No friend requests: UP govt says teachers, students can't interact on social media

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government does not approve of friendship between teachers and students in the state’s schools – at least not in the virtual world. Through a set of exhaustive guidelines, the secondary education department has directed teachers in high school and intermediate schools not to befriend their students on social networking sites. And if any teacher is keen to do so, he or she will have to seek prior permission of the school management. [caption id=“attachment_2166775” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] These guidelines, that leave little room for ambiguity, come at a time when the state government is embroiled in a controversy over the unseemly haste with which a class XI student was jailed for sharing on a social networking site something which a senior minister Azam Khan did not approve of. The guidelines have been separately issued by the secondary education and basic education departments in the last few days, and are applicable to all schools in the state, whether following the UP Board, Central Board (CBSE) or ISC Board system of education. It is learnt that the guidelines have been prepared by a committee which comprised government officials, academicians and the former chairman of CBSE Ashok Ganguly. Ganguly has been quoted as saying that the guidelines have been formulated with the intent of ensuring safety of students on the campus as well as outside. These, according to him, intend to ensure a balanced behavior of teachers towards the students. As per the guidelines, no teacher is allowed to connect with the students over email, phone or social media “unless absolutely necessary and approved by the school principal”. Certain other guidelines have been in force for quite some time, such as no permission to carry mobile phones in class rooms, no child to be retained in school after normal hours without the principal’s permission, separate blocks in schools for primary and higher sections to ensure minimum interaction of primary students with outsiders or strangers, defined entry and exit points to prevent outsiders’ entry into schools and defined ‘curfew’ hours for residential schools. In case of non-compliance, the licence of the school could be revoked. These guidelines, according to an official of the education department, had been formulated and issued in the wake of recent incidents of alleged misbehavior of teachers with students in educational institutions in many cities, including Lucknow. At the same time, most school teachers are wondering how these guidelines can be implemented or the defaulters be identified. Most of the principals say it would be impossible to monitor each and every student and every teacher to find out who was connected to whom on social networking sites. Meena Singh, senior teacher in a school having multiple branches in Lucknow and elsewhere in UP, said even though there appeared some merit in the guidelines, it was very difficult to monitor this. Some co-education schools having easy and harmless mixing between boys and girls are more worried, since it is the students who feel the guidelines on teacher-student friendship are ‘pointless’. A student of such a school in Lucknow said that his favourite teachers and even the principal were on his friends’ list, and there was no reason for him to ‘unfriend’ them. There also appears to some ambiguity on what legal backing such a move could get if challenged in courts. According to Padam Kirti, a High Court advocate, “these guidelines would be difficult to implement and it is also debatable whether these will act as a deterrent for teachers who were inclined to indulge in mischief.” Ashish Srivastava, who runs a software company handling government and private business, says now it is the norm for organisations to provide social media linkages on websites and other advertisements. “Even if two individuals do not directly connect on social media to each other for some reason, they can always discover each other on an organisation of common interest and then connect. It is well-near impossible to stop such linkages,” he says. With the state government already under fire for acting in a heavy-handed manner in the case of a Bareilly student who shared something considered objectionable by a senior minister, it remains to be seen what kind of punitive action could be taken on those found to be flouting the guidelines. “The contravention of such guidelines involving online activity is broadly governed by section 66 (A) of IT Act, and the Supreme Court is seized of the matter regarding action under this Act,” says Kirti.