I think this is inevitable just from numbers. Public education requires enough teachers for the whole public, meaning you can't just take the cream of the crop - you likely have to take the dregs. When the dregs have scandals, they tarnish the image of the whole, and force the system to have rules to police them. The cream leaves for greener pastures (private schools or other industries). Rinse, repeat.
With actual malice or poorly-implemented good intentions this effect is amplified, particularly since the people who most want to be with teenagers are likely those who have teenaged levels of maturity. Who else wants to go back to high school?
Another problem is false accusations. The UK government published data about the phenomenon. Nearly half of all accusations against teachers were found to be unsubstantiated, malicious or unfounded, although a question mark remains over the unsubstantiated cases, because unlike unfounded cases this doesn't doesn't rule out the possibility.
This has a doubly invidious effect. On the one hand it encourages often charismatic teachers to leave the profession. On the other it can cast a pall of doubt over genuine allegations.
This is a part of a broader flaw in the feminist assertion that false accusations are very rare. The Factual Feminist has highlighted research which shows that the general rate of false accusation falls somewhere between 8% and 40%, although I find the higher end of the estimate a highly dubious claim. Malicious false accusations are very rare, but the category of unfounded is far larger. Many people are wilfully ignorant of the law in their jurisdiction. One major area is alcohol. Many mistakenly believe that impaired judgement equals rape. In most jurisdictions the threshold for rape is an inability to form judgements at all. According to one UK barrister I watched in a longform interview, the number of disputed rape cases where both parties believe they are in the right would surprise most people.
Agreed! Trust can be broken even by rumors, and it's that tenuous trust between parents and teachers that lets them use their judgment and not get bogged down in doing everything by the book to cover their asses.
False accusations being rare probably isn't true around kids. Kids are assholes, and will happily accuse on the basis of a rumor if they dislike a teacher enough. They can totally misbehave one class and be completely disciplined another depending on classroom manner.
It happened to someone I know who worked in a primary school - accused of shutting a door on a child in order to hurt her. It was dealt with and found to be nonsense within twenty-four hours but it was the longest twenty-four hours of his life.
My experience of school was varied, to say the least. When my parents were paying attention I was in good schools and flourished. When they weren't, not so much. And we moved a lot until finally settling down in the Bronx. I never attended the same school for more than two years until high school. Luckily it was a good high school. But even there the teachers were a mixed bag. Some were great, inspiring and I loved going to class. Others not so much. But I still remember the great ones and look back fondly and with respect for their talent and caring. Not that I ever expressed it at the time. I was way too busy with girls, sports and music. Still, I am very thankful for the great teachers I had.
Almost everyone in the universities knows that the unmotivated and the ignorant go into Ed school. Which is peopled by all the Drs of Ed of whom most of the rest of the university hold in contempt because they are largely ignorant hacks who preen about having a phd. Just look at Jill Biden. That is what I am talking about. Archetypal.
As you say, your milage may vary but generally not. BTW, the only people who don't view the ed school students as dumb are the journalism students, who are dumber.
since education is filled mostly with women, i jokingly refered primary education university as female equivalent of police academy, which in my country is really a retard school
There was never a golden age of education in America. If you go back and look at primary sources from the 80s they talk about how good things were in the fifties, and in the fifties everyone knew how bad everything had declined since the 20s, and so on. I’m not exaggerating either; even with all the progressivism there’s this feeling of being haunted by decline that permeates the ed world.
Do you feel that it's the school system that brings out the public's ire? If our school system wasn't so obviously broken, would teachers be more esteemed?
Our schools do what they are meant to do. They foster a youth culture built around consumerism and status seeking. They warehouse children mostly comfortably and safely while their parents work or at least get free time. They train enough people in the basics of literacy and numeracy so as to enable some to function and some smaller number to thrive, with a few even moving into the ranks of decision makers. They create and fulfill demands for college educated workers. They help society believe that “education comes first” when it manifestly does not. And they give people something to argue about. It’s interesting that everyone thinks the schools are broken, but the plans to fix them founder on the fact that no one can agree what’s broken about them, and reform ideas are all mutually irreconcilable, because there’s no actual clear notion of what is school is for. Teachers are held in low esteem in America because learning is held in low esteem, because a real education is a process of differentiation, and that’s just undemocratic.
Female dominant industries are also low esteem. When men went into nursing it became desexualized and it’s no longer a cultural trope that nurses are not (also see contemporary BMI). OF/Porn is pretending to be high esteem but is lying and most people know it. HR, compliance, energy transition, are also pretending. Teaching used to have more male participation and is now obviously dominated by women no one will try to marry (unlike good old days of short-shorts teacher lady in your piece).
I sometimes suspect America's broken schools are part of the secret of her success. Since they mean that bright kids grow up hating school and hating the system, and so rather then getting sucked into academia or the bureaucracy they grow up to independently produce disruptive innovations.
I really appreciate your insight into this. I seem to have stumbled into a place where I'm somehow cynical and naive at the same time.
It seems the path some states are taking in which the funding follows the child so families can pick between public, private, and homeschooling is the best solution I've heard of, since there isn't a one-size-fits-all experience for education. Do you have any thoughts about those plans?
I think the more freedom people have to choose the education that best suits their family, the better. I think it’s equally important that public schools remain to serve as a backstop for the indifferent; if there are only private schools and they take state money, the whole system will become de facto public and lose their reason for being.
There's my naivete kicking in again - it's just hard for me to imagine being indifferent to the situation your children are in for half the week. But clearly that does occur.
Your point about a "safety net" is well-taken. Of course, people won't like being forced to admit we have a two-tiered school system, but at least it would be more honest than the system we have now.
I was looking for quotes, trying to guess which one... and came across this true gem:
'Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles....He's our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.'
It seemed somewhat appropriate to the current paradigm.
Regarding Ire: A close friend who started a charter school said, "There will always be angry parents because there will always be parents of 4th graders."
What he meant was that in 4th grade a lot of kids stop looking like their toddler adorable selves and start stretching towards maturity. And in 4th grade parents realize, "Wth....my kid can't read fluently. He doesn't know anything of substance, and his simple math skills are concerning. What Is Going On Down The Street 5 Days A Week, 7 Hours A Day?"
And if they inquire into what is going on, they get a) the runaround or b) justifications or c) lies or d) the famous line we get here in our area, "Oh, are you sure it is our problem??!!! No one has ever complained about this before!!!"
And re d), we'd tell people that they'd say this if they complained and then those people would come back to us and say, "oh my god, you were right. That is exactly what they said to me. And I know it isn't true because my neighbor brought up this same issue with them last month, and they said the same thing to her."
Well in most of the Western world the school system is less broken and teachers are more esteemed.
At least that was the case thirty years ago. Given the tendency of America's bad ideas to get taken up by the rest of the world, I fear that may have changed.
It indeed has, I've noticed on my last visit the backslide of Japanese respect for educators, and in Canada education has fallen. Only French Catholic schools have somehow mysteriously maintained the old education system from the 90s not to say this is a great education system but it's better than to-day's. Because of this, many young families are moving out east, and my brother who is deeply involved in education is always reporting how Maritimes schools keep demanding French teachers and are now importing some from France. The idea being that French education is believed by Gen Yers & Zoomers to somehow be superior and that their kids must know French.
In French schools in my experience, there wasn't as much sexual abuse but verbal and physical sure, with some of it stunting some kids. Some teachers did to my knowledge potentially do as Librarian said I can think of 2 teachers I've always had suspicions towards growing up (I kept my distance as a child). But that said, it is more common for teachers to abandon students who grow out of their classes, and to be verbally and physically abusive.
So that it carries it's own can of worms. Only reason to my knowledge French education might have less sexual scandals, is parents eye everything teachers do with hawk's eyes, and have some of the most... erm 'witchy' ptas and are overprotective of their kids. Many of these parents have even begun turning to online teaching, as they are of a mind that its better. The relationship between most French parents and teachers is one of 'enmity' where parents eye everything the teacher does with suspicion. It leads to a very tense and strange atmosphere.
Given that whole "revolution" France had where they tried to normalize "minor-attraction" I don't blame the parents at all. It's probably going to be generations before they trust teachers again.
This goes back to the 1930s, but yes Foucault had a hand in causing parents to mistrust teachers. My mother is only part-French and I still remember her picking fights, not being part of the PTA but calling them up and the PTA racing in to destroy some teachers pretty gleefully.
My dad could be no less bloodthirsty, and my memere was on an outright crusade.
So yeah, I’ve never known any Franc not to pick a fight or to go sniffing for teacher-blood. It can get a little daunting.
I suspect that pedos could fly under the radar a bit more easily back then, given the lack of awareness of the scope of the problem. As for the Tragic Poet drama teacher, they tend to gravitate toward English and the arts, but I’ve noticed a few in science. History almost never gets them, as it’s populated by coaches who, when they go bad, are almost invariably Creeps, with the occasional Jon Snow.
