…and this is a 
Almost all of your public school teachers have sex. Most of them enjoy it and do it repeatedly, even.
Many of your public school teachers vote for the Democratic party. Some are conservative Republicans. Some are Communists.
Some of your public school teachers are atheists. Or Episcopalians. Or Baptists. Or Scientologists.
All of your public school teachers go home at the end of the school day and have private lives, where they do things that really aren't at all relevant to your 8 year old daughter, your 15 year old son. That you pay taxes to cover their salaries for doing their jobs during work hours does not entitle you to control the entirety of their lives.
All of your public school teachers have a history. Almost all of them have masturbated. Many of them have smoked marijuana. Almost all of them have dated; most of them have danced. Some of them are gay. Some of them are heterosexual. Almost all of them have private kinks which you don't know about, because they don't practice them in public, let alone when they're doing their jobs. Some of them have been sex workers.
And you know what? All of them can be fired or blacklisted by local prudes on school boards or the school administration. Teachers: you don't get to be human. This outrages me.
When I was in eighth grade, one of the best teachers I ever had taught me geometry. Mr Anderson was fat; he sweated excessively. He always wore baggy slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, and he had a crew cut. And he was ferocious. He would yell at bad students and tell them to work harder, and if he caught you being inattentive in class he'd throw an eraser at you. Those students mocked him mercilessly, behind his back. He was also passionate about the subject — I can still see him in my mind's eye excitedly making that chalk fly across the board, talking excitedly about a proof, giggling at how cool a result was.
Every year he rewarded the best of his students with an invitation to his house for a formal party, with snacks and Nehi soda. He was single and weird, but there was no worry about impropriety — there'd be a score of us there, who would all be treated politely as adults, which was mind-blowing right there. He'd play music for us: opera and show tunes.
Show tunes. He adored Ethel Merman, and sometimes even in class he'd start humming something from his beloved musicals.
He made the adults uncomfortable, and you can guess what kinds of rumors the school jocks spread about him. The people who didn't care that he was a fantastic, enthusiastic math teacher who taught students self-respect and to love math only saw a strange man who didn't fit in, who was odd, who fit certain stereotypes, and who obviously could not be trusted.
So one year, poof, he was gone. Dismissed. The best damned math teacher they had, sent away on the heels of a sordid campaign of bigoted whispers.
Even now, it stirs a little outrage in me, that teachers get judged not by the quality of their work and their positive effects on their students, but how well they fit the conventions of the most closed-minded members of the community, by people, even, who despise good educations that raise kids to think independently.
Melissa Petro, the teacher who was open and unashamed of her past as a sex worker, couldn't be more different, superficially, than a fat flamboyant math teacher. But they do share something in common: both were pilloried by an intolerant public and cowardly administrators over perfectly ordinary and human traits that just didn't match an unrealistic expectation of teachers as bloodless mannequins of perfect propriety.
Education
Comments
Posted by: Lou Cypher
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May 8, 2011 2:51 PM
As an aspiring high-school level educator, allow me to say that I greatly appreciate you taking the time to write this.
Posted by: James F
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May 8, 2011 2:54 PM
Indeed, people are still having sex.
Posted by: RationalMind
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May 8, 2011 3:00 PM
Your teacher was probably good BECAUSE he was unconventional. Traditionalism and authoritarianism are marker personality traits for
the absence of "Openness to Experience" also called "intellect" in some of the papers.
Its absence is arguably a "cognitive deficit"
as the absence and the related traits are shown time after time in the literature as being associated with decreases in IQ score.
You see a lot of it in religious mentalfunadlism.
The rejection of, and even hostility towards, the novel , different, or unusual.
Incidentally there was a similar example recently in the British press where an ex-teacher who was a landlord of a flat had one of his tenants killed. He was arrested by the probably rather authoritarian people investigating one assumes :-)
He was released and SOMEONE ELSE has confessed and is on trial!
The papers made him look a real weirdo for being a bit different.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/04/21/thatll-learn-em-6-papers-sued-for-libel-and-invasion-of-privacy/
People like that
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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May 8, 2011 3:01 PM
I'd be far more concerned if my kid's teacher was a Scientologist.
Posted by: nebula99
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May 8, 2011 3:04 PM
One of the best teachers I have ever had was my AP US history teacher in 11th grade. The man made us work harder than I have ever worked in a class. We took notes from our book, memorized dates, wrote paper after paper, and came in on weekends to study with him and prepare for the AP test. It is the one class that taught me how to study to a college level. But he didn't stop at making sure we knew the facts. He made sure we learned different perspectives of history, and that we asked tough questions about the consequences of events. He left us with an understand of how rich and complex history is. Oh, and nearly everyone in the class got the highest possible score on the AP test.
But none of that mattered to the school administration. What mattered was that he was the only teacher willing to step up and be the faculty sponsor of the gay straight alliance, that he was one of the few teachers who made kids who were different feel welcome and okay. So the school decided they needed to downsize the social studies department. There were two new teachers who they could let go, the fantastic history teacher, or the guy who babysat a few classes so that he could coach the football team. I sat in on a few of his classes and he clearly had no interest in teaching the kids anything, just so long as they sat at their desks in a semi-quiet fashion all was well. The school hierarchy decided that the idiot who coached the football team was doing more to contribute to the school, and let the fantastic teacher go.
When I hear people clambering for local officials and principals to have more control in firing teachers, I panic. Why on earth would you want to give more power to people who are for the most part bigoted megalomaniacs. Teachers are the ones who make amazing sacrifices to send kids into adulthood with a knowledge base and a love of learning that will make them successful. It would be nice if we'd stop declaring war on them.
Posted by: Samantha Vimes
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May 8, 2011 3:04 PM
You'd think that we as a society could be *happy* someone managed to leave that behind them and find a better life, instead of closing doors to her.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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May 8, 2011 3:05 PM
Yeah, but the point is if the teacher is a scientologist, and it doesn't intrude on his job performance, then we have NO RIGHT to tell him what he can do outside of class.
Posted by: spencertroxell
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May 8, 2011 3:06 PM
This is the best post you've written since you wrote about the science fiction fans who counter-demonstrated against fred phelps and co. Good work.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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May 8, 2011 3:10 PM
Samantha Vimes:
That was my first thought too. These same prudish people can't stand the thought of sex workers, so why wouldn't they be happy one of them decided to pursue a different career path? Of course, such types never can be satisfied.
Posted by: spencertroxell
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May 8, 2011 3:12 PM
It's also probably appropriate to remind you of this recent story from the friendly atheist:
http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/04/28/going-after-teachers-who-have-side-jobs/
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Apropos of Nada
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May 8, 2011 3:13 PM
At a nearby school, a teacher is being hounded by a small group of parents. She teaches English and, apparently, has published quite a few books under a pseudonym. The books are romance novels. She used the pseudonym so that narrow-minded prudes would not chase her out of her position. Now that the prudes have outed her, they are claiming that the fact that she used a pseudonym to publish her 'sex books' is proof that she knew what she was doing was inappropriate.
Gee. A high-school English teacher who is a published writer. FIRE HER!
Posted by: The Countess
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May 8, 2011 3:19 PM
PZ, have you seen this one? A high school English teacher is getting flack from two prudish parents and a school board - because she writes erotic romance novels on her off hours under a pen name.
http://www.wnep.com/wnep-sny-parents-buranich-english-teacher-writes-racy-novels-20110426,0,4057307.story
More on the story from a great romance site, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books:
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/judy-mays-we-got-your-back-maam/
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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May 8, 2011 3:19 PM
I said I'd be concerned, not that I was sharpening my pitchfork.
Posted by: the.periwinkle.dragon
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May 8, 2011 3:21 PM
As a teacher...
We were warned by the union when I was getting my education degree that legal precedent in Ontario basically says that we can be disciplined for things we do in our personal lives that are totally unconnected to our professional lives. We're held to so-called "higher" standards all the time, 24/7.
I've had to change a lot of things in my online life to protect my identity because I know that it's possible to be accused of improper professional conduct (and potentially get fired) for things that I never talk about at work and that never impede my ability to teach. I worry every day that being an atheist could get me fired - it is 100% legal to discriminate against me if they find out that I'm "out" and vocal and they decide that's "improper conduct".
Why can't teachers be people? After all, the best teachers are usually those with real-life experience - the physics teacher who used to work for NASA (really!), the tech teacher who built houses for 20 years, the soccer coach who used to coach the women's national team. I'm a person and I struggle with having to give up my identity all the time just to do what I love (and am damn good at) 8-4, 5 days a week.
Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
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May 8, 2011 3:24 PM
I'd be more concern if my teacher didn't have a life outside of classrooms. I recalled students being shocked after seeing my AP Literature teacher buying beer at the store.
Posted by: MagistraMarla
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May 8, 2011 3:26 PM
Hear! Hear!
PZ, as a former high school teacher, I loved your post.
I was that eccentric teacher that didn't fit it, too. I would sometimes teach my Latin classes dressed in a stola, as Metella, one of the characters in our textbook. I once told the story of The Odyssey dressed as the blind poet, Homer.
I was also that teacher who mentored the Gay Straight Alliance. I taught in Texas, and the assistant principal told me that "it was just a baby-sitting job, to keep those kids out of the public eye." I considered myself their mentor, and they were "my kids". I was given a rainbow tassel by the LGBT group at my daughter's graduation from Duke (she was their ally on the grad student council). I hung that tassel in my classroom, and all of my students understood that it symbolized that EVERYONE was treated equally in that room.
Interestingly, besides the Mother's Day greetings that I've received from my own five kids, I've heard from two of my former students today. One of them has been disowned by his parents since he started living as a gay man. I'm honored that he thought so much of me that he chose to wish me a happy Mother's Day.
