aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Policing teachers, more costs than benefits
I come from a family full of teachers. I believe there are two kinds of teachers accused of (or vulnerable to) accusations of sex abuse: guilty ones and good ones. So I was interested to find this in Salon today:
Administrators and school boards, spooked by a spate of high-profile school sex scandals and fearful of lawsuits, have begun cracking down on student-teacher relationships, despite charges from critics that they are succumbing to unwarranted sexual hysteria. This new censoriousness may protect students from inappropriate behavior, although the question of whether abuse itself is on the rise is hotly disputed. Many teachers and educational advocates worry that such changes also prevent teachers from reaching out to students—and ultimately create a stifling climate that gets in the way of engaged education. [...]
The cumulative result of the scandals—and the fear they have inspired—has been to discourage teachers from meeting with students alone or behind closed doors, having personal conversations, interacting with students off campus or offering them a ride in their cars, or engaging in any kind of physical contact—whether it be a maternal hug or a handshake.
Fear fueled by our own prurient fascination?
[T]here is an element to education, especially at the high school level and beyond, that at its best, is fundamentally intimate. When we talk about teachers who “make a difference,” they are usually not the people who barricade themselves behind their desks, and something essential is lost when all personal contact between teachers and students is ruled off-limits. The cases that make the news are black and white. But the dilemma lies in the gray areas where parents and educators face a collision of two positive imperatives, between the desire to protect their children from a small risk of sexual abuse and the desire to allow great teachers to do their jobs well. Isn’t it possible that a completely risk-free education—like a risk-free life—is also a mediocre one? [...]
As a veteran teacher, [professor of English literature and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut and editor of “The Erotics of Instruction,” a collection of essays about the role of desire and attraction in education Gina] Barreca is puzzled by the public’s frenzied reaction to teacher-student intimacy. “I want to know why all of a sudden we are so hysterical about this, what does this new concern reflect?” she asks. “Because these impulses have been there since Socrates! So this sudden focus on it really seems to be a deflection of a larger series of fears.”
Indeed, in a way that’s all too familiar, it’s hard to distinguish America’s fear of its youth being sexually abused from its prurient fascination with the subject. The headlines announce: ”Sextracurricular Perv-Teach Crisis,” “Sex Education With Hands-on Training” and “Hottie Pedophiles Deserve Prison Time, Too.” Tabloids and cable channels obsess over female teachers who prey on young boys: Mary Kay Letourneau, Christina Gallagher, Sandra Beth Geisel, Emily Morris and the rest of their ilk. And in a flourish reminiscent of pulp novels and pornos, this March, when former Florida middle school teacher and tabloid staple Debra Lafave was dismissed from charges of sexual abuse, Fox News accompanied its report with a photograph depicting Lafave stripped to her underwear, astride a motorcycle. In our hunt for inappropriate teacher-student liaisons, it seems terror has become mixed up with titillation.
