A student asks a teacher to let him play a video from YouTube. The teacher asks if it is appropriate. The student says it is. The teacher lets the student play it using the teacher’s computer and digital blackboard without ever seeing it. The video is of a “sexual nature and obscene.” A member of the school board finds out about it and says that school employees shouldn’t have access to YouTube or Facebook.
Can you believe it? Can you believe that something like this would happen? I can, but I am still outraged. What was Council Rock school board member, Patricia Vaccaro-Sexton thinking? In what world is making YouTube and Facebook off limits to all school employees the correct response to a failure in judgment on the part of a teacher? The problem isn’t the website. The problem is the teacher who would let a middle school student show something to other middle school students without checking first to see what it was that was being shown. The problem is students having access to teacher’s computers. The problem is that Ms. Vaccaro-Sexton isn’t focused on solving the problem.
The kind of hyperbole that Ms. Vaccaro-Sexton indulged in is an accepted part of politics. It should, however, be proof of incompetence. If one of our elected representatives is more interested in grandstanding, shouting at the wind, attacking the opposition, or whatever it is Ms. Vaccaro-Sexton was doing than they are in solving problems then we ought to replace them. That’s all there is to it.
YouTube is not the problem for the Council Rock School board. Poor judgment on the part of a teacher and a school board member is.
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