Heavy use of social media by children has been linked to lower levels of literacy for the first time.

The landmark study by University College London (UCL), based on 11,000 children tracked from their births in 2000, found their time on social media could be detracting from reading and homework, with a potential knock-on effect on their literacy.

Professor Yvonne Kelly, director of UCL's International Centre for Lifecourse Studies, said the findings suggested a link between “the amount of time young people spend on social media and their levels of literacy”.

Both boys and girls who were heavier users were affected the same. “We looked at whether the more time young people spend on social media, the less time they have for the things that might improve their literacy such as reading for enjoyment and doing homework,” said Professor Kelly.

This school year, students across the country will attend courses on “Queering the Bible,” “Queering Childhood,” “Queering Theology,” and similar topics.

Students at Pomona College in Claremont, California, for instance, will have the opportunity to enroll in a brand new course titled “Queering Childhood,” which will examine “the figure of the Child and how this figuration is used by politics, law, and medicine to justify continued cultural investment in reproductive heteronormativity and productive ablebodiedness.”

Yale University has bestowed its highest faculty honor on a professor who just a few years ago was nearly driven to leave the school by students upset that he defended his wife’s free speech.

The July 23 announcement recounts Christakis’s scholarly work and accomplishments and mentions that the honor is bestowed by Yale’s president and Board of Trustees. According to The New York Times, Yale spokesperson Thomas Conroy stated that “the decision was made purely on academic grounds.”

This honor comes nearly three years after students aggressively protested Christakis and his wife, Erika, regarding an email sent by Erika just before Halloween in 2015, when the pair served as the co-heads of Silliman College, an undergraduate residential college at Yale.

One report paints a grim future ahead for German education and day care systems, despite billions in tax surpluses for municipalities. According to it, even with financing building renovations may take years.

German schools and day care centers lack around €55 billion in funding for major overhauls and new buildings, the report by state-owned KfW development bank says. According to study, the larger the municipality is, the larger the gap between existing and required funding, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia and southern Germany. Schools are currently missing €48 billion in funding and €7.6 billion is needed for day care facilities.

A Colorado school district is attempting a $1 million science experiment -- cutting its school week to four days.

District 27J officially slashed Mondays off the school calendar and started a four-day school week in a move designed to cut costs and attract teachers -- but parents are concerned it will cost them money instead.

Students who attend school in the district had their first day of school on Tuesday. Middle and high school students will attend school from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesdays through Fridays and be off on Mondays, FOX 31 reported. Teachers will have to attend work one Monday a month, but only for half the day.

The issue of gender studies was not on the agenda of the government’s meeting, because there are much more important topics, a government source told ATV.hu on Monday.

Last week, Hungarian universities were given 24 hours to give their response to the plan of the Ministry of Human Capacities, according to which it will become impossible for new students to enrol in gender studies.

As we reported before, Two universities are concerned: Hungary’s biggest state-funded university ELTE, and the Central European University, founded by George Soros.

If the amendment becomes official, it will mean that nobody can attend gender studies courses in Hungary and get a degree in the subject. HVG.hu notes that CEU offers both Hungarian and American degrees, the amendment will not affect the latter.

This month, a new study was released analyzing Americans’ perception of the First Amendment, as well as their knowledge of what it entails. As many would expect, the results were bleak.

For example, 40 percent of those surveyed were unable to list any of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, while another 36 percent could list just one.

A new study reveals that conservative college students cope with left-leaning professors by self-censoring during class discussions and parroting their professors’ political views on homework assignments.
The lead researcher notes that professors who push leftist ideology in class not only "derail" the learning experiences of conservatives students, but also deprive liberal students of the chance to "have their ideas challenged."

A deeply disturbing lawsuit filed in federal court this month tells the horrific story of an autistic child at a Caddo Parish high school who was tasered and left lying motionless in a pool of his own urine.

On Aug. 31, J.H. reportedly began rubbing his stomach against the wall in the classroom when a staff member told him to stop. J.H. then walked out of the classroom and down the hall to the water fountain where he began to compulsively drink water. He then stood in the hallway with his fingers in his ears which is normal behavior for J.H. when he is stressed, according to the lawsuit.

Staff members, including a deputy then formed a semi-circle around J.H. which escalated the situation even further.

