While it surely is questionable whether teachers should be rated on categories such as sexiness or exam difficulty, these are not the root cause of these arguments. This became apparent in a recent article: The German news magazine “Der Spiegel” had invited the head of the German teacher’s society Peter Silbernagel to debate with the founders of spickmich.de Manuel Weisbrod und Bernd Dicks.

The basic message of the teaching official is to blame pupils for being cowards to rate their teachers anonymously on the Internet instead of talking to them in person or approaching the headmaster. It is testimony to his escapist views on schools in Germany if he argues teachers and pupils should be able to discuss at eye level. While this is surely desirable, it totally denies the hierarchical relationship of teachers and pupils that makes criticism (even constructive) difficult.

What Silbernagel does not realise is that they are lucky to have a site as spickmich.de to grapple with. The operators are rather tame compared to other much more aggressive portals of that kind. They check every comment before putting it online and even remove quotes if teachers ask for a good reason. They rightly suggest that a cooperation between the site and Germany’s teachers could be a way to give pupils a voice and improve the quality of teaching because it would enable an evaluation.

However, the message does not get through. The German teacher’s society still hopes it will eventually achieve to abolish those sites instead of finding ways to cope with them. Their complete lack of understanding is exemplified by a recent campaign that is targeted at violence against teachers. While this is surely a problem that needs addressing, it speaks volumes that the campaigning website makes available a prototype form with which teachers can request removal of their ratings from spickmich.de.

Evaluation of teachers = violence. German teachers have yet to learn their lesson.

“Last but not least, the subject under public scrutiny does matter as professors might well be made to face personal criticism in their role as public figures while teachers and nurses might have to be treated differently.”

Well, I might have been wrong. A couple of weeks ago the Regional Court of Cologne has decided that teachers too have to tolerate to be rated online by their pupils. In the case a German teacher had sued spickmich.de, a site similar to the British RateMyTeachers, that allows pupils to mark their teachers in nine different categories such as fairness of grades, quality of the lessons and difficulty of exams. So far more than 150.000 kids have used this service (according to the publishers).

The court made two important rulings: First, the ratings of the pupils are clear value judgements and are acceptable under the principles of freedom of expression as long as these are not defamatory. The court has given a lot of freedom and even allows polemic statements as the criticism of the pupils has the necessary relevance (after all, they are talking about people they meet and work with every day) and the evaluation of the school and its teachers is of general interest. Second, the judges did not follow the argument of the claimant that displaying her name next to the rating would constitute a violation of her privacy. They argue that this is information that could be easily obtained from the school’s website.

While this is an important ruling in favour of collaborative group judgements (something my colleague Malte Ziewitz is working on) there are a number of particularities about spickmich.de that merit highlighting to assess the ruling properly. First, there is a need to register on the site. The ratings are not publicly available and pupils have to register on the site in order to rate their teachers. Another difference to other rating sites is that the service does not allow for personal comments about teachers but only for grades between one and six (like the German grading system) in different categories. Finally, looking at the screenshots of the site it seems that what spickmich.de is really after is to establish a new social networking site for pupils that piggybacks on teacher ratings to reach a critical mass. It is telling that spickmich.de refers to itself as a pupil’s network.

Bottom line: I think this has been a good ruling in general as collaborative efforts with general interest goals should be encouraged and not stifled by the law as long as they do not harm anyone. Still I am slightly worried. The creators of the site do not get tired to emphasize that overall marks received by the teachers are rather good (average of 2.9) and that the site is intended to collect fair and objective judgements in order to improve education. But despite their arguably good intentions it remains the secret of the creators of the site how to reach a “fair and objective” judgement in categories such as sexy (or ugly), cool and funny (or embarrassing and boring) or easy (or difficult) exams.

While the association of German teachers made the predictable outcry about this effort one should make no mistakes: the role of teachers is difficult, public demand on them is high while appreciation of their work is low and although for years German teachers have been paid much better wages than their British counterparts, burn out syndroms are common, contributing to the German situation in which only 5% of teachers do actually work until there legal pension age. I yet have to see a fancy Web 2.0 application that would give teachers something in their hands to cope with their everyday work. Are there any social networking sites for teachers?

