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Comment by joshmlewis | Hacker News Reader

Also, at the same school I mentioned before, later in the year they started cracking down on Facebook. Teachers were getting reprimanded for being friends with students. Students were getting suspended and banned from the prom because they posted a rant about a teacher or worker at the school. It was ridiculous.

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Should a teacher friend a student though? I'm not completely sure that's appropriate.

Yes, there definitely is an argument against it. And I'm sure they are wanting to help teachers avoid getting too close to their students, which would allow for inappropriate behavior. But I there's always a case against something. The fact that teachers were actually getting punished for it is on another level.

From my perspective it was quite useful. I myself sucked at remembering tests (because I was on here too much) and she knew it, she would just say "hey, don't forget our test tomorrow :)" and that helped me. She didn't have to do that but it was a nice gesture and it helped me remember.

When social media is new, people use it in curious ways that aren't best suited. The teacher/student friending was probably an attempt to relate to the student, or get in contact with them for homework/etc. As my mom is a teacher, I've seen some pretty interesting build-your-own-class-website websites, and Facebook could have just been another attempt at that sort of website, for the teachers.

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