News reflection by Jason

The link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12162063

‘Teachers’ union warns of dangers of online ‘abuse’’ is the topic of this online news resource on 11 January 2011 that was impressed me a lot. The news is about there is more and more teachers were bullied on the network by the parents but not just the students. The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) reported that there were some adult bullied cases occurred recently and they told BBC Radio 5 live that they will prepare to take action if the parents continue making the libelous comments on websites.

‘The NAHT said that they received calls every week from teachers who believe they have been ‘cyberbullied’ – and the majority of complaints are about parents using the web to criticize teachers or a school’s scholarship.’ BBC’s reporter said. In the news, there was an example of parents online-attacked the teachers and school. The content is about a parent, Sam who tried to make appointment to see the headmistress about her son being bullied. But she was told that she couldn’t see the headmistress and when she went to the school, the headmistress wasn’t there. After this, she vented her angry on her Facebook page, she wanted other parents to know what was going on. But Sam got a letter from the school warning of legal action if her comments became libelous. At last, the NAHT said that they will set up some instruction for the teachers and teach them how to solve these kind problems.

In the news, there is a sentence which is made me impressed – ‘Social networking sites are a medium for the unreasonable and the unprincipled’. Nowadays, social network become an essential part in our life and it seems that it replaced the traditional approaches to communicate with people. To educate a student is not only the reasonability of the teachers, it also need the communication between the parents and teachers. It is nothing wrong to say that using social network is very convenience to communicate, but I think that face to face communication is the most direct way and it is more effectively. Therefore, if the parents have any problems about the students, I think they should go to school and find the teachers to discuss, rather than online chatting and using the network to bully others.