Facebook Lessons

January 8, 2008

Posted by Jay Livingston

A co-worker tells me this story.

Her 14-year-old son is taking a computer graphics course in school. Talk in class must have veered over to the topic of Facebook because the teacher says, “I’ll give anyone in here and A+ in the course if they can get into my Facebook page.”

The kid comes home last night, goes on line to check out the teacher’s credentials (resumé I guess) to find out where he went to college. Then he creates a fake identity on Facebook and gets in touch with the teacher claiming to be an ex-classmate (“We were in the same math class. . . .”). A few more brief exchanges, and the teacher agrees to friend this old school acquaintance. And the kid is in.

It’s not exactly Megan Meier, and I doubt that anything illegal happened. But the mother had some questions about right and wrong.
  • Is it right for a teacher to offer an A+ for something not course related?
  • Is it right for a teacher to encourage kids to sneak in to places where they are not wanted?
  • Is it right for her son to create a fake identity on Facebook and pretend to be someone he’s not?
I’ll be interested to see how this plays out when the kid reveals the ploy to his teacher.

3 comments:

tina said...

What a creepy teacher! If I were being kind, I would imagine he was trying to get them to grapple with a difficult puzzle, and didn't think that deception would be the route they would take. But what did he think the route would be...hacking the site? That seems like a weird assignment as well.

Anonymous said...

How odd. I wonder if he just spit those words out without thinking...

Anonymous said...

No

No

No

The parent probably needs to contact the principal, to make sure they are aware of this strange situation.