Should Students and Teachers Be Friends on Facebook? The Cons
Read 1-st part of article: Should Students and Teachers Be Friends on Facebook? The Pros
The Cons
- The relationship between teachers and students should remain professional. Facebook friendships “blur” those lines and allow personal knowledge about teachers that can lead to students “crossing the line” in the classroom.
- Teachers and students should not be involved in one anothers personal lives. It damages the teacher-learner relationship that should exist in the school house.
- There are privacy issues for both the teacher and the student when they are friends on Facebook. Yes, there are privacy settings that can be used, but these are difficult to understand and the potential for students to learn that a teacher was “out on the town” over the weekend, complete with drunken pictures from a bar, can be horribly damaging to the teacher’s image within the classroom.
Finding the Realistic Middle Ground
Schools have attempted to “legislate” the use of Facebook by
teachers and students
and these policies have been largely ineffective. A few state governments have
tried to legally ban teacher-student “friendships” on Facebook so long as the
students remain in school, and the backlash has been quite vocal. In Missouri,
for example, the law banning such interaction was rescinded shortly after it
was passed.
It is up to schools to establish reasonable policies, regarding social media interactions, including privacy policy that, among other things, speaks to the issue of photography that is posted without proper permission. And “digital training” needs to occur for teachers and students alike, just as there is training about discrimination, sexual harassment, bullying, and so forth.
The question is not whether students and teachers should connect through social media. That is absolutely going to happen. The question is HOW social media is used by both of these parties.
Photo by: F Delventhal
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