Slashdot Mirror
UK Teachers Say Censor The Internet
Marlow the Irelander writes "The BBC is reporting that in response to a YouTube video of a schoolboy breaking his teacher's window (yes, this is a video), NASUWT, one of the teaching unions in the UK, is calling for legislation to control the internet. Could Britain, rather than the US, be the main front of the battle against censorship in 2007?" From the article:
"Unfortunately, any yob or vandal can now have their 15 minutes of fame, aided and abetted by readily accessible technology and irresponsible internet sites which enable such behaviour to be glorified.
[The general secretary of the union] said the union supported a zero tolerance approach in schools to pupils who used technology to abuse and undermine teachers, and called for more rigorous legislative control of internet sites which gave them license."
Why are the teachers mad about the video? Shouldn't they be more mad about the broken window?
Besides, whoever recorded the incident was clearly a by-stander (the person throwing the rock was in the video). I do not understand why this is bothering the teachers so much.
The BBC is reporting that in response to a YouTube video of a schoolboy breaking his teacher's window (yes, this is a video), NASUWT, one of the teaching unions in the UK, is calling for legislation to control the internet.
Just so we're clear, their logic is that the internet is a catalyst for youth vandalism?
Man, kids these days. When I was their age, we had to vandalize stuff the old fashioned way.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
for giving everyone an equal opportunity to express themselves.
Maybe if teachers were more educators than prison wardens, kids would love them instead of hating them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It seems to me that this is just an over-reaction to an objectively minor problem, fueled by the fact that teachers often get terrible working conditions (abusive and hard-to-discipline students, obnoxious and at times abusive parents, little public support, low pay). They are lashing out in an attempt to control some part - any part - of their environment.
But I fail to see how this is "pupils who used technology to abuse and undermine teachers." The broken window is the abuse, the youtube video is just evidence of criminal activity. Unless you consider a rock to be technology.
Isn't this the country with all the spy cameras all over the place watching people?
Are they complaining because it wasn't an "official" camera that captured the act? I don't get what the Internet has to do with it.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Having grown up as an English lad in the 1940s and 1950s, I can tell you that most teachers and headmasters weren't jerks for the sake of being jerks. They were harsh with us because many of us were stupid little buggers! We needed a good smack across the ass with the fanny paddle every now and then. It kept us in line.
But times have changed, and the teachers have gotten far softer. Look at English youth today as a whole. Many are nothing but scum. Look at just the chav subculture, for instance. They are criminals, plain and simple. They idolise crime, and not just petty crime like vandalism. Many of these kids are burglars, rapists, and in some cases, even murderers. They dress like third-worlders.
We weren't perfect youth 50 years ago. We were mischevous little boys and girls. But we never shot each other in cold blood. We never raped each other. We never slaughtered senior citizens. But these are things we see on nearly a daily basis with the teenagers of today. And we weren't like that because when we did fuck up, our headmasters let us know. We felt direct pain for our misdeeds, and thus learned to live in a civilised manner.
First of all, the teachers should be thankful that these twits happened to place their video on Youtube. This made their detective work in figuring out who were the perpetrators were much easier, giving them a huge smoking gun. Talk about shooting the messenger, sheesh.
I'm a Network Manager at a UK school / college. I guess I'm perfectly placed to speak on these matters, so here we go...
I have a duty of care, in my role, to protect students from certain inappropriate material on the internet. The obvious ones are there; pornography, paedophilia, unmonitored chatrooms, unmonitored messaging sites, etc.
Myspace is blocked, because I can't honestly say that I can be 100% certain that students couldn't use the site and put themselves at risk. Porn websites are blocked, because the students are not 18. All chat programs, such as MSN/AOL/IRC are not installed on student profiles, and students do not have administration rights to install software either. Proxy websites are blocked, so that students can't bypass the restrictions and vew unfiltered content. All fairly common stuff. Ironically, the biggest complaints I get about myspace being blocked are from teachers, but thats another story altogether.
I use active content filtering to block access to inappropriate content on all other websites, such as youtube or google vids, which might contain any of the things I first mentioned.
However, I don't block anything just 'because I'm told to'. A teacher can request that anything in the world gets filtered out, but ultimately the decision lies with me.
If a teacher cannot control his or her students in a classroom, then it is the fault of the teacher, not the students are finding the material. And personally, I think that is the way it should stay. Technology shouldn't be used to simply 'restrict access' to material when that material doesn't fit within the narrow categories I first mentioned. If anything, teachers should be embracing sites such as youtube and google videos because they provide a wealth of material that can be used in the classroom.
