Was one school correct in suspending a student after he posted a picture of a substitute teacher napping in class with his cell phone onto a social network?
gather: Rather than just reprimanding the teacher sleeping in class, the Mustang Public School thought it best to investigate both the teacher and the student. Result? The student was suspended for using his camera phone in class.
Huh? Mary Leaver, spokeswoman for the school has written that “Appropriate follow-up action has taken place.” She said it was against school policy for a student to use a cell phone during the day. Hopefully, it’s also against policy for a teacher to nod off during class, although taking a snooze probably isn’t specifically mentioned in school policy. That’s common sense, right?
Common sense? Well let’s define that. Is it common sense, or rather proper behavior for the student to be using a cell phone during class? Was it appropriate for the 9th grader to then post it on a social networking site? Or how about the fact taking a picture of someone in the state of Oklahoma is illegal without that person’s permission? Was the taking of a picture an ongoing habit of the student that school authorities wanted to curtail? Then again, why is he getting punished for exposing some wrong doing?
This is what Yahoo had to say:
“If anything, they should have been reprimanded for having a phone, but they probably took it to an extreme because they caught a teacher doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing.”
Is that to suggest the school authorities were incensed that one of their own had been discovered misbehaving and then publicly humiliated? (which is to suggest he would have been spared had he behaved discreetly?) Or was this the school’s way of getting even with the boy or even better given the others students incentives not to make this an ongoing practice? Or is this simply the school’s way of saying ‘it’s their way or the highway,’ indiscretions aside…?
Oklahoma Mustang School to date has not indicated what has happened to the napping teacher, although one is prone to think with the school union standing behind him his fallout might not be as precipitous as the punishment one young boy received.
But perhaps one commentator on redditsummed it up rather succinctly:
If your teacher is sleeping and not educating, than you aren’t in school anymore. You’re just sitting in a room with a bunch of other people wasting your time.
This is just some power-tripping administrators protecting their own by castigating someone who got proof that a teacher wasn’t doing her job at all.
Indeed. Class is over…
