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."

Hahaha.

Power-hungry SOB teacher owned. (Hence, "embarrassing" - if he'd been yelling for good reason, it wouldn't have been.) Hope he pukes.

-b.

Re:Hahaha.

I don't know, there seems to be a moral difference between mocking children who have no choice but to be where they are, and mocking adults who chose the profession they are in. Teachers are held to a much higher standard of conduct than students, and for good reason.

Flamebait?

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?

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.

Re:Flamebait?

The fact is kids arnt punished enough in schools these days.

But the punishments should be immediate and painful or unpleasant - i.e. cleaning dirty stuff or having to "assume the position" or even being banned from sports and extracurriculars. Not calling the cops and having them deal with it (that just shows teachers as weak) or forcing kids to attend a whine-session with a shrink.

-b.

Re:Flamebait?

Its kinda funny - in 3rd world countries, kids know how to behave in classrooms by the time they hit highschool. Teachers are given both the power and the respect as parents over the kids. Some teachers are a bit violent, and some find better ways of getting accross - but kids learn how to deal with the whole variety of them.

In Canada / America (I haven't been to a British school) - by the time kids hit highschool, they 'rebel' against society. Clearly there's something wrong when highschool kids don't know where they oughta behave themselves and where they can vent and rebel.

Two different things

One is the fact that kids were recording what was going on privately, i.e. these two teachers fighting. Sure one can argue it was done in public, but still. This is a new world, where even the average joe can feel like a famous actor, where any little flub or stupid act they do can be recoreded by 500 people with camera phones, and uploaded to millions of viewers in a few minutes. It used to be you needed to be someone important to be embarassed by millions, now you just need to be in the unfortunate position of being around a cell phone.

As for CBS, good for them. I would rather have an entire episode of a show, with commercials on youtube in a good resolution then to have to watch it on TV, or be forced to record it via dvr, etc.

Re:Two different things

It wasn't two teachers fighting, it was a teacher yelling at a 13 year old kid. The other 13 year old recorded it and put it on youtube. Depending on why exactly he was yelling, and there aren't many good reasons, he probably should be embarassed.

IMHO yelling at a kid just teaches a kid how to yell.

No, it wasn't the teachers fighting.

The Slashdot article may be ambiguous, but the actual article it links to makes clear it was the teacher yelling at a student, not two teachers yelling at each other.

So incompetent

Main Entry: relevant
Pronunciation: 're-l&-v&nt

Really earning your pay, aren't you, editors

What, Linux doesn't have spell check?

Objective Viewfinders

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

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

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.

Re:Objective Viewfinders

Wake up, buddy. These are public employees. These are the people to who we have committed one of the most fundamental and important roles in our society: teaching the next generation. In many cases these teachers are more important in shaping the future of our society than are parents themselves.

You better believe we need to hold these people to the highest level of accountability.

And you know what? Teachers unions should be happy we are doing this. As we weed out the scum and the freeloaders who are negatively impacting our children, we will raise the standards in the teaching profession and hopefully thereby raise the wages of teachers to reflect the fundamental and critical role they play in our society and our future.

Misleading Summary

FTFA: the incident took place a month ago, when one student provoked the teacher into yelling at her while a classmate secretly taped the confrontation.

As Admiral Akbar once said: It's a trap. TFA also mentions that the exact same thing happened at another school in Canada.

We all know how easily video can be creatively edited & pictures can be photoshopped... so short of banning camera phones & (video) cameras, I don't really see how you resolve the issue.

Re:Misleading Summary

Um, you can always ask other teachers/students in the given situation what was going on. Heck, someone can always press charges and the justice system would take care of it. It would probably set a precedent either way discouraging the use of these phones.

Re:Misleading Summary

How about hiring competent professionals who know better than to allow themselves to be baited by belligerent kids?

The union wouldn't allow that, because it would threaten the job security and promotion opportunities of those teachers who are completely incompetent but good due-paying members of the union.

New trend

I think that we are FINALLY starting to see all kinds of content, including television content online in some kind of substantial quantity.

I was checking out Comedy Central's clips of the Daily Show like I usually do every few weeks or so, and I was shocked to find that you can stream tons and tons of good content from the Daily Show at a time. I used to have to click and watch an ad for every 1 minute segment, which was almost more trouble than it was worth. Last night, I clicked "play all", and I got several hours worth of Daily Show content, with ads interspersed through out (like TV).

I think it's interesting that TV exceutives are FINALLY starting to notice online viewship. It seems to me that they would've done it much earlier, because tracking advertising online is about one beeellion times more effective than those useless Neilson boxes that give very limited information on a tiny same of the population.

Re:New trend

I was with you right up to that last part.

