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Teachers, Students Fight To Be Facebook Friends
An anonymous reader writes "State Governor Jay Nixon recently signed Senate Bill 54, making it illegal for students and teachers to be friends online as of later this month. Now, a Missouri teachers group is fighting the state's new law that prohibits them from being Facebook friends with their students by filing a lawsuit. From the article: 'The Missouri State Teachers Association (MSTA) filed a lawsuit on Friday, challenging a new law. MSTA is specifically asking the Circuit Court of Cole County to determine the constitutionality of the law’s social media portion.'"
Anybody else feel like this is an incursion on freedom of speech?
Editor, you really need to make it clear which state you're talking about. I can't go the whole blurb without knowing where until the last sentence.
can we be CowboyNeals friend?
I would welcome a law that would forbid anyone from entering my e-mail address (and any other personal data) on a web site without my permission.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
"State Governor Jay Nixon recently signed Senate Bill 54, making it illegal for students and teachers to be friends online as of later this month. Now, a Missouri teachers group is fighting the state's new law that prohibits them from being Facebook friends with their students by filing a lawsuit. From the article: 'The Missouri State Teachers Association (MSTA) filed a lawsuit on Friday, challenging a new law. MSTA is specifically asking the Circuit Court of Cole County to determine the constitutionality of the law’s social media portion.'"
You should have been able to figure it out no more than 7 words into the second sentence, so hush down.
Also what's the proposed legal situation if a student and/or the teacher uses a psedonym and is unaware that their friend is a teacher/pupil?
as if being friends in real life was an impossibility, forget facebook the human race survived for millions of years before the internet came along so you can survive and communicate with your friends without facebook too, give it a try, exchange phone numbers, meet for coffee, play a game of pingpong or pool, or a board-game like chess or checkers or dominoes...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
For a teacher who works in a small town for a few decades that will be a large number of people they can never friend on facebook. It could even prevent someone friending their husband or wife. A teacher/pupil can have an age difference of four years, which a few years after they younger one graduates will seem an insignificant difference.
In Australia, teachers aren't allowed (and this is a rule rather than a law) to contact you electronically using any means other than your school-supplied mailbox. From a teacher's point of view it works out quite well, because they can often be harassed by students (anonymously, of course) and sometimes visa-versa. I do admit that it would be hard for relatives who are teachers/students in the same state, but I think that is a bit of a corner case and unlikely to be pursued by the government. This bill seems to be simply to protect one party in the case online relationships between students and teachers become abusive/a threat to privacy.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
I can't begin to imagine a less defensible violation of the first amendment. Here we have a law which directly prohibits the free association of citizens for no justifiable reason. The prohibition does nothing to prevent inappropriate contact between students and teachers (nullifying any possible compelling reason to uphold this unconstitutional garbage) while directly attacking a right so critical to basic human liberty that the founding fathers chose to spell it out in plain English for all the world to see in the Bill of Rights. The first amendment was crafted specifically to ensure that exactly this kind of thing would never happen in this country.
Not even in the 9th Circus would this kind of absurdity pass the smell test. Assuming this makes it to the SCOTUS, the lawyer defending it is going to find the justices incredulously shaking their heads at his every word.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
While I also suspect the constitutionality of this, I can think of nothing worse than befriending my students on facebook.
In college, we had email lists that a few professors used. It was good for starting class discussions, and occasionally discussing a difficult homework problem. The same thing could be done in a FB Group or G+ Circle.
Private communication being it notes, phone, sms, email could always be used for inappropriate messages, but whatever the medium of communication people have to know when it crosses the line of appropriated.
Expect to see child kicked out of class due to Facebook posts.
And in the "grown up" world, a person who brings a camera to any event now ruins the night as far as I'm concerned. Social web and beer doesn't mix.
I want one too please.
See, now teachers have a good reason to sign up for Google+
They won't go to jail.
Such stupidity!
