Slashdot Mirror
Australian Teachers Try To Shut Down Website
DeathElk writes "New South Wales teachers are attempting to have a website based in the United States closed down due to "defamatory" content. The site in question encourages students to rate teachers at their school, which obviously results in some colorful content. Now the story has hit the media, with some insightful quotes such as "The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the Federal Government should block access to 'scurrilous American websites'."
every time you try to censor something in today's tech world you end up attracting more attention than if you had left it alone. besides, how can they possibly enforce this? they cant block the site at home or any cyber cafe or anywhere but the school's computers.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Gulp... Hope they don't ban slashdot too ;-(
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed (SK)
Newsflash: Australians are human.
Average person + anonymity = fucktard.
Average person + power = nazi monster.
Welcome to the Internet.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How does one guy on a Stargate forum constitute a "large portion of the Australia online population"?
I'm Australian, and as far as I'm aware we hate censorship as much as anyone else. Don't generalise.
As a side note, it's also interesting that the first two posts in response to this story seemed to advocate the censorship instead of considering whether the "defamed" teachers might in fact be unfit. Are Aussies really that OK with censorship?
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Teaching is one of very few services whose practitioners are hard to gage until it's too late.
Now you know who sucks, and therefore who to avoid.
I'm sure the ones that suck are really ticked about this.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Good lord man! If you're going to quote the GIFT theory at us for Pete's sake at least get it right.
John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
(This obligatory PA reference bought to you by Total Fuckwad AC)
I'm an Aussie myself and I'm entirely not surprised. A lot of Australians are well-meaning but conservative, especially the older ones in office - their kneejerk reaction to a situation is to try to make it go away, rather than address the underlying issues.
It is my hope that websites like this will encourage quality teaching and improvement in teacher training/practice, but a lot of people think it's better to brush it under the carpet rather than do the hard yards to satisfy the students.
That said, there's no excuse for spreading falsehoods about teachers who don't deserve it. I really don't rate students to give fairly assess the short-comings of someone who just assigned them homework.
... what a fucking joke. Look, I can understand that the teachers feel they are being defamed - they certainly are - but some of the quotes illustrate why this is just an emotional reaction:
(From TFA) "It is clearly an absolute disgrace that people are anonymously able to make comments about teachers that are quite atrocious," she said.
So what? Why should someone's anonymous statement on some website mean anything to these teachers? Can't they just ignore it?
The quote from Jim McAlpine at the end of the article is an absolute disgrace and shows that he is completely out of touch with internet governance, or lack-thereof.
I'm sure Slashdotters will make plenty of disparaging comments towards Australians but this comes down to an irrational, emotional reaction by a small bunch of luddite fuckwits who should know better.
I wash mah-self with a rag on a stick.
In some ways, this isn't that different than students talking behind the teachers backs. At least this way the teachers can find out what the students are saying about them.
Many people favour free speech. Fewer support it when people say things they don't like.
It happens on slashdot too - look how people abuse the moderation system to supress opinions with which they disagree..
Your constitution was a remarkable document, granted, but its role as the absolute guarantor of everything under the sun is exaggerated. It didn't protect you from McCarthyism, it didn't protect you (and the rest of the world) from Gitmo, it didn't stop Lenny Bruce from being arrested repeatedly, it didn't stop Lady Chatterley's Lover from remaining unpublished in the United States for decades, and so on. In practice, all it means much of the time is that when community attitudes finally change, it's more often judges rather than politicians who give effect to the change.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I went through my old school there, and I actually found the site to be pretty decent. Sure, there's some kids (usually still at the school) who will flame, but you'll find that anywhere...even Slashdot (no, I jest). If we can compare and rate products, there's no reason that the free market can't rate teachers. If they're actually good, then nothing like this will inhibit their teaching.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Those kind of nut cases are the vocal minority of Australians....Most Australians don't care, in fact not giving a crap is our national past time.
Next thing you know those nut cases are in office. It happened in the states already. It could happen there.
What?
the teachers involved should sue the websites to get the identities and then sue the posters...
oh wait... that costs money and takes time...
what else could we do... Ah I know... get our union to get the government to block them instead...
la la la la la la... I see no problem.... la la la la la....
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
my fear is that with the current state of play* the China thing could very well happen.
*one-party state posing as a two-party state with talkback radio providing the entire political agenda. Australia has a very small media market with 95% of the populace being led along by 2 or 3 media moguls.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
That doesn't make them any less dangerous. Despite all the protests, they sent troops to Iraq and Afganistan. Many more people are put into harm's way by their actions. If you ignore them, they'll just keep on doing it. We actually should make some effort to stop them from causing any more damage. And another thing, in a more or less democratic country, an "idiotic" leader is not a very good reflection of the people that gave him the job.