And until Adobe stops dragging their feet on Linux (and even BSD) support, fuck Flash, too. Let's face it, the browser plugin situation is a disaster

Using Linux is your choice. YOURS. You have made the choice to use an OS that has roughly 3% market share. Not only that, but an OS where interoperability between distros is far from assured. Oddly enough, the fact that Adobe supports 95% of the market sounds like more than enough for me. The browser plug-in situation is great! Flash is compatible on more types of computers than 99% of the programs out there. Flash is more cross-browser and cross-platform compatible than many HTML/CSS websites. If you have chosen to use an OS that is not supported by a piece of software that has become a major part of the web, that is your choice. The rest of the world is under no obligation to support a platform just because you happen to use it.

How else...

How else would you post videos of your schoolmates making the professor dance [youtube.com] or burning stuff [youtube.com]?

Finally

"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."

Finally! Hopefully, big media will realise that literally giving away content is good for them in the long run. If this catches on like we've been hoping for years now, the DMCA, copyright laws and its like won't need to be changed, they'll just become irrelevant withg the advent of the new paradigm. (sorry for the buzzwords, folks.)

I Know It's Off-topic.

You couldn't pay me enough to be a teacher to primary/secondary student. Well, you could... but it'd have to be one heck of a lot more than a teacher makes now.

Several of my relatives (my generation) have teaching degrees. One now works in a body shop, one owns a flower shop, and the third is back in school learning a new trade.

Kids who deliberately provoke a teacher to film the results don't need to be yelled at so much as slapped around a little. And that's why I'd be a terrible teacher.

Re:I Know It's Off-topic.

'' Kids who deliberately provoke a teacher to film the results don't need to be yelled at so much as slapped around a little. And that's why I'd be a terrible teacher. ''

You would lose your job as a teacher rather quickly. Doesn't mean you would be a bad teacher.

Re:I Know It's Off-topic.

There really are great kids who have been handed poorly-equipped parents by a crueler fate than your own.

Finding the heart to absorb some of their personal angst whilst moving the class forward in spite of the aggressively self-promotional behaviour is THE key challenge of teaching a PUBLIC school - the principle purpose of which is to address the vicious cycles in society by which the feeble beget the more feeble.

Its a lofty calling, and both difficult and under-appreciated (to say nothing of misunderstood).

Here's to those who succeed!

AIK

What's with schools in Quebec and the innurnet?

First the star wars kid [youtube.com] and now the yelling teacher de l'enfer. I'd hate to be a school kid in Quebec, it sounds dangerous for mental sanity...

Re:What's with schools in Quebec and the innurnet?

for mental sanity...

...as opposed to the physical kind? I know what you mean. My left leg is totally barmy. Keeps me awake at nights.

A Good Check

It's ridiculously easy for teachers to abuse their authority. Many often display questionable behaviour in the classroom or elsewhere, the account of which might be met with skepticism when reported to a higher authority, or might simply be flat-out not reported owing to the submissive nature of most students or due to the awkwardness inherent in getting a teacher chastised for an isolated incident.

With the knowledge that lectures are being, or might possible be, recorded by the students themselves, teachers suddenly become accountable for all their actions--as it should be. Banning such videos from youtube, and electronic devices as whole from schools, is a broad handed tyrannical gesture and an affront to student rights and free speech.

Guess who took over the copyrighted material:

http://dailymotion.com/ [dailymotion.com]

great solution!

Was it two teachers fighting, or the teacher yelling at the student? This is completely ridiculous that instead of maybe training teachers not to Yell at students they would ban any devices in order to make sure this inappropriate behaviour can carry on unchecked. Needless to say there are some kids that deserve to get yelled at, hell some kids deserve to get the shit beat out of them, but it is never the teachers place to do it which is unfortunate as most absentee parents are up for the challenge of actually raising their own children either.

Relevent?

What does this word mean? I can't find it in any dictionary!

Parents have rights too.

I think the parent in the article said it best, "...teachers need to be accountable for their actions..."

It is the same with the police, No one would remember Rodney King if someone had not caught the police beating him on video, and ever since then the police have been trying to make it illegal to film/tape them (calling it obstructing justice, personally I call it ENFORCING justice).

Teachers (like the police) have a resposibility to the public, and if a fear of being caught on video doing something unethical, illegal, or stupid, keeps them in line then so be it.

Embarassed

Not at losing control and yelling at the child but at BEING CAUGHT doing it. Nice to see hypocrisy is not a nationally limited 'virtue' but alive and well worldwide :)

Why can't we all just get along?

Why can't we all just get along?

WTF?

So, a teacher does something stupid and gets caught on tape... the response of the school district?

