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'."

Great Firewall of Oz

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.

Re:Great Firewall of Oz

Indirectly. You see a brief flash when someone who tried to climb over it gets lead poisoning.

Re:Great Firewall of Oz

Wont happen,

Those kind of nut cases are the vocal minority of Australians. Family and/or religious groups like the American Family Association but with a much smaller member base per capita (but just as loud and annoying). Most Australians don't care, in fact not giving a crap is our national past time.

The whiners will continue to whine and the govt will pretend to do something but when push comes to shove, the businesses of australia (which have a vested interest in unfiltered traffic) will push little Johnnie or heavy Kevvy (doesn't really matter who wins the elections) that much more harder than the whiners.

All that could possibly come out of this is a taxpayer funded opt in service which given our governments inability to do anything technical, would be completely useless.

I'd just like to say to the govt that if you're going to spend money stupidly, spend it on FTTN ((optic) Fibre To The Node, FIOS I believe is the Yank equivalent) and cut telstra (AU's largest phone Co.) out of it But like the firewall, that will never happen.

Re:Great Firewall of Oz

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.

Re:Great Firewall of Oz

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.

Re:Great Firewall of Oz

I find it kind of disturbing that people believe that the great firewall is a rational response to the potential slander of some teachers.

It's a shame that the response to "potential slander" (i suspect you mean to say libel) is to silence the criticism instead of investigating the claims.

But then again, when teachers unionize, there often isn't much you can do to get rid of the underperforming educators. I bet that if you dig deep enough, you'll find union leaders are the ones getting the most upset over these libelous claims.

I wonder if truth is a defense against slander/libel/defamation in Australia. It isn't in England, which is where the Aussies borrow much of their law from.

US / UK difference is mainly burden of proof

> I wonder if truth is a defense against slander/libel/defamation in Australia. It isn't in England

Yes it is, just that the burden of proof is on the defendent, not the plaintiff. Read the article in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

oops

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.

Re:oops

I didn't know this website existed, that is until I read the article on SMH.com.au. While they don't mention the website's url a quick google for "school teacher rating" pulled up the right page.. a few links down and I was writing reviews for some of the poorest teachers I had ever experienced.

Just like the HD-DVD hex code, once you start giving these things publicity (no matter how you direct it) you'll always get people doing whatever they want with the newly found information.

If they wanted this problem to go away they should have ignored it, not plea with the government to have the website banned.

Re:Not Slashdot Next I Hope

>Gulp... Hope they don't ban slashdot too ;-(

I'm posting from Australia and everything is fi$%*^#$^(H$
NO CARRIER

Re:Not Slashdot Next I Hope

> >Gulp... Hope they don't ban slashdot too ;-(

> I'm posting from Australia and everything is fi$%*^#$^(H$
> NO CARRIER

Attention Australia STOP
Unable to reach you STOP
Sending carriers STOP
USA

I'm not surprised really,

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.

Re:I'm not surprised really,

Newsflash: Australians are human.

Average person + anonymity = fucktard.
Average person + power = nazi monster.

Welcome to the Internet.

Re:I'm not surprised really,

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.

Support?

It's interesting that their primary response is to shoot the messenger instead of listening to the message. We're not hearing from the teachers and administrators who get the highest marks on the website, are we? Just the bad ones who are trying to save their jobs not by improving but through censorship.

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?

Re:Support?

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.

Insightful?

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'."

Who the hell modded that insightful?

How about (-1) flamebait instead?

I think I have a solution...

We'll just post the defamatory content in hexadecimal poems and songs on You Tube!

Of course teachers would hate this!

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.

Man, this is a trip down memory lane ...

The quotes about the anonymous principal, in the article? Yeah, I went to that school, she was principal back then, and the comments are 100% spot on. Funny that she'd find her way into the SMH and onto Slashdot ...

Not surprising, but cure or chaos?

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.

Re:Sad State,

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)

Speaking as an Aussie...

... 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.

Sounds about right.

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.

Free speech

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..

Re:Free speech

"You're confusing your ability to write what you want with my ability to call you an idiot when I read your opinion."

No I'm not. As I said, people use "offtopic" and "troll" moderators to (effectively) remove posts with which they disagree. This is not what the moderation scheme is for - it's intended to reduce the incidence of trolling, abusive posts, etc. Modding down a legitamate post just because you disagree with it is really a form of censorship.

You're an idiot. ;-)

MOD PARENT DOWN

The Muse of Irony demands it!

stupid...

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....

Critical thinking

(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?

Right of reply and anonymous status

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..

I've been rated

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.

Re:Another reason to live int the USA? (trolling!)

Guessing you've never actually lived here...
Australia has thousands of stupid laws that the majority don't agree with, we have an effective way of dealing with these, ignore them.

Constitution-itis

Citizens of the United States, even otherwise sensible ones, have this obsession with "but we have a Constitution that protects blah blah blah..."

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.

Re:Constitution-itis

Well, actually it _did_ protect the Americans from McCarthy, it just took its time in doing so. Likewise over time the likes of Lenny Bruce and Lady Chatterley's lover were vindicated.

And I fervently hope (with some merit) that thanks to a free press, Gitmo will become the Manzanar of this era, reviled and used for a century as an example of what not to do. I wish the constitution could stop Gitmo in advance, but it has powerful enemies, and it is not strong enough to stop them immediately, but if things go OK, it will stop them in time, and leave them in the history books as a story of evil.

Of course, those who remember history are sometimes condemned to be the only ones in horror as they watch it repeat.

RE: Should have known.

I thought public schools these days were all about free expression of idea's, thoughts, etc.

anyone sitting in the .nsw.edu.au domain already is already subjected to filtering. Just ask your little brother what site he's directed to when he attempts to visit youtube from school. I guess they want to expand the schoolyard to every home and business across the country.

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.

Re:Poor buggers

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