Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times has an op-ed piece today by Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education and history at New York University, on the topic of what teachers can or cannot say in and out of school especially on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.    He cites several examples of cases where disciplinary actions were taken against teachers including:

“In April, a first-grade teacher in Paterson, N.J., was suspended for writing on her Facebook page that she felt like a “warden” overseeing “future criminals.” In February, a high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia was suspended for a blog entry calling her students “rude, disengaged, lazy whiners”; in another post, she imagined writing “frightfully dim” or “dresses like a streetwalker” on their report cards.”

“Last October, a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of an Ohio high-school teacher who had asked students to report about books that had been banned from schools and libraries. The exercise wasn’t in the official curriculum, and parents had complained about their children reading some of the banned books.”

In these cases, questions about certain basic rights (freedom of speech and academic freedom) come into play.  However, as professionals, teachers should exercise some restraint in what they say about their students in public.   The cases cited above also indicate that the courts set boundaries about what is taught or not in the classroom.  The op-ed piece concludes that there will be more of these cases especially if legislation that limits collective bargaining rights (i.e., Wisconsin) becomes more prevalent.

Tony