Your descriptions of the three categories of teacher/predators is spot on. Mary Kay Letourneau was my best friend since we were 11. What I learned about sexual predation in schools and the attitude towards it, both public and private, qualifies me for a PhD on the subject. The most interesting part, to me, was how the media treated the subject. I was on various documentaries and interviewed on many shows, and the lawyers were very careful to tell me what I could and could not discuss on camera. Much more fear of lawsuits than truth. One documentary completely changed its direction after the producer spoke with his " bosses", deleting the meat that tied it all together. I believe that the whole mess begins with predated children, generation after generation. I also believe wholeheartedly that as our culture becomes more and more dysfunctional, pedophilia is going to become normalized and only the parents who do not have the mind virus will protect their children. So unbelievably sad. But then again, when people started celebrating the killing of children in the womb, we knew where this was going to lead.
I (man) was groomed by a tragic poet mathematics teacher (woman) who waited until I was 18 to do anything and of course I encouraged it being a teenage boy. In the end it got weird with her basically wanting to spend her life with me despite her being 17 years older than me. At the time it was just a funny thing that happened, but looking back it was pretty stock standard grooming.
A good friend of mine got predated by a far older teacher and married her at 19, with expected results. He was hypersexual to mask his wounds until far later he found a woman 30 years younger than him that he married.
When I was in middle school (1985) I was walking home with a few friends when a man exposed himself to us on school grounds. My mom called the cops and the school and in a few days we had to go to the police station to pick his photo out of a photo line up. It turned out we saw him a few days before and , being so naive, thought he was just taking a leak by the school!
There was a guy always hanging around the high school at that time who did these shows during the breaks during the games. I’ll call him Freddy. When the cops asked us questions about the flasher, they asked if we knew who Freddy was and if it were him. My friend knew Freddy and said it wasn’t him. Turned out Freddy was arrested for exposing himself in the next town. It’s incredible that if the cops knew he had been arrested one would assume the school knew. Why was he even allowed anywhere near a school? And he wasn’t the only one over the years.
I know this is ancillary to the point of the article, but I read this:
"Teachers know that whatever people say, the world holds them in contempt, that the sort of person who spends all day with kids and worksheets really is a sort of loser without better prospects."
and thought, "That's not true at all." I have a great deal of respect for many of my teachers, and several of my friends have been teachers for almost 20 years. Am I in the minority here? Is contempt really that common?
More relevant to your post, I didn't need another reason to homeschool my kids, but thanks for providing one anyway!
I would say amoungst educated people I know, yes.....we do hold these people in contempt. Here's why: They have degrees in 'education' but they actually seldom have deep content knowledge in any content area and therefore they should not be teaching anyone because they know almost nothing; They work 8 out of 12 months (I'm counting all the extra days off they get inside the school year and adding them into the summer break); They bitch endlessly about their salary but are so bad at math that they can't understand how much their rich benefit packages cost the taxpayers, as well as retirement; A lot of them don't really like children; The majority of them act worse than the children in their care; They constantly cop an attitude with phrases like "I teach the future" and utter rubbish like that; They never and I mean NEVER take responsibility for the poor, benighted, ignorant, illiterate, uneducated kids they flush out into the world, the work place, and the dumpster fire universities; They ALWAYS take credit for the kids who do well even though we all know that for 90% of those kids their success is due to having a good, supportive, intact family; and last but not least, we now know that a lot of them are perverts.
Oh....and back in the 90s Dave Barry went to a swingers convention so he could write about it. He said that the two most represented professions amoungst swingers were teachers and police.
High school teachers often have MAT or M.Ed degrees; this is because the system generally either requires them or offers a higher salary for getting them. But virtually no teacher at that level is without a subject area degree already. Teachers are salaried employees and most have training or other requirements to fulfill in the summer; I spent mine in graduate school. The other points are just generalizations; teachers always complain about their salaries; they always act like children? I work in a private school and make less than the typical public school teacher at my level but I would say I’m pretty fairly compensated. My blue collar relatives complain incessantly about how the whole world is set up to keep them poor with foreign competition and think everyone who doesn’t work with their hands has an easy life. Teachers don’t like kids? Plenty of doctors get tired of sick people and bankers get pretty bored with devil worship at times I’m sure. That most students leave school as ignorant as they were when they got there is certainly true, but that’s not really a complaint, since almost no one actually cares. When was the last time you got mocked for not reading enough as an adult in America? We’re a rich country and our lives are filled with cheap entertainment; no one gives a crap about algebra. Teachers for the most part carry the load of hypocrisy the public foists on them, and in addition to watching societies’ kids all day agree to accept the blame for not inspiring a love of learning that no one has or wants. In return, they get some theoretical time off in the summer, occasional free donuts, and all the office supplies they can steal.
In my comment I was speaking from an administrative perspective, which I should have made clear. And teachers, when together, seem to bring out the worst in each other unless really held in check by a good administration, and unless you excise the poisonous ones regularly. Hence my comment on their bad behavior. And although there is the odd fellow who isn't good for the teacher community in school, there is nothing half so poisonous and spiteful as a malicious, lazy woman teacher.
I don't like kids either, so I don't blame them for that. I blame them for coping an attitude and acting like they are doing such a great job all the time, and that all the problems are because the parents suck. I don't like parents either, so I get their perspective from time to time, but those parents pay their flipping salary and the contempt most teachers I've seen have for parents is disgusting.
In my area, not that long ago, a middle school teacher got a middle school certificate and could be expected to teach any class. So there were a lot of shit classes taught by people who had no background in the subject area.
I've interviews hundreds of teachers for upper school positions who, though having a subject area specialty, knew almost nothing compared to what we were going to be asking them to teach in those classes. It was shocking. I continue to be shocked by how ignorant they are and how little they realize it. We don't hire those people.
I have to say that I've never seen a public school teacher accept the blame for any non-optimal outcome for a student or class or school. Ever. The good teachers, of course, don't have to.
You, Librarian, are a thoughtful person. I'm glad to know that you are in the classroom, teaching kids, and hopefully inspiring them from time to time. Kids in this demented epoch have a lot going against them. If they don't have thoughtful parents, they really need thoughtful teachers. Which is why I would never recommend anyone ever send their beloved child to an American public school.
When I was in high school in the early 90s, it was widely known the CompSci teacher would have a "spring Senior" for her toy every year. It was usually a jock and the teacher was a smoking hot blond with a penchant for short skirts and high heels. Heh the students usually knew which teachers were sleeping together too. Public school definitely seems to be a greater cesspool for this activity than private schools. Personally I think advancements in AI and communications technology removes the need for public education beyond the basics of reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. Private schooling will always be around because people will pay for a personal touch.
In my purely anecdotal experience, the public school teachers in the lavishly funded Massachusetts school district I grew up in tended to gripe much louder about their salaries than the teachers in the rural, less well-funded NY district where I live now.
I had some great teachers who were passionate and knowledgeable about the subjects they taught. It was the mediocre/incompetent teachers who were the biggest complainers, and most active in the teachers union. Most parents/taxpayers were aware of this distinction and reserved their contempt for teachers that deserved it, not the profession as a whole.
I know someone who is a professional and qualified to degree level in a technical subject, who works at managerial level running a large and expensive factory. I don't think he's read a single book since he was compelled to at school. It's astonishing. The sad thing is he's intelligent and when his father gave him a book on European politics he read it cover-to-cover and discussed it for months afterwards.
Taking away screens is seen as some kind of 'probably doesn't like micro plastics and vaccines weirdo'-type thing to do but why would you let your children have a TV? What is there that they might watch that's good for them?
Those are fair critiques, for sure. I do wonder how representative the teachers you describe are; in my obviously very anecdotal experience I'd only put one of my teacher acquaintances in that bucket. And I'm not really even trying to defend teachers here; I have no intention of sending my kids to public school, and I'd look long and hard at a private school before committing. Still, I can't help but think that teaching done correctly is a noble profession, and it makes me sad that so many may hold it in contempt.
I wouldn’t say the abusers are in any sense representative. I would say (and I think the research would be consistent with this) that there probably isn’t a school of any size without something like this happening at least at some point.
I do have good friends who are teachers in private or charter schools. I know they are intellectuals. You can tell by what they read and the questions they ask when you talk to them. They have a calling and they can talk about that calling in terms of the things they have deep knowledge of and long to impart to young people.
However, most people who go into ed go into it for three reasons, "June, July, and August". This was said to me by teachers. There is another reason.....they don't know anything else after spending 13+ years and the best part of their day in that lame ass institution so they naturally think, "I know more than a 4th grader. I could teach."
“They never and I mean NEVER take responsibility for the poor, benighted, ignorant, illiterate, uneducated kids they flush out into the world, the work place, and the dumpster fire universities; They ALWAYS take credit for the kids who do well even though we all know that for 90% of those kids their success is due to having a good, supportive, intact family”.