1. Leave (probably paid) for the teacher

2. disciplinary action for the kids doing the filming

3. ban of personal electronic devices in classrooms

Uuuuh, can I be the first to say: WTF!?!!

Could this situation be *any* more backwards than what it should be? How about an appropriate response like:

1. Fire / discipline teacher

2. Public praise for the kids involved

3. No ban of anything

I have seen some stupid videos.

The Kids should be suspended..

If anything shows that kids can't be trusted with technology.

I recall another video on YT ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePxLRCr1sw [youtube.com] ) a month or so ago where this kid with his face covered is asking people egg some persons house.

What is funny about the video is you can find other videos by the same person showing their face, people calling him by name and is account is his name.

Keeping bad teachers in check

I think kids should be allowed to have electronic devices because the threat of being recorded will keep bad teachers in check.

My highschool was like that

If they saw any personal electronic device (phone, PSP, etc) you were immediately scolded. Usually the first time it happened, MOST teachers/administrators wouldn't do anything beyond scolding you, but after that (or even the first time with some) they would confiscate the device and/or send you to the office.

Of course, there was the occasional teacher who didn't give a damn what you did, so long as it wasn't disruptive. But otherwise, everyone acted about the same.

Now, I personally think of cell phones and the like as a crutch on which no person should depend--much like computers, though at least a computer has more potential for good. But seriously, with the exception of when your car breaks down (yet another crutch), when if ever are you someplace where you cannot find a phone to use?

That being said, the policies which came into effect at my school did absolutely nothing beyond encouraging students to simply not get caught. If you ask me, this encourages exactly the wrong type of behavior. Which is probably why on every survey taken by the sociology class to which I saw the results, some 85% of students admitted to cheating. Punishing people for getting caught only encourages them to be more careful about not getting caught, but rarely is this sufficient to prevent the act itself from happening.

So, unless the administration at the school from the article plans to either punish the act of the student carrying such a device, by searching every student as they come into the building (possibly via a metal detector), or make the consequences of getting caught so severe that no student would dare risk getting caught (ie: first offense-detention. second-suspension. third-expulsion), then I don't see this having any real effect. It's just like the speed limit: almost every single person goes 5 miles over because the odds of getting caught are so slim and the consequences are almost negligible.

Furthermore, it's difficult to define personal electronic device. In the case of my former school, I made it a point to emphasize that under their current system, a digital watch was against regulations.

So, essentially what I'm saying is, even if the school implements such a policy, I doubt that it will affect the behavior of the students adversely, speaking from experience.

The teachers' union is now trying to get all perso

The teachers' union is now trying to get all personal electronic devices banned from all schools in Western Quebec.

So that teachers will be able to yell at each other, beat children without noone seeing, maybe some molest them and so on ?

so that things will stay hidden ?

I will never listen to any babbling about 'childcare','child upbringing','good parenting','good teaching' crapola from any teacher from now on.

Stress Leave?

What is this guy, a pansy?

relevent

Sheesh, you lose credibility when you screw up spelling on the main page. The correct word is "relevant". Weeeee.

Why ban?

It is indeed possible to misuse personal electronic devices, but does that justify banning them all? Police are already involved in this case, so there's no reason to take away everyone's iPods too. The uploader will be identified and punished, let that be the end of it.

So long as students understand there will be consequences for misuse, then the problem should disappear. This only happened because the students didn't expect any trouble, just shits & giggles.

He should've done something

like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hut3VRL5XRE [youtube.com]

Record everything in the classroom all the time...

and put it up undedited on youtube, right at the end of each school day. Put a mechanical clock in the corner of the view to make any cuts obvious. This would protect both students from abuse and teachers from baseless allegations. Too bad it would scare the crap out of some students, and they would be afraid to raise their hands and ask "the dumb questions." Other students would play to the camera. Still others would be motivated by the camera to work harder. I think it would be an interesting experiment.

Thoughts?

Teaching the kids "kill the messenger"

Remember when the digital photos from Abu Ghraib came out, and the Pentagon immediately swung into action to prevent any repetition? By banning digital cameras?

The school is simply teaching the kids an important real life lesson about what happens to whistleblowers.

Google for "filming classroom"

finds this gem:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4470000/n ewsid_4476100/4476105.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Apparently filming kids secretly in a classroom is "underhanded" but not illegal; teachers seem to be unhappy about film material demonstrating that they lost control completely. I can't find anything that says whether open filming would be legal or illegal.

Close to home

Having lived in the vicinity of that high school, I can quite honestly say that while I totally disagree with this censorship, there are two sides to this story. Should the video be removed from Youtube ? No. Should we immediately accuse the prof ? No. Did the kids provoke the prof ? I wouldn't be surprised. Mont-Bleu is one of the more problematic communities because of the very high student population and generally low income; an educated ghetto. Combine that with idiot parents and you end up with what we have here, a teacher losing their mind to these stubborn disrespectful teens.

