At 11:52 AM 3/20/99 -0500, you wrote:
>John, I hear your experience in high school and I honor that as yours.
Honor? Wouldn't it have been easier to say, my experience was different
than yours?
I have not said that it wasn't malicious in any way, and that it shouldn't
be stopped by authorities. However, assuming an evil, malicious
boy/innocent, frightened girl paradigm. . .well, we all know what
assumption does. All I am saying is that at my school, there was a more
dynamic element in terms of harassment and harassing. Boy/Girl, Girl/Boy,
Girl/Girl, Boy/Boy. Not all sexual, but influenced by the hormonal rage as
well as sociological uniqueness of Western society.
But keep in mind what teachers face in today's society. In my parents day,
the teacher said something, and their parent's stood behind it. The old
idea was that the teacher would swat you for something, and then your
parents would swat you for getting swatted is long gone. I've overheard
conversations where the parents stood behind their children and threatened
to sue the schools, even when the children were wrong. There is no support
of teachers in public schools (private is a slightly different matter,
because the parents have a financial vested interested in the school and
indirectly a more vested interest in their children's success).
Now, you're a teacher and you overhear something in the hall. You have two
choices: stop the incident, punish the offender, and face a lawsuit by the
offender's parents, _or_ stay in the shadows, and see the parents sue the
school district. The parents don't back you, the administrators don't
back you, the community doesn't back you.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Apr 12 2002 - 15:14:16 EDT