Relationship News: A sixth form teacher in Birmingham has proved incredibly reluctant to accept a Facebook friend request from one of his pupils.
The friend request proved both baffling and slightly creepy to history teacher Norman Thorngod, 43, who says that it ‘crossed a line’.
“Why would they want to be my Facebook friend? Does this 17-year-old share the same interests as me, a middle-aged man? Unless they’re into gardening and the music of Beethoven I very much doubt it.”
What Thorngod initially saw as a ‘funny, weird’ situation, he now describes as ‘worrying’.
“They’re probably going to print out all my holiday pictures from Facebook and Photoshop cocks on them, then put them up all over the school.”
“Or use what personal information they can find to compromise my online identity and implicate me in a series of murders that happened in Shropshire in the summer of 1998 that I certainly had no part in.”
Story: Simon Swatman
Like The Poke on Facebook and you will never be bored again.
Most schools don’t encourage this kind of ‘friendship’ but once the student (or teacher) has left school, why not? Must we be limited to social contacts of our own age? We can have lots in common with people both younger and older than ourselves. Obviously common sense is needed – if you suspect someone’s motives, just ignore the request.
Why is this a story? I don’t understand what is interesting about this, I know a few teachers and this is a fairly common thing, in fact a lot of schools these days, especially the more ‘elite’ private schools actually don’t allow teachers to have fb accounts for this exact reason.
New to The Poke, guys?!
Clearly the idea of the Poke is lost on some people…
Celestial Heather & Pearl Wheeler, you guys are hilarious!
Serious comments on the Poke – Brilliant
I bet that pair are teachers. God help the kids….