Governments can't be so repressive if their citizens are fully armed.
When did the U.K. embrace Big Brother?
I swear, both countries appear to be in a race to see which country can reach the bliss of fascism first.
To be honest, it's not clear to me exactly why this is. I mean, I understand why it's happening in the U.S.: the U.S. government is controlled by its largest corporations. There are various reasons for that, ranging from the chokehold on the media those corporations have to the campaign finance setup and lobbying setup that exists in the U.S. Fascism by definition is more friendly to big corporations than any other form of government, so it's easy to see why those who run the biggest corporations want fascism to rise in the U.S.
But the UK? Why is it going down that path? I was rather under the impression that the media wasn't a slave to the big corporations there, which means that the people there should have a somewhat less biased source of information on which to base their voting decisions. Money is power so I can see the big corporations having some influence there, but nothing like in the U.S.
And yet, the paths both countries are following are almost identical. What gives?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Have you seen the climate there is around teaching right now? I just started teaching this year and I had to fight hard for my job. Up here in Saskatchewan there is declining enrollment and that means that there are a ton of teacher that are being cut from the school board budgets. So really as a beginning teacher I could be cut at any moment. Some people do fall into the category of those who can't teach but there is more to it than content. Have you ever tried going infront of a group of kids and tried to get them motivated enough to get them trying to learn. I'm a Math/Physics teacher and all I get is the stereotype that "math and physics suck." I tell ya its bloody hard to get them to do anything. The other thing is that you mention that teachers have no experience in having a "real job." Honestly a "real job" would probly have me working a lot less and living somewhere else. But you do it for the students and try and get people interest in your subject area. Well that and you are actually affecting the future and hopefully helping someone to find themselves and their passions. As for the civil service lifers that happens in about half the teachers you see and I have no time for them as they are rediculous. But there are some good teachers out there and I'm proud to say I'm one of them.
... the powers that be try to blame everyone but the person/people responsible.
Oh no, it's the internet's/violent video games'/movies/ fault that these kids run wild and act like hooligans! It can't possibly be the kids themselves or their parents who deserve any of that blame.
It boggles the mind how a teachers' union could fixate more on the "15 minutes of fame" and less on trying to make parents or the kid accountable (even outside of legal remedies). Instead of whining about how terrible the internet is, they could turn around and warn his new teachers/neighbors in Canada about what he's been up to over there (and point them to the video). Make the parents look bad and make his life miserable wherever he ends up and see if kids don't start to wise up.
I suspect what they're really upset about (and the real point to the zero tolerance policy they mention) are the other cases where teachers have been caught on video doing things they shouldn't do (e.g. screaming at kids). This is just a convenient scapegoat because the kids were clearly the ones doing something wrong so now they blame the internet/cameras/etc...
It's funny how often the people who should worry the least about surveillance (teachers, cops, etc...) are often the ones who least want to be scrutinized by the very things they'd like to use on us.
You need to start earlier than that. We should start failing students in kindergarten, and every grade after that, if they are not up to moving to the next level. Waiting until someone is 8 years into their education before you require them to actually know something is both unfair to the student, and a recipe for mass failures in high school.
The debate about whether teachers as a group are crappy or not is a false dicotemy. The fact is, our (US) public school system broken on just about every level. From national public policy to a high number of crappy teachers we have. Just about everybody can recount 3 or 4 really good teachers they had over their 13 years in school. Most can remember twice as many actively bad teachers. The rest, would have been somewhere in between. The problem there is that after a student spends a year with a crappy teacher, and the next a mediocre one, you need more than one great teacher to get that student re-engaged, and back up to speed with where he should be. Unfortunately, there just are not enough great teachers to go around.
Add to that that our system is set up as a baby sitting service from the top down, you have a recipe for disaster, and no amount of money is going to fix it. When I was in school, I must have heard a dozen times the first day of class speech about how "If you try, I will not fail you." That speech was intended to try and engage the students that knew the class was a waste of time because it would be past them. What it told many of us that were not dolts was that understanding the material was totally irrelevant to passing the class. Of course, it isn't just teacher that are pushing age based advancement. The school administrators are right their pushing any teacher that does try to take a stand. Why would they do this? Because when they fail students, they have to deal with parents who are also pushing for age based advancement. Of course teachers and faculty don't really want parents to get involved. It is easier to deal with parents that push for age based advancement than it is to deal with parents that demand you give the child a proper education.