Thanks for defending teachers, especially those of us who have cared enough to love and challenge our students.
Posted by: nathaniel.tagg
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May 8, 2011 3:30 PM
Thanks James (#2) - I'd totally forgotten about that.
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Apropos of Nada
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May 8, 2011 3:31 PM
The Countess:
Thank you. That is the story to which I referred in my comment #11 but, with the odd ways of my current computer, I was unable to find, much less link to, the WNEP news story. I had seen it on the local news, and remembered being angry, but couldn't find it.
Posted by: Quodlibet
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May 8, 2011 3:34 PM
I would hope that the people who teach our kids about life and learning be real people with real lives and real experiences and real passion for learning, rather than passionless cardboard cutouts with limited experience and limited minds.
Good teachers are professionals who know how to keep their private lives separate from the public, professional activities with the kids. What they do away from school does not matter. They should be judged only on their professional service.
The administrators and parents who harass or dimiss these special teachers are teaching our kids that "different" = "bad" and that "different" people should be punished, fired, and rejected, regardless of their value as humans and, in this case, as teachers. This is horrible and creates lasting damage. But bigotry is always short-sighted - bigots can't see past their own fears and insecurities.
GRRRRRRRRRR.
Great post, PZ. This is important.
Posted by: raven
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May 8, 2011 3:36 PM
PZ is right. Teachers can be fired for all sorts of irrelevant reasons having zero to do with teaching.
Richard Mullens was fired from a HS in Texas. His crime? Suspected ATHEISM. Note that he was never proven to be an atheist. It was just an accusation.
Never, ever turn your backs on fundies. Unless you want to know what a knife in the back feels like.
Posted by: raven
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May 8, 2011 3:43 PM
This is just fundies doing standard xian things.
Witch hunting. Real witches are hard to find these days. After a 1,000 years of being hung, burned at the stake, and killed in other imaginative ways, they aren't real open most of the time.
So the religious freaks have to make do. These days the witches are evolutionary biologists, gays, atheists, Moslems, former sex workers, published authors, etc.. Anyone who isn't a brain dead, ignorant fundie xian moron.
There are real Pagans and Wiccans. They keep a low profile and tend not to use their real names. Because they get fired, kicked out of rental housing, and have their houses vandalized all the time.
Posted by: Ferrous_alloy
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May 8, 2011 3:55 PM
Both my parents got their degrees in education, and honestly I can't imagine a more stressful occupation. My mom quit, but my dad still teaches because they were teachers they wouldn't buy alcohol where students might see them, and they were careful about how they acted in public and even censored their political beliefs because it could damage careers.
Thank you for talking about this, more people need to be aware of this; however, you forgot one thing, teachers can also be punished for what their kids do or say. I was often told not to say certain things and was even warned that should I get into legal trouble when I was in High School my dad's career could be put in jeopardy because of my actions.
Teachers and all public school employees barely have freedom they have to conform to what the parent's think they should be like, and because school boards are usually spineless they will always side with parents (no matter how misinformed or uneducated they are) over the educators.
Posted by: PeteJohn
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May 8, 2011 3:56 PM
In my area a teacher was fired because she used to do porn and didn't tell anyone about it. I guess a student found out or something. Anyway, I thought you may have been talking about that, then I followed the link and I have to say, this individual was a lot more interesting. She openly shared, in a published source, some details about her past life and unfortunately paid for it. Have to admire her honesty and guts.
Posted by: Azkyroth
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May 8, 2011 4:00 PM
No. Not paid. Was robbed for it.
Posted by: Samantha Vimes
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May 8, 2011 4:19 PM
btw, those of you who are teachers (or privacy experts)-- I'm getting my degree & credential over the next few years, so I get that I should keep my controversial opinions out of sight of future students, but I also have an online presence under my real name that I use for networking as an artist. Is there a way to separate these identities after I've already had up information that links one to the other? How worried should I be about "liking" a controversial article over on my Facebook page? I am normally very open about my opinions, and it does worry me that I need to start hiding who I am to protect my future career, and I don't even really know what can be done. To make it worse, both my nom du net and my real name seem to be unique.
And... I can't even give out my email here without creating another link between my real and online names. So I gues the first step is getting a second email?
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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May 8, 2011 4:20 PM
Those who can't do OR teach, administrate.
Posted by: Petzl
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May 8, 2011 4:23 PM
I don't understand, where are the teacher's unions in all this? It's impossible to fire a teacher for cause it seems, but then I hear about these frivolous firings...
Posted by: mort_sinclair
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May 8, 2011 4:38 PM
Public school teacher here. We have clauses in our contracts as well as strings attached to our licensure that demand, in short, that we uphold the highest level of professionalism given our privileged and influential status among children.
There's the rather vague rub.
Posted by: Spinniac
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May 8, 2011 5:34 PM
From the original Salon article: "I got caught up in the [sex] industry's pull toward materialism and greed."
See! Sex workers are entrepreneurs, pushing the limits of the paternalistic state.
Where is America's other right wing when you need them?
Posted by: Deluded Creodont
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May 8, 2011 5:50 PM
Well, obviously she wasn't unsatisfied with her former profession, she'd gotten a job as a teacher so she could secretly move in to corrupt poor defenseless children into becoming a future generation of sex workers. Think of the children!
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
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May 8, 2011 5:54 PM
Not having sex, does not make for better teachers.
Posted by: Knofster
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May 8, 2011 5:54 PM
The school I attended was a boys only Christian boarding school that caters mainly to the wealthy (there are also large scholarships) in South Africa. If I mention it in in conversation there will almost always be some comment about being overly rich or some such.
Anyway, we had a music master who was very eccentric but at the same time one of the best teachers I ever had. One evening he and another teacher were in one of their homes (attached to a boarding house) and some sexual comments were made about one of the students. Unbeknownst to them some 1st team Rugby types were recording the "weird teacher's" conversation and the conversation was quickly spread across the whole school.
The pupils were not punished in any significant fashion for spying on a private conversation that occurred in a private residence. No, the two teachers (one the above mentioned music master, the other the head of the science department) were forced to resign by the overwhelming hatred of the majority of the student body and parents.
There were many problems with the environment at that school (there were, to be fair, good points as well) but that the one incident that totally captures the cruelty it all.
Posted by: Cerberus, unnatural product of en-OMnomnom-ification
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May 8, 2011 6:01 PM
Caine @9
Because such people are Untouchables. If they can "leave that behind" and go on and become "productive members of society", then they humanize themselves, demonstrate their humanity, and of course show that such actions do not "ruin your life".
Thus the moral guardians see it as their duty to ensure that such pasts "ruin one's life" by fighting for discrimination and the rights to fire such people and prevent them from having any opportunities, job prospects, no possible way to go from being one of "them" to being one of "us".
It's the same reason they fight so hard against anti-discrimination laws against LGBT people. It's why they fought so hard against women in the workplace. Why they fought and fight so hard against anti-discrimination laws based on race or disability. Why they whine about accessibility and why they crow and crow about "moral standards".
They want a world where anyone who isn't "desirable" simply disappears from their lily-white world and goes off to die somewhere. Something to serve only as a horrible warning to their children about the danger of free-thought or disobedience to their insane edicts.
A sex-worker who repents and is a school-teacher is a threat to their narratives and something to be destroyed. A sex-worker that renounces it, becomes a spokesperson for Jesus, solely does religious functions where they rant about the inhumanity and evil of people who were like them is the only acceptable path out of sex work.
Posted by: shockwaveplasma
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May 8, 2011 6:02 PM
Some teachers in Australia got together and started a little music group, they called it TISM. Short for This Is Serious Mum.
They had some great little songs like "Greg the Stop Sign", "Everyone has more sex than me", and "Defecate on my face".
So you think this would get them fired in the USA, land of free speech?
Come to think of it, maybe the masks just arn't because they are ugly.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TISMBand?blend=23&ob=5
Posted by: waynerobinson4
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May 8, 2011 6:05 PM
I'm a retired pathologist. In my last year of work in a state government hospital, I was required to do an online course on recognizing child abuse (I never see any patients, dead or alive in my work) so I set out to get all the questions wrong in the concluding multi choice questionnaire. To my extreme disappointment, I got one question out of 30 correct. But I still got a lovely certificate to frame on my wall verifying I'd completed the course. One of my colleagues, not anywhere near retirement, got all the questions wrong, but she still got the certificate.
It's an anomaly that authorities turn a blind eye to lapses that are important in doing one's job (missing child abuse by a doctor who sees children) and cracks down on things that are irrelevant (one's private life).
Agreed liking Ethel Merlman isn't a sacking offense, it's more a hanging offense. I must go and rewatch Airplane!
Posted by: opposablethumbstoo
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May 8, 2011 6:11 PM
One of the Heads of Department in my elderdaughterspawn's secondary school is gay, out and a high profile figure in the life of the school. His SO attends some of the big annual school events with him. Coincidentally he happens to be exceptionally good at his job and all the kids love him (afaik a lot of the parents love him too; if there are any who disapprove, they certainly don't say anything openly). I'm just hoping my youngersonspawn is lucky enough to get into his classes in a couple of years.
Reading posts like this and some of the responses makes me realise just how lucky we are. We get to benefit from this guy's skills and expertise and passionate love of his subject; we are the lucky ones. We are the lucky ones, too, because of teachers like him and other members of staff (e.g. there's one who has mentioned that he is usually the first atheist of muslim family whom most of the muslim-family pupils have ever met). We're lucky because kids at this (state comprehensive) school get to experience less toxicity than in many others.
