Infuriate-My-Teachers.ie

Your Word: There has been much controversy surrounding www.ratemyteachers.ie, a website that gives students a chance to comment on their teachers...

And rate them on clarity, helpfulness and easiness. The response and popularity of the site in Ireland has been huge, not least helped by all the bad publicity it's received and efforts to shut it down.

“I can see no merits in having it around as regards teaching. It is totally a money making scheme by a company that provides the site for advertisements,” was what one teacher had to say when I asked him his opinion. But is it really that bad? Teachers rate us everyday – too lazy, too chatty, too disruptive – the list goes on and on. Teachers don't have a choice that remarks on their teaching abilities are being posted for anyone to see – but neither do we have a choice, when reports of our ‘student' abilities are sent out to our parents.

“There seems to be no safeguards in place to protect the reputation of teachers,” my teacher added. Conor Bredin, ratemyteachers.ie administrator for my school, would disagree. “I check every post before it can be put online and delete any bad ones. The majority of things I'd delete would just be posts with ‘feckin' or something like that, joking ones.”

Purely in the interests of research, I checked out the site myself, and found nearly all of the comments to be true and sincere, referring to the teacher's ability rather than slandering them. Some even went on about how great their teachers were, praised them with “BRILLIANT!”, “I love this guy”, and “I don't care what anyone says she's the best teacher in the school.” No one seems to have noticed that instead of being a place for students to insult teachers, it's a place where students can say exactly what they think, without fear of being labeled a ‘lick'. There were so many positive posts, you'd wonder why the teachers' unions are slating it at all.

Maybe it's lack of knowledge about what's posted. After all, the principal of my school has told every teacher not to go on the website because the comments are just made by students insulting teachers who have given them punishment or teachers that they don't like. I wonder how he knows this – he told me himself that he's never been on it.

But people expect the worst from students these days. Young people are portrayed all over the media as apathetic, lazy, good-for-nothing alcoholics who sleep around any chance they get. What's wrong with the teachers getting a little publicity?

By: Miriam Needham

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