"several decades ago"
On Slashdot, not only can you be his friend - you can be his FOE.
AND we have "I hate" buttons too.
They come in flavors of "Offtopic", "Flamebait", "Troll", "Redundant" and "Overrated".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
government officials are not allowed to be friend with their citizens, or their coworkers. it seems improper that they have a channel of communication that is not under monitor and hence weaken government transparency.
It is a violation of freedom of association that is the issue. We have the right to associate with anyone who is willing to associate with us without interference from government.
If teachers are some how unfit to communicate with students online, then shouldn't they be unfit to communicate with them IN PERSON AT SCHOOL?
It seems that it would be intelligent that teachers should welcome a chance to be let into the social circles of students online. This is where they could influence them in a positive way. For example the case of cyber bullying. If there is a teacher in the circle of friends, wouldn't this hamper cyber bullying? Don't we have enough disconnect from the youth of the country as it is? We have both parents trying to work 2 jobs each trying to pay the bills, this leaves kids disconnected to a point of being criminally negligent.
It's ok that we we let kids be influenced by Rap music, MTV, and free run of the Internet with all the filth involved in these elements, but we balk at a teacher being around? It sounds like we need drug testing for politicians.
Take the Red Pill.
Can you friend a teacher in your school that does not have you in any of his/her classes?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Teachers should be friendly but they are not "friends". There should be distance between the student and teacher. The relationship should be academic to recieve the best results. Why would someone want to be facebook friends with a teacher at their school? It doesn't make a whole lot of sence
The United States Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama that the freedom of association is an essential part of the Freedom of Speech because, in many cases, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others:
"We hold that the immunity from state scrutiny of membership lists which the Association claims on behalf of its members is here so related to the right of the members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in so doing as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment" ( NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 US 449 - Supreme Court 1958 )
What about all the Priests? The neighbors across the street? Most kids are molested by a father or uncle. If we're serious about protecting kids then we need to make it illegal for any adult to "friend" children on facebook!
And so what if the law is entirely useless and won't do anything to curb inappropriate relationships... at least it proves Jay Nixon cares about children.
I had the pleasure of attending a boarding school in 9th and 10th grade, here it was normal to hang out with teachers after class, play board games, sports and what not... Teachers were always around, the principal even lived next door. I'm friends with some of them on facebook, and why shouldn't I be, I have "friends" on my facebook account who are a lot less friends than they are...
That said, when you have authority over someone, you should always be aware of how you conduct yourself, even when you're off duty. I don't actively add kids, I was leader for at summer camp, to my facebook, that would be somewhat creepy.
But just because you have a position of authority over someone, doesn't mean you can't be friends, and most certainly not facebook-friends (lets face it fb-friend != friend).
Unless the teacher agrees to let every student be their friend, I can see how it would create problems if the teacher was selective. I would find it easier as a teacher if there was a policy keeping me from accepting several dozen friend requests per year ("Sorry, Billy, I can't accept your Farmville invitation, state rules.") While the ban probably wasn't a good idea in hindsight, I can imagine a thoughtful person supporting Missouri in the policy, and can imagine a lot of teachers groaning if it's reversed.
Gently reply
It's not for the government to decide who can be friends with whom. I think it's good for children to have other adults they can trust, besides their parents. What if you get sexually abused at home (which does happen a lot)? Then an adult friend is a best thing you can have.
"Think of the children"? Yes, think if your children want to live in a sexually tabooed and paranoid world, that you "think of the children"-folks are pushing it towards.
was a teacher who had an inappropriate sexual relationship with his student.
Thirty years ago, well before the time of social media.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
How is this law "thinking of the children" exactly? I've heard of many teachers friending their whole class so that students could post questions and get help on their homework.