I agree that student success is due to supportive families, but why do you not lay blame for unsuccessful students on their families (or lack thereof) as well? You imply that teachers really have no influence on academic success, so if that is the case, they cannot also be blamed for that lack of influence.
I think if more of them saw themselves as just another profession rather than tireless, underpaid and selfless servants then there would be less contempt. They often fail to realize their economic woes are no different than most Americans. Big problem here is the types that go straight into teaching after college. Also, loading history and English departments with disinterested and unqualified coaches has never been a good thing. I've always felt the married, middle aged teachers who are in a second career were more grounded, better teachers and more professional individuals in general. I don't hate them as a whole but I don't trust them. My wife was a teacher, now she homeschools our children.
Hmm...my own experience, based on substitute teaching, and getting to know some particular public schools, elementary level, quite well: at least 80% untrue, except perhaps the benefit package part. At some schools: 95% untrue.
Not that there aren't a lot of public school districts which are riddled with corruption, leftism, resignation, etc., from top to bottom, where it's everything you said in this comment and worse.
You excise qualification from your prose and your thought, and you bring injustice in....
I have generally qualified most of what I said when I was talking about our experience interviewing, hiring, and managing teachers in our area. And I am obviously talking about my experience but it seems pedantic to constantly say, "based on my experience....". I am assuming that if you sub, your experience is based on your experience. I know, from talking to others who also hire and manage teachers that it is bad in most areas. Very bad in some. I know a teacher who was on the BOE of her district for years and years. She is a very sweet, kind-hearted person who doesn't view the world like I do, generally speaking. However, when we talk about education, she basically nods her head and says things like, "I can't argue with that."
The real injustice here is the absolute crime that has been committed against students for well nigh 50+ years, and the gross mismanagement of public funds.
What is the purpose of an Education degree? Most with this credential don't seem to even know Cognitive Load Theory, the best current theory for how the brain learns. It's difficult for parents to make discerning choices when it comes to education. Often a high calibre of student, driven mainly by socioeconomics, can mask a school which has a terrible teaching practices- and the reverse is certainly true as well.
The best simple diagnostic is desk layout. Do the desks face forward? Does the teacher impart knowledge, or are children encouraged to 'discover' knowledge for themselves (a hugely inefficient process)? A good question to ask is do the children receive homework? If the headteacher or teachers use the phrase 'consolidation', get your kid into that school by any means necessary. 30 minutes of consolidation homework a night, ensures that the knowledge learned during the day 'sticks', and is committed to long-term memory.
Working memory is puny. Performing any cognitive complex task requires drawing upon knowledge stored in long-term memory. It is not enough to be able to work out that 9 x 7= 63. By the time a kid is in high school, all of the products from the multiplication tables should be committed to long-term memory. This is one of the reasons why kids experience Math trauma. In this case, it's not snowflakery. Maths consists of a pyramid of building blocks more than any other subject. The reason why older kids flounder and get anxious with Maths is because they haven't had all of the previous building blocks crammed into their long-term memory. It's also why older adults and younger people evince a marked difference in mental maths, a vital skill for both pitching, giving and receiving quotes, and tasks as mundane as a Head Chef planning a menu. A lot of commercially valuable tasks require something akin to a checksum- a fast series of rough guestimate calculations to assess feasibility. A head chef looking at new menu possibilities, would mentally assess pricings, cooking times, kitchen capacity and time on the pass. Without mental maths, this task would take hours rather than minutes.
Cognitive Load Theory is a current educational fad, even though it's been around for years. Unfortunately, it's also been hollowed out by zealots in Educational academia. Educational sources focus on not overwhelming cognitive load, when the real power of Cognitive Load Theory lies in understanding that people simply cannot perform cognitively complex tasks unless they've had a huge amount of useable knowledge crammed into their brains and committed to memory. This is just as true of English writing, reading and grammar as it is of Maths- Maths is just easier to explain.
Progressive education makes an artificial distinction between skills and knowledge, when the only difference between the two is that skills are more easily learned through demonstration and imitation than they are through explanation. The reason why progressive education makes this distinction is because many doubt the basic premise that objective knowledge exists (or is knowable, when a better distinction might be perfectly knowable) and many don't want to 'pollute' children's minds with Western knowledge (which is actually a universal knowledge system). Postmodernism and the grievance studies have a lot to answer for in terms of damage caused to kids in K-12. Such questions might be interesting and provocative for an undergrad, but they were never meant to be integrated into the earlier stages of education. Ironically, Foucault himself complained of a lack of 'objective' knowledge in his students as progressive education progressively undermined the accumulation of knowledge in K-12. After all, it's not possible to competently critique something unless you first fully understand it.
Math educators constantly disparage procedural work as beneath them, even though solid scaffolded procedural drilling is the best way to implicitly understand fundamental concepts.
Good luck teaching algebra when a student can't do order of operations problems in their heads.
Also, they don’t really explain the ‘why’ of showing your workings. Partial credit doesn’t really cover it. When I was covering quadratics, I found a cheat. It is relatively easy to solve problems if one looks at the integers in an equation (multiples of 12 were quite common in the UK exams I took) . This is fine for the question being asked, but answering questions this way doesn’t inculcate the process of separating the terms.
My Maths teacher told me I would come a cropper later on, but he didn’t really explain the ‘why’. I subsequently had huge problems with differential equations.
Back when America's education system was being set up Andrew Carnegie, think of him as the Bill Gates of his day, got the idea into his head that "knowing how to teach" was more important then knowing the subject, and since he was donating lots of money to help set up public schools...
Yours might be the most valuable comment in a section with a lot of them… having basic math at the ready is useful nearly every day for all kinds of things. I’m at the stage where I take it largely for granted, as I do all my kinds of cultural information in my long term memory banks. How challenging it is to put yourself in the place of a child that has yet to be exposed to much of anything, and to decide how to impart useful knowledge! As a kid I rarely understood why anything I was taught mattered, but a lot of it stuck. Kudos to all the good teachers out there.
There's something new afoot with these women teachers sexually abusing boys. A recent case in England - she gets nicked for doinking one of her boy students. She denies it, gets granted bail. She then captures another boy, buys him a £300 belt, gets pregnant and has his baby. She denies it all right into a (for England) lengthy sentence.
Ravenous, unblinking psychopath, sure. I have a feeling that growing up with internet porn has a role here. Who's to say all the ladies were feministically outraged by the Van Halen video? Perhaps some viewed it from a different perspective more to do with being powerful, adored and desired. To have someone in her thrall. The decades of porn, which to my mind is always violence and slavery, maybe has disfigured a lot of women so that what once remained latent, or expressed through more acceptable forms of immorality, now comes to the surface in the form of 14 year old fathers.
Not to sound ancient or anything but a lack of consequences frees the female to make predatory choices. No shame and no inconvenient children to worry about. We’ve all been sold the gay male lifestyle as an option for everyone.
I'll be more old - why is it that these 13 and 14 yr olds do not seem to consider whether mom or dad would think that's OK? Allowing children to develop a private life is important. Actually letting them have one or even think they have one is child abuse. One can grooming-proof one's boys, whether they like it or not.
I suspect your comments section will be inundated with everyone’s recollections of their own school’s sex shenanigans so let me be among the first: I went to a very small school in rural Indiana (there were 72 students in my graduating high school class) and I know of at least three instances in three separate categories. My elementary school band teacher, whom I loved dearly and who was an enduring influence on my later musical career, was sent into outer darkness without explanation after he was found to be diddling little boys. I had no idea and only learned of it years later; he was unfailingly kind to me and never seemed creepy. In high school we had a serial Tragic Poet drama teacher. In each successive year he found a “leading lady” who conveniently graduated so that he could pick from the next crop without repercussion. This went on until after I had graduated and while he was probably eased out there was no public scandal. The third would today probably be quietly shuffled off somewhere but in 1974 a shop teacher who knocked up an 18 year old cheerleader could keep his job by “doing the right thing” and marrying her. Hell for all I know they’re still married.
I often argue with a loved one in my life over whether a 15 year old having sex with a teacher is "abuse." I say it is, every single time, because it doesn't matter if that kid "wanted" it or not; made passes at the teacher or not; is cheered on by the other students or not; is a virgin or has slept with 10 other kids; etc.
A child of that age doesn't understand the ramifications of such a relationship with the teacher. To say any kid "wants" it, is the same logic people use to justify things like "gender re-assignment" surgery. It's sick and these men and women who are being caught need to have their knees broken for being such losers that they prey upon kids.
I think a good rule of thumb is that you should be at least a decade older than the people you teach, unless everyone is at least forty. It’s perfectly natural for a 23 year old to feel a romantic connection to an 18 year old, and there is a very real ethical barrier such as relationship would create.
True. The best way for this would work is if young teachers were automatically put in kindergarten or first grade and had to work their way through the grades as they gain more experience teaching. It would not only help the teachers themselves, but protect students.