As the Shreveport Times reports:

Many of the nation's colleges have become a force for evil and a focal point for the destruction of traditional American values. The threat to our future lies in the fact that today's college students are tomorrow's teachers, professors, judges, attorneys, legislators and policymakers. A recent Brookings Institution poll suggests that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Of course, it is. Fifty-one percent of students think that it's acceptable to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. About 20 percent of students hold that it's acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking, over 50 percent say colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people. Contempt for the First Amendment and other constitutional guarantees is probably shared by the students' high school teachers, as well as many college professors.

Though we are no longer shocked at the callous and indiscriminate nature of Saudi coalition attacks on Yemeni towns, we are surprised that major US networks like CNN have actually decided to cover coalition war crimes for a change.

Early on Thursday a coalition air attack scored a direct hit on a school bus packed with children as it drove through a crowded market place.

CNN provides the following disturbing details:

The bus was struck as it was driving through a market in the rebel-held province of Saada, according to the Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV.

At least 43 people were killed and 63 injured in the strike, according to the Houthi-held health ministry.

The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a hospital it supports in Saada had received 29 dead bodies of "mainly children" under 15 years of age, and 40 injured, including 30 children.

In this article, Professor Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, founding director and senior scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program at San Francisco State University offers an update and critical analysis of the struggle for scholarship, pedagogy and advocacy on justice for/in Palestine as part and parcel of the indivisibility of justice.

A teacher at Lodi High School in Lodi, California, kicked a sophomore student out of class for wearing an NRA T-shirt, and reportedly told another student that she would have to write an essay if she continued to disagree with him.

The school administration later determined that the shirt did not violate the school’s dress code.

Sounds good, right? But it’s the unintended consequences of the shared information that others are concerned about.

Buried amid the school security measures swiftly passed by the Florida Legislature in the wake of the shootings last February at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland is a mostly overlooked provision that requires parents or guardians registering a child for public school to disclose any mental health information in the prospective student’s past.

Sounds good, right? Having school officials made aware of a child dealing with mental health challenges means that the student and family can be connected to all available services, and school staff will be on alert to provide additional support. Who could argue with that?

The University of California-Los Angeles has hired 18 students at $13 per hour to combat “social injustices” and “privilege and oppression” following a semester-long recruitment campaign.

Hosted by the UCLA Intergroup Relations Program, the Diversity Peer Leaders project is a year-long internship during which students facilitate workshops on social justice issues in exchange for leadership training and compensation from UCLA.

College campuses are being hit by militant, pro-Israel, often anonymous anti-boycott campaigns. Some of them are so rough, they’re even making pro-Israel Jews uncomfortable.

The list of Jewish groups that do anti-BDS work on campuses is bafflingly long. A partial tally includes StandWithUs, AEPi, CAMERA, the David Project, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jerusalem U, AIPAC, Sheldon Adelson’s Maccabee Task Force, and the Zionist Organization of America.

The total amount of American Jewish and Israeli government funds flooding the anti-BDS effort is easily in the tens of millions of dollars each year.

A U.S. District Court Judge in Oregon recently ruled that boys must be allowed to use the girls locker room, showers and bathrooms, and vice versa in public schools throughout the state.

According to Judge Marco Hernandez, for children to “see or be seen by someone of the opposite biological sex while either are undressing or performing bodily functions in a restroom, shower, or locker room does not give rise to a constitutional violation.”

Perhaps not, but it does violate normal standards of decency. The Judge offered an alternative to parents who disagreed with the policy, telling them to send their kids to private school, according to WND. That way, not only do they get to have their conservative beliefs trampled on, but they also get to pay taxes to support the public school trampling on their conservative beliefs, and private school tuition. What a deal!

Under the school's bias response program, "a student who voices a controversial or unpopular opinion—or who seeks to use humor, parody, or satire when discussing sensitive topics—could face severe punishment," argued Speech First, a D.C.-based advocacy group that filed the lawsuit in May.

A Penn State fraternity member who last month admitted to plying a pledge with vodka the night he was fatally injured in a series of falls on Tuesday was sentenced to three months of house arrest.

Ryan Burke apologized in court to the parents of Tim Piazza, who died in February 2017 after drinking three times the legal alcohol limit in the space of 82 minutes during a night of hazing in the Beta Theta Pi house.