.
.
I read a few days ago about the English teacher who got attacked for writing romance novels, and it looked like a lot of local response and responses from her current and former students were massively supportive of her and tore strips off her attackers and off the local newspaper that ran the story without investigation. Iirc, this was on the local news website itself. Don't know if anyone has more up-to-date news?
Posted by: Rheb-El
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May 8, 2011 6:19 PM
I chose to teach in what used to be a safe haven for education (WI) two decades ago. Could have done anything, but felt the calling. I have to thank PZ for his support of educators, but agree with much of the above sentiment. We all feel as though we are constantly having to watch our backs, as all it takes to get rid of us is an unscrupulous administrator with an axe to grind, or a school board with an agenda. I do not post as myself anywhere out of fear for my family's security, yet in the current climate we--and Ohio, New Jersey, etc. are in, I still fear what the end of collective bargaining will do for the job security of teachers like myself, who openly speak out in the community in support of the profession. I fear that my anonymity on the net will become my anonymity in supporting the profession at the local level, and know that I am not alone.
Posted by: Michael Swanson
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May 8, 2011 6:25 PM
The two finest teachers I ever knew, a US history teacher and an Honors English teacher, were openly critical of the school board's policies and decisions. The year after I escaped high school, I heard that both of them were reassigned to the junior high school as, respectively, a gym teacher and a 7th grade remedial English teacher.
But hey, at least we got a new football field and bleachers when virtually every other department in my old school was reduced or was closing! No music program, no marching band, no photography or art class, no auto shop - just football!
Posted by: jack.rawlinson
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May 8, 2011 6:36 PM
This applies to every profession, not just teaching.
Here's what matters: do you do your job professionally and well?
Here's what doesn't matter: everything else.
I had gay teachers, straight teachers, married teachers, single teachers, young teachers, old teachers, male teachers, female teachers, pretty teachers, ugly teachers, conservative teachers, liberal teachers, teachers who rode cool motorbikes, teachers who drank, teachers who took drugs...
...and none of that was relevant to whether or not they were good teachers. My best ever teacher was a young man who was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who talked openly and honestly about drugs and who very clearly was having a lot of extra-marital sex. He was a fantastic teacher. The reason he was a fantastic teacher was that he was really, really good at enthusing us kids and making the subject interesting, and because he encouraged questions and discussions.
Posted by: GvlGeologist, FCD
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May 8, 2011 6:43 PM
This is of course why both teacher tenure and unions are important.
And of course one of the reasons why various bigoted groups are against tenure and unions.
The reason that I use GvlGeologist instead of my real name is that I started posting on Pharyngula (and Panda's Thumb) before I had tenure. Without hiding my identity, I knew that there was a chance of harassment by creationists in this generally conservative region. Was I overly cautious? Possibly, but I wasn't about to take the chance. I have seen far too many examples of creationist activity, both in my classes and in the community. Now that I have tenure, I know that I can't be fired for frivolous reasons such as random complaints.
Posted by: Therrin (Ben S)
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May 8, 2011 6:55 PM
#34 shockwaveplasma:
Assuming that wasn't rhetorical, the answer is yes.
(I suppose it's the same if it was.)
Posted by: Mattir-ritated
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May 8, 2011 7:07 PM
It's not just teachers - anyone who works with kids, including parks and recreation staff, is vulnerable to this sort of horror. It's the totalitarian "spy on your neighbors" mentality run amok.
I shiver when I hear adults advising kids to make sure they censor their FB posts because they'll lose their job in there's a photo of them holding Solo plastic cup and looking too happy on their page. Discretion is one thing (i.e. sexting is probably a bad idea), but the current mood requires a level of paranoia that's frightening.
Posted by: rather be fishing
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May 8, 2011 7:08 PM
Thanks for posting that. It made me feel good as I sat down to mark 2 class sets of lab write-ups.
I teach in Alberta where a teacher can lose his or her position for unprofessional conduct, conduct that brings the profession into disrepute; generally that means crimes against children, serious violations of the protection of privacy laws and so on. Sexual or political orientation is not a firing offense, contrary to what some of our more straight-laced, tea-pot memebers of some school trustees think.
From the Alberta Teachers' Association website:
Posted by: Krubozumo Nyankoye
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May 8, 2011 7:09 PM
There are good teachers and bad teachers. There are teachers who are dedicated and teachers who only do the job because they haven't yet found something better. There are teachers who are lazy and want to take advantage of a fairly secure position and there are teachers who are ambitious and want to cultivate a respect and enthusiasm for knowledge and the discovery of knowledge. And then there are people who do not want to teach but to indoctrinate.
Life is an education, it does not end when schooling does, at least to some people. But to others, who for some reason are afraid of the amazing and wonderous variety of what humans are and can become, and what our world is, and can become, who are afraid that their belief is false, that their irrational hopes are indeed irrational, the only recourse is to condition everyone else to adhere to the same baseless ignorance.
I do not think such cowardice is inate in anyone. It is rather the product of the relentless drone of dogma over the obvious. It is a great pity that humanity must struggle so, unlike those other creatures who are able to live in a world where lying to yourself is not even a possibility. I have grown to envy the insects and nematodes.
Posted by: gotwals
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May 8, 2011 7:10 PM
Wish I could post this to my FB page...but I'm a public school teacher.
Posted by: Agent Smith
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May 8, 2011 7:12 PM
I suspect that those vexatious bands like education to resemble the lives prescribed for the teachers: dull, uninvolved, and as dry as crackers.
Light a kid's brain on fire with inspiring education, and they might start questioning the unquestionable. Can't have that! Since it's hard to run a teacher out of town by saying their lessons are too good, the next best thing is to attack the teachers themselves. Eccentric ones are sadly the softest target.
A teacher who was in the sex industry - what an opportunity, I wouldathought, for the students to see someone associated with that industry as a real human being, mature and worthy of respect. Far better than viewing them as anonymous vessels only there to sate lust and be hated on. Education like that is a gift, especially early in life, but it's too easily thrown away because someone doesn't like the wrapping.
Posted by: david.utidjian
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May 8, 2011 7:17 PM
Rey Fox @ 26:
I think it goes like:
Remember, those you can DO, and those you can TEACH, you can't administrate!!
(or something.)
Hmmm, it is sort of starting to make sense now.
Posted by: Andyo
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May 8, 2011 7:29 PM
I hope at least FluffPo is paying her for her writing.
Posted by: llewelly
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May 8, 2011 7:47 PM
This is among the cruelest of the many ugly things our society does to sex workers: it ensures that they have no other option. If they find out sex work is too dangerous for them, they cannot leave, because our culture will not allow them another job. If they find it demeaning, they often cannot leave, because they will have trouble finding other work.
And what is one of the best defenses against abusive employers? The ability to go elsewhere for work.
In this fashion, everyone who discriminates against sex workers enables the abuse that goes in on that field.
Posted by: Mattir-ritated
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May 8, 2011 7:55 PM
Um, SwCM, no one has ever said that sexting by teens is ok. I dare you to find one citation in which an adult proclaims that sexting is an acceptable practice for teens - there is no pendulum on this issue. This post is not about extremes and a golden mean, it is about being allowed to have a professional/public life and a private life, and it applies to kids as well as to adults.
Also, my name is not Mattie.
Posted by: ParticleMan
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May 8, 2011 8:12 PM
I had a similar experience - my 10th grade algebra teacher was professional, inspiring, enthusiastic. He saw a talent within me and recommended that I get tested to get into AP math ... and I did. I remember that he came to band concerts and pointed out how well the band played and which students of his played which instruments. He had one mark against him though: he was extremely effeminate (sp?) and obviously gay. This was in 1985. He was mercilessly teased and mocked despite the fact that he was, simply, one of the best teachers that school ever had. I don't know what ever happened to him but after a few years he was gone. I remember feeling sorry for him at the time.
Posted by: Darreth
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May 8, 2011 8:19 PM
I speak exceptionally good conversational Spanish, which I learned in HIGH SCHOOL. Because of a teacher who passionate about not only Spanish, but the Renaissance, and history, and art, and theater, etc.
He was my most interesting and best teacher EVER (even in college) because of his extremely wide-ranging knowledge.
He was as gay as the day is long.
If he had been fired, I would never had had a lifelong passion for that foreign language - which is not foreign to me anymore.
That was 35 years ago.
How dare these Christianist idiots think they can create a nation of total dumb asses because they're terrified of a Jewish mythological deity.
They make me ill.
Posted by: IanKoro
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May 8, 2011 8:47 PM
This reminds me of a somewhat similar incident from my high school years, only in this case, the teacher wasn't even guilty of anything wrong.
Basically, it came out that my high school drama teacher possessed child porn, he was arrested, and his face was on the front page of our local newspaper. Obviously, he lost his job.
I never learned the details, but it turned out later, that some students had repeatedly emailed child porn to him, and anonymously called the police, presumably either as a prank, or because they had some sort of beef with him. A few weeks after the initial story emerged, the newspaper followed up... with a short blurb in the back pages. I believe he was offered a job in the board of education administration offices, but that hardly undoes the damage. I believe the fact that a small amount of marijuana was found in the investigation had something to do with why he wasn't offered his previous position, but it still struck me as extremely unfair.
A few years later, I visited my friend's cottage in northern Ontario...and I was surprised to see my former teacher running the water taxi, ferrying people and their supplies to their cottages. I made small talk, discussing the fact that I was one of his students, but I didn't really feel comfortable bringing up the ordeal that lost him his job.
The fact that not only his career was stolen from him, but his reputation was destroyed, and that the media had clearly moved on by the time he was proven innocent still infuriates me.
