August 28, 2011, will mark a drastic redefinition of the rights of government intervention with social networking websites, and at the same time kill the developments in the U.S. since 2006 with the integration of archives, school teachers, and school classes. The state of Missouri has passed a law--State Senate Bill 54, or Amy Hestir Student Protection Act--reacting to the results of a decades-old case involving a teacher molesting a student. This law has a section reported on msnbc.msn.com by Suzanne Choney that will keep public school teachers from having students as friends on social networking sites such as Facebook, or even having contact with them after they go onto college technically:"Section 162.069 is a mandate that references social networking sites, as well as teachers not being allowed to have a 'nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student.'"
How this affects archives is best illustrated from an experience I had as a graduate assistant in my first stint as a graduate student. As a history department GA, I worked one quarter grading projects for students in a state history class that was mandatory for education majors at my institution. One of the projects discussed, experimented with, and ultimately chosen by a couple of students was the use of Facebook to create profiles for historic characters, using photos, letters, diaries, and other records from archives to make the people seem alive, allowing students in high school history classes to "Friend" people who haven't been alive for 150 years while making their lives relevant to the modern age. A lot of education programs have begun emphasizing this in recent years, as an outreach to students and an inventive way to use social media. Now, before you say "students shouldn't be encouraged to use Facebook before age 16" or the like, I was just in a library today and saw three 9-year olds shooting a promo video on a digital video camera for a class project--9! No doubt this project would get posted on some class websites, or the library's webpage. Younger and younger students are interacting on social network sites--for good or bad. Back to the Missouri law.
The students' projects I graded were tremendous and imaginative uses of historical primary sources, capable of drawing youth into archives to learn more about this person in the profile. However, Missouri seems to have believed the same was true for sexual predators masquerading as teachers on Facebook and other social networks. Let me just say: I am not saying teachers should be contacting students on Facebook pre-college in a "friendship" status. I understand the risks involved, and have personally been involved helping a number of teenage girls recover from physical abuses given them by teachers. I understand the importance of this legislation. At the same time, our society--or at least our government--seems to be taking a radically different approach to the field of Facebooking and the government. Government agencies have gone on Facebook, posted current news and other things intended for audiences of all ages, begun not blocking Facebook on government agency computers (as happened frequently prior to 2009). Having worked for two state agencies and a county government agency in the past three years, I have seen this radical shift of acceptance and full-blown exploitation of the possibilities of Facebook and other social networking sites for government-based initiatives.
Now, however, at least in Missouri, school programs emphasizing the use of Facebook as a medium to engage students with history and primary archival records will no longer be a possibility, and programs developed over the past few years will have to be scrapped. It seems that history and education are being left out in portions of the digital community, in favor of absolute protection of youth from any possible connection with non-family adults. While this is understood, again, it is a far cry from the world of 50-60 years ago, when neighborhood adults were often trusted family friends, when kids were encouraged to listen to the old war stories of veterans in the neighborhood and the parents loved their learning history first-hand, and the innocence of socialization for education benefit.
With the Missouri law, archives and pre-collegiate educators will have to find new ways to use online technologies and websites to reach out to an ever-growing base of youth who do not go outside of their houses to learn new information. Virtual exhibits, virtual recreations of long-lost civilizations and cities, and Youtube-ed historical documentaries are making history and the use of primary records available everywhere. On August 28, the "unlimited" capabilities of social networking's uses to promote history and archives in the classroom will begin to take a step back in deference for the public protection imperative. The past five years has seen such a dramatic shift in the use of social medial sites by government agencies for public programs that the advisability of continuing to use the type of integrated personal use/public use setup of Facebook to promote historical records and organizations may need to be rethought to meet the developing social theories inherent in new legal precedents. Programs and policies such as those suggested by the National Archives for establishing a school archival repository and making use of new technologies to promote the historic materials online (while gaining student involvement in the process) will not be possible in a social-network model as promoted by education training programs in colleges and universities around the country.
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