Burke said he was 'truly sorry' and accepted responsibility for his role in the events that led to Piazza's death from severe head and abdominal injuries he suffered the night he accepted a pledge bid.

In a campaign to improve its image abroad, the Israeli government plans to provide scholarships to hundreds of students at its seven universities in exchange for their making pro-Israel Facebook posts and tweets to foreign audiences.

The students making the posts will not reveal online that they are funded by the Israeli government, according to correspondence about the plan revealed in the Haaretz newspaper.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which will oversee the programme, confirmed its launch and wrote that its aim was to “strengthen Israeli public diplomacy and make it fit the changes in the means of information consumption”.

Taught by Heather Davis, “Queer Ecologies” is a four-credit course offered by the school’s Culture and Media department for students who wish to “disrupt prevailing heterosexist discursive and institutional articulations of sexuality and nature.”

According to the professor, these "heterosexist" explanations of sexuality and nature often involve referring to male/female animals.

According to the course description, students will be taught to “reimagine evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and environmental politics in light of queer theory” by drawing from research in fields such as feminist science studies and environmental justice.

Students will also “draw important connections between the material and cultural dimensions of environmental issues, and examine the ways in which sex and nature are understood in light of multiple trajectories of power and matter,” the description adds.

An international group of university researchers has found that humans perceive the color of “anthropomorphic” robots the same way they perceive race in humans.

Hence “the same race-related prejudices that humans experience extend to robots,” the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers magazine Spectrum reports.

Just like California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo and its problem with too many white students, and Harvard’s efforts to keep down its Asian-American population, the robot industry has a racial diversity problem.

The University of Alaska Southeast will be canceling classes this fall to hold a "Power and Privilege Symposium."

This will be the third year in a row that UAS has shut down classes at its Juneau campus for this conference, where students discuss issues such as “race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, religion, body size, ability, mental illness, class, and their intersectionalities."

Steve Bannon’s idea to set up a Soros-styled NGO to prop up Europe’s right-wing parties has caused quite a stir among liberals and the left, who rushed to accuse the former Trump advisor of planning an “attack on democracy.”
Bannon’s new non-profit organization, blandly dubbed ‘The Movement’ is set to establish itself in Brussels and would bring together right-wing parties from across Europe. The former chief advisor of Donald Trump unveiled the plan last week, seeking to provide like-minded parties with the support of think tanks, the organization of polls and valuable insights on data-targeting.

Member of the European Parliament from Germany and center-left politician Udo Bullmann branded Bannon’s idea “an attack on freedom and democracy in Europe,” vowing a “response’ to his initiative. Renata Alt from Germany’s Free Democrats Party, for her part, described the plan to establish The Movement as a “frontal attack on the EU and European values.”

The University of Minnesota is potentially going to punish students and teachers for improper use of gender pronouns. The policy is still under consideration and includes a punishment up to expulsion or firing.

The outlandish policy is titled; “Equity and Access: Gender Identity, Gender Expression, Names and Pronouns”—members of the academic institution “are expected to use the names, gender identities, and pronouns specified to them by University members.”

Also, the policy not only outlines punishments for improper use of gender pronouns; but also includes verbiage that would allow students to use school facilities such as dormitories and restrooms that they see fit, rather than what aligns with their biological identity.

As more students balk at the debt loads they face after graduation, some colleges are offering an alternative: We’ll pay your tuition if you offer us a percentage of your future salary.

Norwich University announced Tuesday that it will become the latest school to offer this type of contract, known as an income share agreement. Norwich’s program is starting out on a small scale, mainly for students who do not have access to other types of loans or those who are taking longer than the traditional eight semesters to finish their degree.

“Norwich University is committed to offering this new way to help pay for college in a way that aligns incentives and helps reduce financial barriers to degree completion,” said Lauren Wobby, the school’s chief financial officer and treasurer.

The same “progressives” who have made American higher education into indoctrination chambers for cultural Marxism, identity racism and other anti-American ideas are now targeting our K-12 public schools. For instance:

At the Edina School District in Edina, Minnesota, all employees, even bus drivers, must take “Equity and Racial Justice Training” instructing them that “dismantling white privilege” is at the core of the district’s mission. They must acknowledge their racial guilt, and embrace the district’s “equity” ideology.

To enhance “cultural diversity,” students at Maryland’s La Plata High School were ordered to copy the Islamic creed “Shahada” which states in part, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” One worksheet distributed by the school states, “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian.”