Posted by: Doktor Zoom
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May 8, 2011 9:21 PM
"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school / it's a wonder I can think at all."
Posted by: Molly, NYC
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May 8, 2011 9:45 PM
Wherever he is, I hope Mr. Anderson reads that.
Posted by: Javascap
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May 8, 2011 9:50 PM
It is interesting that I read this while researching on if student input should be used as a means of determining teacher retention. My view is that student input, combined with the academic track record of the teacher, should be the basis of teacher retention, not community input or a personal life.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 8, 2011 10:06 PM
Ugh why would anyone WANT to be a teacher? Pay isn't the best and despite the posturing about being such an important goal you are regularly disrespected, marginalized, and villianized by politicians and have draconian measures put on your personal life that effective means you're working in some fashion 24/7 (at very least as a school representative) without compensation.
Teachers should go Galt
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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May 8, 2011 10:42 PM
I do so love stories about teachers from the past. Your Mr. Anderson brings to mind my Mrs. Temple. She was a math teacher who's classes I attended both in Jr. High and High School. She was deadly with a blackboard eraser.
I gotta tell ya, that lady had an arm on her like Sandy Koufax! But what was uncanny was her accuracy. She always went for the head shot. I swear she could locate the position of a wisecrack in three axis space with her back turned. She had a sonic map of the room in her head! Within a half second she could wheel about and deliver that felt right between
mywassname's eyes.At this far remove I recall her fondly for two things: teaching me to understand trigonometry and to throw side arm. And to anticipate. I recall her fondly for three things . . .
Posted by: shawkins4444
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May 8, 2011 10:52 PM
Well if it weren't for what many people called "weirdos" I wouldn't have had more than a couple of teachers.
Posted by: mick.long
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May 8, 2011 11:02 PM
What a lot of people don't realise about us teachers is that we are in a job which requires patience, a thick skin and a sense of humour.
So why the hell can't a former sex worker be a teacher?
Posted by: raven
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May 8, 2011 11:10 PM
WTF??? This is related, inasmuch as a teacher was fired.
So help me out here. I think I might have drifted into an alternate universe over the decades. In fact, it is looking almost certain.
When I went to high school in the mid late 20th century on the west coast, the boys or some of them would take their shirts off on hot days, PE, track, and cross country among them. In fact, dredging up distant memories, a common way of dividing boys into teams was "shirts" or "skins" although I can't remember what the games were anymore.
What universe am I in now, what color is the new sky, and what have they done with my old universe? Bring it back, now!!!
Posted by: Samantha Vimes
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May 8, 2011 11:14 PM
Ing, stand in a room full of kids, with that *earnestness* children can have, seeing them ready to learn but worried they may not succeed, lighting up when they *get* a concept... you'll probably understand the why then.
There's a lot that sucks about teaching, but the fundamental process is so worthwhile that at least some teachers can tolerate the rest of it. Still, things should be improved, if only because teachers could teach better with more freedom.
Posted by: Autumn
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May 8, 2011 11:22 PM
Late in my first year of high school, one of the history teachers, just normal kid history, not hte nerd stuff, got arrested for public indecency for having gay foreplay in a van down by the river...causeway, whatever.
The news had hit the morning broadcasts, and a few students had heard.
Now, this teacher was fairly effeminete, and there were always a lot of jokes about him being gay circulating in the student body.
The School Board decided that this was a verboten subject, and informed teachers that morning that they were to inform their students that discussion of the matter would result in disiplinary action!
Needless to say, by day's end, copies of the news articles were taped up all over.
The wonderful thing then happened.
The students, even the ones circulationg the jokes a day before, were all defying the gag order, and chants in the teacher's name were heard at the breaks between the last few periods.
A friend of mine's mother said that she saw the teacher a couple of days later at the grocery store, and she hugged him and told him how much his enthusiasm had meant to her son and his friends.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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May 8, 2011 11:22 PM
I forgot to make the point that Mrs. Temple had a long and distinguished teaching career back at my old school. To my knowledge she was never called out by anyone for her felt flinging. It wasn't any secret; another teacher once admonished me that what I had just done in his class would get an eraser bounced off my head in Mrs. Temple's.
Come to think of it, I can't recall any fellow student or parent or adult making any comment that wasn't in support of Mrs. Temple's teaching ability and her right arm. It was actually sort of a badge of honor to have your forehead covered in chalk in math or algebra class.
Something evil has happened over the last forty some years.
Posted by: fuckin' kristinc
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May 8, 2011 11:53 PM
If this puzzles you, you either haven't read Handmaid's Tale or not read it thoroughly enough. The secret whorehouse for the high-ranking men? Yeah, that's what's going on here. It serves the current structure, or more specifically those in charge in the current structure, that women who are sex workers can never pursue another career path -- because there need to be sex workers for them to use. The catch-22 isn't a big, it's a feature.
The gender roles are even split along the same lines as in Handmaid: women, by and large, do the work of policing out-of-bounds sexuality but it's men (by and large) who benefit from the underground pool of sexuality the policing maintains.
Exactly.
Posted by: bananacat
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May 8, 2011 11:53 PM
I sincerely hope that you're being sarcastic. But if you really can't figure it out, maybe it's because some people care about others, care about society, and want to make life better for others, especially children. Honestly, are you a sociopath or something? It's not normal to expect everyone to be completely selfish.
Posted by: middo
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May 8, 2011 11:56 PM
I remember fondly my high school chemistry teacher. He was 30, bald and outrageous. Teaching at an all boys school allowed him some leeway you may not get at a co-ed school, but his jokes were so rude that they melted the paint on the walls. I received an education in more than chemistry, but I always looked forward to his classes, and my best marks were in chem.
Incidently, when I though about becoming a teacher myself at 30, I remember him saying that it was a job you do because you love seeing "the lights go on". Anyone who doesn't get that should not be teaching.
Posted by: DLC
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May 8, 2011 11:58 PM
On the other hand, we have petty tyrants like the teacher in Pink Floyd's The Wall.
They really do exist. And probably their fat and psychopathic wives actually do thrash them every night to within inches of their lives.
But, by and large, teachers are good, well-meaning people who live more or less ordinary. Some of them are Excellent teachers who deserve accolades.
Posted by: bananacat
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May 8, 2011 11:58 PM
@ raven #63
Welcome to the world of being female. When I was just a little toddler in the 1980s, I went to a home daycare that did not have air conditioning. We spent as much time as possible outside, and we couldn't get our shirts off fast enough. Then all of a sudden, one day, the boys could still remove their shirts but the girls couldn't. Apparently the nipples of a 4 year-old girl are worse than those of a 4 year-old boy, even though they look exactly the same. And in the U.S., it's rare to see even the youngest baby girl at a pool or beach without her top covered. We have a reached a point where we must always cover the area where breasts will eventually be in several years.
So yeah, it's really stupid to fire a teacher for letting boys take their shirts off, but it is even more ridiculous when it applies to girls, and it has been that way for a lot longer.
Posted by: otrame
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May 9, 2011 12:00 AM
This was in a previous thread (whoever posted the link, thank you!!!) but it is appropriate here.
What Teachers Make
Posted by: CargoCultist
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May 9, 2011 12:13 AM
Er... yeah. Great choice of words there, Mr. Myers.
Posted by: otrame
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May 9, 2011 12:14 AM
@71:
You know the movie (using the term very loosely) they made from Heinlein'sStarship Troopers had precisely one good thing about it. It showed a bunch of soldiers in the shower. Some of them were male, some of them were female, and no one thought anything about it. I liked that scene. Hope the day comes when it is real, because that will mean that considers women to be people and women are no longer considered at risk of rape if a guy gets a load of her tits.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
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May 9, 2011 12:23 AM
Er . . . yeah, CargoCultist. "Poof" is a very well known word with a very well known meaning. I'd say that it was used correctly in this example.
Posted by: Teshi
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May 9, 2011 1:00 AM
In many ways, being a teacher, especially a primary school teacher, is significantly more intrustive in your everyday life than being most things.
Everything you do in the area where you teach or on the internet has to be carefully arranged to not be offensive in case some overzealous parent gets a hold of what you do in your free time.
I teach Religious Education. Enough said.
Posted by: pteryxx
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May 9, 2011 1:43 AM
re Samantha Vimes back @25:
Yes, get an alternate email or three. I have several online identities, because I also associate with kids sometimes... can't have a freak encouraging the little ones to think or accept or anything like that.
re Petzl @27:
A pack of teachers won't let a teacher be fired for incompetency, because that might happen to THEM and we can't have that. A pack of teachers will let a teacher be fired for being controversial, because that would NEVER happen to THEM. it's fairly basic mob rule, I think.
Posted by: chaseacross
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May 9, 2011 3:05 AM
"In the beginning, God created idiots. That was for practice. Then he created school boards."
-Mark Twain
Posted by: Alice Bluegown
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May 9, 2011 5:06 AM
'Shirts and Skins' was a favourite method of one notorious PE teacher at my secondary school for separating the boys from the boys, as it were. He also, occasionally, required said boys to remove their shorts along with their shirts, but that's a whole other story.
And is "poof" poised to make a comeback as derogatory slang? I haven't heard that one for decades...
Posted by: Nancy New
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May 9, 2011 7:57 AM
How about this one? This teacher was fired (music), and I believe justifiably so.
He was writing and posting teacher-"graduated student" porn on his Xenga page under a pseudonym. He was discovered by a student back-checking visiters to her Xenga page--he had searched for "Mr. S" and the name of the HS, which is how he'd found her Xenga site--she surmised he'd been looking for references to himself--another young male teacher at the school was getting a whole lot of buzz from female students. She thought he was looking to see what the girls thought about him.
