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Re: [Phys-l] Should teachers blog???



I think the major issue here is public versus private. I agree with you (in another post) that private emails between teachers and students and teachers and parents should not be subject to public scrutiny. They should have the same protection as a private phone call or letter. When it comes to complaining about particular students, teachers should use common sense as has always been the case. Is it okay to complain about a particular kid in the faculty lounge? That depends. If there are only a couple of close friends there, then fine. If half the faculty is there, then it would be wise to keep your mouth shut. People everywhere vent about their jobs, and they generally vent to their spouses, their friends, and their neighbors. I would never consider railing against my publisher in a personal blog that goes out to the entire world. My publisher would rightly consider whether or not to continue working with me if I did that. Similarly, if I had worked with a particular school district and told everyone on this list to avoid them, that would be stupid. I would lose business quickly because no one would trust me. That's very much like a teacher complaining about a particular student on a blog. All of his or her students would soon lose trust, and that teacher would be much less effective. I think it's fine for a school to have a policy forbidding this.

It should be fine to blog respectfully about general trends among students regarding their abilities--that's more of a professional observation than a personal complaint. It's a shame that you know of examples where teachers are admonished for that. But what I saw in that thread was teachers saying that if students could disparage their teachers in a public forum, then teachers should be able to disparage their students in a public forum. Seems childish and unthinking to me.

Bill



On Feb 17, 2011, at 10:46 PM, John Clement wrote:

I am not necessarily defending that particular teacher, but there is an
important principle here. Can teachers say things which are true, but not
necessarily nice? The sort of things that the individual in question was
saying are exactly the types of things you hear in the teachers lounge,
except the students are named in the lounge.

While there is a lot of anger, there is also a lot of suppression of
information in the name of being nice and gentle. So the question is where
you draw the line. If you come out and say that 75% of the students do not
have proportional reasoning so they have poor reasoning, can that be
construed as being demeaning to students? If you say to students that they
have to improve their reasoning is that grounds for being called onto the
carpet? But that is exactly what administrators do. I know from personal
experience.

If you say publicly that student evaluations or teachers are worthless,
administrators will object. They can possibly even fire you.

So the question of academic freedom is not academic. To have the right to
express well founded opinions, you also have to have the right to spout
drivel. Some politicians do it all the time! Where does the line between
freedom of speech and the employer's rights lie? Remember that public
schools are government institutions so they must honor the laws and the
constitution. Private schools have a lot more leeway.

A lot of people are locked into jobs that they wish they could leave, but
have no idea of what to do as an alternative. So saying they should leave
teaching may not be reasonable. I know a lot of teachers who look at
students and say to themselves that certain ones are stupid. Sometimes it
will be express as Joey does not have a lot of wind in their sails.
Actually this comes from the conservative idea that IQ and intelligence are
fixed and can not be changed, so you can be stupid. Once you realize that
it is possible to improve thinking, then the equation is turned around.
Mazur and others in PER have demonstrated that students failed to learn
because of what we do.

Actually what this teacher in question is doing is just expressing what a
lot of her colleagues are thinking. So what is really needed is a paradigm
change on the part of many teachers. Firing this one will merely make the
opinion go underground and won't change any attitudes.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX



Having now read through all the posts in that thread, I'm amazed at
the number of teachers defending their "right" to complain about kids
in a public forum. You're right. If they are that angry about what's
going on in their classroom, they need to find a different profession.


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