Can the teachers do anything about this site?
Any student of the Irish educational system knows that it is desperately lacking some form of accountability or performance review system for its teachers. Throughout my thirteen years in primary and secondary school I had some great teachers, many good teachers, a few mediocre teachers and a couple of teachers who were simply useless. I always felt that if there had been some checks and balances for teachers that those few who were clearly not interested and/or capable of being teachers would have been taken out of the system.
Is www.ratemyteachers.ie such a system? And if so, is it the correct system? In my opinion – absolutely not. On both counts. ratemyteachers.ie is one of the most despicable sites I have ever seen. It allows any person (whether a past/present student of a particular teacher or an Eskimo sitting at his computer in his igloo at the North Pole) post any comment anonymously. Yes, this comment can be constructive or even flattering. But it can also be personally insulting and hurtful. I can only begin to imagine the kind of stress, self doubt and sleepless nights these kind of comments could cause.
Aren’t all of the comments moderated? Yes. But by whom? How do they qualify and what qualifications must they possess? It is my understanding that the first student to try and rate a teacher in a school yet to be added to ratemyteachers.ie automatically becomes that school’s moderator. They require no qualifications and the school has no input into the choice. This student may very well be a leaving certificate student wishing to tell the world how great her English teacher is and she may make a very good moderator. It is also possible that this first student is the fourteen year old self-appointed class clown with a number of grudges to bear.
These moderators should also be aware of the possible legal situation they have placed themselves in. By moderating for a school you may have placed yourself in the position of being an editor under the terms of defamation law and you may indeed be liable for all comments posted that relate to that school. There was an excellent article written by Fergal Crehan, Barrister-at-Law, in the technology section of the Irish Times on April 29 of this year about libel liability and the Internet. His original blog entry covering much of that article can be found at http://www.tuppenceworth.ie/blog/2005/04/libel-liability.html .
And moderators, do not believe for one second that the Internet hides your identity – there is a simple trail that can be followed from ratemyteachers.ie back to your computer that can be obtained with a court order. If you have performed your moderation duties from a school computer laboratory then the chances are that the school already has the necessary information to identify you even if they do not yet realise it. If I were you, I would hand over your moderation username and password to one of your teachers and hope none of them decide to take legal action against any defaming comments.
So what can be done about this site?
The first question is should the teachers do anything at all? Some commentators believe that by attempting to have it taken down or campaigning against it, all the teachers achieve is to give it more publicity and credence. The put your head in the sand approach never held any water with me.
Then the second question becomes just what can they do about it? There is always the legal route but it’s difficult as the site is actually hosted in the USA and it would also prove a very expensive operation. There are a number of outwardly offensive measures that could be considered such as denial-of-service attacks but these may be illegal in this jurisdiction or in the US (I’m not a lawyer).
If the teachers do not want to risk the expense of taking legal action and the possible legal implications of an out-and-out attack then perhaps they might consider making it more difficult for the people behind ratemyteachers.ie to maintain it by lobbying those that provide the Internet services that support it – the site itself is hosted by Rackspace Ltd – www.rackspace.com – a web hosting provider with offices in the US and the UK.