SIR, are you on facebook ?

Teacher , students and facebook

Today many colleges and universities advise its teachers and other members to avoid using social media for personal communication with their students. Many conventional thinkers recommends that teachers do not accept Facebook “friend” requests from students, to avoid following them on twitter, texting, or exchanging personal email addresses or other non-work related contact information. According to the Toronto Star, which obtained an early copy of the report, teachers should only use the internet to communicate through “established education platforms” such as a course website. 

While most teachers’ first reaction is “duh” to the news that they shouldn’t “friend” their students in Facebook or follow them on Twitter, in reality this rule now exists because some teachers don’t share that same reaction.

As per Danielle Webb, National Bureau Chief for Canadian University Press. Most teachers, and even most students, recognize that becoming Facebook or Twitter friends with a teacher presents a host of uncomfortable — and potentially damaging — situations. That’s why even university professors should have strict rules governing online interaction with current students.

But in what is widely being described as a discreet advisory to set the appropriate tone for all teachers, the College is making sure the rule is hereby carved in stone. And it’s a good thing, too.

All learning should take place in public where the opportunity for teachers and students to take advantage of each other is next to nothing. Engaging with students in any unregulated online capacity — whether it’s Facebook, email or instant messaging — effectively closes the door on any checks and balances that currently exist in the school systems.

It’s the same logic that keeps parents from letting their children spend time alone with a teacher in an uncontrolled environment. Even teachers with the best of intentions can get caught in some very hot water.

“I think that students and teachers have different personas in the classroom than outside of it, and the two should not necessarily be mixed,” says Heather Steed, a recent graduate of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla. As a student herself, Steed never added instructors on a social network until she completed their class.

At least three teachers from the city's public high schools have been fired in the past six months for having inappropriate back-and-forth with students on Facebook -- one of which led to a sexual relationship, The New York Post reported.

Posting a nasty comment on a social networking site may come with a punishment next time, especially if it involves a teacher. Twenty-one class XII students of Vivek High School have come under the scanner for bad-mouthing their teacher on Facebook, with the authorities suspending them for three months on charges of indiscipline.- Chhavi Bhatia , Indian Express, Oct 07 2010

This is where abuse happens. Just yesterday a teacher in Idaho pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a junior high school student. The teacher was suspended by the school district after he was accused of impersonating a teenage boy and engaging in sexual conduct online with a 14-year-old student. He is now facing up to 25 years in jail and a $50,000 fine- said Danielle.

Students and teachers are a bit like church and state: They should be inherently separate. But just as in the separation of church and state, sometimes people try to blur the lines of division and must be reigned in. It’s inappropriate — and often criminal — when it happens, and we all shake our heads. But we have to recognize that it does happen and it makes rules like this one all the more necessary.