. 2/ journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Avoiding Us versus Them: How Schools’ Dependence on Privileged “Helicopter” Parents Influences Enforcement of Rules - Jessica McCrory Calarco, 2020journals.sagepub.com As privilege-dependent organizations, U.S. public schools have an interest in catering to higher-SES White families. But, what happens when privileged families’...

That kind of immunity from consequences then amplifies the sense of entitlement that highly privileged kids (and parents) feel and express in their interactions with teachers at school. 3/

This is exactly what we see in the Malvern, PA case. In the wake of vicious online impersonation from students in the school in a wealthy, mostly White suburban community, "Some teachers are now hesitant to call out pupils who act up in class," out of fear of online reprisal. 4/

Meanwhile, the students involved are showing little remorse for their actions. As the article notes, "'Move on. Learn to joke,' the other student said about a teacher. 'I am 13 years old,' she added, using an expletive for emphasis, 'and you’re like 40 going on 50.'" 5/

If anything, the students involved seem to feel entitled to continue the abuse. The article quotes a student saying "We’re back, and we’ll be posting again. And we are going to private all the videos at the beginning of next school year, 'cause then they can’t do anything.” 6/

I suspect this case in Malvern isn't a one-off. And I suspect this and similar cases will not only make it harder to fill already growing shortages of teachers but also amplify inequalities by making teachers even more reluctant to hold privileged kids accountable to rules. 7/

This is one of the few times when a “kids on the internet these days” article is actually highlighting something important. Similar to some of the other work in the Times on deep fakes being used for porn by high schoolers. Sometimes, there really is a problem. But the platforms could address this.

Post