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Education Law

: Edjurist

Classrooms, Cel Phones and YouTube

By Justin Bathon

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All you teachers and administrators out there, you must check out a compilation of cel phone videos of classroom disputes between teachers and students that Scott McLeod at Iowa State put together at Dangerously Irrelevant . I would say it is shocking ... but it isn't. I have not only seen these kinds of incidents on YouTube before, but I have also witnessed them myself when I was teaching in high school.

Scott asks the question:

Do we want students bringing to public attention these types of classroom incidents? Should students be punished or applauded for filming and posting these?

My initial response of course is to protect the school, so my first instinct would be to punish these students. I am sure there are cel phone bans (or at least requirements to turn them off) in most of these schools, so if you want to punish under those rules, if they exist, fine.

But, to the larger question of should the public be clued into what is going on in our classrooms? Why not? A parent could come into a classroom to observe. The principal should be observing. The classroom is a closed forum, but that does not mean it is a private place. Schools put video cameras into hallways and parking lots on the basis that it is a public place, so they should not be that surprised when the tables are turned on them. If there are bad teachers in classrooms and students legitimately want to expose what they consider to be unfair or overly aggressive practices, then I don't think we should be punishing them for what they consider to be doing the right thing. If there are minor consequences, such as serving a detention or something for having their cel phones on during class, that is fine by me, but I don't think we should be subjecting these students to major consequences. These will be judgment calls on the part of the school administrator, but I do think they should consider that some students who post these classroom incidents think they are doing the right thing my exposing the activities.

Full post as published by Edjurist on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).