When the student looked over the postings, she realized who he must be (he'd been her home room teacher the year before). She immediately cut and pasted all his entries into a document and saved it. When she went back to the site later in the day, he'd taken it down--which she took as evidence that she'd been right.
He'd described his own musical tastes and how he listened to music in his classroom, the movies he liked, his classroom and its sound system, members of the school administrative staff--and stated in the notes to the stories he posted that he didn't know what he'd do if a student approached him sexually--and that characters in stories he was writing were based on current students.
The student who discovered his postings did so at the beginning of the winter holidays. She wrote an explanatary email to the school principle and attached the copied entries; the first day back after vacation, he was called into the office, and didn't go back to his classroom. I don't know if he was fired or allowed to resign.
As a parent of a student at the school, I didn't have a problem with him writing porn, or posting porn. I DID have a big problem with his writing porn about student-teacher sexual relationships, even if they were "graduated" students. I had an enormous problem with his admitting that he didn't know what he'd do if a student approached him, and with his basing porn on the personalities and descriptions of current students.
To top it off, of course--in our very religious conservative community, this guy was public about his status as a "christian" and held a 2nd job as a church choir director.
Posted by: R. Schauer
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May 9, 2011 8:11 AM
There is this elephant in the room that I keep running into after reading about situations like this, namely that education has indeed become part of the panopticon described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish.
http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Punish-Prison-Michel-Foucault/dp/0679752552
The panopticon being a cruel prison enclosing all and seeks to control behaviors through censoring, grading, sorting, reporting, classifying, lying, bullying, coercing, intimidating and manipulating others for power, profit and control. I don't wholesale subscribe to Foucault's structuralism, communism or whatever "ism" but his insights on govt's social controls through social institutions such as sanctioned religions, courts, prisons, schools and the military is revealing and historically very accurate. I wish only that I had the ability to summarize it here better but hey, it's only 3-4 hundred pages to begin with. Unfortunately one thing about Foucault is pointed out by E.O. Wilson in his book Consiliance is Foucault fails to connect this panopticon further to the neurological/physiological level and the human evolutionary processes involved.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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May 9, 2011 8:12 AM
It's the same problem as in politics. We're not really in a position to judge a teacher on their teaching qualities any more than we are a politician on their policies. However, we have a strong intuitive sense of character and of what makes someone moral. Unfortunately it means absurdities like this... but so long as some people feel morally vindicated, right?
Posted by: rainyday
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May 9, 2011 9:11 AM
I honestly think that teachers have one of the hardest jobs in the world. You get overworked, under payed and you're under constant scrutiny from close minded people who act without thinking. I think teaching is more a calling these days than an actual job. Especially when you're a science teacher who teaches scientific subjects that are in conflict with religion. Fortunately that problem is less big here in the Netherlands, but it's still a difficult job.
Posted by: legistech
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May 9, 2011 9:48 AM
Not that this isn't stupid -- because it is -- but keep in mind it is still harder to get fired from a teaching job than a typical corporate job. Teachers have some remote protection in the form of a union contract. An office worker fired because they wrote erotica on their spare time, or because they had a sordid past, could be fired without it ever showing up on the evening news.
Unfortunately, union contracts sometimes have "moral turpitude" clauses, which are general clauses signing away any of your past, present and future "morality". It's not real morality, since it's just whatever the community feels like attacking at the time. IMO, they shouldn't have these clauses at all, especially since a teacher contract is only collectively bargained.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 9, 2011 10:19 AM
Do you people even know me? Sorry, I thought it was obvious with the Atlas Shrugged references how I was mocking the anti-teacher assholes like Gov Walker.
Posted by: Thomathy
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May 9, 2011 10:24 AM
The comments on this woman's (Melissa Petro's) article are rather hateful (see for yourself) or are intentionally missing the point.
Take this one, by SVS-NS. Sure this poster makes a point regarding the euphemism 'sex work' (I guess), but I believe that the straw man that's been erected in response to Petro's use completely misses the wider point that so-called sex work shouldn't be the 'slave-trade' that it is and that people like Petro, who are elucidating on the subject, are trying to change the social response to it and the laws surrounding it exactly in order to undo the pervasive 'slave-trade' that is 'sex work'.I can't put my finger on exactly what goes through the minds of people who create arguments against nonextant positions, but this quote from SVS-NS probably sums it up,It's pretty clear that Petro's not doing the equating, but that this poster is and because of the misunderstanding (?) of Petro's position, even thinks that there's a problem with her activism. I would think someone concerned about the perils of prostitution, of the forced-sex-trade, would be open to a voice on the issue that attempts to destigmatise it so that society can talk openly and honestly about it so that the grievous problems with 'sex work' can be addressed, but apparently if someone isn't voicing the perils of 'sex work', they're promoting a, "feminist insistence on the term 'sex-work'", and a public perception of the , "'prostitute as empowered entrepreneur' rather than face the reality of the millions who suffer in the slave trade." The obvious logical fallacy inherent in that reasoning is rather indicative of the very problem with 'sex work' that got Petro fired in the first place, and this person is right there with those who fired her, insistent on the stigmatization and while concerned for the victims of some 'sex work', is incapable of seeing the deeper problems that perpetuate the victimisation that so bothers the poster.Posted by: k-dub
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May 9, 2011 10:27 AM
Nothing to add except Bloodless Mannequins = a pretty good band name.
Posted by: Kevin
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May 9, 2011 10:33 AM
Of course, it wasn't all that long ago (your grandparent's era), that a female teacher who married was required to leave the job.
Only virgin females allowed, thank you.
Posted by: Thomathy
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May 9, 2011 10:55 AM
Nancy New, do you have anything other than your bald anecdote? Like a link? It's a lovely story you tell, but there is no particular reason that anyone should take it seriously, and even as a hypothetical, I can't help but be rather more peeved about the very nosy student, your prudishness and your reaction to something that you probably can't even substantiate, namely, 'his admitting that he didn't know what he'd do if a student approached him.' Not that anyone would know, since all you offer is your anecdote.
Also, I really can't stand prudishness. It's not like you had to read the stories he wrote ...wait, you didn't, did you? You just have a problem that he wrote fictional -And they were fictional, unless he actually did the stuff in the story? But he didn't, did he?- sex themed stories about non-students, characters who could be based on current students.If the teacher were a credible threat, the stories would hardly be the problem. But again, there's no way anyone could evaluate that (because you posted a bald anecdote), and the reaction of that nosy girl and the community probably cloud any way to evaluate whether he'd engage a student sexually or not. He didn't even do anything criminal to loose his job. Apparently, it's enough that a student discovered he writes sex themed stories that makes mothers squirm.How concerned were you, exactly, to really find out whether he was a credible threat to students? Not concerned enough, apparently, to find out if he resigned or got fired. Funny that, isn't it? That you're so concerned about what he wrote and what he allegedly admitted to, but never bothered to investigate his termination. It must be enough for you to know that the sex story author isn't teaching at your child's school anymore.Posted by: Thomathy
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May 9, 2011 11:13 AM
Nancy New, it seems pretty clear that, if you don't, as you say, have a problem with the fact that he was writing stories (even though you contradict yourself by saying that you do, when you believe that the characters are based on students and if the characters are non-students, all of which you say his stories contain), then that shouldn't really matter to you in the case of his firing (or resignation). It seems, according to your anecdote, that the more salient reason for which he no longer works at the school, is that he made obvious allusions to his real life and the school itself, which would probably bother administrators enough to get rid of him. But that's not the sticking point for you, it seems, and presumably wouldn't have been for them and the community at large. It really does, despite your claim otherwise and due to your obvious contradiction, seem that the problem is directly related to his writing stories that involve sex. I'm really so bothered by prudishness that I really can't take anything about that anecdote seriously, especially when you try to conceal that prudishness by stating that you aren't bothered by his writing stories and immediately after that describe how his stories really bother you. It's annoying and dishonest and, further, I'm not convinced that you had any real reason to believe that he was actually a threat.
Everyone, I'm sorry if I've somewhat repeated myself here.Posted by: Gracie05
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May 9, 2011 11:23 AM
Teachers also have been known to have sex with their much younger underaged students, beat their students until they are bloody, have affairs with students and kidnap them (in one of our local areas)attempt to kill then bury them thinking they are dead but this young teen survived and the teacher put in prison, and...this just in they knowingly have affairs with married men (my husband)on a regular basis destroying real families and lives. I thought teachers were supposed to foster family life but this takes the cake. I really HATE when people show only one side of a coin! It is very undermining and dishonest. If you want to know the TRUTH about teachers go on line and see for yourself. There are teachers out there on adultery sites. I don't care what this friggin writer thinks or feels...sometimes the personal life of someone who is supposed to be a role model is very important to their job. Students are directly affected in so many ways when a teacher breaks up their parents/family lives, or when a teacher has an affair and tries to kill them when they try to break up. It never ceases to amaze me how people can just write up shit and get published!
Posted by: otrame
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May 9, 2011 11:28 AM
Sorry, Thomapathy, I have to say that firing a good teacher because s/he writes porn is really stupid, but firing a teacher that says that he does not know how he would react if approached by a student for sex is not stupid. Frankly, it would creep me the fuck out. I am not a prude. I write slash fan fiction myself and enjoy reading similar porn. I think teachers have a right to do the same. The concern is not the porn (though the choice to write porn about students and teachers would bother me, especially when written by a teacher) it is that the teacher apparently has some question about whether he would refrain from having sex with students. That is the problem. Of course, I didn't see what he wrote, but putting the absolute best possible construction on what Nancy wrote, if I were his principal, I would be VERY concerned and would probably fire him myself.
