by You must read this article from New York Magazine, Testing Horace Mann.
When students created Facebook pages that viciously attacked a teacher, and when their wealthy parents on the school’s board defended them, Horace Mann was forced to confront a series of questions: Is a Facebook page private, like a diary? Is big money distorting private-school education? And what values is a school supposed to teach?
When students post racist and sexist attacks on a highly-qualified teacher, it is that teacher and her defenders who are fired by an uber rich school much more concerned with their children realizing their birthright at Harvard than with education or doing the right thing.
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.
I really think, as more and more of these social network scandals break, that sociologists will begin studying the effects of Facebook and Myspace at length. It’s amazing the havoc that such connectability can wreak, especially in a school setting. I’m fortunate that I was out of school before Facebook became popular.