I hope this fiasco raises some stir in the local press and maybe get a few big heads talking. I just compare kids today with kids ten years ago, and well I wish I could drive the school bus into the river because these teens are going nowhere.

Do as I say not as I do.

So schools, can place CCTVs around to monitor students, submit students to search, and general pry into the lives of students.
But when students monitor the administration that cannot be allowed to happen?

This is classic and typical of EVIL OVERLORDS!

Private versus Public School

Sure the public school system may be able to hide behind their unions and "privacy" concerns, but perhaps that would further segragate the quality of education received by those in private school. As a parent paying big money to send a kid to a private school, one would feel this would be a right. If one pays for it, one deserves the right to see what they've paid for. Just like Kramer, there is a line between discipline and acting in a way that is uncalled for.

Locker Room recording - Coach Knight

Being originally from Indiana and the formerly well known Coach Bobby Knight, his unadultered commentary shows up as well. I looked his name up on YouTube. One of them is a half-time tirade in the locker room.

Here is the link [youtube.com]. Hilarious to listen to but BE FORWARNED, his speech will make a sailor blush. If Coach Knight found about this audio being posted, the team will catch hell even if this was recorded a few years ago !

Common now..

A friend of mine who is a teacher said to me a few weeks ago that this was common at the secondary school he teaches at now. Infact, some kids are trying to make their teacher lose their temper on purpose just so they can record it and put it on youtube later. Doing this of course makes the kids who did it a hero among their peers, and the teacher very embarassed.

kids and communication

and some wonder why they are quitting [slashdot.org] school ???

plus another /. story recently on smuggling in cell phones in their underwear

schools are becoming a battleground over communication. those who have the powerful minds yoked are losing control of the system that keeps the humans docile and working for other's benefit, and they do not like it. ("stay in school, you get a good job!" ... crap) People younger and younger are realizing that the way out is through self sufficiency and most of the formal education systems simply do not teach that, and certainly will not allow it during the student's forced stay/sentence.

Kids need to stand up and claim personal rights to devices that permit and enable communication, or simply refuse to participate in the system. find education elsewhere. their parents need to support them in this, or they are selling out their kids.

A better response....

Would be to have video cameras installed in EVERY classroom, so that if some smart-alec tries to set up his teacher this way again, the full story can still be seen... including how the teacher was goaded into responding the way that he did. Not that I excuse what he did, but having another video to substantiate what led up to the occurence would have made it a lot easier for him to just apologize for overreacting and move on without continuing to be embarrassed. With such facilities, a student who is trying to provoke a teacher into doing something stupid could just be sent to the office for disciplinary action, and the school could have the entire incident on tape.

No lies

The cameras are great truth-documenters and we need lots more of them. The innocent little tech devices don't lie and show all for the world to see and judge. This is very bad for the bad guys and there is no turning back!

To the Teachers... Ha ha, sorry, but f*ck you.

For the last, what, one, two centuries, teachers have regularly abused their students, beating them down, in some form of apparent pathology or another. Some because they felt they had to squash intelligent students because they were as well, when they were kids, or in others, they chose to because some students threatened the status quo.

However, in another recent case, someone with a cell phone camera recorded a pro-creationist teacher telling science students in school that they would go to Hell for not accepting creationism as fact.

Simply put? Just as people can use cameras in this surveillance based society to imprison the innocent, it can equally be used to imprison the guilty. So if you can't deal with the idea of being dressed down because you were stupid enough to let your own stupidity be caught on camera, don't bitch about it. Suck it up, or cut it out. Plain and simple.

Screw Copyrights

Go out and make your own content for YouTube, yah lazy bastards! For YouTube to stay relevant it needs original content, not the same network crap regurgitated into a web browser.

stress leave????

Wimp.

Sounds like hes better off not teaching 'our' children anyway.

How many of you have worked with kids?

I'm seeing a lot of posts saying "the teacher shouldn't yell" or some other why don't you just reason with them.

I do volunteer work with 13-15 yr olds in the Australian (Catholic) High school system. Kids talk, they're disruptive and don't like authority. From what I've experienced in the school system students are far more disrespectful. I was amazed when I heard students swear directly at teachers. How many of you have to put up with that in your working environment?

Children need to respect the authority of their teachers and be disciplined by them. Parents going on about "suing" are stupid and teaching their children poor skills to deal with life

Re:Good plan

The teachers' union is now trying to get all personal electronic devices banned from all schools in Western Quebec.

Does that include calculators?

-b.

Sorry state of affairs

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 thei

Re:Good plan

There is no overkill, there is only open fire and time to reload.