~Syberz
By January 1, 2012, every school district must develop a written policy concerning teacher-student communication and employee-student communications. Each policy must include appropriate oral and nonverbal personal communication, which may be combined with sexual harassment policies, and appropriate use of electronic media as described in the act, including social networking sites. Teachers cannot establish, maintain, or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian. Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student. Former student is defined as any person who was at one time a student at the school at which the teacher is employed and who is eighteen years of age or less and who has not graduated.
unless I am reading it wrong it sounds to me like every school must adopt a policy concerning facebook and other social networking sites, but it does not say that students and teachers cannot be friends. what it does say is that a teacher cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student meaning that they cannot run there own website that allows them to communicate exclusively with a student. Is there something I am missing here?
There are a host of problems with allowing teachers to friend students. Teachers demanding that all students "friend" them in order to keep track of their out-of-school activities, teachers selectively "friending" only certain students, etc.
The thing is, all of these issues can be most appropriately handled at the school district level. An irrational and unconstitutional state law does nothing to effectively solve the problems. Especially as "friends" is targeted to a specific social media site. Can they follow each other on twitter? Can they be LinkedIn "associates"? Can the use email, phone, or text messages to communicate? This isn't a slippery slope, it's an elevator chute.
So I think this law is going a little overboard, but a lot of new teachers (who are in their early-to-mid twenties) don't realize that, by friending their students, they're giving their students access to all those embarrassing drunken pictures taken of them while they're in college--I've heard stories from my mother, a teacher, who is on Facebook (unfortunately) but who doesn't accept friend requests from students, but who works with many younger teachers who do. IMO, teachers should be trained that it's a good idea not to friend your students, maybe to the extent that it's the policy of a school system to not allow teachers and students to be Facebook friends. But I agree that this is a case of the government sticking its nose somewhere it doesn't belong.
Nothing of value was lost.
Don't forget Dr. Bob, DC :p
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
As my first post on Slashdot after reading for a while, I can say that I lost an entire post already due to the back button on my browser. I suck. So, since I don't have the energy to post again why I hate this bill so much (to sum it up quickly, 1st Amendment and the fact this bill is so vague no one knows exactly what it says), I'll post the link to the actual lawsuit which was filed. You can find the .pdf underneath the summary. http://www.msta.org/news/?ID=1996
On a side note, I'm going to have to figure out how to put spaces in between my paragraphs. I'll figure this out at a later time.
Undo half of this law by enabling female teachers to be online friends with male students!!! The reverse can be problematic but the case I'm proposing has no bad consequences. If anything, the female teacher would be the one that's in danger...
and do us all a favor
Sent from my ENIAC
Facebook can be used safely as a venue for communication between educators & students.
I understand many of the previous posts here both regarding freedom of speech as well as privacy of the students.
Educators can easily (and have been able to for some time), create organizational pages for their classes on Facebook where they can post homework assignments and answer questions. This has been a feature that has been available for quite some time. This way parents, school administrators and students can all have access to the site, and teachers can easily post assignments and reminders to students feeds / wall to keep them in the loop. Questions about assignments can be directly handled through the wall / discussion board of the site as well - keeping academic work separate while ensuring the privacy of the students.
While there are many other safety driven sites available for educators, the ability to keep students up-to-date with their homework assignments through social media, whether it be Facebook, Twitter or Google + can be a valuable resource.
Robert Chandler
CAT Computers
"Are you GAY?
Are you a NIGGER?
Are you a GAY NIGGER?
If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for! "
Sorry, but I'm a gay nigger from outer space.
A lot of you are failing to see beyond the immediate idea of a current teacher/student this year implications... The law includes all FORMER students too (nothing to say the law stops applying when they become legal adults). If you have been a teacher for thirty or forty years that can include a LOT of people (several thousand people easily). My high school chemistry teacher created a Facebook group for school alumni - as someone who has had their 10 year reunion come and go, shouldn't I be old enough to decide whether or not it acceptable for me to associate online with a past teacher?
I was hoping to make a "Well, there's still G+!" joke here, but apparently the law doesn't single out Facebook by name, it just says "social networking sites."
This is looking to be an emerging rule in schools in general though, so I don't see the problem.