Posted by: Peter Ashby
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May 9, 2011 11:30 AM
@Kevin
It wasn't only teachers, more generally a women was required to quit work when she married. It was only that teaching was one of the few professions a woman could even enter that teaching is linked with this. Lots of secretaries had to give up work when they married as well. Paradoxically there were positions that required a man to be married. The world was and is a strange, hypocritical place.
Posted by: Thomathy
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May 9, 2011 12:03 PM
Otrame, we don't know that what Nancy New says is true. I don't take anecdotes seriously. You'll notice how I wrote that above. You'll also notice, I hope, that I asked Nancy to substantiate and offer proof that the teacher actually said any such thing. Until then, I remain, I think, reasonably sceptical.
Now, if the teacher actually did admit that he wouldn't know what he'd do if engaged by a student, well, that's a rather damning admission. The answer should always be obvious; the answer should always be something amounting to, "I'd tell the student, 'No.'" That's easy. Nancy New, however, lies about not being bothered by the writing. I have a problem with that. That, to me, makes the rest of the story rather suspect. I don't believe it.Oh, otrame, the infix, it doesn't fit. I'm not apathetic. Did you want to substantiate your name-calling? Is it a one off thing? I hope so.Posted by: zshuford
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May 9, 2011 12:06 PM
PZ, I'm curious. Do you know whatever happened to Mr. Anderson?
Posted by: MrXerxes
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May 9, 2011 12:07 PM
Woah gracie05!
Though that indirectly raises another question - is a teacher simply meant to educate on their subject or are they supposed to be role models in 'good' lives as well?
I can't remember caring what role models my teachers were (none of my conscious role models was a teacher) and I struggle to care about what my child's teachers get up to, beyond them being trusted not to hurt my child while she is in their care
Posted by: MrXerxes
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May 9, 2011 12:13 PM
Thinking more on it, it depends on what people think constitutes harm. And then you're right back in the moral majority different = bad metric
Posted by: MrXerxes
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May 9, 2011 12:14 PM
Thinking more on it, it depends on what people think constitutes harm. And then you're right back in the moral majority different = bad metric
Posted by: dogsmycopilot
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May 9, 2011 12:14 PM
"All of your public school teachers go home at the end of the school day and have private lives, where they do things that really aren't at all relevant to your 8 year old daughter, your 15 year old son. That you pay taxes to cover their salaries for doing their jobs during work hours does not entitle you to control the entirety of their lives."
My only problem is this isn't applied to anyone at the moment so why should teachers get a pass? Right now there are many potential workers sitting at a drug screening place. There's a few in my city, I'm sure there are a few in yours. This dehumanizing and deplorable practice means that almost every company thinks they have the right to delve into what you do (or don't do) behind closed doors and after hours. They aren't paying you for all 24 hours but they think they have the right to know what you're doing. Never mind your views on drugs. The bottom line is when we are all subject to these dehumanizing excursions into our private lives I have a hard time summoning sympathy for one individual simply because they are a teacher. All companies need to be put out of our private lives. All. Out of everyone's life.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 12:18 PM
Gracie05,
Wow, using caps like that... no not gonna go there.
So... you blame all teachers for an affair that your husband had? He bonked a teacher, are you also insinuating that all members of his profession are going to cheat on their significant others?
Look, the point of the post is that teachers are people. To condemn all of them because an individual hurt you is pretty childish. Can't you tell the difference?
And what the fuck does it have to do with how good a teacher this person was? I'm assuming that they weren't gettin' it on in front of children, for shit's sake.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 9, 2011 12:28 PM
@Audley and Gracue05
At risk of having my feminism card revoked: from my sample set of Gracie05's attitude and behavior I sort of doubt it was the teacher's actions that were the foundation of her marital problems.
Posted by: wylann
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May 9, 2011 12:29 PM
Some teachers have an unhealthy obsession with cephalopods....;-)
If we, as a society, are really going to expect some public workers to be held to an unrealistic standard in their private lives, allow me to expand that list.....
Police officers
Prosecutors
Judges
and of course, politicians. =) (arguably, there's a fair amount of this already).
Posted by: Illuminata, féministes fin de jeu
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May 9, 2011 12:35 PM
One wonders if any of the male teachers or administrators or board members who purchased the services of sex workers would be treated in such a way.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 12:36 PM
Ing,
If you're implying that there could have been martial problems between Gracie and her husband before the teacher was even in the picture, then my arm chair marriage therapist totally agrees with you. Whether or not Gracie recognized it is another question.
(I hope you're not laying all the blame on Gracie.)
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 9, 2011 12:37 PM
@Illuminata
From my personal data points. (disclaimer) male teachers who have affairs with students get promoted so as to remove them from contact with students.
Posted by: fuckin' kristinc
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May 9, 2011 12:39 PM
Yeah, heaven forbid her experiences give her empathy (something this commenter clearly lacks) for children in similar positions. Gah.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 9, 2011 12:39 PM
@Audley
In the meta term I do mean the first one
In a joking way I'm taking a jab at Cracie's irrational WTF crazy personality (from what I've seen)
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 12:44 PM
Ing,
You know, it's sad that she's prolly a hit-and-run poster. I want to see how far down the rabbit hole her irrationality goes.
Posted by: Steven Mading
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May 9, 2011 12:45 PM
She admitted to a horrible shameful past that is inexcusibly immoral and detrimental to society.
No, I'm not talking about being a hooker - that's nothing. I mean the bit where she admitted she wrote articles for the Huffington Post. For shame.
Posted by: raven
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May 9, 2011 12:48 PM
So have ministers and priests. In fact, ministers and priests are getting a bit notorious for stalking kids for sex. It almost seems like they consider it one of the perks of the job.
Ministers have also been known to kill their wives or vice versa. There have been several cases just recently.
Do you have a point or did you just feel like ranting and raving?
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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May 9, 2011 12:53 PM
Gracie05:
Uh...this is a blog, Gracie. People can write whatever they want on their blog, no approval by a publisher required.
You seem to have blithely missed the point of the post. By miles. Educators are people, just like everyone else. Some people make lousy personal decisions. It happens.
Posted by: Illuminata, féministes fin de jeu
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May 9, 2011 12:54 PM
I fully agree. I am always immediately suspiscious of people who blame the person their SO cheated with (or in this case the entire population of people who happen to share the same occupation of said person), instead of the cheater themselves.
Posted by: raven
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May 9, 2011 12:56 PM
I'm not claiming all ministers or their wives are homicidal maniacs. But it isn't unusual to see news reports of them murdering each other.
Now about clergymen stalking kids for sex, we all know that is all too common. I wouldn't let my kids near one.
Posted by: KG
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May 9, 2011 1:01 PM
My only problem is this isn't applied to anyone at the moment so why should teachers get a pass?
You have problems sympathising with someone subject to the same sort of tyrannical intrusion in their private life by their employer as you?
WTF is wrong with you?
Posted by: Nancy New
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May 9, 2011 1:10 PM
Re #'s 90, 92, 94
This happened right before Christmas, about 4.5 years ago. I've got a copy of the entries the teacher in question posted.
The student who tracked back to his site wasn't being "nosy." She was being careful--tracking back a stranger who had visited her Xanga site. If he hadn't been searching for self-references, the student wouldn't have found his postings. If he'd been smart enough to disguise his story-
settings more carefully, she wouldn't have been able to pinpoint who he was. But he was careless and stupid.
The student provided me with the posted entries to get my advice on what to do about what she'd found--whether to report the teacher to the school administration or not.
I advised the student that she should provide an explanation of how she found it and a copy of the file to the school administration. What the school administrators did was the school's business. I know the teacher was either fired or made to resign--and I don't know any more than that because the matter was handled internally.
In reading the entries, three things stood out to me (other than he couldn't spell) when I read the material.
1) He has a high level of interest in sex with teenaged girls; an interest strong enough that he wrote about it. In intro notes to a story, he stated uncertainity as to how he'd react if he was approached by one of his students, and posted that statement of self-doubt in his ability to control his own behavior related to sexualy activity with underaged students on a public website.
2) By his own admission, he was basing descriptions of fictional sexual partners for himself as a "fictional character" (the stories were all told first person, with himself as a character) on current, underaged students at the school.
3) He was indiscrete (and stupid) enough to post such materials on a public forum, with recognizable descriptions of school facilities, personnel, and (quite possibly, if you were a student or teacher there) other students. It's not a huge school. He was a music teacher--it's a small department.
He clearly knew that he had put his job at risk, since after he checked his own site visitors later that same day, he took down the site.
I'm far from a prude. If his porn writing was virtually anything else, I wouldn't have recommended she report him--but the man was a public school teacher, in a position of authority over students, who was this interested in sex with teenaged girls as a subject for writing, and yes, I have a problem with that. If she hadn't reported him herself, I would have.
Posted by: Yoav
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May 9, 2011 1:10 PM
And senator Jim demented of SC think this policy should be reestablished.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 1:35 PM
One of my favorite teachers was my eighth grade English teacher. He is gay and, at the time, he lived with his partner right in town. This was in the mid-90's and no one seemed to give two flying fucks about it.
But, like everything else that's been going on in this country, we are backsliding horribly. What the fuck is wrong with people??
Posted by: Illuminata, féministes fin de jeu
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May 9, 2011 1:40 PM
[Insert obligatory "Idiotocracy" reference here]
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 1:44 PM
(And, of course, I realize that YMMV. I wouldn't presume to think that his situation would have been the same if he lived in a less progressive area.)
