UK School District To Report On Parents Allowing Kids To Play More Mature Video Games
from the nanny-state dept
In case you thought the nanny-state arms race was over, it isn't and, also, who were you kidding? The initiation of laws and rules made by governments desperate to protect their own people from themselves is a pastime at this point, one which has previously seen legislative and law-enforcement actions taken against wearing headphones, smoking, and allowing children to find entertainment in the form of electronics. Now, in the UK, one school district is taking matters into its own hands, stating it will report to police parents who allow their children to play video games with an R18 rating.
This declaration was made in a letter warning parents of the new policy, authored by head teacher Mary Hennessy Jones, who heads up fifteen primary schools and one secondary school in Cheshire, England.
"Several children have reported playing or watching adults play games which are inappropriate for their age and they have described the levels of violence and sexual content they have witnessed: Call Of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Dogs Of War and other similar games are all inappropriate for children and they should not have access to them. If your child is allowed to have inappropriate access to any game or associated product that is designated 18-plus we are advised to contact the police and children’s social care as it is neglectful."If this isn't sending a shiver down the spine of any parents out there, it damn well should. The idea that a school district might seek to place itself directly in between a child and a parent when it comes to parenting decisions is somewhat without precedent when it comes to the type of entertainment the child engages in. This leaves aside the question of blatantly illegal content, of course, such as child pornography and/or real-life filmed violence. This is strictly about parents who decide (or choose not to decide) what types of legal entertainment their children are allowed to enjoy. As always, this overstep traverses a bridge built with platitudes about protecting children.
The letter sent home to some parents also mentions "inappropriate" social media accounts including Facebook and WhatsApp because it could "make them vulnerable to sexual grooming and explicit images."
Threatening parents with calls to the authorities for a child even witnessing an adult playing an adult-rated video game is bad enough. Suggesting social media access could result in the same action (the letter does not explicitly say Facebook access will lead to a call to the police, but connects "social media sites" to "these games" in the bulleted list of "actions we are advised to take") pushes this whole thing into the realm of the completely ridiculous. While some parents may feel that it makes sense to restrict their kids' access to social media and violent video games, and there is arguably a place for schools to alert parents when the appropriateness of the entertainment content to which children are exposed inside and even outside of school is questionable, implementing a zero-tolerance policy on the choices of parents about their child's entertainment is the nanny state taken to an absurd level.
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Filed Under: nanny state, parents, uk, video games
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Because here in the US, game ratings are a voluntary system and aren't really against any laws.
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The legal case resulting from that law’s passage both nullified the law and gave First Amendment protections to video games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Ass'n
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How the EU system PEGI (Pan European Game Information)is used varies from country to country.
The rating system is compulsory in every EU state, however it is only legally enforceable in some. In the UK for example, it is illegal to sell to or for someone to purchase for - under-age people. It is a criminal offence.
Although the laws restricts sales, I do not believe it goes as far as restricting what children can play. That is supposed to be down to parental choice.
But in much of the EU it's a non-enforceable but compulsory advisory system.
This particular situation with this UK School District is very definitely not the norm and they have way over reached. I very much doubt the police would give a toss and even if they did, there's nothing they could do. Social Services - maybe, in an extreme case (as part of other problems)but not the police. They would laugh at you and probably tell you stop wasting police time.
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WTF is "Sexual Grooming"?
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This is what a moral panic looks like.
Or when we didn't want kids playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons because they had the option to be Chaotic Evil and there were demons in the Monster Manual
Or when we didn't want people watching / reading The Marriage of Figaro because they... might... get... ideas... about something.
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If that objective was achieved, the original Dungeon and Dragons is still available, and only requires paper and dice.
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If a console required some kind of camera-based biometrics or age verification, I suspect that the diorama technology would be similarly implemented, and that is if the biometric software couldn't be bypassed outright.
Like clocks on VCRs in the 80s, voluntary opt-in parental controls seem to be something of a mystery to typical households.
