Use some common sense, dummy

I sympathize with Mike Riggs’s basic point over at Reason, in his post on the firing of a teacher who was using his MySpace account to communicate with students during out-of-class time. Utilizing sites like Facebook and MySpace for educational purposes makes a pretty decent amount of sense. Kids love using those sites, maybe you can trick them into learning while they’re LoLzing their lives away.

But can you really get worked up over a teacher who gets fired when this (apparently undisputed) sentence makes its way into a complaint:

One of Spanierman’s school colleagues became concerned about the page, which she said contained, among other things, pictures of naked men with “inappropriate comments” underneath them.

Just speaking from the position of “use some common sense, dummy”: that sort of thing will get you fired. For some reason parents (and teachers) of impressionable, underage youths get worked up when you expose them to nudity. Crazy, I know.