So true. I'm beginning to think all HS and MS teachers should be married and at least 40. That would cancel out much of the unprofessionalism I saw when I was in HS. There were middle aged and married teachers that were also unprofessional but they were almost entirely career teachers and seemed to not clique with the teachers that came from other careers. Of course, in our current society that will never happen.
I teach all boys in person so I don’t have the issue that coed teachers face anymore, but for my part I was always careful to create an emotional distance. I still refer to both my college and high school students exclusively by their last names and I never communicate with them in any context apart from one where I am in a position of authority (no social media). Crushes are natural; I’m more concerned with the panda-like numbness of some of my current charges, who preferred homecoming be canceled rather than show up and dance.
"I’m more concerned with the panda-like numbness of some of my current charges, who preferred homecoming be canceled rather than show up and dance."
They grew up in a world where everything about their desires was portrayed as toxic. Why wouldn't they be numb by now? Heck at times I'm surprised teen suicides are so LOW since there seems to be a constant messaging to especially young men nowadays that the best thing they could do for the world is die.
This is what John Taylor Gatto said after the Columbine shooting. To paraphrase: "We are asking the wrong question. The question isn't why did this happen. The question is, given the inhuman nature of schools today, why doesn't this happen more often."
School shootings, despite the obvious attention they get in the media, are relatively rare. The people most likely to shoot up schools for ordinary criminal reasons generally just stop going to school, and in cases like Columbine, the impetus for the shooting had less to do with anything that happened at the school and more to do with the fact that Dylan Klebold was a psychopath and Eric Harris was his submissive orbiter. If they hadn’t shot up the school they would probably have become serial killers, or else joined the military and committed some atrocities overseas. Public schools aren’t pleasant places, but they generally make kids irritated and indifferent rather than violently angry. Even the dumbest kid knows he won’t be there forever and they mostly take out their frustrations in a petty way on those who can’t fight back, like their weaker peers and the staff.
I very clearly remember having a teacher in 11/12 grade take me into a little teacher's break room during class to ask me if everything was ok at home. Everything had never been ok at home but it was none of her damn business and I remember being really angry and resentful that she was trying to intrude into my private life. She was a young newbie and I am sure had been taught psycho-gobbledegook about how to "connect" with kids. I don't think she meant any harm but a lot of these people do harm without meaning to harm, and more vulnerable kids than me probably fell/fall for the sympathy and attention.
Teachers in every state I’m aware of are mandated reporters. This means that by law they cannot ignore any signs of abuse or neglect, and have a positive duty (unlike the general public) to intervene by following a specific protocol. Given your statement I would guess the indications of problems were manifest and she was therefore compelled to inquire. If she hadn’t, and something happened to you, she could have faced jail time.
Something unpleasant and untoward happened in a school in a smaller town adjacent to my town but ruled by the same school district. I was writing for the paper at the time and someone contacted me about it. I couldn't write about this story because there was an investigation pending (and the paper always protected 'the head shed' as we called administration) but they wanted me to know......one of the things they told me was that the "investigation" into the incident was going to *finally* start at the end of the summer. But this was June and, mirabile dictu, the front office in which the incident happened was undergoing a complete tear down and remodel all summer! Oh dear....all evidence destroyed and the descriptions of things made by the student completely uncorroboratable due to the remodel. I drove up to the town to see if the school really was under reconstruction. Yes. All taped off and no trespass signs etc.
No one should put their kids into the hands of these people. No One. Ever.
Teaching, as Virginia Woolf noted, encourages vanity. I learnt to just ignore what my (mostly adult ESL) students think of me, as most of it is nonsense but I guess if you're a regular school teacher, in the same establishment for decades, you inevitably acquire a persona & narcissistic temptation. On the rare occasions a group has openly told me I'm the best teacher, it is surprisingly pleasant - I can see how teachers start to manipulate their students, to create a persona; and what better way than through sex/romance?
In the 90s, a gay professor at my uni was fired for constantly talking about sex (in gruesome detail), blazing his gay students, but also resisting the encroaching bureaucracy that is now the norm. When I met him, years later, I thought he was a cool rebel type; he was certainly a brilliant lecturer/talker, and I didn't see what business it was of the university if adults have sex, even if they are tutor & student. Later, knowing much more about the psychological frailties of 18-year-olds, I've come to see him as recklessly selfish and I'm only amazed the university didn't fire him earlier. They were lucky his behaviour didn't lead to, at the least, embarrassing teenage histrionics, and at the worst suicides etc.
Excellent article. Well thought and felt out. I agree that there's an allure for these people about the youth, and I think it's mostly around missed opportunities in their life. Like these female teachers, I feel a lot of men who become obsessed with pics involving girls in a certain age-group are actually just really sad about the decisions they've made and this is a really weird way to cope with having made bad decisions by making even worse decisions. It's like their sexuality has been consumed by this feeling of longing and desperation that they need to recreate in themselves constantly. It's like they're practicing suicide. The hardest thing to do in this world, especially the older you get and time begins to feel less infinite, is take responsibility for your own mess and clean this thing up. Or, at least it was for me, and I'm still cleaning up my mess, IMO.
Fortunately, I dodged the bullet when it comes to the underage attraction. When I was seventeen, I told myself, "You need a girlfriend for your senior year. No BS. Get one. Get her to fall in love. Go all the way." I devoted myself to that pursuit and accomplished it. It was amazing. We partied together. We were ride or die (but not really cause we broke up a few years later and cheated on each other a lot). We were in love in the way you can only be in love for a short period of your life. It was deep for who we were as people but also shallow af because we weren't anybody yet. We had made no decisions. But I had a great senior year with her and my friends. I mean, it was mega. I had no idea when that summer ended that I was about to be kicked out of my parent's house and would soon be in the adult world forever--no more summer breaks, no more easy friends, no more girlfriends who wanted to love big and deep (just girlfriends who claimed they wanted that but could never do it).
The great compromise of adult life hit me at 19 when I got a job in health and welfare administration that was supposed to last only 90-days. I didn't want to do it but needed the money. Twenty-three years later, I'm still here. It was all over so quickly and had I not listened to my intuition, I don't know if I would've been okay as an adult. I'm not certain I could've survived the disappointment, but I remind myself, "Hey, you did it. You had that girl." These teachers or porn addicts are staring at or are interested in minors in this detached, unhealthy way but I can somewhat relate. I think about my formerly-sixteen year old girlfriend all the time. She lives in my head and hasn't aged a day. Sometimes the memories of her love and her body are the only things that get me through the pain. And you can only make those memories at one point of your life. You cross a threshold and you can never go back. It's maybe one of the first deaths we face as adults. This time of your life, this kind of relationship, is off-limits forever and no one consulted you and no one cares that it didn't work out the way you wanted. The time is over and your fate is sealed.
If you don't have your life spiritually in order, you will be eaten alive by the regret, IMO.
“When I teach, I first of all hope to convey whatever love my students feel for me to that love’s proper object, most immediately the subject at hand, but ultimately to God.”
Mr. G, is that you?!
Mr. G was hot! But the English that he taught was hotter. Plus, he engaged us all intellectually and emotionally and with love without playing favorites, so there was never any competition for him among the girls. No weird dynamics in that class.
I attended a high school of roughly 1,000 students and clearly remember both a "creep" type and a "tortured poet" type. This was 20 years ago but I recall both men clearly, and how their behavior was well known within the student population. One wound up married to a girl who was a student of his and their relationship was an open secret even before graduation. A quick google shows the other as having worked for 4 districts in 4 states since then. I thought that was somewhat exceptional but your writing makes me wonder if perhaps it was not.
Maybe someone's brought this up but the culture has to be a factor. If a male teacher preys on a female student people across the country will fantasize about nailing his balls to a wall. Other way around and the same people are saying "Nice" and "Lucky."
Maybe its this cultural leniency that makes this such a problem. The teachers know they won't get the worst PR and then are emboldened.
"There is another way. Education is intimately bound up with Eros. Aristotle noted that it consists of teaching young people to love what they ought to love. It’s fundamentally about the orientation of affections."
I would say that teachers as a whole are not very esteemed, which is due to a lot of things, while individuals’ mileage may vary.
I think this is inevitable just from numbers. Public education requires enough teachers for the whole public, meaning you can't just take the cream of the crop - you likely have to take the dregs. When the dregs have scandals, they tarnish the image of the whole, and force the system to have rules to police them. The cream leaves for greener pastures (private schools or other industries). Rinse, repeat.
With actual malice or poorly-implemented good intentions this effect is amplified, particularly since the people who most want to be with teenagers are likely those who have teenaged levels of maturity. Who else wants to go back to high school?
Public education, as John Derbyshire used to note, is about maximizing the effectiveness of mediocre people- students, teachers, and administrators.
As a firmly mediocre person, I agree with this. Might as well get some use out of me.