What?
A teacher who starts at 8:30am and knocks off at 3:30pm isn't doing the job. There's time spent preparing lessons, quizzes, tests, etc.; then there's the time spent correcting the aforesaid. There are parent-teacher meetings that normally happen outside of school hours, continuing education requirements (many of which require using up some of that "12 weeks annual leave", or night classes or whatever), and supervising extra-curricular activities (athletic coaches usually get paid extra, but it isn't that much, and non-athletic activities usually don't entail extra pay).
Being a teacher entails acting as a mentor, an arbitrator, a cop, a counsellor, a confidante, a social worker, and many other professions. And then they have to put up with bozos who complain that they are overpaid.
I'm not actually a fan of the public school system; I think it's designed primarily to create sheep who will be docile and obedient workers for industry (for further discussion of that, see the works of John Taylor Gatto and John Holt). My wife and I homeschooled our own children, because we could see that public school wasn't serving their needs or helping them achieve their potential. But to assert that teachers have it easy and don't deserve what they make is utterly ridiculous. It is a demanding, high-stress, low-respect job, and anyone who does it (and doesn't just go through the motions) deserves more respect and salary than they probably get.
As for making $10,000 more than you, without knowing what that is or what you do to earn it, that's a meaningless comparison.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
I was trying to be humorous.
We (australia) know that John Howard (Australian Prime Minister) is dangerous, but we also know that Howard is smart enough not to do something too stupid. Howard will get away with sending troops to Iraq so long as there aren't pictures of dead Aussie soldiers on the front page every second day. Howard only deployed a small force of SASr's (commando's) to Iraq to prevent a major backlash.
Alas the sad state of democracy these days, we're no longer voting for the put best candidate in, we're voting to keep the worst ones out. Which is precisely how Howard has won 4 elections.
On a more humorous side note, someone should tell Republican party if they want to help John Howard win this years election they should be voicing support for the other party. Every time Bush or Cheney give support for Howard opposition leader Kevin Rudd gets a surge in the polls.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Oh nonono. Censorship is BAD and therefore it's only attributed to the government who, as we all know, are a bunch of lazy and incompetent fascists even though we keep electing them in free elections.
Anything in the private sphere is GOOD and therefore the same act deserves the much milder "moderation" tag.
Just like money given to public institutions are SUBSIDIES and therefore bad. Money given to private institutions are tax-RELIEF and therefore good.
Get with the nomenclature here!
Truth is always a defense to slander, just that in the US This is not entirely correct... it varies from state to state, and though all require it to be truth, I believe one or two states also require it be "in the public interest".
dicks, sometimes.
I heard a teacher from the Uk talking about the UK version of the site, calling for the government to regulate it or shut it down.
His argument was that, he had a series of ten comments about him, eight of which were glowing - utterly positive - but because the other two were a little negative - and not abusive or defamatory, mind - the whole thing was an outrage, and Something Should Be Done(TM).
This guy wasn't just any old teacher either, he was the head of some teacher's union, speaking in an official capacity.
Maybe it's the result of having a constant work environment where the principle relationship with people is one of authority and, perhaps, a lack of firm grounding in that authority, that results in such hypersensitivity to criticism. Whatever the reason, they should get a bleedin' grip.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
One time, I was up in the IT department, and a bunch of tech support people were discussing how the processes and timeframe they were given for a project made the rest of the organisation suffer. I overheard this and casually remarked that sometimes it wasn't the processes and timeframes that was the problem. They did seem to get fairly upset, and assumed I was criticising them in some way. Finicky people those.
I think the key problem is to find a way to enable the debate without letting defamation creep in. I disagree /entirely/ with trying to shut the site down because that is blunt censorship, but there has to be accountability.
How to impose that without violating the right to privacy is another matter, but it's not right that you go and call someone names without being responsible for your words - what's to stop someone maliciously claiming one of those teachers does strange things with furry animals (I'm keeping this light, I'm sure you can come up with worse)?
So, I think the site idea is good, even though teachers may not like it, but it needs moderation, right of reply and accountability without voiding the anonymous nature (as that would otherwise stop the debate for want of damage to grades and/or expulsion).
Bottomline, however, is that there appears to be quite a disconnect between teachers/management and the students. It would be wise for the teachers to start thinking about that and maybe find a solution for debate closer to home. This is what leadership (and teaching) is supposed to be about..
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