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'."
I was just listening to Radio National (oz public radio station) do a story on this. One of the people interviewed said that China is capable of blocking websites from overseas so maybe something similar should start up in Australia. I find it kind of disturbing that people believe that the great firewall is a rational response to the potential slander of some teachers.
most Austrailians I've met in person have been pretty cool people, but there seems to be a large portion of their online population who are big on censorship. At one point I was a very active member on a Stargate message board, but ther was an Aussie admin who was constantly closing threads as "Asked and answered" "No longer relavent" and the best yet "Off Topic" the funny part about the off topic one was that it was in a section of the board specifically labeled as the Off Topic section. I got the board admin in on it (he wasn't usually watching what was going on) and got their over zealous modding slowed down, but I stood my ground. I wasn't going to post anymore unless they reopend some wrongly closed threads, they didn't.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
As with many stories, there is more to this than meets the eye.
The NSW Teachers Federation, which is a fairly powerful union here, has been vigorously fighting any attempts to rate the teachers performance and that of their students. Report cards for students are virtually meaningless nowdays and they have fought tooth and nail to prevent the return of the old system. I can't see what justification the Dept of Education has for blocking access to these sites, but as someone who went through the NSW system, I think having a rating site is a great idea. Many of the teachers are less than competent to be teaching our children.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!
Having worked (briefly) in the Victorian education system as an IT support lackey, I can definitely say that teachers here have security issues and closet inferiority complexes.
Some of the general reasons that lead to this include, but are not limited to:
* The advancing average age of secondary teachers
* The general lack of tech savvy amoungst teachers and supporting staff
* The ultra-low wages, high-volume classrooms.
* The mentality from the general public that the teachers are given an 'easy go' and should be teaching their kids how to read/write (nevermind that this should have been done BEFORE the student reaches primary school, let alone secondary school, IMHO)
Case in point. One time, I was in a secondary college, and a group of teachers were discussing general causes of problem students. I casually remarked "You have to admit, sometimes it's not the student that is the direct cause". I didn't get a chance to elaborate, all three teachers immediately assumed I'd accused THEM of being incompetent (when i was going to discuss an event from high school where a teacher had shown up drunk for work)
Teachers tend to be very protective of their egos, so the incident in this slashdot story doesn't surprise me in the slightest (and, I'll also suggest it's being overblown here, it's no-where near what some US schools have done, such as suspending/expelling students, etc, over similar incidents)
That's overstating the facts. Each week there are a couple of slots set aside for religious education in public schools. Each religion is responsible for providing its own teachers for that time. Children attend the class of choice, and have the freedom to do a non-religious activity during that time. It's a good system. Freedom of religion includes the freedom to be religious as well as the freedom not to participate in religion.
(If it were technically possible,) how would you react to a website where anyone (including potential employers) could search for you and see what your average bug count per 100 lines of code was?
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
I'm a teacher in New Zealand and many of the schools here in NZ are listed on this site. I think this site is actually beneficial. Most on the comments on there are positive and constructive. Some are not. I think the moderators do a reasonable job removing imature slander etc. Anyway I think it's cool but then i would say that because my feedback so far has been sweet! If i had negative feedback on there then it might give me a hint that i might need to change my teaching practice.