Another problem is false accusations. The UK government published data about the phenomenon. Nearly half of all accusations against teachers were found to be unsubstantiated, malicious or unfounded, although a question mark remains over the unsubstantiated cases, because unlike unfounded cases this doesn't doesn't rule out the possibility.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/teachers-most-vulnerable-to-false-accusations-according-to-new-research
This has a doubly invidious effect. On the one hand it encourages often charismatic teachers to leave the profession. On the other it can cast a pall of doubt over genuine allegations.
This is a part of a broader flaw in the feminist assertion that false accusations are very rare. The Factual Feminist has highlighted research which shows that the general rate of false accusation falls somewhere between 8% and 40%, although I find the higher end of the estimate a highly dubious claim. Malicious false accusations are very rare, but the category of unfounded is far larger. Many people are wilfully ignorant of the law in their jurisdiction. One major area is alcohol. Many mistakenly believe that impaired judgement equals rape. In most jurisdictions the threshold for rape is an inability to form judgements at all. According to one UK barrister I watched in a longform interview, the number of disputed rape cases where both parties believe they are in the right would surprise most people.
Agreed! Trust can be broken even by rumors, and it's that tenuous trust between parents and teachers that lets them use their judgment and not get bogged down in doing everything by the book to cover their asses.
False accusations being rare probably isn't true around kids. Kids are assholes, and will happily accuse on the basis of a rumor if they dislike a teacher enough. They can totally misbehave one class and be completely disciplined another depending on classroom manner.
It happened to someone I know who worked in a primary school - accused of shutting a door on a child in order to hurt her. It was dealt with and found to be nonsense within twenty-four hours but it was the longest twenty-four hours of his life.
My experience of school was varied, to say the least. When my parents were paying attention I was in good schools and flourished. When they weren't, not so much. And we moved a lot until finally settling down in the Bronx. I never attended the same school for more than two years until high school. Luckily it was a good high school. But even there the teachers were a mixed bag. Some were great, inspiring and I loved going to class. Others not so much. But I still remember the great ones and look back fondly and with respect for their talent and caring. Not that I ever expressed it at the time. I was way too busy with girls, sports and music. Still, I am very thankful for the great teachers I had.
Almost everyone in the universities knows that the unmotivated and the ignorant go into Ed school. Which is peopled by all the Drs of Ed of whom most of the rest of the university hold in contempt because they are largely ignorant hacks who preen about having a phd. Just look at Jill Biden. That is what I am talking about. Archetypal.
As you say, your milage may vary but generally not. BTW, the only people who don't view the ed school students as dumb are the journalism students, who are dumber.
since education is filled mostly with women, i jokingly refered primary education university as female equivalent of police academy, which in my country is really a retard school
They’re not much worse in terms of overall effect on society than the finance people or the lawyers, to be fair.
> That was okay as long as they stayed in education.
No, it wasn't. The people in education are the ones who educate the next generation.
There was never a golden age of education in America. If you go back and look at primary sources from the 80s they talk about how good things were in the fifties, and in the fifties everyone knew how bad everything had declined since the 20s, and so on. I’m not exaggerating either; even with all the progressivism there’s this feeling of being haunted by decline that permeates the ed world.
Do you feel that it's the school system that brings out the public's ire? If our school system wasn't so obviously broken, would teachers be more esteemed?
Our schools do what they are meant to do. They foster a youth culture built around consumerism and status seeking. They warehouse children mostly comfortably and safely while their parents work or at least get free time. They train enough people in the basics of literacy and numeracy so as to enable some to function and some smaller number to thrive, with a few even moving into the ranks of decision makers. They create and fulfill demands for college educated workers. They help society believe that “education comes first” when it manifestly does not. And they give people something to argue about. It’s interesting that everyone thinks the schools are broken, but the plans to fix them founder on the fact that no one can agree what’s broken about them, and reform ideas are all mutually irreconcilable, because there’s no actual clear notion of what is school is for. Teachers are held in low esteem in America because learning is held in low esteem, because a real education is a process of differentiation, and that’s just undemocratic.
Female dominant industries are also low esteem. When men went into nursing it became desexualized and it’s no longer a cultural trope that nurses are not (also see contemporary BMI). OF/Porn is pretending to be high esteem but is lying and most people know it. HR, compliance, energy transition, are also pretending. Teaching used to have more male participation and is now obviously dominated by women no one will try to marry (unlike good old days of short-shorts teacher lady in your piece).
I sometimes suspect America's broken schools are part of the secret of her success. Since they mean that bright kids grow up hating school and hating the system, and so rather then getting sucked into academia or the bureaucracy they grow up to independently produce disruptive innovations.
You need relatively freedom for that
I really appreciate your insight into this. I seem to have stumbled into a place where I'm somehow cynical and naive at the same time.
It seems the path some states are taking in which the funding follows the child so families can pick between public, private, and homeschooling is the best solution I've heard of, since there isn't a one-size-fits-all experience for education. Do you have any thoughts about those plans?
I think the more freedom people have to choose the education that best suits their family, the better. I think it’s equally important that public schools remain to serve as a backstop for the indifferent; if there are only private schools and they take state money, the whole system will become de facto public and lose their reason for being.
There's my naivete kicking in again - it's just hard for me to imagine being indifferent to the situation your children are in for half the week. But clearly that does occur.
Your point about a "safety net" is well-taken. Of course, people won't like being forced to admit we have a two-tiered school system, but at least it would be more honest than the system we have now.
Perfectly put. You ever read CS Lewis' Abolition of Man? He would certainly agree with you.
I have Lewis quotes pertaining to education having on my classroom walls.
I was looking for quotes, trying to guess which one... and came across this true gem:
'Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles....He's our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.'
It seemed somewhat appropriate to the current paradigm.
If I had sons, I would definitely feel better about entrusting them to you if I saw those. Cheers!
Regarding Ire: A close friend who started a charter school said, "There will always be angry parents because there will always be parents of 4th graders."
What he meant was that in 4th grade a lot of kids stop looking like their toddler adorable selves and start stretching towards maturity. And in 4th grade parents realize, "Wth....my kid can't read fluently. He doesn't know anything of substance, and his simple math skills are concerning. What Is Going On Down The Street 5 Days A Week, 7 Hours A Day?"
And if they inquire into what is going on, they get a) the runaround or b) justifications or c) lies or d) the famous line we get here in our area, "Oh, are you sure it is our problem??!!! No one has ever complained about this before!!!"
And re d), we'd tell people that they'd say this if they complained and then those people would come back to us and say, "oh my god, you were right. That is exactly what they said to me. And I know it isn't true because my neighbor brought up this same issue with them last month, and they said the same thing to her."
Now this is an astute comment. 4th grade is where several kinds of reality make themselves more visible.
Well in most of the Western world the school system is less broken and teachers are more esteemed.
At least that was the case thirty years ago. Given the tendency of America's bad ideas to get taken up by the rest of the world, I fear that may have changed.
It indeed has, I've noticed on my last visit the backslide of Japanese respect for educators, and in Canada education has fallen. Only French Catholic schools have somehow mysteriously maintained the old education system from the 90s not to say this is a great education system but it's better than to-day's. Because of this, many young families are moving out east, and my brother who is deeply involved in education is always reporting how Maritimes schools keep demanding French teachers and are now importing some from France. The idea being that French education is believed by Gen Yers & Zoomers to somehow be superior and that their kids must know French.
In French schools in my experience, there wasn't as much sexual abuse but verbal and physical sure, with some of it stunting some kids. Some teachers did to my knowledge potentially do as Librarian said I can think of 2 teachers I've always had suspicions towards growing up (I kept my distance as a child). But that said, it is more common for teachers to abandon students who grow out of their classes, and to be verbally and physically abusive.
So that it carries it's own can of worms. Only reason to my knowledge French education might have less sexual scandals, is parents eye everything teachers do with hawk's eyes, and have some of the most... erm 'witchy' ptas and are overprotective of their kids. Many of these parents have even begun turning to online teaching, as they are of a mind that its better. The relationship between most French parents and teachers is one of 'enmity' where parents eye everything the teacher does with suspicion. It leads to a very tense and strange atmosphere.
Given that whole "revolution" France had where they tried to normalize "minor-attraction" I don't blame the parents at all. It's probably going to be generations before they trust teachers again.
https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2010/07/probably-there-to-join-in-fun.html
This goes back to the 1930s, but yes Foucault had a hand in causing parents to mistrust teachers. My mother is only part-French and I still remember her picking fights, not being part of the PTA but calling them up and the PTA racing in to destroy some teachers pretty gleefully.
My dad could be no less bloodthirsty, and my memere was on an outright crusade.
So yeah, I’ve never known any Franc not to pick a fight or to go sniffing for teacher-blood. It can get a little daunting.
Another source of the IRE is property taxes. Confiscatory and punitive in my area.
It's different in the UK, where teaching is seen as a profession.
Where I grew up in BF America, people used to have very high opinions of teachers. That was a long time ago.
