Don't break any school rules - even when you're at home - because your teachers might be watching. Yes, spying on you, even in your own bedroom.

According to an article from PC World, after remotely activating a MacBook webcam, a Philadelphia-area school district took photographs of a student who was "engaging in improper behavior at home."

Yes, that's right. Improper behaviour "at home." As in, the school was actually spying on the high-school student in his own house.

The MacBooks were distributed as part of a school project, involving all 2,300 students in the school district. The webcams could be activated without the students' knowledge, supposedly as a "theft-prevention measure." The student in question was approached by a high-school official, who showed him the photographic evidence of his "improper behaviour."

Now the school board has a class-action lawsuit on its hands, which, according to the article from PC World, could even become a case of child pornography if the photographs turn out to be of a sexual nature.

In their lawsuit against the school board, the parents claim that "the indiscriminate remote activation of the webcams incorporated into each laptop was accomplished without the knowledge or consent of the Plaintiffs or the members of the class." Pretty scary stuff.

I can't imagine any of my own children's schools doing anything so sneaky and underhanded. The thought of anyone being able to secretly listen in and even watch as one of my kids hang out in their bedrooms is a very disturbing one. My kids have been lucky, I guess. None of their teachers or school principals are hypocrites, holding their students up to a higher standard of ethical behaviour than they do for themselves.

After acknowledging the fact that schools could use the Mac books' webcams as little spy cameras, the superintendent of the school district didn't offer any horrified apologies. Instead, he announced that the school board regrets "if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families."

Inconvenience? I wonder how he'd feel if some of the students in his district had been secretly spying on his bedroom? And then released pictures of anything they deemed to be "improper behaviour"?

The same thing should happen to the school officials involved in this shocking invasion of their students' privacy as would happen to those kids if they dared pulling a similar stunt. Yes, they should all be arrested and charged.

Anyone who has ever attended a university lecture has probably had this experience. It's a sort of rite of passage when you switch from the high-school row-by-row seating plan to an auditorium with over 500 seats.

You've arrived to class early. You're able to indulge in looking for the perfect seat. Third row, slightly to the right for a quick getaway after class, close to the exit near the front of the room. But close enough to hear and see the prof's overheads (or PowerPoint slides). You get yourself comfortable, having time to take off your coat and place your bag by your feet just right. You ignore the person shuffling behind you as you pull out your laptop or spiral notebook, and get a pen handy.

And then, just as you finish arranging your pencils by ascending height, it happens.

You hear it before you feel it. The tell-tale deep and prolonged breath. And then the wettest, juiciest snork you've ever heard coming from right behind you. And after that split second of pure revulsion, the mist settling onto the back of your neck.

Maybe as a germaphobe I just have some sort of homing beacon to sneezers. Every lecture you hear a few sneezers, but February classes seem to bring them all in. It's the middle of flu season.

From a distance - a big distance - you can feel sorry for those students who, by sheer force of will, come to class to make sure they don't fall behind. But once you experience the full sneezage of a sick university student, it's hard not to feel almost self-righteous about your total disgust.

Well, until you become one of them.

I couldn't understand why they were coming to class. After all, there was no way they could be getting anything from the lecture, as sick as they were. But then I got sick last week, exactly halfway through this term.

Then I started to understand.

I'd never been sick in the middle of midterms or when all those essays you've put off are finally starting to be due. Falling behind in high school because you feel sick means an extra few hours of studying. Or reading the 15 pages you missed from the novel you're studying in English class. No biggie. University isn't so forgiving.

University means dragging yourself to class even when you feel like crap and would give your iPod (and home-baked cookies) just to sleep for five minutes. But you can't. Because you have to keep up with your course work.

You really learn just how fast the pace in university is when you fall behind, even just a few lectures worth. What you went over in class on Monday seems like a lifetime ago by Friday, just because of the sheer volume of material you cover.

Some classes are easier to miss than others. But for many courses - if not most - it can seem scary to miss even just one class.

But even so, the right course of action is to stay away.

