Teachers Feeling Hurt by YouTube

For a while now, popular websites such as YouTube, My Space and various other Internet sites, have been a place for any normal person to put videos and their personal opinions out there for the world to see. Everyone knows that these videos aren't always the most polite, they seem to tend more towards being funny, shocking or just entertaining. Nevertheless, these types of sites can be considered an important media outlet. When do videos go too far though?

Yahoo! News is reporting this week that "Malicious Online Videos are Hurting Teachers". On YouTube and other websites that support student videos, there can be found videos taken by students on their cell phones and other devices showing malicious and embarrassing things being done to teachers. An example is of a video on YouTube showing a teacher stumbling around the front of the classroom after a student has run up and pulled his pants down around his ankles. Others show a teacher walking into cellophane covering a classroom door, and a student trying to fake a head injury with ketchup. British education secretary Allan Johnson is claiming that "such videos hurt teachers, and many have left or are considering leaving the profession because of the defamation and humiliation they are forced to suffer." Johnson also goes on to state that these online companies have a "social responsibility and moral obligation to act" against these types of videos. The spokeswoman for YouTube Julie Supan says that there are guidelines for which videos can be uploaded and that if complaints are made about a video, the video is revised and often removed. If you do a quick search on YouTube today though, that first video of the teacher with his underwear around his ankles is still there, as are many others.

I remember when I was younger, students would often make fun of teachers to each other, but nobody I ever knew actually went up and did anything to them. I also agree that seeing these types of videos can be funny. There definitely is a line though that can be crossed between funny and hurtful and humiliating. If this situation is getting so bad that teachers are considering quiting their jobs because of it, then yes to me it is a problem. Just because something is funny doesn't mean its ok. There is a time and a place for everything and I think that this notion needs to be reinforced in a lot of kids. It is also the responsibility of these online organizations that are allowing for the uploading of these videos to better regulate and stop this from happening. School teachers are very important and if they continue to leave and there are also still kids who think these sorts of things are ok, we might be in for a problem.