Posted by: Barnegat Blummis
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May 9, 2011 1:44 PM
Fantastic. I agree a lot, however: I have had many teachers. Most of whom had their own quirks and peculiar practices. However, I had two of the worst teachers in the world at Brooklyn Tech HS. One was Mr. Henry Wood. He was tall, dressed old-fashionedly, had a British accent and "taught" math. He was a furious man, shouting at anyone who got a wrong answer. He'd stand over the student shouting at him how stupid and inadequate he was. The tirade would be several minutes long but felt like hours. His class was tense, agonizing and filled with failure for me. I curse his memory. He, too, threw erasers at kids. I'd fire his ass if I were the principal. (I'm a licensed principal today)
The second teacher, Mr. Richard Goldstone, was clearly gay. Now let me say that I have and always have had gay friends. Mr. Goldstone yelled at kids, deliberately embarrassed them and then, after having done the same to me, one day invited me to come home with him to his apartment in Manhattan to "review" my lessons. He taught English. I was smart enough to refuse. His punishments continued. I curse his memory, too. And his being gay had nothing to do with the horrible nature of his teaching methods.
At the same school, I had some of the best teachers of my life, Ms. Mary Heslin, Mr. Shuttlesworth, Mr. Kerrigan. They are standouts in my memory. So being weird isn't an excuse for firing, but it isn't a great recommendation, either.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 1:50 PM
Illuminata,
At least in Idiocracy it was assumed that this would take generations. Not 15 years!
It's almost like people are being deliberately stupid.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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May 9, 2011 1:57 PM
Barnegat,
So why mention that he was gay? Can't you see that you are attaching that descriptor to his awfulness as a teacher? You could have contained your relevant information so:
What essential point was carried by the text I removed?
Posted by: Illuminata, féministes fin de jeu
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May 9, 2011 2:05 PM
Perhaps it hasn't been merely 15 years. Perhaps we were convinced of our own non-Idiotocracy too soon.
;)
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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May 9, 2011 2:06 PM
Illuminata:
Now I haz a sad. :(
Posted by: Thomathy
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May 9, 2011 2:09 PM
Barnegat Blummis, his being gay had nothing to do with any of this and yet you write,
I get the impression that his being gay figures somewhere in there.Thanks for expanding the narrative, Nancy New, but it's still anecdotal. However, appreciating the further details, and having no intention of defending someone who admitted, implicitly, that he would engage sexually with a student, yeah, I think he ought to have been fired.On a separate note, related to the topic, is this thread going to be people's stories of bad teachers or are people going to defend the humanness of teachers and their private lives, or their public lives for that matter, against the unrealistic and demeaning demands of a public that doesn't like teachers to have lives a part from their work?It's appropriate, Nancy New, for that teacher to have been taken out of the school. It's sad, Barnegat Blummis, that you had two awful teachers. That's not what this is about. No one is defending awful teachers or teachers who'd abuse their students. What's being discussed is the rights of nominally decent teachers to talk about their pasts, or to have pasts at all, or to have lives that are private or otherwise outside of their work.We've all, I imagine, had bad teachers. Even the bad teachers are human and deserve better than to get fired for having a past or a life that doesn't fit a narrow view of perfection.Posted by: broboxley OT
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May 9, 2011 2:16 PM
How about the flip side of the coin, a teacher who is blatantly misinformed and I have to unlearn my daughter practically on a daily basis. So far this year I have written letters on the following subjects
holocaust denial
that it is demeaning for him to use the term innuit in reference to my daughter and forbidding her to refer herself yupik
its an insult to call an eskimo native american
whether one is an agw proponant or not the climate is changing rapidly (for a climate that is)
Lots of american history corrections,
he stated that there are no more Iroquois, I wrote and asked him if he would like to meet some and lent him a copy of the Iroquois constitution
Geography repairs to his work papers, on and on
He teaches Social Studies and geography
he is a white young earther and republican, I couldnt get him out with a backhoe
Posted by: Illuminata, féministes fin de jeu
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May 9, 2011 2:19 PM
(((Audley))) Don't be sad. I'm just in a misanthropic mood lately. To quote Olympia Dukakis: If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me. ;)
Posted by: Hairhead
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May 9, 2011 2:51 PM
Mmm, I didn't have any really bad teachers in the last couple years of high school. My French teacher was gay, in the open-secret kind of way. The usual high school jerks made fun of him, but he was very popular with the intelligent seniors, and he was never disciplined or threatened in any way.
On another note, my wife's prudish younger sister became outraged when saw a former teacher going out with one of her classmates, now graduated. It was clear they were having a sexual affair. It came out that the teacher, one of the younger and more popular ones, had had several affairs with FORMER students after they had graduated and BECOME ADULTS.
The younger sister wanted "something done about it", but nothing could be -- after all, all parties were consenting adults. My wife found this very amusing, and she had no problem with the teacher's [and the students'] actions, as she had started having sex (with me) when she was in Grade 11.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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May 9, 2011 3:07 PM
Broboxley,
You have all the luck don't you? Gah. I just don't know. Are the letter for you to let his superiors know about the crap he spews? Or just to attempt correction on him directly?
Posted by: Glodson
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May 9, 2011 3:16 PM
Here's what is bugging me about this whole issue: if she, Melissa Petro, had decried her sex industry past and became active in the Church, the same people that got her fired would single her out as a sort of champion.
So, instead of accepting a woman that is working to educate children and has done nothing wrong, instead she is made a pariah by a judgmental community... And isn't judging another person a no-no? I mean, I swear I read that in some old book that people seem to enjoy here in the US.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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May 9, 2011 3:49 PM
broboxley OT
In Canada we pretty much don't use "Eskimo" any more, unless you're talking about the football team.
but what's up with the Inuit/Yupik thing?
Didn't this guy have access to books or the interwebs?
Posted by: bananacat
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May 9, 2011 4:05 PM
Do we really have to go through the Idiocracy debunkment again? First of all, it's not true that poor people outbreed rich people. Second, intelligence is influenced more by education than by genes, except in the extreme cases on either end.
Posted by: Thomathy
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May 9, 2011 4:46 PM
Chigau, I don't get the Inuit/Yupik distinction either. Specifically, I don't know that it is demeaning to refer to people as Inuit.
It may be a cultural thing. Here in Canada, people self-identify as Inuit and it is the appropriate and expected term to be used when referring to the people collectively, their art, culture and language (though the language most widely spoken is Inuktitut, just as an individual Inuit is an Inuk).Apprently, in the US, Inuit is not used as it doesn't apply collectively to the two distinct indigenous peoples that have historically inhabited Alaska.Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/9b.4Xjx1zZuchkPdynqv5rSXZnqZ#2cc9a
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May 9, 2011 6:16 PM
She did writE positive articles about her past as a whore though, did she not? Hence, it stopped being her private life at that time. Thats what got her in trouble, the articles. This article is pretty disengenous.
Posted by: Brother Ogvorbis, Apropos of Nada
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May 9, 2011 6:36 PM
yahoomess:
So every part of your life that is known to others is directly applicable to your proffesional position?
Posted by: Agent Smith
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May 9, 2011 6:46 PM
Yahoomess, what really got her into trouble was the lunkheaded attitudes of those who thought the kids she taught might catch sex-worker cooties.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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May 9, 2011 6:46 PM
Yahoo,
So no sex worker could ever have a positive view of their experience as one? I note your terminology suggests you think not.
Posted by: Illuminata, féministes fin de jeu
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May 9, 2011 6:51 PM
bananacat - no, you don't. That's why I brought it up as a joke, as opposed to an actual attempt at an argument. It seems like someone makes that reference every chance possible (not here) and it grates on the nerves.
++
About as disingenuous as the implication that, because it wasn't private, it has any bearing at all on her current work or ability to perform her current work, I'd wager.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlr3fDs9SKkl4raiVIj78emqiZVKi-JHsM
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May 9, 2011 8:43 PM
This is why strong labour laws are needed to protect Teachers from being fired on a whim for no good reason. ie: protect their BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS.
Shame most americans seem to view protecting their own citezens basic needs and human rights as some bizzare and wholly imaginary sociaist threat.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 9, 2011 10:04 PM
Ok...maybe I'm wrong on this one. If so I request the Horde dog pile but...
Congratulations, you helped punish someone for thought crime. Yes he posted the stories foolishly and all and that's how you knew of them, but if he had left the fantasies stay inside his head do you still think he should be fire? This is a basic understanding of rational justice. You can't punish people for things they HAVN'T DONE.
And what's worse is that you've continued to promote the stigmitization of people with taboo fetishes. Why is this a problem? Well basically for the same reason it is to stigmatize a sex worker. How are they supposed to get aid if they need it? There's some serious study (from what I hear, Sven and others please correct if I'm wrong) that true pedophilia is a orientation (ie people can't choose NOT to be attracted in such a way). Now if you have someone who has basically this orientation which cannot be actualized or accepted by society lawfully or morally...how are they supposed to get help for addressing that? They can't go to psychiatrists because they're obligated to report potentially dangerous information. Same thing with this teacher, what flipping harm would it have done if he had fantasies he never acted on? I'm not up on the ethics of the situation, would a shrink see themselves as obligated to report a teacher who comes to them talking about student/teacher fantasies? I really don't think people should be punished for inaction...ugh I dunno it's a bugfuck issue.
I just wonder if there aren't people out there who have unlawful/illegal/immoral sexual fetishes but don't want to actually hurt anyone and are basically cut off from the normal psychiatric help others could get due to thought crime.