Once you get to the hacking and sneezing stage of being sick, no one wants you at class. You're just too icky. Plus, you won't retain a single word the prof says, anyway, and you'll just prolong being sick.

So when I got sick last week, and had to miss my 1:30 organic chemistry class on Monday and Wednesday, it was worth it.

After all, you really do need to be fully functioning to pretend to understand electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions.

When a student breaks the rules, their school is expected and allowed to discipline them accordingly. Forget to hand in your homework? You get a bad mark. Late for class? You get a detention. Caught scribbling on your desk? You have to clean the mess, and maybe every other desk in the classroom as punishment.

But when a 12-year-old in New York City was recently caught doodling on her desk, she didn't receive any of these usual punishments. After writing "Lex was here 2/1/10" in Spanish class on her desk, along with "I love my friends Abby and Faith," the young girl was handcuffed and taken to the police station. She was there for several hours before being released.

Seriously.

Haven't we all written or drawn something on our desks, or in our textbooks, at least once in our life as a student? Vandalizing school property is wrong, of course. Perhaps especially if the writing or drawing is something rude or offensive. But this 12-year-old girl didn't even write "This class sucks big time."

What she did was definitely wrong. But not "hand-cuffed and thrown in jail" kind of wrong. According to the story in the New York Daily News, the student was suspended and assigned eight hours of community service by the courts, along with a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience.

This story reminds me of that recent case in Dallas, when a four-year-old was suspended because of refusing to cut his shoulder-length hair. The little boy's long hair is a violation of the school's dress code - a code which actually dictates the length for male students' hair. The school claims his shoulder-length hair is so disruptive, he can't be allowed in the classroom.

School officials eventually offered a so-called "compromise" to the boy's parents. If he kept his long hair in a braid, he would be let back in class. Apparently a little boy with pig tails or a braid is less distracting than a little boy with shoulder-length hair.

Of course, schools need to have policies, and they need to enforce them.

Yet they also need to recognize when they've made a mistake, and admit they were wrong.

Putting handcuffs on a 12-year-old for doodling on her desk is wrong.

Not allowing a four-year-old to attend class because of his hair length is also wrong. I hope both schools own up to their mistakes. And soon.

The mother of a nine-year-old is suing her local school board for what she says is the board's failure to protect her son from bullies. The Kitchener, Ont., mom says the Waterloo Region Catholic School Board hasn't done enough to stop the bullies who repeatedly harassed her son, giving him fat lips, bruises, and stab wounds from a pencil.

According to an article in The Record, Kitchener's daily newspaper, the attacks started in September, 2008. The mother was quoted as claiming bullying to be a widespread problem in her son's school, and accused the principal, school trustees and superintendents of not taking her concerns seriously. She says she has written dozens of letters, and even tried working it out with the parents of the kids who were bullying her son. But now her son wants to be home schooled.

The boy and his mother are not being named to protect his identity.

In what the article described as a possible first of its kind in Ontario, the mother is suing the school board and Region of Waterloo both for $25,000 in damages, the maximum allowed in small claims court.

A spokesperson for the school board said this is the first time the region has been taken to court over its anti-bullying program, and an investigation will look into the case to see if the rules were followed when it comes to complaints about bullying.

The school board and region can't respond directly to the allegations made by the mother because it is before the courts, according to the article. The board has filed a statement of defence.

This is going to be an interesting case to follow. Earlier this month, Ontario became the first province in Canada to require all school staff to report any serious incidents of bullying to the principal. As part of the 'Keeping Our Kids Safe at School Act,' school principals are now also required to contact the parents of the victims of bullies, another first in Canada.

But what good is this legislation if nothing happens as a result? The government claims on its website that this new legislation will "make schools safer" and help students "achieve their full potential."

But for at least one nine-year-old in the province, school doesn't sound like such a safe place right now. Nor a place he can achieve his full potential. So in what seems like a very un-Canadian move, his mom has decided to sue. Let's see what happens next.

(You may also be interested in the story of two Winnipeg moms with bullied children, and another story about an Ottawa situation. )