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Missouri Hedges On 'Teachers Can't Friend Students' Law
bs0d3 writes with an excerpt from an AP story, as carried by NECN.com: "Missouri senators took a step Wednesday toward repealing a contentious new law limiting online conversations between teachers and students, but stirred opposition from the governor by still attempting to mandate that schools adopt their own policies about online chats and text messages. The action by the Senate Education Committee comes a couple of weeks after a Missouri judge blocked the new law on teacher-Internet communications from taking effect because of concerns it infringes on free-speech rights."
why do we even have these useless donkey turd excuses for humans?
The exact same slashbots who are screaming about how unfair it is that teachers can friend students on Facebook will be the same ones screaming at the top of their lungs about Big Brother and the police state violating "privacy" rights when some stupid student posts pictures of himself committing a crime and the teacher reports it to the cops.....
It's all part of the I want all of my "rights" without ever having any consequences to my actions philosophy of Slashdot.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
* Do not dress in condom costume at the school Halloween party.
* Do not send funny naked photos of yourself to your students depicting Washington Crossing the Delaware.
* Do not give lectures on the benefits of marijuana at the Do Not Do Drugs School Rally.
* Do not invite students back to your apartment for "extra study time".
It's a good thing if teachers have a Facebook account that deals with class related issues, allows students to communicate about homework, ask questions, expand the subject, etc.
It's a bad thing if teachers have a Facebook account they use to buddy with their students simply to share pictures, schmooze, gossip and otherwise engage in behavior that is unbecoming a teacher.
The law is entirely unnecessary as this is a matter of professional conduct to be handled on the teacher level and administration level, not a state government level. Banning Facebook in this manner is like banning teachers from using email, telephones, Skype or any other technology to communicate appropriately with students. So you want teachers to remain teaching with nothing but in person voice, chalk and blackboard for the next 300 years?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Give them a logged and controlled environment for just the students, teachers and parents of a school zone. The problem with face book is that it exposes the student to not just the teacher but all of his / her friends as well.
As people become more entrenched in theoretical process of running a school system, they tend to view any new technology as Salem community elders viewed witchcraft. Here is a brief explanation:
My mom is a high school teacher in Missouri, and this law has far reaching effects, not just with regards to Facebook. For one, the school district provides students and teachers email addresses in order to facilitate school related communication between the two in regards to homework, etc. My mom would have students email their papers and assignments regularly. Not anymore, according to this law. What about school clubs wishing to create a Facebook page or other online presence? If it's a school-sponsored club, the school can be held liable for anything put online, yet the faculty sponsor would be putting him/herself at risk by accessing the page to ensure that everything's ok. Our legislators need to stop trying to legislate for every little thing, and start ensuring that our government has the resources it needs to enforce the laws we already have.
--- I'm just rambling...
This law was much more far reaching than just Facebook; it effectively prohibited ALL online communication between students and teachers. My mom is a high school teacher, and after the law was passed, they were prohibited from using their school provided email accounts to communicate to students via their school provided email accounts.
--- I'm just rambling...
I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing for a teacher to friend a student as a "buddy". It is possible to have a student/teacher friendship and keep things professional. I did it when I was in school. I texted with one teacher that I had but I don't see it as unprofessional or unbecoming a teacher. She was like a mentor to me and she feels that I helped her become the great teacher that she is today and now we are good friends. In fact, if we weren't "friends" then I probably wouldn't be where I am today because that "friend" encouraged me to better myself.
As a (former) teacher living in Missouri, this law is horrible. It comes from school administrators around the state going out of their way to not do their jobs. This law came about because of a fear of a teacher going from district to district who molests children, and uses electronic media as one of his tools. If there is a teacher who gets asked to find a job somewhere else because it is suspected that they have molested a student, it is the job of every school district employee to report this person. This reporting is legally mandated, and anyone found having knowledge of molestation who holds a job as a mandatory reporter can and should be held liable. I once worked in a district where the band teacher was suddenly arrested for having sex with students. I was livid. If he had been in the building when I found out, I would have kicked his ass into his office and kept him there till the police came. Any district that doesn't investigate such things should be held liable, and any administrator who suggests a teacher find another district in which to molest students should lose their job and license as well. I say regressive because most students are well ahead of the school districts in terms of making regular use of technology. This just discourages teachers from using technology further. I can't tell you how many times we've been able to plan accordingly because my kids were able to text their coach or teacher about an upcoming event to make sure we weren't late, or planned to be out of town.
Yes.
I agree. I'd think that a teacher should have a separate facebook account for use when communicating with students. There's really no reason for students to get insights into your personal life, or to see your family pics.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The schools are running scared. School IT admin seems to lag everywhere by a generation or two or three. We're going through the latest round of IT snafus in our school system as the year begins, and it's really quite sad.
