Teachers demand YouTube closure

Teachers at their annual conference have passed a motion asking for YouTube to be shut down in light of the spate of cyber-bullying now gripping the nation.

Speakers at the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) conference have spoken out against the website where so many of the videos posted by cyber-bullies are being shown. As many as 1 in 5 children have suffered from cyber bullying, a report charting 15 000 children over five years has shown. This is in tandem with the humiliation many teachers are facing at the hands of their pupils through online broadcasting of offensive videos, including one post portraying a decapitated teacher and the words ‘you’re dead’. Teachers are also suffering from online persecution in the form of websites such as RateMyTeachers, where some teachers are still being subject to grief from students who left their school seven years ago. Speakers at the PAT conference said that teachers had a right to teach without fear and should not be subject to this sort of intimidation, and that the fear this bullying has created had resulted in many leaving the profession.

Children suffering from online bullying are said to suffer a lot more than those who are bullied face-to-face as there is no escape from cyber bullying which may occur 24hrs a day. Teachers have therefore said that the only way to eradicate this online bullying is to shut down YouTube. However others have argued that this will not remove the problem, and that the bullies will just find other ways to attack their victims. Anti-bullying organisations such as Beatbullying, have said that this is not the way to combat cyber-bullying, and that closing YouTube to deal with with the problem was like closing schools as a way of eradicating bullying. What teachers and anti-bullying organisations agree apon is that something must be done to stop the rapid increase in online bullying, which has risen from from 14.5% to 20.6% in the last five years according to reports.

Sources:

Times Online
BBC News