In a special session, Missouri Congress removed the section in Missouri Senate Bill 54 regarding one-on-one teacher and student communications via virtual means. The removal is in response to outcries from both students and teachers, much of which was—ironically enough—on Facebook.

Although the law was generally rejected by the public, its purpose is one everyone should agree with: the protection of students.  There is precedent for teachers behaving inappropriately toward their students, and virtual communication opens another door for exactly that. An administrator should not, however, need to view every virtual conversation between a student and teacher; a district needs to trust its teachers and allow them to make the most of educational opportunities.

Granted, districts need to monitor their teachers in order to ensure the safety of the students. However, an administrator is not there for every one-on-one classroom conversation. The idea seems laughable, no? A social studies teacher and his student are oh-so-scandalously discussing patterns in U.S. history. Somebody get Mr. Wade on the phone.

According to Rick Stream, Missouri Representative, most of the legislators who voted on the law aren’t acclimated with Facebook, and the legislators did not ask the opinion of students and teachers.
“[The law] was more of a preventative measure,” Stream said.

That’s right. This law was not a response to anything; there was no incident. Sorry, Missouri legislature, but students do not need to wear gloves every time they pet a dog just in case it bites. For now, districts need to trust the people they hire to use social networking and electronic communication responsibly.

Facebook, Twitter, texting and GoogleDocs are immensely useful educational tools. AP classes use Facebook groups or texting to discuss difficult homework problems, and an administrator does not want or need to receive every text from an AP Chemistry student needing to know the difference between enthalpy and entropy. Also, if students can ask such questions over text or Facebook, the teacher can move forward more quickly in class (instead of covering the oh-so-obvious differences between entropy and enthalpy). Districts should not discourage use of social media; they should encourage it.

The Missouri legislature removed the law because it recognizes that, without question, it was wrong to write a restrictive law without surveying the people involved first (or at least using the technology involved). Districts need to trust their employees to responsibly use a tool that can enhance the education of their students, and Missouri legislators need to avoid making laws about technologies they do not use.