I suspect that pedos could fly under the radar a bit more easily back then, given the lack of awareness of the scope of the problem. As for the Tragic Poet drama teacher, they tend to gravitate toward English and the arts, but I’ve noticed a few in science. History almost never gets them, as it’s populated by coaches who, when they go bad, are almost invariably Creeps, with the occasional Jon Snow.
Your descriptions of the three categories of teacher/predators is spot on. Mary Kay Letourneau was my best friend since we were 11. What I learned about sexual predation in schools and the attitude towards it, both public and private, qualifies me for a PhD on the subject. The most interesting part, to me, was how the media treated the subject. I was on various documentaries and interviewed on many shows, and the lawyers were very careful to tell me what I could and could not discuss on camera. Much more fear of lawsuits than truth. One documentary completely changed its direction after the producer spoke with his " bosses", deleting the meat that tied it all together. I believe that the whole mess begins with predated children, generation after generation. I also believe wholeheartedly that as our culture becomes more and more dysfunctional, pedophilia is going to become normalized and only the parents who do not have the mind virus will protect their children. So unbelievably sad. But then again, when people started celebrating the killing of children in the womb, we knew where this was going to lead.
I (man) was groomed by a tragic poet mathematics teacher (woman) who waited until I was 18 to do anything and of course I encouraged it being a teenage boy. In the end it got weird with her basically wanting to spend her life with me despite her being 17 years older than me. At the time it was just a funny thing that happened, but looking back it was pretty stock standard grooming.
A good friend of mine got predated by a far older teacher and married her at 19, with expected results. He was hypersexual to mask his wounds until far later he found a woman 30 years younger than him that he married.
When I was in middle school (1985) I was walking home with a few friends when a man exposed himself to us on school grounds. My mom called the cops and the school and in a few days we had to go to the police station to pick his photo out of a photo line up. It turned out we saw him a few days before and , being so naive, thought he was just taking a leak by the school!
There was a guy always hanging around the high school at that time who did these shows during the breaks during the games. I’ll call him Freddy. When the cops asked us questions about the flasher, they asked if we knew who Freddy was and if it were him. My friend knew Freddy and said it wasn’t him. Turned out Freddy was arrested for exposing himself in the next town. It’s incredible that if the cops knew he had been arrested one would assume the school knew. Why was he even allowed anywhere near a school? And he wasn’t the only one over the years.
I know this is ancillary to the point of the article, but I read this:
"Teachers know that whatever people say, the world holds them in contempt, that the sort of person who spends all day with kids and worksheets really is a sort of loser without better prospects."
and thought, "That's not true at all." I have a great deal of respect for many of my teachers, and several of my friends have been teachers for almost 20 years. Am I in the minority here? Is contempt really that common?
More relevant to your post, I didn't need another reason to homeschool my kids, but thanks for providing one anyway!
I would say amoungst educated people I know, yes.....we do hold these people in contempt. Here's why: They have degrees in 'education' but they actually seldom have deep content knowledge in any content area and therefore they should not be teaching anyone because they know almost nothing; They work 8 out of 12 months (I'm counting all the extra days off they get inside the school year and adding them into the summer break); They bitch endlessly about their salary but are so bad at math that they can't understand how much their rich benefit packages cost the taxpayers, as well as retirement; A lot of them don't really like children; The majority of them act worse than the children in their care; They constantly cop an attitude with phrases like "I teach the future" and utter rubbish like that; They never and I mean NEVER take responsibility for the poor, benighted, ignorant, illiterate, uneducated kids they flush out into the world, the work place, and the dumpster fire universities; They ALWAYS take credit for the kids who do well even though we all know that for 90% of those kids their success is due to having a good, supportive, intact family; and last but not least, we now know that a lot of them are perverts.
Oh....and back in the 90s Dave Barry went to a swingers convention so he could write about it. He said that the two most represented professions amoungst swingers were teachers and police.
I'll stop now. I could say a lot more.
High school teachers often have MAT or M.Ed degrees; this is because the system generally either requires them or offers a higher salary for getting them. But virtually no teacher at that level is without a subject area degree already. Teachers are salaried employees and most have training or other requirements to fulfill in the summer; I spent mine in graduate school. The other points are just generalizations; teachers always complain about their salaries; they always act like children? I work in a private school and make less than the typical public school teacher at my level but I would say I’m pretty fairly compensated. My blue collar relatives complain incessantly about how the whole world is set up to keep them poor with foreign competition and think everyone who doesn’t work with their hands has an easy life. Teachers don’t like kids? Plenty of doctors get tired of sick people and bankers get pretty bored with devil worship at times I’m sure. That most students leave school as ignorant as they were when they got there is certainly true, but that’s not really a complaint, since almost no one actually cares. When was the last time you got mocked for not reading enough as an adult in America? We’re a rich country and our lives are filled with cheap entertainment; no one gives a crap about algebra. Teachers for the most part carry the load of hypocrisy the public foists on them, and in addition to watching societies’ kids all day agree to accept the blame for not inspiring a love of learning that no one has or wants. In return, they get some theoretical time off in the summer, occasional free donuts, and all the office supplies they can steal.
In my comment I was speaking from an administrative perspective, which I should have made clear. And teachers, when together, seem to bring out the worst in each other unless really held in check by a good administration, and unless you excise the poisonous ones regularly. Hence my comment on their bad behavior. And although there is the odd fellow who isn't good for the teacher community in school, there is nothing half so poisonous and spiteful as a malicious, lazy woman teacher.
I don't like kids either, so I don't blame them for that. I blame them for coping an attitude and acting like they are doing such a great job all the time, and that all the problems are because the parents suck. I don't like parents either, so I get their perspective from time to time, but those parents pay their flipping salary and the contempt most teachers I've seen have for parents is disgusting.
In my area, not that long ago, a middle school teacher got a middle school certificate and could be expected to teach any class. So there were a lot of shit classes taught by people who had no background in the subject area.
I've interviews hundreds of teachers for upper school positions who, though having a subject area specialty, knew almost nothing compared to what we were going to be asking them to teach in those classes. It was shocking. I continue to be shocked by how ignorant they are and how little they realize it. We don't hire those people.
I have to say that I've never seen a public school teacher accept the blame for any non-optimal outcome for a student or class or school. Ever. The good teachers, of course, don't have to.
You, Librarian, are a thoughtful person. I'm glad to know that you are in the classroom, teaching kids, and hopefully inspiring them from time to time. Kids in this demented epoch have a lot going against them. If they don't have thoughtful parents, they really need thoughtful teachers. Which is why I would never recommend anyone ever send their beloved child to an American public school.
When I was in high school in the early 90s, it was widely known the CompSci teacher would have a "spring Senior" for her toy every year. It was usually a jock and the teacher was a smoking hot blond with a penchant for short skirts and high heels. Heh the students usually knew which teachers were sleeping together too. Public school definitely seems to be a greater cesspool for this activity than private schools. Personally I think advancements in AI and communications technology removes the need for public education beyond the basics of reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. Private schooling will always be around because people will pay for a personal touch.
“Snow!”
- Wun Wun
In my purely anecdotal experience, the public school teachers in the lavishly funded Massachusetts school district I grew up in tended to gripe much louder about their salaries than the teachers in the rural, less well-funded NY district where I live now.
I had some great teachers who were passionate and knowledgeable about the subjects they taught. It was the mediocre/incompetent teachers who were the biggest complainers, and most active in the teachers union. Most parents/taxpayers were aware of this distinction and reserved their contempt for teachers that deserved it, not the profession as a whole.
I know someone who is a professional and qualified to degree level in a technical subject, who works at managerial level running a large and expensive factory. I don't think he's read a single book since he was compelled to at school. It's astonishing. The sad thing is he's intelligent and when his father gave him a book on European politics he read it cover-to-cover and discussed it for months afterwards.
Taking away screens is seen as some kind of 'probably doesn't like micro plastics and vaccines weirdo'-type thing to do but why would you let your children have a TV? What is there that they might watch that's good for them?
You’re certainly single-handedly redeeming the profession of teacher, at least in my eyes
“Plenty of doctors get tired of sick people and bankers get pretty bored with devil worship…”
But do they, really? 😄
Never change, man.
Those are fair critiques, for sure. I do wonder how representative the teachers you describe are; in my obviously very anecdotal experience I'd only put one of my teacher acquaintances in that bucket. And I'm not really even trying to defend teachers here; I have no intention of sending my kids to public school, and I'd look long and hard at a private school before committing. Still, I can't help but think that teaching done correctly is a noble profession, and it makes me sad that so many may hold it in contempt.
I wouldn’t say the abusers are in any sense representative. I would say (and I think the research would be consistent with this) that there probably isn’t a school of any size without something like this happening at least at some point.
I do have good friends who are teachers in private or charter schools. I know they are intellectuals. You can tell by what they read and the questions they ask when you talk to them. They have a calling and they can talk about that calling in terms of the things they have deep knowledge of and long to impart to young people.
