The downside of an open web...and cell phone cameras

I would be the last person to want to censor the internet. I have, shall we say, broad tastes in what I enjoy and I hate the idea of excessive and repressive censorship. However I do have considerable sympathy for the outburst by Alan Johnson, the UK Education Secretary, who was railing against the abuses of camera phones and the irresponsibility of sites like 'YouTube' and 'Rateyourteacher' who accept their output.

At a time when the British teaching profession is under more stress than it has ever known given that there seems to be little redress teachers have against thugs, bullies and disruptive students, and more and more teachers are leaving the profession with stress related illness, they now have the additional ordeal of websites which feature photos taken on cell phones, often capturing them in some undignified pose, and making them look ridiculous.

'Rateyourteacher' seems to allow images of teachers to be posted along with usually unflattering commentary and a series of marks often calculated to deride and humiliate. Of course the poster can hide behind the anonymity of his screen name but the poor teacher's image, comment and 'marks' are circulated for the world to laugh at.



No student would be allowed to get away with such behaviour in class and the fact that some are doing this protected by on line anonymity is both shameful and cowardly. No person doing a job of work deserves to be publicly derided in this way and I have every sympathy with any measures, hopefully voluntary, with the owners of the sites, to stop this sort of thing continuing.

If the likes of 'YouTube' refuse to cooperate its hard to see what can be done about it, short of security guards posted in every school and students and their lockers searched every day for the presence of a camera phone...and who wants a society like that?