A University of Texas-Austin student was forced to reflect on a film about toxic masculinity after a Title IX investigation found him guilty of harassment based on a non-criminal standard of evidence.

According to an internal letter obtained by Campus Reform, following an appeal of his sanctions, the student received a note from UT president Gregory Fenves stating that “nothing you allege, even if true, would change the ultimate outcome of this matter.”

The University of Illinois at Chicago has launched a new partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency that will enhance student career opportunities at the university, officials recently announced.

UIC will receive resources to support academic enrichment and workforce development activities for students. The new pilot partnership, called the Signature School Program, will also draw on UIC’s rich academic programs, the graduation rate of its students, as well as the diversity of its student population.

The agreement “will establish a solid partnership between UIC and the CIA and provide our students a greater breadth of career opportunities,” said UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis. “The Signature School Program will provide UIC students with direct access to careers and internships within the agency for many years to come. It’s a win-win situation for both of us.”

LGBT activists have figured out the mass public doesn’t buy the “transgender” propaganda they are trying to sell.

So “transgender” activists have now decided to adjust their tactics and target children.

After all, children are young and impressionable, so LGBT activists figure they are the perfect avenue to carry out the sick LGBT agenda.

But there’s a catch.

LGBT activists know parents won’t allow this type of curriculum to be forced onto their children.

At least 40 secondary schools have banned girls from wearing skirts in a bid to cater for transgender pupils, it has emerged.

Schools are opting for gender-neutral uniform policies under which boys and girls both wear trousers, while others are considering similar changes, it is claimed.

They have followed the lead of Priory School in Lewes, East Sussex, which scrapped its female uniform last September, also citing fears over the sexualisation of young women.

It comes alongside news that a leading private school is bringing in make-up experts to help pupils who feel anxious about their appearance.

However, one thing is certain: Joel Doerfler had no involvement whatsoever. He was neither in the classroom, nor in any way implicated in how another teacher responded to a discussion with his students. There is no reason why an incident involving Mr. Redden should have had any bearing on Mr. Doerfler.

Nonetheless, a group of Riverdale parents, some of whom no longer have children at the school, used the incident as an opportunity to attack Joel Doerfler. Following Mr. Redden’s suspension, this group of parents launched what appears to be a smear campaign against Mr. Doerfler and his course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their efforts culminated in a forum of parents and administrators in the school auditorium, where Mr. Doerfler was attacked on political grounds.

Human rights activists in Virginia are fighting to protect the quality and accuracy of schoolbooks as Israel advocacy organizations seek substantial changes to the texts.

The suggested changes would distort the way Israeli history is depicted, deliberately whitewashing its military occupation and ongoing policies of land theft, apartheid and expulsion of Palestinians.

These changes have been proposed to the Virginia Department of Education by the California-based Institute for Curriculum Services – a “strategic initiative” of the Jewish Community Relations Council, an organization with an active Israel lobby.

ICS director Aliza Craimer Elias recently boasted in a video interview that her firm works “behind the scenes” with textbook publishers to edit entries about Jews, Judaism and Israel and to train classroom educators with ICS curricula.

Over the last few years, a select few schools around the country have shown the high cost of catering to the demands of partisan activist groups and mobs of social justice warriors.

Schools like Evergreen State College, the University of Missouri and Oberlin College are all notorious for their tendency to pander to social justice activists — and now they are paying the price. Although college enrollment is slightly declining throughout the country, these institutions have seen massive declines over just the past few years.

Not so long ago, student debt was mostly the responsibility of students. That is, you paid for college with loans and then paid off those loans with the proceeds of the good job you got with an advanced education.

These days it’s a little different. The cost of higher education is soaring, the jobs available to college grads don’t pay as much, relatively speaking, as they used to, and the size of loans available to students – though huge – don’t cover the full cost of many degrees.

One might expect these changes to lead more students to work for a few years and save up, or choose a cheaper degree, or eschew college altogether (as a lot of successful people now recommend) and substitute work experience for a diploma.

Yesterday’s bill passed primarily due to votes from opposition and independent legislators. It had originally been proposed by independent Senator Frances Black who spoke before the vote and brought Palestinian farmers to be present in the Seanad for the occasion.