However, most people who go into ed go into it for three reasons, "June, July, and August". This was said to me by teachers. There is another reason.....they don't know anything else after spending 13+ years and the best part of their day in that lame ass institution so they naturally think, "I know more than a 4th grader. I could teach."
“They never and I mean NEVER take responsibility for the poor, benighted, ignorant, illiterate, uneducated kids they flush out into the world, the work place, and the dumpster fire universities; They ALWAYS take credit for the kids who do well even though we all know that for 90% of those kids their success is due to having a good, supportive, intact family”.
I agree that student success is due to supportive families, but why do you not lay blame for unsuccessful students on their families (or lack thereof) as well? You imply that teachers really have no influence on academic success, so if that is the case, they cannot also be blamed for that lack of influence.
I don't need to lay that blame. The public schools are happy to do that en masse every day all year.
I think if more of them saw themselves as just another profession rather than tireless, underpaid and selfless servants then there would be less contempt. They often fail to realize their economic woes are no different than most Americans. Big problem here is the types that go straight into teaching after college. Also, loading history and English departments with disinterested and unqualified coaches has never been a good thing. I've always felt the married, middle aged teachers who are in a second career were more grounded, better teachers and more professional individuals in general. I don't hate them as a whole but I don't trust them. My wife was a teacher, now she homeschools our children.
Hmm...my own experience, based on substitute teaching, and getting to know some particular public schools, elementary level, quite well: at least 80% untrue, except perhaps the benefit package part. At some schools: 95% untrue.
Not that there aren't a lot of public school districts which are riddled with corruption, leftism, resignation, etc., from top to bottom, where it's everything you said in this comment and worse.
You excise qualification from your prose and your thought, and you bring injustice in....
I have generally qualified most of what I said when I was talking about our experience interviewing, hiring, and managing teachers in our area. And I am obviously talking about my experience but it seems pedantic to constantly say, "based on my experience....". I am assuming that if you sub, your experience is based on your experience. I know, from talking to others who also hire and manage teachers that it is bad in most areas. Very bad in some. I know a teacher who was on the BOE of her district for years and years. She is a very sweet, kind-hearted person who doesn't view the world like I do, generally speaking. However, when we talk about education, she basically nods her head and says things like, "I can't argue with that."
The real injustice here is the absolute crime that has been committed against students for well nigh 50+ years, and the gross mismanagement of public funds.
People admire their teachers, but nobody wants their kid to be one.
What is the purpose of an Education degree? Most with this credential don't seem to even know Cognitive Load Theory, the best current theory for how the brain learns. It's difficult for parents to make discerning choices when it comes to education. Often a high calibre of student, driven mainly by socioeconomics, can mask a school which has a terrible teaching practices- and the reverse is certainly true as well.
The best simple diagnostic is desk layout. Do the desks face forward? Does the teacher impart knowledge, or are children encouraged to 'discover' knowledge for themselves (a hugely inefficient process)? A good question to ask is do the children receive homework? If the headteacher or teachers use the phrase 'consolidation', get your kid into that school by any means necessary. 30 minutes of consolidation homework a night, ensures that the knowledge learned during the day 'sticks', and is committed to long-term memory.
Working memory is puny. Performing any cognitive complex task requires drawing upon knowledge stored in long-term memory. It is not enough to be able to work out that 9 x 7= 63. By the time a kid is in high school, all of the products from the multiplication tables should be committed to long-term memory. This is one of the reasons why kids experience Math trauma. In this case, it's not snowflakery. Maths consists of a pyramid of building blocks more than any other subject. The reason why older kids flounder and get anxious with Maths is because they haven't had all of the previous building blocks crammed into their long-term memory. It's also why older adults and younger people evince a marked difference in mental maths, a vital skill for both pitching, giving and receiving quotes, and tasks as mundane as a Head Chef planning a menu. A lot of commercially valuable tasks require something akin to a checksum- a fast series of rough guestimate calculations to assess feasibility. A head chef looking at new menu possibilities, would mentally assess pricings, cooking times, kitchen capacity and time on the pass. Without mental maths, this task would take hours rather than minutes.
Cognitive Load Theory is a current educational fad, even though it's been around for years. Unfortunately, it's also been hollowed out by zealots in Educational academia. Educational sources focus on not overwhelming cognitive load, when the real power of Cognitive Load Theory lies in understanding that people simply cannot perform cognitively complex tasks unless they've had a huge amount of useable knowledge crammed into their brains and committed to memory. This is just as true of English writing, reading and grammar as it is of Maths- Maths is just easier to explain.
Progressive education makes an artificial distinction between skills and knowledge, when the only difference between the two is that skills are more easily learned through demonstration and imitation than they are through explanation. The reason why progressive education makes this distinction is because many doubt the basic premise that objective knowledge exists (or is knowable, when a better distinction might be perfectly knowable) and many don't want to 'pollute' children's minds with Western knowledge (which is actually a universal knowledge system). Postmodernism and the grievance studies have a lot to answer for in terms of damage caused to kids in K-12. Such questions might be interesting and provocative for an undergrad, but they were never meant to be integrated into the earlier stages of education. Ironically, Foucault himself complained of a lack of 'objective' knowledge in his students as progressive education progressively undermined the accumulation of knowledge in K-12. After all, it's not possible to competently critique something unless you first fully understand it.
Math educators constantly disparage procedural work as beneath them, even though solid scaffolded procedural drilling is the best way to implicitly understand fundamental concepts.
Good luck teaching algebra when a student can't do order of operations problems in their heads.
Also, they don’t really explain the ‘why’ of showing your workings. Partial credit doesn’t really cover it. When I was covering quadratics, I found a cheat. It is relatively easy to solve problems if one looks at the integers in an equation (multiples of 12 were quite common in the UK exams I took) . This is fine for the question being asked, but answering questions this way doesn’t inculcate the process of separating the terms.
My Maths teacher told me I would come a cropper later on, but he didn’t really explain the ‘why’. I subsequently had huge problems with differential equations.
> What is the purpose of an Education degree?
Back when America's education system was being set up Andrew Carnegie, think of him as the Bill Gates of his day, got the idea into his head that "knowing how to teach" was more important then knowing the subject, and since he was donating lots of money to help set up public schools...
Yours might be the most valuable comment in a section with a lot of them… having basic math at the ready is useful nearly every day for all kinds of things. I’m at the stage where I take it largely for granted, as I do all my kinds of cultural information in my long term memory banks. How challenging it is to put yourself in the place of a child that has yet to be exposed to much of anything, and to decide how to impart useful knowledge! As a kid I rarely understood why anything I was taught mattered, but a lot of it stuck. Kudos to all the good teachers out there.
There's something new afoot with these women teachers sexually abusing boys. A recent case in England - she gets nicked for doinking one of her boy students. She denies it, gets granted bail. She then captures another boy, buys him a £300 belt, gets pregnant and has his baby. She denies it all right into a (for England) lengthy sentence.
Ravenous, unblinking psychopath, sure. I have a feeling that growing up with internet porn has a role here. Who's to say all the ladies were feministically outraged by the Van Halen video? Perhaps some viewed it from a different perspective more to do with being powerful, adored and desired. To have someone in her thrall. The decades of porn, which to my mind is always violence and slavery, maybe has disfigured a lot of women so that what once remained latent, or expressed through more acceptable forms of immorality, now comes to the surface in the form of 14 year old fathers.
Not to sound ancient or anything but a lack of consequences frees the female to make predatory choices. No shame and no inconvenient children to worry about. We’ve all been sold the gay male lifestyle as an option for everyone.
I'll be more old - why is it that these 13 and 14 yr olds do not seem to consider whether mom or dad would think that's OK? Allowing children to develop a private life is important. Actually letting them have one or even think they have one is child abuse. One can grooming-proof one's boys, whether they like it or not.
I suspect your comments section will be inundated with everyone’s recollections of their own school’s sex shenanigans so let me be among the first: I went to a very small school in rural Indiana (there were 72 students in my graduating high school class) and I know of at least three instances in three separate categories. My elementary school band teacher, whom I loved dearly and who was an enduring influence on my later musical career, was sent into outer darkness without explanation after he was found to be diddling little boys. I had no idea and only learned of it years later; he was unfailingly kind to me and never seemed creepy. In high school we had a serial Tragic Poet drama teacher. In each successive year he found a “leading lady” who conveniently graduated so that he could pick from the next crop without repercussion. This went on until after I had graduated and while he was probably eased out there was no public scandal. The third would today probably be quietly shuffled off somewhere but in 1974 a shop teacher who knocked up an 18 year old cheerleader could keep his job by “doing the right thing” and marrying her. Hell for all I know they’re still married.
I often argue with a loved one in my life over whether a 15 year old having sex with a teacher is "abuse." I say it is, every single time, because it doesn't matter if that kid "wanted" it or not; made passes at the teacher or not; is cheered on by the other students or not; is a virgin or has slept with 10 other kids; etc.
