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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."
If a video tape was mailed to the police department, would the postal service be abolished?
Man, kids these days. When I was their age, we had to vandalize stuff the old fashioned way.
I tried checking out a bomb making book from the library as kid, they wouldn't let me. They had no problem with me checking out the books on witchcraft and demonology. Go figure.
Rather than censor teh Intarweb, here's a better idea. Let these punk-ass kids have their fifteen minutes of fame. Then videotape their fifteen hours of community service and put that on YouTube.
It's no wonder they're turning out idiot students -- the poor kids are being taught by idiots of the first order.
John
Please sit down and shut up. Take your issues that you had in high school, and treat them as your issues, rather than overly-generalizing them to make it appear as though you understand every problem ever related to schools and education.
I'm a teacher (math and computer). I'm also a tech coordinator. I wear both hats at my school. I've been studying, taking apart, assembling, and troubleshooting PCs for 12 years. And I take offense to anyone who says "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach." If you were to take the time and evaluate MANY teachers, you would see how much time and effort we put into helping students, as well as research how to better educate students in our discipline(often through professional teacher organizations...I myself belong to the MCTM...www.mctm.org).
Sadly, even at my school, I have seen and am upset with some teachers who do not give a rat's ass about the students they teach, and I wish that administrators and teachers got a lot more serious about evaluating teachers' behavior and teaching inside and outside the classroom. It upsets me a great deal to see how much time and effort I put into helping a student learn, both about a particular subject and about the world & life in general, in hopes that I can build trust with students and show them I care about their lives, only to have that trust destroyed by a teacher who makes rather damning comments to students demonstrating apathy to their profession. Yet while I have met and even work with a few teachers who behave this way in one way or another, I will not sit by and watch some stupid punk think that we teachers are a waste of space.
There are so many students that depend on us teachers for social and academic support. We don't just sit and twiddle our thumbs when kids ask us questions. We understand our discipline. (I, as well as the vast majority of teachers, majored in their discipline in college; if you want to discredit our education, you may as discredit your own, assuming you graduated from college, at least.) Most of us have a great passion for it, as well as for helping other students learn to love it as well. And if you wanted us to actually demonstrate that in a job, I certainly could do so. But I would find great boredom in, say, being an actuary, doing nothing but number-crunching for 8 hours straight. 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!
And it's teachers like me who help make the students who become a part of your work force. They're not just born smart, stupid.
Uhhh, why? This incident makes the perpetrator look like a fool. Why does having a vandal break a window make the victim look foolish?
Right. Let me seriously answer that question. The reason is that teachers - and probably the teacher in question - behave in a very authoritarian manner towards their students (i.e. they are bullies). And the last thing a bully wants is the idea that one of their victims can stand up to them in any way and "get away with it". The fact that the teacher's window being broken was publicized on YouTube makes it worse because now the students can refer to this video and relive a type of revenge against the teacher, if only in their minds.It makes the student into kind of a "hero" who stood up to a bully. And so, like most bullies, this teacher is lashing out in an unintelligent manner.
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