14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that more and more students use social media as a tool to express their frustration towards their teachers.
According to NASUWT (The Teachers' Union), the number of teachers who have to deal with online abuse coming from their students has doubled during the last year.
Foul language is only one of the issues that teachers have to face, but there are other remarks deemed unfit for someone with once a respected job.
Social media allows them to remain anonymous, and this is why so many students resort to this type of measures to express their strong dissatisfaction towards their professors.
Various cases of online abuse have been reported
The teacher’s union has revealed some of the most shocking cases of students who had belittled their teachers online.
One such instance is that of a teacher’s photo being posted online with the word “b***h” below. The picture was soon discovered by the teacher, but there seems to have been no record of the person who had edited the content, therefore there was no one to blame for the misconduct.
To make matters worse, it was revealed that not only students use this method, but also an increasingly large number of parents who take to social networks to show their disapproval with the people teaching their beloved offspring.
One teacher revealed for The Telegraph that “Some parents view teachers as fair game for abuse.They use online technologies to hide behind while posting lies and abuse about their chosen victim.”
A survey showed that 60% of the almost 1,500 NASUWT members polled have had to deal with hateful comments or information posted by them on social networks.
Teachers have also shown their disapproval with children taking photos of them during classes which they later on post on social networks in order to offend them in some way. It should be noted, however, that this type of incidents could be easily avoided if students were not allowed to carry and use their phones during class.
The survey also shows that Facebook is the main tool that kids resort to in order to post deprecating comments regarding their teachers.
The results of these polls are worrying as pupils should show a little more respect towards those who devote their lives to education.
Schools carry a large part of the blame also because they do not take any measure in such cases, making children think that, in a way, they are allowed to have things their way without facing the consequences.