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More like parental control requires effort, and it is much easier to force everybody else to keep the world safe for kids, by prohibiting anything that would harm them.
Should be sarcasm, but unfortunately it is not.
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So, any of those shows about people injuring themselves doing dumb stunts?
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Real life filmed violence
I suspect along with those who watch such vids for the outrage factor are those who get a rush from some guy getting a beatdown.
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My first call...
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"Upon receiving your letter warning us of the dangers related to mature media with regards to our children, I was immediately moved by the level of your concern. Please accept this fine piece of classic literature as a token of my appreciation for the care that you provide us all."
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Pfffffft.... (or an English version of the bronx cheer)
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I had heard rumblings about this lunacy a couple days ago, but I was too busy playing old-school violent video games like Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem to pay it much thought at the time.
But Christ on a motorcycle, I didn't realize it was that absurd. Contacting child care services over some kid playing an 18+ game like Call of Duty, GTA Halo? I know the UK's been a bit of a nanny-state for years now, but this is even by their standards.
That being said, I suspect a sizable chunk of the COD community probably wouldn't mind if there were less foul-mouthed primary-schoolers trash-talking them over Xbox Live because of this.
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Also the police and social services will tell them to get lost, they are far too busy for this shit.
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So 16 total schools will be affected by this idiocy. And yeah, I expect that the police would just shrug it off, but she's still trying to scare parents into doing what she believes in the moral thing.
Personally I hope whoever is in charge of the police sends here a nice little letter detailing the punishment for filing false police reports.
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sehe was, was etwas sagen
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Seems she should get reported for intentionally trying to traumatize children with unfounded legal threats to cause trouble for a family. After all, who should know the child's ability to tell reality from fantasy better, a stranger or a parent?
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Back in the day
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What genre would that be then? One is an ancient Hindu text, the other is an early 20th century English novel. They have almost nothing in common.
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How about this
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The only thing the police could do is follow a parent and bust them when they buy a game for a minor but that seems like a huge waste of time.
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Hell! I'll do you one better! Is it any better if the child was >playing
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They can even do that. Thos laws only apply to commercial entities only. Its not at all like buying cigarettes.
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She may have been referring to the Pink Floyd song.
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It's a free-to-play turn based strategy RPG, based on the board game "Confrontation"
http://store.steampowered.com/app/219700/
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I also frown upon such parents, but barring extreme circumstances, its none of my damn business
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In the UK for example, it is illegal to sell to or for someone to purchase for under-age people.
No. The sale to those underage is prohibited, nothing else. For example, anybody selling my ten-year-old cousin a copy of Kill Bill would be committing a criminal offence, but if I purchased a copy for her eleventh birthday, I wouldn't be arrested.
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1. There is no such thing as a "school district" in the UK. There are Local Education Authorities (LEAs), but this wasn't an LEA. This was a group called "Nantwich Educational Partnership". The group's Wordpress site has been deleted (wonder why...) but earlier incarnations are on wayback. http://web.archive.org/web/20141213191723/http://nantwicheducationpartnership.wordpress.com/about/
NE P seems to have been no more than an unofficial, voluntary association including schools in one particular town.
2. The letters were sent by NEP and drafted by Ms Jones. Ms Jones does not "head up 16 schools" she is the headteacher of one school (and presumably the leader of NEP). She has no authority over any other school
3.The local council (who actually have some control over what schools in their area do) issued a rather tepid statement in support. I say tepid because they state:
"Where the circumstances indicate that neglect may be involved, schools have the option of reporting the matter to police and children’s social care." and that all incidents must be judged on a case-by-case basis. See further http://thenantwichnews.co.uk/2015/04/01/council-backs-nantwich-headteachers-over-18-rated-video-game s-letter/
In other words, the schools *might* report to social services (not the police). That letter is just one foolish headteacher, drunk on her own authority over children, who thinks the same tactics will work on their parents. Her threats are about as real as "if you don't all settle down this instant, it's detention for everyone!".
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