I think the blanket "protective" rules are aimed at setting up bright lines that any idiot can administer without really dealing with the human beings involved or reflecting on how porous technology makes communication to anyone determined. Seduction (in either direction) is a *social* problem not tech, and sure wasn't invented recently. These rules won't stop the problem, they're just a way of the schools burying their heads in the sand instead of dealing with the content of the problem. It's like relying on curfew to stop teenage pregnancy. Preventing abusive relationships is an education topic, not appropriate for some idiotic 50's notion that the key is to prevent the communication of "bad ideas" -- or than the medium generates the ideas!
I enemy this.
"as this is a matter of professional conduct to be handled on the teacher level and administration level" I agree with you. However the problem is that public school teachers are Government Employees, Unionized, and have a Tenure. A lot of extra protection that could allow creepy people to stay in the system. Giving less power to Administration.
Now for this article I am not saying Unionization, Tenure or being a Government Employee is a bad thing on the whole, but it does create a problem where you need Laws to step in to stop problems that for other organisational structures would be Unprofessional conduct where disciplinary actions may take place.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The real issue is that the law does/did nothing to protect students from predatory teachers. Missouri also has a law that if a sign is posted banning hand guns in a facility, then you can't bring them in. Like the facebook law, this law also does nothing to protect people from somebody intent on doing harm (maybe the signs are made out of kevlar).
The real problem with these types of laws are that they are emotional based to give the appearance that something is being done, when in reality, they provide little if any protections to the people they purport to protect. With regards to the facebook law, now only did it not add any real protection, but it was a poorly crafted/worded law and banned all kinds of electronic communications between teachers and students, far more than friending somebody on FB.
Ironically, under the law as it stood, it was a criminal offense to email a student or former student but not send them an actual letter. Interestingly, since the law applied to all school personnel, not just teachers, it also meant that guidance counselors, nurses, etc., could not communicate with the students electronically. Makes it kind of hard to send out information regarding scholarships, too.
The law could have avoided all of this by only restricting communications that would not be outside of the realm of what constitutes normal communications between a school employee and a student. That way, a counselor creating a FB page regarding scholarships information or when recruiters will be at the high school would not be illegal.
In effect, that is what the legislative committee is recommending -- that these types of decisions (ie acceptable use of electronic communications) be set on the local level by local authorities.
It may take a village to raise a child, but it doesn't require the government to do so.
. . . . attempts to legislate fads are a really BAD idea.
If that requires that students also have a Facebook account, just to get access to the teacher.. then that would be a horribly wrong thing. (and my experience of facebook is that if you don't have an account, you can't actually use the site)
Sharing pictures, schmoozing, gossiping and otherwise engaging in social behaviour.. thats exactly what social networking sites like Facebook are for!
Calvin & Hobbes: http://madshakespeare.com/2010/08/sunday-funnies-verbing-weirds-language/
You do not need a law to preent you from doing it to not do it.
And what exactly are school IT admins supposed to do about facebook etc?
How about when an irate parent comes in and starts screaming about how little Johnny put up something nasty about little Bobby on facebook...
after school hours...
on a home computer...
What do you want to do?
When you've already banned FB and a few dozen proxy sites, but kids still find other proxies or just use their own smartphones.
What do you do?
When you catch kids doing sh*t on the network that is obviously against policy... ...
You can't permaban them because "computers are needed for schoolwork"
The school can't enact punishment because the previously I-don't-give-a-shit parents suddenly explode at the school admins if their little darlin' actually gets a reprimand...
what do you do?
School IT admin isn't as behind as you might think. It *is* often chronically underfunded compared to other areas, but that funding comes from tax dollars.
The problem is you have way too many people screaming for a technical solution to a social problem, mainly because if it were addressed as a social problem they'd have to deal with it themselves.
if only for the fact that it erodes a recently established missouri law that permits teachers to consider and present "alternative theories" of sciences such as evolution in the class as a form of free speech.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's a bad thing if teachers have a Facebook account they use to buddy with their students simply to share pictures, schmooze, gossip and otherwise engage in behavior that is unbecoming a teacher.
Ummm, why? There is nothing wrong with teachers being friends with their students and doing anything a normal human being would do (within the law and school policy obviously). If they abused it by taking advantage of their position of power, or something else then yeah, it's a bad thing, but I was friends with some of my teachers when I was younger. I did gossip with them, and sometimes see or show holiday pics and things, and these were the teachers I went to when I needed advice, for example when I couldn't ask my parents. Just because some fucker decides to abuse a system doesn't mean I should be punished for it.
Who need's speling and grammar?
