Thursday, June 09, 2011

Nixon at press conference: No decision yet on teacher/student Facebook bill

Gov. Jay Nixon told reporters at a press conference in Joplin Wednesday that he had made no decision on whether to sign Sen. Jane Cunningham's bill which would make it illegal for teachers and students to communicate through Facebook and other social networking sites.

"I haven’t gotten to that in my bill-reading process yet. I’m sorry, I just haven’t, so I wouldn’t want to speak to that. I’ll get back to the capital tonight and do some more bill reading. That one hasn’t crossed my desk. At the right time, if you ask me that, I’ll give you a great answer."
It has been noted on this blog and other sources that Facebook made it possible for Joplin teachers to contact students who were their Facebook "friends" and cut down greatly on the amount of time it took us to account for all of our students. But that is not the only legitimate purpose educators have for communicating with students through Facebook or other social networking sites.

As I have been noting for months (in fact years, since this is not the first time Mrs. Cunningham has proposed this law), it is not just the emergency application of social networking that makes the bill so ridiculous, but also the educational aspects, as many teachers have incorporated Facebook. That provision of Mrs. Cunningham's Amy Hestir Student Protection Act does not do one thing to protect students from perverted teachers, and sadly, there are a few, but it does a lot to make things more difficult for those who have never crossed the boundaries between teachers and students, and it adds to the growing number of attempts made by Mrs. Cunningham and others to paint a false portrait of public school teachers based on the actions of a very minute minority.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm telling you right now that I don't have one problem with the teachers my kids have as friends on Facebook. Most of them they have known their entire lives. Who are these elected officals to tell my and my kids who they can be friends with and who they can't? Really? A concerned parent will have usernames and passwords for all of their kids networking sites anyway! If you stay on top of things it shouldn't be an issue!

Anonymous said...

Is this possibly a freedom of speech issue anyway. I mean, is this law even Constitutional, isn't it trying to limit free speech?

Anonymous said...

Personally, and I know this is controversial, but, it wouldn't make me mad if they shut down all internet social networking and made people TALK to one another again.

For God's sake, people are far more worried about a freaking Facebook page than they are the state of the union.

Isn't THAT the plan? Distract and conquer. As long as we are trained from birth to piddle with such nonsense we miss what's really going on with the world.

To H@@@ with Facebook, MySpace, and the rest of those narcissistic BS social sites. While these sites may be helping people in other parts of the world (no doubt), they are ruining America and it's kids.

As far as teachers and students not talking to each other on Facebook -- total nonsense. Heck, these kids talk to far worse than their teachers so what the heck. Bring it on.