Two of my cousins are teachers, and both of them have told me that their local schools are enforcing similar rules.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Your parents aren't your friends (in real life), and neither are your teachers. There are more than sufficient ways for teachers to communicate with their students in a professional way. Facebook is not one of them.
When the line becomes blurred bad things happen.
The fact this law is named after someone tell me it is knee jerk reaction pushed through by a state legislator looking for votes in their district, there is no chance of it being repealed legislatively, and it addresses a negligible risk to kids without understanding the problem. It's like killing off all of the Grizzlies because one ate some tasty humans.
Screw saying that its a bad thing, I think this is great for the kids. It keeps the teachers from saying: "Why won't you accept my friend request?". Students need to be away from their teachers during down-time, not having them looking over their shoulder when they're playing farmville or other nonsense. Stuff like: "I saw your accomplishments, if only you would put that much time in to studying for my classes."
So when my physics teacher saw me online and started quizzing me on the exam subjects to check that I am prepared, he was being inappropriate too? Looked like a beneficial cause to me...
friends shouldn't fight! ;D
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
it's necessary to remind Americans that the founding fathers had no comprehension of Facebook, let alone a society where children and teachers have the relationship paradigms that exist in the 21st century Anglosphere.
The only thing a teacher would "poke" you with in the 1770s is a leather belt or a stick of some kind.
Once upon a time there was a lovely little dream called Freedom of Speech and Expression, as well as a small document called the Constitution, but it was too much of a bother for the power-hungry so they systematically dismantled it by keeping the masses busy blaming everybody and everything but themselves...
If there is a need for collaborative work, Facebook doesn't have to be the platform for it - a dedicated education platform should be the goal. It also means that Facebook through a ToS or functionality change could disrupt classwork. Not good.
I don't use Google+ much, but when I joined I almost without thinking immediately added 2 of my college professors into a "Teachers" circle. Circles ftw.
There are aspects of the law that are good-- strengthening the reporting requirements, etc. to make sure an abuse case can't be suppressed by the school administration, et. al. The problem is quite profound in terms of our current legal system in fact. A comparable case is that "it is legal in the United States to buy certain types of high explosives, but not to make them", as the buying can be regulated so that not just anyone can go out and buy TNT at the local "five and dime let's make a bomb shop". But because of the Bill of Rights, nearly anyone (felons excluded) can own just about any type of "arms" (weapons) because we have the right to keep and bear arms. And that right is strongly protected.
Even though we all agree that teachers coercing or molesting students is a bad thing, it's not a preventable by destroying an aspect of the bill of rights thing. They call it the slippery slope and it's the same kind of thing with free speech. You are free to yell "fire" at the top of your lungs --but not in a public place --unless there is actually a fire. So the laws designed to protect students can't just say who can talk to whom and how as a method of preventing child abuse, they have to be crafted so dang specifically that they fit existing crime statutes, for example, it's illegal to engage in speech "soliciting" or "coercing" behaviors such as sex with minors, prostitution, etc., but not to call and talk to a student about an activity or grade. And a parent monitoring a child's FB account would have the right to raise holy hell for any teacher risking that kind of speech, etc. online anyway.
So the likelihood of the freedom of speech issue surviving a court challenge as written is probably nil.
(EFF ==> Electronic Freedom Foundation, btw).
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
It is interesting that this is being interpreted to mean "can't be facebook friends" when the language of the bill is this:
"Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student. "
If a teacher has a gmail account, doesn't that give exclusive access with a student simply because they can use it to send the student a private e-mail message?
A long time ago, when I was in college, I had one class where completed projects had to be e-mailed to the teacher. Of course, this law doesn't apply to college (at least I don't think so), but my point is that this was almost 20 years ago, and electronic interchange has gotten much more common in the intervening years. I imagine that using facebook as a tool is probably even somewhat common. I know I have been talking to some people in the teaching profession that my stepson recently moved up to campus to start college, and they said "Oh, yeah, I saw his post on facebook."