At which point, your mom should've asked for IT to create a mailing list for the class, and thta all communications take place between on the list. Benefits include everyone in the class seeing problems, and parents and others are allowed to join in to offer assistance and other such things. Private problems can still be brought up in one-on-one sessions after class.
Honestly, if I was a teacher, I'd avoid one-on-one emails as well - the system is too easily stacked against teachers for stuff like sexual misconduct and the like, and it's way too easy for a student to make a false accusation that gets blown way out of proportion.
Maybe I'm just a traditionalist who thinks teachers using email and facebook for communications is strange (at best the parents had ot call the school to call the teacher - the only direct "access" I had was in class and before/after school). Heck, even in university most students automatically preferred to use the course website's forums rather than one-on-one emails with the professor, and have one-on-one sessions during office hours.
I have a very close friend who is a flaming liberal. I am a pretty ultra conservative. We get into all kinds of fun debates. Fine. She is a teacher.
She has a multitude of student facebook friends, many under 18, many in her class or have been in her class who view her as a role model and intellectual. She is very prolific about her position, politics and social issues on facebook. I would think this is probably ok in the current atmosphere.
What if she was an ultra religious conservative preaching the 4,000 year old earth 2nd coming of Jesus bit to all her students via facebook. Would it still wash when little Jenny asks mom why her family is going to hell for not accepting Jesus as their savior?
One of my daughter's teachers from last year has an email form on his teacherweb site.
Her current teacher (different school) gave them a long lecture that email assignments need to be sent from their parents' account since she will not even open an email that looks that it was sent by her student.
Different strokes.
Your solution for a mailing list wouldn't have worked; ALL online communication was prohibited, regardless of the medium or format.
--- I'm just rambling...
having a police officer escort each teacher around school to make sure they don't talk to students about anything but homework? If they as much as MENTION that they're having a good/bad/etc. day, they can just be arrested on the spot for having a personal conversation with a student. Cuz we all know teachers aren't people, and if the students found that out, jeez....what would happen next? I can see a huge playground orgy involving teachers and students right now.
Preventing all teachers from being able to talk to kids online is like priests being forbid to marry. It just magnifies and mutates the problem until the ones who actually ARE pedophiles (I'm optimistically guessing this is a minority of teachers) find a way around it to satisfy their urges.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Private problems can still be brought up in one-on-one sessions after class.
High school students rarely have enough time between classes to even get a drink from the water fountain, much less delve into private problems.
Honestly, if I was a teacher, I'd avoid one-on-one emails as well - the system is too easily stacked against teachers for stuff like sexual misconduct and the like, and it's way too easy for a student to make a false accusation that gets blown way out of proportion.
How is one-on-one face time any less likely to lead to false accusations than e-communication?
It's akin to making the use of pencils and pens illegal because of the ability to use them as weapons.
The tools and means for criminal activity will always exist; the key is to remove the desire for them and to isolate the individuals who cannot control themselves from harmful desire.
It's unfortunate but realistic news, people... If someone wants to do bad, they're going to do it. One thing that is a psychological fact is that when you make someone feel that they aren't allowed to do something, they are more likely to opt into doing it. I needn't cite references to back that statement up.
Curious (not trolling).. so if a teacher created a website with info related to their subject, and the li'l chilluns read said website, the teacher would be in violation of the law?
According to the legal counsel for the school, probably... This law had a lot of unintended consequences.
--- I'm just rambling...
Why exactly do you think that being part of the union, having tenure, or being a government employee matters in matters of unprofessional conduct? All those things mean is that you get due process. They do not trump unprofessional conduct based on existing law which certainly covers inappropriate communication between a teacher and a student.
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The main draw for a low salary job such as teaching is the benefits; one benefit is the high status (in the classroom), which itself is a currency that can be cashed in sexually, among other ways. Regulating away human nature is a complete waste -- in this case, if the student doesn't already have a combination of the correct software running on her brain and peripheral social support, and other methods that cover up the failure modes (condoms for pregnancy), that student will be picked off anyway, law or no law, draconian measures or no measures, because she will be selected for as a low-risk target.
It seems as though these types of laws, while intending to protect, end up regulating or imposing sanctions while providing very little in real protection. We know from the research in education that the creation of student-teacher relationships is critical to student engagement in school. Haven't many of us had teacher role models that made a big impact on our life? Facebook and other technology platforms simply create ways for us to develop those relationships in new and meaningful ways. Our recent student engagement benchmark study (see research highlights on our website: http://www.ncfsl.org/content/student-engagement-satisfaction-survey) underscores the importance of these relationships. States err on the side of protection these days and I think it's a mistake.
Scott Wallace, Executive Director of the National Center for School Leadership