There is this guy called Larry Lessig who is a kind of super hero if you are interested in intellectual property in the age of the Internet and more general, if you do any work on the Internet and its social implications: This is someone you look up to as an academic-in-the-making. If we talk amongst ourselves about why we do what we do and where we want to go, he usually is one of the prime examples of people that just did it. This has many reasons: First of all, of course, this guy is famous (which is quite good if you want to make a living from your work). Ok, but also, he clearly had a lot of good ideas (Creative Commons being one of them). Most importantly however, the most fascinating thing has been that he simply single-handedly defined the area he would make his future career in. He would not write the 50th review of some well-discussed problem that he just analyses from a slightly different angle that makes it academically worthwhile but basically has an impact factor that is indistinguishable from zero.

No: he came to believe that we need a law of cyberspace and he was the man to do it. Before him, people said a special law for the Internet would be like a special law for horses. So he wrote “The law of the horse” and ten years onwards he has convinced a lot of people that digital technologies do indeed merit a new kind of legal perspective, as “code is law”.

So he is the kind of guy you look up to if you are wondering how a (not-so-standard) academic career could look like that brings you a fifteen page CV at the age of 46. And then he just says: So long and thanks for all the fish. Or rather:

“Just one favor I ask in return: when you get to the promised land, remember to send a postcard. “

You probably should read his post but in short Larry has decided that 10 years of revolutionizing IP law will only get you so far and the real problem is to address the “corrupt” political process. I’m still amazed and the amount of comments to his posts indicate, I’m not the only one. I think it is admirable, although I am actually a bit doubtful how good of an idea that is: However, staying in the field would probably have been the easy option and it is even more admirable if he does not want to go for it. If he really does that: Impressive!

The opinion of the general public is in high demand as exemplified by a recent announcement of the British National Health Service (NHS) to introduce NHS Choices which among other things will allow patients to comment on their hospital treatment. The move has clearly been inspired by the success of PatientOpinion, a not-for-profit site which has allowed people for more than a year now to voice their experience with treatment received in hospital (and for which this new state-run competition raises some problems of its own).

Commendably recently even the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit within the Cabinet Office has launched a review that is intended to highlight ways on how to leverage the Power of Information generated by state as well as the public.

However, not all is perfect for this new form of user empowerment. Especially one form of rating site has come under attack: sites which allow to comment on the performance of teachers, in particular a site called RateMyTeachers. These sites have come under fire as teachers complain about cyber bullying:

“Another teacher at the same school is criticised by a pupil because they “cannot speak English” and another as “the worst person ever” and “everyone hates her”.” (BBC, 3rd April 2007)

“Mr Brown said: “Comments are one thing but what about teachers who’ve had images of their heads super-imposed on to gratuitous images or who have had pictures taken and posted of their cleavages or underwear as they bend over, or who have had comments questioning their fidelity to their partner?”" (The Independent, 4th April 2007)

As every reader of newsgroups or forums has learned long ago many people have yet to master the art of making constructive criticisms and it is understandable that teachers take offence at anonymous comments like the ones quoted above. The concerns are serious enough for some to even call for a closure of such sites.

A new court decision in Germany could lead the way in assessing these issues in the future: The German website MeinProf.de which allows students to rate their professors and comment on their performance had been sued. After some nasty comments (including naming the professor a “psychopath”) that were quickly removed by the web site owners the professor in question went to court demanding the operators to pay 3,000 Euros (about £2,000) for any similar comment about him that might appear on the site in the future.

The court has decided that a general “cease and desist” for unacceptable comments is against the law. As a professor one has to face public criticism that cannot be prohibited ex ante. (see full coverage as well as press announcement – all in German I’m afraid).
(btw I wonder what Wendy’s take on the situation is…)

Several things have to be noted: In general this is a positive outcome for web sites that leverage the wisdom of the crowds as it offers some protection for the often not-for-profit operators of these sites. However, this does not justify defamatory comments on those sites and the court has emphasized the operators’ duty to remove those entries as soon as they are recognized. Last but not least, the subject under public scrutiny does matters as professors might well be made to face personal criticism in their role as public figures while teachers and nurses might have to be treated differently.

Unsettling features of such a so-called “federal trojan” would include that it would have to go undetected by anti-virus software and could potentially enable law enforcement agencies to copy files to the monitored computer – so they might copy child pornography on your hard disk and then prosecute you for possessing it. I also wonder how the StopBadware project would deal with that. Jonathan, any comments?

However, today the German government has conceded that online monitoring of computers is already taking place and that has been the case for about the last two years. The justification of this in face of the high court ruling is almost cynical: The agencies would not violate the secrecy of telecommunications as they would only access files on the hard disk but not ongoing communication. Also, the online surveillance does not constitute a house raid (which would need a court permission) because laptops could also be used outside a flat and by spying on the computer one would not monitor events that happen inside a flat.