I’m annoyed by this.
France bans naming teachers on school-rating website
PARIS (AFP) — A French court on Monday ordered a website that allows pupils to rate their schools to stop naming teachers, after the country’s educational establishment denounced it as “public lynching”.
The website, www.note2be.com, which opened late January based on similar sites that have existed for years in Britain, the United States and many other countries around the world, proved wildly popular with students and parents.
In just four weeks they gave marks out of 20 to 50,000 of their teachers and judged whether they were “interesting,” “available,” “respected,” or “motivated”.
Judgments, made anonymously, were on the whole favourable, with an average rating of 14.
But teachers, already smarting after a suggestion by President Nicolas Sarkozy that they might face performance reviews to which students could contribute, were incensed.
A group of teachers and several teachers’ union asked a Paris court to decide whether the site broke privacy laws by publishing teachers’ names and ratings and whether it breached their right to be judged only by superiors.
Read the rest of the article here
Public lynching?!? Give me a break! Students have every right to judge their teachers. I hope the site’s creators win their appeal.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Justin // Mar 4, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Ah French privacy. I still get a kick out of those concerns… but seriously, if you are so concerned with privacy, please stop standing so close to me in lines at the supermarket. I cannot rate you, but you can stand on top of me… come on!
There is one high point to this… we shouldn’t have to worry about a French version of ‘hot or not’ popping up! Thank goodness! We don’t need anymore junk sites like that on the web.
2 Karina // Mar 4, 2008 at 10:10 pm
You can’t stop the internet, if anything the added publicity will entice other students to set up similar sites.
Besides, according to the French once you pass the concours you’re automatically a fantastic teacher har-har
3 Linda // Mar 5, 2008 at 8:31 am
There must have been a lot of bad teachers on that site that didn’t want the rest of the world to know.
4 nicole // Mar 5, 2008 at 2:51 pm
There is a fine line here between the rights of students and teachers. There is the possibility of so much going wrong on this type of site – libel and slander can happen and quickly. And having been a teacher in the US, these sites are not my favorite. Oversight and caution are needed in my opinion.
5 Alisa // Mar 5, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I agree with you that is is legal for these sites to exist, and if the students want to rate the teachers, oh well. It’s not like they even really have a choice of which teachers they have – so it doesn’t really change anything, and I’m sure Sarko isn’t going to be looking at this site for performance reviews!
I did read they put up all the teacher’s schools and contact info though, which I think is going a bit far.
In any case, these teachers should be rated, so many of them are crap crap crap!
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