She said:

In the occupied territories, people are forcibly kicked out of their homes, fertile farming land is seized, and the fruit and vegetables produced are then sold on Irish shelves to pay for it all. These settlements are war crimes, and it’s time for Ireland to show some leadership and refuse to support them.

“To further advance its goals of reflecting the demographics of California and creating a more diverse and inclusive campus community, Cal Poly administration has developed the following Diversity Action Initiatives document,” the report states.

In it, administration details a multi-year effort with dozens of intitiatives, including ones to further lower the percentage of white students on campus and increase the number of faculty of color.

For students, the school plans on recruiting applicants more heavily based on race. For instance, the school has recently implemented several new scholarships “aimed at recruiting more African-American and other underrepresented minorities.” It’s also working to recruit low-income and first-generation students by partnering with high schools that enroll a high percentage of these students, according to the report.

Professors at the University of Wyoming say the school’s new cowboy slogan promotes “white heterosexual” masculinity.

Expanding upon the University of Wyoming’s Cowboy mascot, the school recently adopted a new slogan — “The World Needs More Cowboys.” But some professors are up in arms over the choice, claiming that it promotes “white heterosexual” masculinity.

Christine Porter, associate professor of kinesiology and health at the university, is leading the charge against the new slogan.

“The history of cowboys, of course, is much more diverse than that racially, and presumably also for sexual orientation,” Porter said in a comment. “But the image — what the word ‘cowboy’ means off the top of almost everybody’s head in the U.S. — is the white, heterosexual male.”

South Carolina passed a law this week codifying a discredited definition of anti-Semitism that conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Jewish bigotry.

“The law will inevitably violate students’ First Amendment rights if enforced to restrict or punish campus speech critical of Israel,” Dima Khalidi, director of the civil rights group Palestine Legal, told The Electronic Intifada.

Students now face increased scrutiny, investigations, censorship and possible punishment for their activities advocating for Palestinian rights on South Carolina campuses, Palestine Legal has warned.

The anti-Semitism definition, which has been pushed by Israel lobby groups in the US and Europe, is sometimes referred to as the “State Department Definition” because a version of it was adopted by the US State Department.

The measure was added as a rider on South Carolina’s 2018-2019 budget bill, which makes the law valid for only one year.

College-graduate salaries are barely keeping pace with inflation, but the editor of an influential progressive website says the government should import “drastically” more foreign college-graduates for white-collar jobs in the United States.

“We should drastically increase the number of such [visa-] workers who can come — if not eliminate the cap entirely,” said Matt Yglesias, editor of Vox.com

Yglesias’ call for a much bigger — or even unlimited — supply of foreign college graduates comes as Americans’ salaries are just creeping ahead of inflation, according to the Conference Board, a nonprofit consulting firm. Annual growth in white-collar salaries is even lagging behind growth in blue-collar wages, according to board’s June 2018 estimate.

After finding out their children had been illegally strip-searched at school, furious parents filed a lawsuit. In spite of admitting the school violated the students’ rights, however, the lower court dismissed the lawsuit, citing lack of a claim. Naturally, the parents appealed the decision and, last week, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court overturned the lower court’s decision in a scathing reversal.

In his opinion explaining why he dismissed the case, Judge Murphy acknowledged that literacy is integral to one’s well-being—that, as the late Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan once wrote in his opinion on a related educational-access case, “illiteracy is an enduring disability.” Yet Murphy concluded in his analysis that the due-process guarantee to life, liberty, and property does not “demand that a state affirmatively provide each child with a defined, minimum level of education by which the child can attain literacy.” Without that clarity, he was reluctant to assert that the right to literacy exists—let alone that the state violated it.

As research into EMF sensitivity and social media addiction continues to surface, it’s no surprise that some institutions are trying their own little happiness experiments. After all, schools are supposed to be for focused education, and the added distractions and social pressures of cell phones may further zap the joy right out of students.

Researchers, for instance, recently discovered that smart phones were the culprit behind the depression spikes and suicide attempts among teens in the last decade. That little-known discovery has serious implications for the future of humanity. But is anyone paying attention? (or are they on Snapchat!)

Four years ago, a French school trepidatiously banned the use of cell phones – and something interesting followed.