Posted by: vksperr
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May 10, 2011 9:19 AM
In 1947, when my mother was being interviewed for a elementary teaching job in the Buffalo City School, her friends told her to take off her engagement ring or she wouldn't be hired. In 1950, when the principal heard she might be pregnant (with me) she had to stand sideways in his office. As soon as she "showed" she had to resign.
Wow...we've come a long way...(sarcastically)
Thanks for the post PZ.
Posted by: broboxley OT
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May 10, 2011 10:25 AM
Dhorvath, I only addressed one letter to the priciple on the holocaust thing, the rest is just to correct his misinformation.
To the Canadian folks, Innuit is the non Indian indigenous folks who inhabit the Canadian Arctic. In Alaska there are many peoples, Inupiat cousins to the Inuit. Yupik who historically had enmity with Indians and Inupiat http://www.anchorage.net/821.cfm for reference. So the equivalence would be if one addressed all kaybekkers as anglais and stated that francais is a demeaning term so get used to being called anglais
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/5m_HivAjqvoshlmdvJV6UFqysnk-#a0fbf
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May 10, 2011 6:02 PM
simple, it's not what you know, it's who you know...sucks, but getting on top is mostly about being connected with the right people!
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 8:54 AM
@PZ Myers: "we have NO RIGHT to tell him what he can do outside of class."
Are you suggesting people shouldn't be able to freely decide who they will hire and associate with?
Are you suggesting their opinions are worth less than yours?
The problem here isn't freedom of association. The problem here is you've chosen to send your kids to the same school that a bunch of whackjobs send their kids to. And they're people too, they get as much say as you do.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 9:10 AM
#144
So if someone is gay they should be able to refuse to hire them that reason?
If someone is a part time circus performer on the weekends then that is a justifiable reason to be able to refuse hiring them even if it 100% does not affect their ability to do the job they are applying for?
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 9:37 AM
@145, sure, if someone doesn't want to do business with person X, they should be free to decline for any reason. Forcing people to do things they don't want to do is not compatible with freedom - and it goes in both directions.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 10:20 AM
So that whole civil rights thing was a big waste of time?
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 10:27 AM
@147, ah, nice canard! Obviously for government services that are monopolized by the state, discrimination can't be allowed. But there is competition in schooling (even if certain schools get a huge advantage via mandatory funding).
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 10:32 AM
No canard, you addressed the issue broadly
sure, if someone doesn't want to do business with person X, they should be free to decline for any reason.
So if an African-American man walks into a shop and the owner doesn't want to serve him, they should be able to refuse service?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 10:35 AM
sorry, blockquote fail there
No canard, you addressed the issue broadly
So if an African-American man walks into a shop and the owner doesn't want to serve him, they should be able to refuse service?
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 11:40 AM
@150, yes, of course. Just like someone who wants to read an unpopular book should be able to do that, or someone who wants to say unpopular things should be able to do that.
Business practices are a combination of speech and association. Which of those are you opposed to?
Posted by: Brownian
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May 11, 2011 11:49 AM
Argumentation is a combination of honesty and thought. Which of those are you opposed to?
Sometimes short-term restriction on freedoms (such as that of shop owners to refuse service) are meant to prevent long-term, more serious restrictions on freedom (such as that of minority groups to access goods and services).
For similar reasons, even hard-core economic libertarians agree with restricting the freedom of businesses to form monopolies.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 12:06 PM
Neither, but I'm also aware that without certain restrictions that economic or majority power left wholly unchecked can and will be used to discriminate against and deprive the un-empowered.
Restrictions are a part of a civilized society. You're restricted from any manner of things that can be considered and infringement on your personal rights for the benefit of the society as a whole.
So are you cool with how african americans were treated in the US pre Civil Rights act 1964 (I'm not going into the continued discrimination, yet)?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 12:11 PM
an not and.
typos for the win
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 11, 2011 12:15 PM
Not to mention that basically if all the stores in a given area were not handicap accessible you'd basically starve the crippled.
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 12:20 PM
@152 what? Monopolies? That's a pretty significant goalpost shift, especially considering I already specified that monopolies (such as government services) should be restricted in their discrimination.
@153 again, I'm opposed to legalized, forced discrimination such as Jim Crow laws. Private discrimination is a unfortunate side effect of freedom. The fact that you and I don't like it doesn't give us any more right to force other people to do things they don't want to do than racists have to force us to comply with Jim Crow laws.
@155 yes, clearly. That argument is as bone-headed as the argument that if weed were legalized everyone and their mother would instantly turn into violent sociopaths.
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 12:23 PM
Cliffnotes: freedom is awesome as long as people do what I like for them to do. Democracy is good as long as people vote for things I want them to vote for. When those things don't happen, something is broken and now we need to start bossing people around.
How close is that?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 12:39 PM
Posted by: Brownian
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May 11, 2011 12:39 PM
Not at all. You attempted to mischaracterise Rev BDC's argument for limited restrictions on business activities as being opposed to either freedom of speech or freedom of association.
I'm just pointing out that the similar restrictions of business freedoms (such as the restriction on monopoly-formation) imply neither opposition to freedom of speech nor freedom of association, and so it's clearly possible to hold those values and argue for limited restrictions, your inability to understand nuance and preference for hyperbole notwithstanding.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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May 11, 2011 12:49 PM
Jesus I'm on a typo roll today
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 1:02 PM
@159, yes, being for restrictions on freedom actually IS the same as being against freedom. You can't have it both ways.
That itch you're feeling is the cognitive dissonance.
And of course, the irony of you accusing me of having a preference for hyperbole when basically every response to my posts has been implicitly accusing me of being "cool" with racism is quite humorous. If your idea of nuance is "talking out of both sides of your mouth" then yes, I don't understand nuance.
@158, if you owned a lunch counter and there wasn't a government agent forcing you to serve minorities, would you? Is a law the only thing stopping YOU from being a racist? If the answer to either of those is "yes" then your concerns about "unchecked" discrimination seem overwrought. The fact that everyone here finds such behavior repugnant should be telling you something.
Posted by: Brownian
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May 11, 2011 1:29 PM
Actually, you have to have it both ways, since there is no possible world in which some freedoms aren't at odds with others. When two freedoms are in conflict, what the adults try to do is determine a course of action in which the freedom restricted is lesser than the freedom protected.
No, it's the irritation of yet another fucking libertarian gnat. Probably male. Probably in his early-20s. Most definitely not nearly as intelligent as he thinks.
Whether other people who aren't me (since I've not accused you of racism) are guilty of hyperbole has no bearing on whether or not you are engaging in hyperbole.
So that's not irony, that's you engaging in tu quoque. If you want to claim, "Hey, I'm just giving what I'm getting" then that's fine. It's your choice: honesty vs. pseudo-intellectual posturing.
Actually, a non-racist would answer 'yes' to the first and 'no' to the latter, but even if you didn't fuck up your little survey, the answers to those questions do not entail your conclusion about fears of 'unchecked' discrimination being overwrought.
How many here do you think would answer 'Yes' to the question "Should same-sex marriages be legal?" Does that mean concerns about unchecked discrimination against homosexuals is overwrought?
I know you're busy learning the names of logical fallacies so you can toss them out whenever you please, but you might want to take a course in statistics and learn that sometimes the sample population is not representative of the population of interest.
Posted by: mayostard
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May 11, 2011 2:35 PM
Browninan, nice. Confronted by your own logical inconsistencies, the obvious solution is to stoop to personal attacks and general nastiness. Generally such venomous reactions indicate that a nerve has been touched.
Please tell me what "two freedoms are in conflict" when I want to buy a car from my neighbor and he doesn't want to sell it to me? Are you suggesting that people have a right to unilaterally decide the terms of any transaction they want to engage in?
Yes, you caught me making a mistake, but you clearly understood the logic being presented.
If anything, the fact that a large population might NOT want to permit, say, same sex marriages, should give you a wake-up call about the shortcomings of democracy. I suppose if I pointed out current prudish restrictions regarding sexuality, recreational drug use, etc (including behavior standards for teachers!) are the "will of the people" you would disagree?
Posted by: KingUber
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May 11, 2011 5:24 PM
One of my chess teachers was a communist as he was from Russia. One day he brought a communist book into the chess club and one of the kids was looking at it and the other teacher joked and said "Alex, are you trying to indoctrinate the kids with your communist propaganda?"
Posted by: Brownian
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May 11, 2011 6:20 PM
Do you really think my calling you a 'fucking libertarian gnat' mean that you must be correct? Is that really how you think the world works?
I am perfectly content to leave you to operate under that assumption.
Posted by: mayostard
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May 12, 2011 10:34 AM
No, I don't think that it makes me correct. It just indicates that you yourself don't have any decent arguments left.
But now that you mention it, the fact that you jumped to the conclusion that I must think I'm right because of your lack of tact does indicate an increased probability of defective thought processes on your part.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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May 12, 2011 10:40 AM
Except people have in the past used such tactics to run undesirables out of town.
Posted by: Je craque
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May 19, 2011 2:03 AM
Late to the party, but this is exactly why I'm looking harder for a lab or field job than a teaching job despite my licensure.
I'll teach when this shit changes. Until then, I guess I'll have to have kids of my own, or something.
Posted by: Je craque
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May 19, 2011 2:51 AM
Also, PZ and the others who listed the teachers that made a difference to them, I do hope you voiced your appreciation to your former teachers personally at some point.
Posted by: certel3127
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June 14, 2011 11:09 PM
I want to thank you for being so unabashedly honest. Somehow education is taking a back seat in this country, when it should be a much more precious issue. Thank you for your honesty, your empathy and your outrage. Teachers should be thanked for their service, their enthusiasm and their hard work (especially for such little pay in most places). We should be thankful for every one of them!