Feds, teachers to stalk your kids on Facebook now?
When did the Department of Education become the Department of Speech Monitoring? Add the Dept of Ed to the list of Obama agencies that need to be reined in, hard and fast.
Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.
There has only been muted opposition to this far-reaching policy among the professionals and advocates in the education sector, most of whom are heavily reliant on funding and support from top-level education officials. The normally government-averse tech-sector is also playing along, and on Mar. 11, Facebook declared that it was “thrilled” to work with White House officials to foster government oversight of teens’ online activities.
The only formal opposition has come from the National School Board Association, which declined to be interviewed by The DC.
It’s no great surprise that federal bureaucrats, Facebook, and the ACLU are on board with this. But…the teachers’ unions are fine with teachers and administrators being put in legal jeopardy for what kids do on Facebook, on their own time? Really?
Even creepier than the policy itself, is who has been charged with overseeing it.
The leading advocate for the expanded rules is Kevin Jennings, who heads the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.
Jennings’ is a name that just keeps popping up in the Obama era. He ran that White House bullying summit last week. As Zombie wrote at the time, Jennings brings quite a history to the field of education — a history that includes child porn in the classroom, failing to report a child predator, and proclaiming to have been inspired by NAMBLA’s Harry Hay. Quite a history the so-called “safe schools” czar has brought to the table. Now he’s advocating that your kids’ teachers Facebook stalk your kids.
And the teachers’ unions have nothing to say about this? Don’t the teachers; unions have teachers a) who will wind up in court over this, and b) kids in school who may end up running afoul of whatever insane rules the likes of Kevin Jennings comes up with?
January 2013 can’t get here fast enough.
I can’t think of one aspect of normal American life that isn’t under assault by these radicals. Not one.
They have not yet begun to regulate toilet paper.
(I admit, it took me a while.)
Rob, It’s only Friday MORNING. There’s still a good portion of the day left.
Shower heads? Done. Toilets? Done. Lightbulbs? Done.
Since they’ve already done everything else in the bathroom toilet paper is the only a matter of time.
THEY CAN HAVE MY TWO-PLY WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD…
(unfinished. fill in as you please.)
Politicians use the Constitution as Toilet Paper & Regulate it to death
Facebook is the new Big Brother.
http://www.bluecollarphilosophy.com/2009/12/the-democrats-aspire-to-be-big-brother-you-must-obey-them.html
Social networks are giving the government access to our lives, our friends, our thoughts and beliefs. While we can still get the truth out there we should use facebook until it proves unsafe to do so. How long before some of your facebook friends go off to re-education camps or sensitivity training seminars?
Another reason to avoid Facebook.
Yet another reason to home school your kids, as well as to disconnect from facebook.
I’m in California and we plan to home school. This state is headed for disaster.
Good for you, Todd. Here’s a good resource for you:
http://www.hslda.org
Research the laws, join, get involved.
Home school students are much better prepared for academic work in college than public school students. Many home school students are literate; that is, they know how to read a book. That value is lost to public school students. Take it from a life-long professor.
Kids are smart when it comes to social media. They’ll have endless fun using fake identities to run the bureaucrats around in tight little circles. Heck, I might even have some fun with it!
Yup. Which side of the equation has a more internet-savvy generation?
Smart good kids are just going to use this to screw with teachers and the bureaucracy. Keep em running in circles so they don’t do any more damage. Smart bad kids are going to use this to focus the eyes of teachers and law enforcement on other students. Bullying with federal assistance!
And what happened to law enforcement keeping an eye on suspiciously old people paying a bit to much attention to kids’ social networks? But but..they’re teachers! Yea, my teachers never used to follow me home at night to make sure I never used any bad language. Back in the day teachers used their evenings to grade papers and write lesson plans.
Ohh wait, I forgot. Teachers don’t do that anymore. That’s the job of the Fed.
Keapon Laffin – to add to that re: teachers watching kids… I bet kids will pretend to be teachers watching kids and stalking them, meeting them on the sly for special “tutoring” sessions, making dirty talk, etc. Darn, I wish I was still a kid!
There technical savvy and then there’s wisdom. Kids don’t usually have much of the latter. That’s why they do dumb things. They are still learning the ways of the world.
Confusing the two is a common mistake.
Especially among kids, including the gray-haired baby boomer variety.
32 years in Education at the High School level and this MAY well be the stupidest thing I’ve heard yet.And there has been untold stupidity along the way. Unreal……
I’ve only got 29 years in myself, but whenever I hear the words “Department of Education” my eyes automatically roll to the back of my head.
The question is are a few student suicides from on-line bullying, simply the price of growing up and doing business in our brave new world?
Yes and Facebook is a willing acomplice
You will recall the left’s old mantra “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. Try this one for size: “One man’s bullying is another man’s freedom of speech”.
My daughter is probably the only 12-year-old on the planet who doesn’t have a Facebook account. (She doesn’t even care, which pleases me to no end.)
11 years in secondary public education. I do not support the NEA or the Dept of Ed and I guess, considering his “credentials,” I should not be surprised at this coming from our education czar. It puts school administators in an impossible situation. Taking action at school to discipline a student for what they do outside school is not legal nor is curtailing free speech. So the choice for the administrators who tries to comply is risk losing their job or being sued by parents. As if we did not already have enough problems finding good people to fill the role of administrators and the thankless, overworked lifestyle that goes with the role.
Those that can ‘DO’ those that can’t ‘TEACH’
That statement is a narrow-minded and non-constructive falsehood. A simple examination of the posts prior to this one shows that teachers are not in favor of this. The correct group to attack in this case would be the DoEd. I assure you I “did” before becoming a science teacher and the doing was far easier than is teaching. For the record “doing” in my case means real science research including being published in peer-reviewed journals (Toxicology Letters to be exact).
Ronald Reagan is already doing hard time in purgatory for reneging on his campaign promise to abolish the Education Dept., which was Jimmy Carter’s political payoff to the No Education Assn. (NEA). The 1994 GOP “Contract with America” gang are destined for the same fate, and for the same reason.
I know that our local police monitor Facebook sites and have solved at least one vandalism incident, where the perps were dumb enough to brag about it.
It’s not clear how FB “monitoring” can and/or should be used either by police or the schools. Cops actually have more down time, day in, day out to check such things, but it is one thing to be looking for references to a specific “crime” and something else to be doing a general screening. I suppose that once a student complains, some system might fall into place, but it is a whole new ball game, completely apart from any salacious probing by teachers into students, or students into teachers, (which is actually much more likely, given student curiousity about some of their teacher’s (especially the younger ones) personal lives.
I retired before it became an issue, but internet ratings of teachers were just beginning.
More than likely they will make a new position and hire computer savvy people to monitor F. More federal jobs.
Teachers stalking the students… cool. I think we have laws against that in our state, we can send the teachers to jail and then sue the federalalies for civil rights violations.
Bring it on.