A child of that age doesn't understand the ramifications of such a relationship with the teacher. To say any kid "wants" it, is the same logic people use to justify things like "gender re-assignment" surgery. It's sick and these men and women who are being caught need to have their knees broken for being such losers that they prey upon kids.
I think a good rule of thumb is that you should be at least a decade older than the people you teach, unless everyone is at least forty. It’s perfectly natural for a 23 year old to feel a romantic connection to an 18 year old, and there is a very real ethical barrier such as relationship would create.
True. The best way for this would work is if young teachers were automatically put in kindergarten or first grade and had to work their way through the grades as they gain more experience teaching. It would not only help the teachers themselves, but protect students.
So true. I'm beginning to think all HS and MS teachers should be married and at least 40. That would cancel out much of the unprofessionalism I saw when I was in HS. There were middle aged and married teachers that were also unprofessional but they were almost entirely career teachers and seemed to not clique with the teachers that came from other careers. Of course, in our current society that will never happen.
I teach all boys in person so I don’t have the issue that coed teachers face anymore, but for my part I was always careful to create an emotional distance. I still refer to both my college and high school students exclusively by their last names and I never communicate with them in any context apart from one where I am in a position of authority (no social media). Crushes are natural; I’m more concerned with the panda-like numbness of some of my current charges, who preferred homecoming be canceled rather than show up and dance.
"I’m more concerned with the panda-like numbness of some of my current charges, who preferred homecoming be canceled rather than show up and dance."
They grew up in a world where everything about their desires was portrayed as toxic. Why wouldn't they be numb by now? Heck at times I'm surprised teen suicides are so LOW since there seems to be a constant messaging to especially young men nowadays that the best thing they could do for the world is die.
This is what John Taylor Gatto said after the Columbine shooting. To paraphrase: "We are asking the wrong question. The question isn't why did this happen. The question is, given the inhuman nature of schools today, why doesn't this happen more often."
School shootings, despite the obvious attention they get in the media, are relatively rare. The people most likely to shoot up schools for ordinary criminal reasons generally just stop going to school, and in cases like Columbine, the impetus for the shooting had less to do with anything that happened at the school and more to do with the fact that Dylan Klebold was a psychopath and Eric Harris was his submissive orbiter. If they hadn’t shot up the school they would probably have become serial killers, or else joined the military and committed some atrocities overseas. Public schools aren’t pleasant places, but they generally make kids irritated and indifferent rather than violently angry. Even the dumbest kid knows he won’t be there forever and they mostly take out their frustrations in a petty way on those who can’t fight back, like their weaker peers and the staff.
Yeah a lot of news "issues" is a problem of scale but good luck getting people to understand that.
I very clearly remember having a teacher in 11/12 grade take me into a little teacher's break room during class to ask me if everything was ok at home. Everything had never been ok at home but it was none of her damn business and I remember being really angry and resentful that she was trying to intrude into my private life. She was a young newbie and I am sure had been taught psycho-gobbledegook about how to "connect" with kids. I don't think she meant any harm but a lot of these people do harm without meaning to harm, and more vulnerable kids than me probably fell/fall for the sympathy and attention.
Teachers in every state I’m aware of are mandated reporters. This means that by law they cannot ignore any signs of abuse or neglect, and have a positive duty (unlike the general public) to intervene by following a specific protocol. Given your statement I would guess the indications of problems were manifest and she was therefore compelled to inquire. If she hadn’t, and something happened to you, she could have faced jail time.
It was in the 70s. I don't think those laws were in place then.
Something unpleasant and untoward happened in a school in a smaller town adjacent to my town but ruled by the same school district. I was writing for the paper at the time and someone contacted me about it. I couldn't write about this story because there was an investigation pending (and the paper always protected 'the head shed' as we called administration) but they wanted me to know......one of the things they told me was that the "investigation" into the incident was going to *finally* start at the end of the summer. But this was June and, mirabile dictu, the front office in which the incident happened was undergoing a complete tear down and remodel all summer! Oh dear....all evidence destroyed and the descriptions of things made by the student completely uncorroboratable due to the remodel. I drove up to the town to see if the school really was under reconstruction. Yes. All taped off and no trespass signs etc.
No one should put their kids into the hands of these people. No One. Ever.
Teaching, as Virginia Woolf noted, encourages vanity. I learnt to just ignore what my (mostly adult ESL) students think of me, as most of it is nonsense but I guess if you're a regular school teacher, in the same establishment for decades, you inevitably acquire a persona & narcissistic temptation. On the rare occasions a group has openly told me I'm the best teacher, it is surprisingly pleasant - I can see how teachers start to manipulate their students, to create a persona; and what better way than through sex/romance?
In the 90s, a gay professor at my uni was fired for constantly talking about sex (in gruesome detail), blazing his gay students, but also resisting the encroaching bureaucracy that is now the norm. When I met him, years later, I thought he was a cool rebel type; he was certainly a brilliant lecturer/talker, and I didn't see what business it was of the university if adults have sex, even if they are tutor & student. Later, knowing much more about the psychological frailties of 18-year-olds, I've come to see him as recklessly selfish and I'm only amazed the university didn't fire him earlier. They were lucky his behaviour didn't lead to, at the least, embarrassing teenage histrionics, and at the worst suicides etc.
Great essay. Especially the paragraph about society coveting youth.
"Jon Snow" is a heck of a coinage. :)
Twas brilliant
Excellent article. Well thought and felt out. I agree that there's an allure for these people about the youth, and I think it's mostly around missed opportunities in their life. Like these female teachers, I feel a lot of men who become obsessed with pics involving girls in a certain age-group are actually just really sad about the decisions they've made and this is a really weird way to cope with having made bad decisions by making even worse decisions. It's like their sexuality has been consumed by this feeling of longing and desperation that they need to recreate in themselves constantly. It's like they're practicing suicide. The hardest thing to do in this world, especially the older you get and time begins to feel less infinite, is take responsibility for your own mess and clean this thing up. Or, at least it was for me, and I'm still cleaning up my mess, IMO.
Fortunately, I dodged the bullet when it comes to the underage attraction. When I was seventeen, I told myself, "You need a girlfriend for your senior year. No BS. Get one. Get her to fall in love. Go all the way." I devoted myself to that pursuit and accomplished it. It was amazing. We partied together. We were ride or die (but not really cause we broke up a few years later and cheated on each other a lot). We were in love in the way you can only be in love for a short period of your life. It was deep for who we were as people but also shallow af because we weren't anybody yet. We had made no decisions. But I had a great senior year with her and my friends. I mean, it was mega. I had no idea when that summer ended that I was about to be kicked out of my parent's house and would soon be in the adult world forever--no more summer breaks, no more easy friends, no more girlfriends who wanted to love big and deep (just girlfriends who claimed they wanted that but could never do it).
The great compromise of adult life hit me at 19 when I got a job in health and welfare administration that was supposed to last only 90-days. I didn't want to do it but needed the money. Twenty-three years later, I'm still here. It was all over so quickly and had I not listened to my intuition, I don't know if I would've been okay as an adult. I'm not certain I could've survived the disappointment, but I remind myself, "Hey, you did it. You had that girl." These teachers or porn addicts are staring at or are interested in minors in this detached, unhealthy way but I can somewhat relate. I think about my formerly-sixteen year old girlfriend all the time. She lives in my head and hasn't aged a day. Sometimes the memories of her love and her body are the only things that get me through the pain. And you can only make those memories at one point of your life. You cross a threshold and you can never go back. It's maybe one of the first deaths we face as adults. This time of your life, this kind of relationship, is off-limits forever and no one consulted you and no one cares that it didn't work out the way you wanted. The time is over and your fate is sealed.
If you don't have your life spiritually in order, you will be eaten alive by the regret, IMO.
“When I teach, I first of all hope to convey whatever love my students feel for me to that love’s proper object, most immediately the subject at hand, but ultimately to God.”
Mr. G, is that you?!
Mr. G was hot! But the English that he taught was hotter. Plus, he engaged us all intellectually and emotionally and with love without playing favorites, so there was never any competition for him among the girls. No weird dynamics in that class.
I attended a high school of roughly 1,000 students and clearly remember both a "creep" type and a "tortured poet" type. This was 20 years ago but I recall both men clearly, and how their behavior was well known within the student population. One wound up married to a girl who was a student of his and their relationship was an open secret even before graduation. A quick google shows the other as having worked for 4 districts in 4 states since then. I thought that was somewhat exceptional but your writing makes me wonder if perhaps it was not.
Maybe someone's brought this up but the culture has to be a factor. If a male teacher preys on a female student people across the country will fantasize about nailing his balls to a wall. Other way around and the same people are saying "Nice" and "Lucky."
Maybe its this cultural leniency that makes this such a problem. The teachers know they won't get the worst PR and then are emboldened.
Well done.
"There is another way. Education is intimately bound up with Eros. Aristotle noted that it consists of teaching young people to love what they ought to love. It’s fundamentally about the orientation of affections."
Sums up many facets of Life.