As I look back on the last 20 hours or so, I am still in shock over my Facebook banning. Frankly, with the thousands of articles I’ve written on here and posted all over education groups on Facebook, I’m shocked it didn’t happen sooner. It makes me wonder, what was it about this post, a “Parent Bill of Rights” for education, written in reaction to the education reform tainted “Testing Bill of Rights”, that caused this banning on Facebook? Did I fly too close to the sun with my “Parent Bill of Rights in Education”? I could hypothesize all day long who may have complained to Facebook, but the plain simple fact is this: I’ve ticked off many in nearly two years of blogging.
But what if it was more than someone just complaining? Others have been banned from posting in groups before. But have they had the groups they administer decimated? The Delaware Opt Out district groups (all 20 of them), the Refuse The Test Delaware page, and Delaware Against Common Core? While I can see the posts I put on those groups, others can’t. Why are they restricting others from seeing what I’ve written? This is censorship at it’s absolute worst. I would love to know the justification for my two week ban. What criteria do they use? I saw their community page, but nothing in my article called out anyone, threatened anyone, bullied, or harassed anyone. There was no sexual content or nudity. Nothing remotely bad. Especially compared to what I’ve written before!
I have to think, whatever is going on, I rattled someone. So bad, they wanted to shut me up fast. Which tells me they are worried. Scared. On edge. I’ve always suspected opt out was very dangerous to the corporate education reformers. But when you encourage parents to demand data on their children isn’t sent out at an aggregate level, that’s a whole other level of opt out.
What scared them is how fast it got out there. Within minutes of my posting the article to different Facebook groups, it was being shared by like-minded readers. But the action on Facebook’s part had a rebound effect. A very big thank you to the always awesome Emily Talmage for announcing my Facebook jail status. Nobody likes to be censored, and nobody likes to see someone being censored (unless you’re a corporate education reformer). This caused the “Parent Bill of Rights” to become bigger than I ever thought it would. Which is more ironic, the fact that censorship led to greater views or that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook banned a post that actually talked about parents being censored?
If you agree with the “Parent Bill of Rights for Education”, please sign the petition on Change.org today. Many have signed already. And if you should want to share this post or the change.org petition on Facebook, please do so. Until April 8th, I can only write and post on my own Facebook status. What I learned yesterday was how many parents agree and are in solidarity about the rights of parents and children. That’s a very good thing.
The Season Of Myths 