Facebook. The demise of us all. Or at least it’s Jennifer O’Brien’s. The first-grade teacher may lose her job, stated an article last week on Reuters.com, after calling her young students “future criminals.”
Could this be called a privacy issue? Why of course it could. First of all, it’s the same old claim, O’Brien voluntarily put her thoughts out there for the world to see, those thoughts are no longer private. Second of all, this issue isn’t so much a privacy one as it is a sensitivity one.
All these Facebook “privacy” issues that are popping up in the news, consist mostly of “inappropriate” statements or pictures. But Facebook is no more than the weak link in the chain of “ignorance is bliss.” If Facebook is guilty of one thing, it’s of making it a whole lot harder to be ignorant.
Privacy is lost on Facebook. All Facebook does is show the real us: What people really think, how people really act, what people really look like when they’re drunk. It’s the evidence. Just because we wouldn’t see it if it wasn’t posted on the Book, doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.
Everyone’s been in this situation. We’ve all had embarrassing pictures posted of us, we’ve all devised status’s that we later regret, some of us have even been caught by authority figures in sticky online-depicted situations.
But this is what I want to know: Who’s the rat? I mean really, I will be the first to say it, half O’Brien’s class is probably going to be future criminals. How did her Facebook post travel from her measly 333 friends to the parents of her students and further still, the principal of the school?
True, perhaps she should have kept her thoughts to herself instead of volunteering them to the online world. True, maybe she should have been more courteous to the little munchkins that she’s entrusted to oversee everyday. But is it also not true that the little brats give her hell seven hours a day, five days a week?
Apparently, O’Brien’s complete status had been updated to, "I'm not a teacher - I'm a warden for future criminals!" She wrote the status after her students allegedly hit her and stole money from her.
Would parents sue if she said the same thing to their faces in a parent-teacher conference? How is it different that the words were stated behind the parents backs rather than to their faces? Where they more dangerous this way? No student was named.
Teachers are people too. They are allowed to express their frustration in their everyday jobs to the online world just like the rest of us do. And parents out there need to toughen up a little. Yes, these are their darling children, their darling children that stole money from their teacher.
We are human beings and we are going to do what we want to do, say what we want to say, and hopefully tiptoe the terrible stuff through the our newsfeeds. This matter all comes down to who is smart enough to not get caught and who is stupid enough to flaunt the evidence that evicts them.
If parents and teachers are going to cause such a hullabaloo and be so damn dramatic about having online profiles (aka Facebook pages), perhaps they should just sign off and leave it to those of us who are little less sensitive. Those of us who use it for fun, not to fish around for the trouble that it stirs up.
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