A teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina has been fired for material she posted on her Facebook page and four other teachers were “disciplined for posts involving poor judgment and bad taste”.
After reading some of the details, it’s difficult to invoke the usual First Amendment arguments to defend these people.
Sometimes free speech rights do not outweigh incredible stupidity.
I would love to see, just once, statistics regarding how many teachers have Facebook profiles that don’t get them in trouble, either because they’re totally clean or because they set them to “friends-only” like any sensible person should.
Very, very interesting to compare this with the state board of education member who wrote an extreme column that was intentionally published to a wide audience: http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1038035.html
I shared this one with my pre-service teachers. Most of them have made their facebook sites private. And some teacher educators are recommending that they skip facebook altogether. Clearly, some media literacy work is needed in teacher education programs!
It never ceases to amaze me what an appalling lack of common sense there is in the world. The First Amendment was never intended to protect stupidity. Jeez.