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Teachers are in a special position, they need to be examples and they have a special area of importance to their students. They shouldn't be forming cults of personality on places like Facebook or MySpace. They are obligated to keep relations with their students on a strictly professional level. It's not that much more different than the strictures against socializing with your students.
I had to google the State Governor concerned to find out he was a Democrat. I'm sure that information would have been more prominent if he had been a Republican.
Mary-Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau v Facebook
I don't want any of my students finding out more about me than the limited amount of information I share with them. My football team changes every week, my first name changes depending on the day and who is asking.
Teachers are profesionals, and should act in a professional mannerm with suitable boundaries. Also, leave your work at work, don't take more home with you, I already do enough of that with marking!
That passed this law should be personally financially responsible for it's legal challenges. And when it is found unconstitutional they can pony up the money.
Wouldn't it be better to force students to be Facebook friends with their teachers and with the administrator. Then everything they did on the social network would be effectively chaperoned. If children are on these networks they should be supervised. This seems like a sure fire way to make Facebook less safe.
Why do students want to be Facebook friends with their teachers?
Once you've graduated, sure. But while they're in a position of authority over you (and doubly so when you consider that schools have this nasty habit of using your out of school life against you in class)?
I have very few co-workers on Facebook for the same reason (and certainly none of my bosses!)
But really - what possible benefit are you getting from having your English Teacher see everything you do?
As a teacher of 11-18 year olds in the UK, unfortunately I must agree, however I don't think this law should apply to former students.
As a teacher I'm responsible for making the students do things they don't always want to do, like work and learn, when they'd rather play and chat to each other. In order to do this I must have authority over them. These days, the kids know all too well that teachers can't hit them anymore, the worst we can really do is shout, give them detentions etc, and ultimately pass the issue on to the parents, who often as not just plain don't give a shit. In order to maintain some level of discipline, they need to respect (and to an extent, fear) me, they need to have the illusion that I have more authority than I actually do. This is almost impossible to maintain when my drunken weekend shenanigans are available for the class to see, and are a major talking point among the students (this is inevitable).
The fact is modern classrooms are based on the illusion of authority, giving the pupils access to details of the teachers' personal lives (regardless of what they actually get up to) erodes that illusion.
Most adults cannot be trusted to correctly use the privacy and friend-grouping functions of facebook effectively, and so it makes sense to simply make friending them at all illegal. However this still requires blocking pictures to non-friends, which hopefully most can manage.
And there's no need for students and teachers to be friends on facebook, no reason at all. All pupils (at my school) are given an email address at the school's webserver, we use it to communicate electronically and when they're not in school. Most importantly, it is controlled by the school and detailed logs are kept and are readily available, should anything nasty be said.
I AM friends on facebook with one or two former students, since my above reasoning no longer applies.
As a teacher at a high school I was not allowed to be friends with students on fb (school policy), I even had to remove students I was friends with prior to becoming a teacher! It was for my protection and the schools. Once I left the school I was added by about 30 of the students who I could then accept. I think its a good idea not to add students, although making it a law is silly, especially since students and teachers would join the same groups (eg the name of the school group) and write on the wall to each other.
There was a time when teachers were hired to, you know, teach, and kids were expected to learn. Nowadays, teachers are hired to grade, and kids are expected to pass.
All those problems of teachers exploring the kids are a consequence of that disfunctional relationship they have now, and won't go away untill the actual problem (and it IS a problem) is fixed, it doesn't matter what kind of barriers you put between them.
Rethinking email
it says that a teacher can't have a site like facebook, not that they cannot take part in a site like facebook
Taking away freedoms should never be done with so frivolously! I am embarrassed for our nation that we even have a governor that would entertain the idea of taking away a freedom without bringing the idea to the entire population. In fact, we should have a new amendment to the constitution that states that any law that restricts freedom can only occur by a vote of the population.