GNN reports:

Over half of students who graduated from Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities this year did so with cum laude, magna cum laude or summa cum laude honors or their equivalents, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Just under that many students earned the once-meaningful designations at the University of Southern California, Lehigh, and Princeton. At Middlebury College, anyone with a GPA of at least 3.4 can add Latin honors to their brand new résumé, which was over half of students as of this spring.

“I’d say that it’s time to reconsider our eligibility criteria,” said Middlebury Interim Provost Jeff Cason.

According to a Wall Street Journal review of graduating seniors who earned designations at schools in the top 50 institutions ranked by the WSJ, honors designations "have become close to the norm at many top

A US educational center for special needs children has reportedly retained the right to use electric shock therapy in its operations despite objections from local authorities.

After a lengthy legal battle with Massachusetts state officials, a school for special needs children, known as the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), secured its right to use electric shock therapy, ABC News reports.

According to the news agency, the state authorities had been trying to end this practice since 2013, but the Bristol County Probate and Family Court decided otherwise.

Many of my friends who defend public education are also the political type who are very worried about monopolies. They often point to the damage that companies with large market shares—think Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Google—can do. These friends point out how these companies’ large market presence allows them to squeeze out competitors, exploit employees, and hold customers captive.

Those points, of course, are debatable, but what really troubles me is that while these friends decry monopolies in commerce, they defend a huge monopoly: public schools. All the same criticisms should apply—but never seem to.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I was in the seventh grade, I took an occupational investigation class. If I remember correctly, there was a fairly stout textbook involved that listed nearly all the jobs and professions of the day. Earning a six-figure salary as a pilot stuck in my memory.

At the time, however, I was drawn to the lawyers of L.A. Law and the doctors on St. Elsewhere. I wanted to be an obstetrician like Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show. I knew any of these paths could be lucrative, but delivering babies seemed pretty rewarding.

Then I saw a character in a movie utter something about going six figures into debt to attend medical school. I was out.

Human rights activists in Virginia are fighting to protect the quality and accuracy of schoolbooks as Israel advocacy organizations seek substantial changes to the texts.

The suggested changes would distort the way Israeli history is depicted, deliberately whitewashing its military occupation and ongoing policies of land theft, apartheid and expulsion of Palestinians.

These changes have been proposed to the Virginia Department of Education by the California-based Institute for Curriculum Services – a “strategic initiative” of the Jewish Community Relations Council, an organization with an active Israel lobby.

ICS director Aliza Craimer Elias recently boasted in a video interview that her firm works “behind the scenes” with textbook publishers to edit entries about Jews, Judaism and Israel and to train classroom educators with ICS curricula.

The University of Redlands, in Southern California, is now offering a class that gives male students a “safe space” to discuss the problems they experience due to masculinity.

The DUDES Course aims to “take a historical look at a societal norms of masculinity in America” by reviewing topics such as “healthy relationships,” “gender roles,” and “competition,” according the course description.

Students will also explore the theory of the “Man Mask.” Popularized by social justice educator Keith E. Edwards, the theory argues that all men suffer from the “mask” of masculinity, due to the pressure it puts on them to conform to gender norms.

A 13-year-old who recorded a conversation with his school's principal and another administrator has been charged with felony eavesdropping.

Student Paul Boron began recording before stepping into Principal David Conrad's office for a February 16 meeting with Conrad and Assistant Principal Nathan Short, after he failed to attend several detentions at Manteno Middle School.

Boron says he argued with Conrad and Short for around 10 minutes in the reception area of the school secretary's office. When Boron told the two administrators that he was recording, Principal Conrad reportedly the student that he was committing a felony and quickly ended the conversation.

Two months later Boron was slapped with a class 4 felony charge of eavesdropping.

Elias is not a person. It’s a robot that teaches language to students of Finnish primary schools.

Elias doesn’t get tired of repeating answers to questions that students ask over and over. It doesn’t embarrass children with reprimands about undone homework, failing grades, repeated absences, tardiness and other forms of delinquencies.

It can even break into a “Gangnam Style” dance to make students take a break from all that learning.

The one-foot-tall Elias is not alone. This language-teaching machine is one of four robots in a pilot program at primary schools in Tampere, Finland. OVObot, the Math robot, on the other hand, is even shorter. The 25-cm (10-inch) blue robot resembles an owl, and was developed by Finnish AI Robots.

Embedded in the robots’ systems is software that lets it understand and speak 23 languages, enabling them to grasp what young students ask, and therefore facilitate learning.