Teachers in numerous Massachusetts cities and towns are not allowed to “friend’’ students on Facebook or other social networking sites, and a number of other school districts south of Boston are considering a similar ban.

The Boston Globe reports that many communities are working on policies governing school staff’s use of Facebook, “inspired in part by ‘model’ rules on the subject distributed this fall by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.”

The Massachusetts Association of School Committees rules are designed for administrators to “annually remind staff members and orient new staff members concerning the importance of maintaining proper decorum in the online, digital world as well as in person.’’

Teachers should be reluctant to add students as friends on Facebook, as Facebook and other social media sites blur the lines in the student and teacher relationship.

Growing up, we knew nothing about our teachers. They were authority figures that didn’t seem to exist in the real world. If we ever saw a teacher in public, at a mall, wearing regular clothes, we fell into a state of shock!

Now, because of the personal information made available on teachers’ Facebook profiles, students know more than they should about their teachers’ personal lives. They know if a teacher’s relationship status is “Complicated,” and that over the weekend he “Partied like it was 1999.”

One argument against students and teachers establishing online friendships is the need for a distinction between personas in and outside the classroom, and a necessary distance between students and teachers, in order to maintain respect and define a teacher as “a role model, mentor, and advice giver – not a ‘friend.’”

Ultimately, the teacher-student relationship is all about guiding the student through a set curriculum involving reading, writing, arithmetic, and so on. This is and has always been a professional relationship, not a social one. Social media facilitates a social relationship. Call me “old school,” but it doesn’t seem right for students and teachers to connect in this way.

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Comment by Elgin Bolling on January 27, 2011 at 8:11pm: Kids have enough friends without having an adult testing them on their cellie and adding them to their facebook page. It's inappropriate and unnecessary. It doesn't make the learning process and easier, and it's harder to "take orders,or instruction, or discipline". From a friend whom you see as an equal, we've become a society that seems to despise boundaries of any kind thinking that whenever one is put up we are somehow restricting ones freedom. My question is, freedom to do what?

Comment by Elgin Bolling on January 27, 2011 at 8:07pm: I agree about the line of separation. It exists in the military, in business and even in the world of sports. A direct boundary line as to be drawn, especially when it comes to discipline. A friend is more of a peer relationship, and as such, a certain amount of self disclosure is given. The younger the student is, the less control he has over his emotional life, even if he pretends otherwise. Adults, on the other hand , with more experience, can easily take advantage of the situation. I personally know of a case where that boundary was crossed between a teacher and student, which ended in a scandalous affair, which cost the teacher her job, the student their innocence, and the school, their good reputation which they never fully recovered.

Comment by Dagoth Pie on January 27, 2011 at 7:14pm: That sounds like a horribly sterile form of education, if all the teacher is there to do is teach, then how does that differ from simply learning out of a textbook?

Sure it could get creepy teachers getting to know students too well, but in todays society, where a lot of children only have one parent, or have parents with issues (for lack of a better term) then having other adult role models is a good thing. I grew up without a Dad, and to be honest, even though though I wasn't aware of it at the time, one specific teacher, who in my last two years at high school was also my dean, stepped into give me advice and guidance on a more personal level than it was really his job to do.

Of course, all of that happened without the help of social media, but we do all have to accept that outside of cyberspace, the world is a different place than it was back in "The Old Days"...

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