Missouri Hedges On 'Teachers Can't Friend Students' Law 102
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."
Re:ban politicians from talking to anyone. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not the point, the point "why does the child need to fucking be legally banned from friending a teacher on FB or vice versa?"
Yes schools should come up with their own policies (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Schools don't get technology (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Re:ban politicians from talking to anyone. (Score:4, Insightful)
You think that if the government decides you don't need something its ok to make it illegal. You Nanny State Government knows whats best for us Liberals make me ill. Why do you hate freedom so much. You would have been a good communist. "Nyet, nyet, we don't need our guns, you can take them, Comrade Stalin will protect us."
Woosh!
Liberals - Want to limit your rights to: speech that might offend someone, take risks for yourself, own things that look dangerous (firearms), do anything that might go against "its for the children"
Conservatives - Want to limit your rights to: speech that might offend someone, have sexual liasons with the same gender, own things that look dangerous (technology) do anything that might go against "its for the children"
Its not about left/right liberal/conservative or whatever the banned thing is, its all about control.