And people wonder why I passionately despise the public K-12 education system in the United States

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. - High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com. ADVERTISEMENT

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

The concept of In Loco Parentis is officially under assault. One parent was quoted as saying that this is overstepping their authority. You... think?! The school system superintendent responded with a very snarky comment dismissing her complaints that her rights as a parent were being violated with the statement:

"The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," he said. "It is called the World Wide Web."

It ought to creep out anyone that cares about responsible government that the schools are starting to reserve this power for themselves. This is a police function, not the function of a school, public or private. The only time that a school has any business "monitoring" a student's website is to check on the content to see if it poses a clear and present danger to the safety of a student, while on school time.
Listen, conservatives and libertarians alike, stop supporting the public school system. Stop voting for candidates that want to keep it afloat. It is a vehicle for enforcing social conformity and reducing the capacity for rational thought in the majority of its wards, minorities in particular.
If you think that there is nothing truly sinister behind this clear breach of In Loco Parentis, consider this:

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

It's part of an assault on liberty 158 years in the making.