So, basically our education system is broken, starting with the parents, right through the teachers and administrators, all the way up to the President of the United States, who referred to the smart kids as the 'Nerd Patrol'.
This has lead me personally to give up on our public education system. At 2, my son is doing early reading, and basic math. What chance is he going to have in our public education system? By the time he even gets to kindergarten, it will be obvious to him that success in school has nothing to do with knowledge, and all about making the busy work motions.
Luckily, I am not alone, and this has lead to a boom in home schooling, and in response, a boom in businesses, and organizations that support them.
I'm currently reading the book "Not in front of the children" by Marjorie Heins, a very informative book on the history of censorship and censorship law (mainly in the US, but with UK roots and occasinoal references).
In the US, the Constitution's First Amendment allows for a strong defense to censorship. However, censorship of "obscenity" and/or "indecency" (in their varying and sometmies contradictory definitions) is allowed is a common-law exception to the First Amendment (see First Amendment/Obscenity). The exact nature, power, extent, and constitutionality of the exception tends to be at the centre of any legal/judicial or legislative debate on censorship, and has gone back and forth (as documented in the book).
Britain has no such explicit, written right to free speech as the First Amendment, and thus censorship has a better legal footing (I suspect CCTV is in a similar situation). While censorship in Britain may be more easily applied, the "battle" would be more one-sided than in the US, if censorship (i.e. of obscenity) were to have such a strong following as it has in the US.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Instead of seeking to make the Internet safe for children, why not simply ban children from the Internet?
After all, this is primarily an adult world. Childhood is a temporary phase. There are some things that are not, and never will be, suitable for children. That does not mean they are not suitable for adults.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
but the yahoos who accompanied him got a good ass whoopin'
I take it you don't live in the UK then. More likely they got counselling and a nice holiday somewhere warm!
Yes, there are times when it looks as if schoolkids in the UK have been given a status nearly like medieval child princes, who had whipping-boys who got 'whooped' in their places when the princes did something bad.
The teachers' unions now seem to take for granted this world where bystanders and victims sometimes are made to pay for what delinquent children and youths do -- so when a union representative "called for more rigorous legislative control of internet sites" I have to wonder if this isn't the union selecting the internet service provider as next in line for the status of whipping-boy.
-wb-
For "Youtube saddam execution". I bet that footage is making the government of Iraq rather uncomfortable right about now. They had some high level government minister on NPR the other day and he changed his story about three times when they kept asking him the same question over and over again. Those questions never would have been raised if this video hadn't surfaced.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Furthermore, people do well by their own efforts, and that typically has very little to do with teachers in modern western society (though it is unfair to blame teachers for this predicament). Once you can read and write, you are basically on your own - those who want to learn and have the ability to do so will rise (or not) largely as a result of the effort they put in.
Very few programmers (outside of the army of cookie cutter Java enterprise developers who don't have an innovative bone in their bodies and who tend to develop the least elegant and barely 'serviceable' software) are taught the relevent skills or knowledge they rely on in formal education - they are predominantly self taught - something that's almost synonymous with being a good developer in the first place. Most of us have a great passion for it, as well as for helping other students learn to love it as well. Another Brick in the Wall springs immediately to mind. And I've tried tech support before, but to be quite honest, I don't like living an OfficeSpace-kinda life. I actually enjoy being around other people and talking with them, teaching them, interacting with them, and even watching them grow and being a part of it You can find all that plus a far larger pay cheque, and the ability to work on some cutting edge stuff in the commercial world. Of course to get the most exciting work, having the appropriate skills is important (or you will be one of the people who get stuck writing some tedious J2EE billing module and maintaining it for 4 years).
The highschool education system specifically (particularly in the UK and in the US, and I'd wager much of Europe) is so broken I'm am amazed that the small number of very good teachers in each school (and larger number of potentially good teachers) even bother to remain. Bullying, distrutive pupils, bad teachers, bad management, inequitable treatment of pupils, and a poor curriculum are the norms! Outside of the very best schools, neither teachers nor board of governers at schools are willing to tackle these issues.
I am not susprised teachers in the UK might see censoring the internet as a solution, but the problem is with society in the UK, the way we treat offenders and the way schools themselves are run. We ought to tackle the parents about their child's behaviour and teach those who can't or won't behave in seperate faclilites that are appropriately equipped - and there needs to be a process by which parents can escalate concerns and school's be punished for failing to act with due dilligance in dealing with concerns raised by pupils or parents.