Teachers’ Personal Lives

Where doyou draw the line between free speech and immorality, especially when it comesto teachers? An April 2003 article from the website eSchool   News online, “ School board:  Teacher’s personal web site is grounds for dismissal,”   reports that a Pennsylvania   high school music teacher may be fired from his job because of a personal website. Dan Konnen’s website was created in 6 years ago, and contains jokes about genitalia and comments fromthe cartoon South Park . The issue at hand here is whether Konnen should be dismissed from his job because of a personal website that he designed and posted long before he was hired by the school district. The article states that it will come down to the community’s opinion of the issue. If parents no longer feel comfortable sending their children to school to Dan Konnen’s class, or if so many students have seen the web site thatit is distracting themfrom the learning environment, then the schooldistrict is justified in firing him. Another issue that officials are lookingat is the fact that Konnen signed a document for the school district that explained acceptable behavior for a school teacher when he was hired. The teacher’s union has said that they arecoming together to “vow his right to free expression on the web and that it has nothing to do with his in-school behavior.”

I personally feel that Dan Konnen should be sparedhis job. The article adds that this is not an obscene website. There are pictures of him completely clothed, there are horoscopes, and it tells a little bit about himself. There is nothing illegal on Dan Konnen’s   website. The article gives alot of good, supportive quotes from Konnen’s   lawyers and emphasizes thestance the teacher’s union has taken. If the teachers strongly support him, then I think that he ismost likely an effective teacher. Arguments that support that he should be fired are not solid. If it can be proven, as the article suggests, that the website has taken away from the learning environment or that parents are uncomfortable sending their children to his classroom, then firing may be justified; however, this is difficult to prove. For these reason, my opinion is that he should not be fired, and that this web page was perhaps a poor judgmentcall, not grounds forlosing his job.

(http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=4374)