YouTube Stays Relevant Despite Pulled Content

Gray writes "École Secondaire Mont-Bleu has banned all personal electronic devices and suspended two 13-year-old girls after one uploaded to YouTube a camera phone video of their teacher yelling at the other. After the video was posted on the popular internet video site, the teacher was so embarrassed that he stayed home from work, where he remains on stress leave. The teachers' union is now trying to get all personal electronic devices banned from all schools in Western Quebec." Meanwhile, via the PVRBlog comes word that YouTube has helped raise CBS' ratings by some 7-9%. From that article: "CBS has uploaded more than 300 clips that have a total of 29.2 million views on YouTube, averaging 857,000 views per day, since the service launched on October 18. CBS has three of the top 25 most viewed videos this month (Nov.1-17), including clips from CBS's Tuesday night hit drama 'NCIS,' 'Late Show with David Letterman,' 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' and 'The Early Show.' The CBS Brand Channel is also one of the most subscribed channels of all time with more than 20,000 users subscribing to CBS programming on YouTube since the channel launch last month."

Comments

Objective Viewfinders

[airos4]

And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."

Personally? As much as I'm against the Big Brother society, I'm amused that someone is so scared of how he could be portrayed by an objective viewfinder. And he'll tell us all about how the context isn't there, but there's no good reason why a teacher should be yelling and carrying on to the point where it looks good on video. There's other more effective ways to reach people, and if you can't figure one of them out then there are other career paths.

Re:Objective Viewfinders

[El Cubano]

And how many times did you ever go home and tell a parent about how a teacher treated you, and get ignored or dismissed with "They wouldn't do that."

And how many times have schools contacted parents or called them to a parent teacher conference to tell of some misbehavior by their child, only to have the parents say "that's not possible, my little angel would never do that and if you try and discipline him/her for it, we'll sue"? Now, if the teacher tried to record the little monsters (even for the teacher's own protection and to have proof of the act), the parents would be completely livid. Lawsuits would be flying and we would all be screaming about "The Man" trying to oppress the students.

I too am against a Big Brother society, but I think we are already getting there. The problem is that Big Brother is not the government, but rather any knucklehead with some sort of recording device. Personally, I think those kids should be treated the same way a teacher at that school would have been for similarly recording an altercation instigated by a student toward a teacher.

I absolutely despise teachers' unions. I think that they have done more to damage the quality of education in the industrialized world than any other force. However, it is abundantly clear that this teacher needs the full backing of the union. More than anything, kids today need to learn respect for authority. This doesn't mean that authority is always right or infallible, just that kids should be taught to respect and that there are proper channels in which to handle grievances (i.e., posting to youtube is not the proper channel).

Re:Objective Viewfinders

[Hizonner]

I too am against a Big Brother society, but I think we are already getting there. The problem is that Big Brother is not the government, but rather any knucklehead with some sort of recording device.

If that's Big Brother, I think I'm probably for it. The problem with surveillance has always been that one side, the "authority" side, has always had a recording. If that recording was favorable to authority's version of events, it could be released. If it was unfavorable, it could be buried. The imbalance invites abuse.

I would be against a system where only the student had a recording. I wouldn't be as much against it as I would be against a system where only the teacher had a recording, because the teacher is already in a position of great power, but I'd still be against it. I might very well be in favor of a system where everybody had, or at least might have, a recording of everything, all the time.

Yeah, that would mean that there'd be embarrassing footage of all of us, because we've all done stupid things we're not proud of. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal, though... it's kind of hard to come down too hard on Joe for his filmed mistakes, when he can dredge up yours. On the other hand, if somebody has a pattern of behavior, it becomes pretty hard to hide it.

Such a system might be too hard on people, too stressful to live with, too unforgiving of the human need to get away with something once in a while. I'd especially be worried about people getting destroyed over the witch-hunt of the week.

It might also be an improvement over what we have now. The case isn't open and shut... and one could actually do reasonable research to perhaps predict the effects, rather than just having everybody yell about "privacy" like that automatically trumped everything else.

More than anything, kids today need to learn respect for authority. This doesn't mean that authority is always right or infallible, just that kids should be taught to respect and that there are proper channels in which to handle grievances (i.e., posting to youtube is not the proper channel).

Why? What's so special about authority that it deserves this mystical respect you're calling for? Obviously, people in authority are often right about a lot of things (as well as often being wrong). That doesn't mean they should get an iota more consideration than everybody else. Arguably they should get less slack, since they're in a position to abuse their authority.

Sorry state of affairs

[WebCowboy]

Proving once again that you can never have too much overkill.

Walking a fine line labelled "troll" here...but I had to comment...

