I've done alot of thinking about this blog, and I think it has the potential to do great good for and great harm to the school. Things like this can engender great constructive debate, but even the best-intentioned debate about any problems at our school can give the wrong impression to outsiders who are trying to evaluate our school. I would strongly suggest that we make the READING of this blog as invitation-only, as well as posting. In addition, I would suggest restricting invitations to present & past parents and current staff & teachers, and possible carefully-selected others.
I would also suggest disabling all sharing of posts, to minimize the likelihood of people's comments being spread farther than they intend.
I think the use of a forum like this is a terrific idea, but they can, if we are not careful, degenerate into very destructive tools.
Comments?
I think Mr. Passy's suggestion should be followed
ReplyDeleteIf you do a Google search on “school blog,” you will come up with 756,000,000 results - one has to accept that open discussion always was a characteristic trait of a democracy, and latest technological advances only emphasized that. Discussion of schools, universities, and teachers is commonplace. About 175,000 new blogs are created each day, and Yelp has become a platform to discuss anything and everything.
ReplyDeleteWhat you suggest amounts to an elaborate scheme of censorship, where one would have to prove his right to read information which should be freely available – provided that one even knows about this information in the first place.
If the possibility of saying lashon hara is present, it is in your words “degenerate into very destructive tools.” You were careful enough to phrase this with an “if,” but others, if they say “the blog - no matter how well intentioned - will simply degrade“ would be saying lashon hara right there, by definitely stating that a group of Jews will do wrong. Therefore, I might have been more careful not to put a stumbling block in front of people who may violate the prohibition. However, those who speak “against lashon hara,” violating the prohibition at the very same time, were not certain to do it. Moreover, they may refrain the next time.
I, on my part, was careful in selecting the blog setting which does not allow anonymous posting. The fact that when stating one's opinion, one has to identify himself or herself, is in my mind deterrent enough.
By the way,
ReplyDeletehttp://berenacademy.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-first-blog-post.html
and
http://shmsoft.com/view/perm/segalblog.png