I recently heard about a school board undergoing internal strife and personal turmoils because an award winning teacher was convicted of having sex with students. They want to improve methods of review to make sure that never happens again.
This is a nonsense thing. How on earth could an interview possibly weasel out the applicants penchant for pedophilia? Just as such an interview will not reveal the avenues toward award winning pedagogy.
The truth, I believe, is embarrassment and perhaps a sense of shame. Their immediate concern here then is appease the gullible public as quick as possible with a sense that they are doing something concrete to protect their children and. . .please don’t fire us.
I don’t understand this attitude that things can be regulated into non-existence. Shit happens and for the most part there is not a lot that can be done about it until it happens. However, what can be done and what people never think of is create a safety net for victims to fall into when inevitable shit happens.
What this school board is proposing without realizing it is, perhaps, thought crime. Is unacted upon thought a crime? Interviewing an individual for things he might but has not done seems ludicrous to me. Because in this instance I can only assume the teacher had never indulged in such activities before; if she had then she would have a record…ergo how did she become a teacher or is able to continue teaching with such a record? As such the problem is further up the chain than an individual school board.
Still this was an interesting item for me to think through.
Did I get it right though?