I'm not sure what it is, but from my personal experiences with teachers from Quebec, as well as anecdotal evidence from others (my girfriend was raised in Montreal and I know a couple of other Quebecois with similar experiences as well) I now have quite a dim view of the teaching "profession" there. This is especially true with regard to teachers in anglophone schools in Quebec. They are VERY strongly unionised and VERY protective of their own self interests and, quite frankly, a few of them are mentally unstable. I KNOW this is a blanket statement and I hope that any /. readers who are teachers from Quebec do not take offense becasue there are at least a few good teachers there I'm sure.

In any case, I think that there is some sort of systemic problem with public education in Quebec concerning monitoring competency of teachers and providing accountability. Perhaps it has to do with the union having too much control (unions have a purpose but when they are corrupt or the bargaining posisions are not on level ground it can be harmful). It seems very close to impossible to fire a teacher in Quebec--one would have to be convicted of physically or sexually abusing a student to be fired, or some other similar grave justification. That culture is why some people of questionable capability, mental capacity or emotional stability can remain teachers for as long as they want.

From what I understand, teachers with short fuses have been occasionally blowing up on students in Quebec classrooms for decades. We aren't talking about stern corporal punishment in the style delivered by the nuns of the old Catholic schoolhouses here either--we are talking they go all "Kosmo Kramer" on a student. In my girfriends primary school this was the sort of discipline meted out by these real pieces of work:

* Forgetting to bring something for show and tell in Grade I would mean you were ordered to go home and get it...unescorted..even if you lived a couple kilometres away or had to cross major throughfares. The parents wouldn't be notified of this.

* One teacher would throw objects at her students' heads if they were talking when she didn't want them to (chalk, etc). When my girfriend caught flying chalk coming toward her head one day and threw it back she was sent home and told not to come back the next day.

* Locking children in broom closets was a choice method of discipline. Parents were not notified of behavioural problems that justified such a punishment, nor were they asked if it was appropriate to discipline their child that way.

* Yelling and screaming tantrums--by the teachers--was common in some classes.

What happened to detention or going to the principals' office? What happened with informing and involving parents with such issues? Apparently, at least as early as the late 1970s, such practices have fallen out of style in a few schools in Quebec. And guess how complaints from parents are dealt with:

* Denial - your kid is lying or exaggerating
* Defence of the actions by teachers, however inappropriate the parents might think they are
* Promises to stop using such methods on your child--mixed in with threats of legal action should you complain publically about a teacher.

Yes, it is true I've met a couple of great teachers who (at least at one time) taught in Quebec. Former STUDENTS that I know, pretty much without exception, had multiple teachers that were incompetent and/or nutjobs at some point. I was not educated in Quebec myself, and I had my fair share of stupid teachers, but I cannot remember there being as many nutjobs as I've heard about in Quebec. Can't say whay that is aside from something systemically wrong with teacher training/hiring/screening becasue as a whole the Quebecois are among the most wonderful people I've met (thankfully they didn't learn how to behave from their teachers).

Flamebait?

[Travoltus]

When a teacher loses control, there's no excuse.

Pranks like this get caught and lead to kids being punished, but whenever a teacher loses control, that damages their credibility and that of the school's. In this case, both the teacher and students need to be suspended; and they all need counseling. The kids need to be taught not to play pranks and the teacher needs to learn how to maintain control.

We need those student cameras in place in case teachers start shit with the students (i.e., beatings, molestation, etc).

Banning student cameras in this case is like banning cars because someone went on a rampage across a playground.

Re:Flamebait?

[falcon5768]

Very rarely is the teacher at fault, I can easily say based on reports I see via NEA and NJEA newsletters nearly half the time the teacher is punished despite 9/10 times the student provoking the teacher. Getting kicked, spit on, punched, cut, fingers broken, death threats, sex threats, etc. is the norm for teachers these days.

In 30 years of teacher only in the last 10 have either of my parents been physically injured by students, my mother her finger broken by a kid who was beating the shit out of another in the hall (she pulled the kid away and he jammed her fingers into the door and slammed it. My father in a "good" district got a black eye by a kid who swung a 2x4 at another kid and he stepped into it to block it. If either of them had swung back, they would have been fired, yet the kids got a weeks suspension and thats it. Both my parents are considered "good" teachers reading what their students have said about them on rate my teacher, infact apparently my dads kids love him, so they are in no way "mean"

The fact is kids arnt punished enough in schools these days. All treating kids with respect has done is let them walk all over people because their parents dont know the first thing about punishing a kid for bad behavior, so they learn that there is no such thing AS punishment until its too late. I myself had to be escorted to a school for a into to education course once because the violence around the school was so bad. Not by adults mind you, but by the KIDS.

I wholeheartedly agree students should be videotaped all day. That way every time one tries to sue a teacher they can be shown to be the punks and fuckups they are. I also feel that anytime a student does something outragiously wrong like strikes a teacher, not only should they be expelled, but the teacher shoudl be allowed to sue their parents for being a fuckup as well.