Donald Charbonneau, a teacher at a Palm Beach, Florida middle school, watched as one of his students, a 13-year-old boy, Adrian Thompson, attacked classmate Joshua Poole, who was sitting at his desk. Thompson hit Poole several times, and threw him to the floor. Rather than intervening is the fight, Charbonneau left the room to get assistance. Poole says he now suffers from headaches and blurred vision from the prolonged attack, which was longer that it would have been had the teacher stopped the fight.
The school district released a statement explaining that the teacher was following a school policy dictating that staff can only intervene after undergoing “special training” on how to properly deal with such incidents.
Got it.
The policy is an irresponsible legal risk-reduction maneuver that places students at risk and turns teachers into spineless, equally irresponsible weenies.
David Charbonneau is, therefore, a cowardly, irresponsible weenie. Policy or not, he had an obligation as a teacher, an adult, and a human being not to allow a child in his charge to be attacked and beaten while he had the ability and the inherent authority to stop it. We can presume, based on the school’s policy and his fealty to it, that Charbommeau would also have meekly left the classroom if:
- Poole’s attacker had been hitting him with a book, a shoe, or a pair of brass knuckles…
- Thompson was trying to gouge Poole’s eyes out with his finger nails.
- Poole was being choked, and was turning blue…
- Thompson’s victim had been a girl…
- A student was trying to rape a girl, and has ripped off her blouse…
- Thompson’s victim was a handicapped student, or a much smaller boy…
- The victim of Thompson’s attack was screaming for help…
- The victim was bleeding copiously from the mouth and ears.
Right? None of these things would have prompted the risk-averse teacher from intervening, presumably, since he didn’t have the requisite “training.” And if he did intervene, his risk-averse employers would have punished him severely—no matter what potential tragedy he prevented. Surely it is unreasonable to expect a a teacher to ever make the health and safety of an innocent child a higher priority than his relations with his employers.
What’s that you say? My sarcasm is misplaced? The teacher would certainly have intervened if the attack turned deadly?
Fine: if you believe that, you entrust your child to such a teacher. I don’t and I won’t.
Teachers are responsible for the education and safety of the children in their charge. Bullies are common; young bodies are vulnerable; young emotions are unpredictable. A teacher who stands by and allows a student to undergo a beating without making the effort to break it up has breached a duty that no school policy can remove. I would try to stop such a fight—or beating—or rape– as a mere bystander on a street corner. Wouldn’t you? We have a duty as adults to stop children—any children from being harmed. If we are the adults in charge of the children, that duty is absolute.
The school’s policy and the teacher’s acquiescence to it represent more than an abdication of decency and responsibility for the educational system. It degrades the ancient cultural obligations of the mankind to protect children, even at personal risk.
Now Poole’s parents are suing. Hooray. The school administrators and their lawyers, commentators say, were only trying to protect the school from lawsuits—in case, for example, one of the children claimed to be injured in the act of breaking up the fight. Good plan: now they are being sued for the consequences of not stopping the fight. I hope they get a jury of parents who are properly horrified by this case, understand how craven and warped the school’s policy is, and recoil at the deficit of character and human decency any teacher who followed it has exhibited. I hope that the punitive damages put the school district into bankruptcy and its decision-makers in the unemployment rolls, and I hope that the teacher is soon working in a setting where he doesn’t ever have to exercise discretionary judgment in protection of a child…say, as a toll booth worker, or a telemarketer. I hope the resulting case permanently reminds school districts that they may not make students the victims of their petty, venal, brain-dead and cruel efforts to avoid judgment, commitment and responsibility.
Pop quiz, teachers!
a. Which is better—being sued for preventing potential serious injury to a child who was in your charge, or being sued for leaving like a scared rabbit when the fight broke out?
b. Which conduct calls into question the crisis-handling ability of teachers, their commitment to the welfare of their students, and the wisdom of parents entrusting their children in their charge?
c. Which conduct shows an educational system pathologically focused on self-preservation rather than the interests and care of its students?
I know—too easy. Well, for everyone but school administrators, that is.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack, I greatly admire your ability to bring fresh indignation to your Alarms. In this case, it might have been increased to “put the school district into bankruptcy” by the fact that you’re a dad of a school-ager but that’s your privilege. I don’t think it would make much difference.
This is the blunting of the other side of the sword that once upon a time cut through red-tape and tangled morality to preserve and protect the psyches as well as the bodies of our children — the one that allowed (yea, encouraged) the teacher to actually touch a crying child, pat one in encouragement, hug a sad one, grab hold of another to stop him falling down the stairs, pick up and carry an injured youngster to the infirmary. Certainly it was the teacher’s responsibility to intervene instantly and to the best of his/her ability, in any situation that put a student in jeopardy. I’m not going into the sick overreactions that scared these DON’T TOUCH! policies into effect but they did become practice from pre-school on — to the extent that no one dare lay a hand for any reason on a child not their own (property).
So here’s the natural outcome: When physical barriers are put up, emotional barriers grow up around them. You can’t deny caring and supportive touching without denying protective touch as well.
And thus the barrier thickens on both sides — I wonder if the other children in the class or Joshua himself actually trusted that their teacher would intervene. Why should they? The Genovese Syndrome learned early and well!
I think that’s a good diagnosis, Penn. If I could be sure someone would always supply such useful analysis, my posts could be 50% shorter—and stick to ethics.
I hesitated on the bankruptcy wish, I admit. But schools that only care about dollars can only be frightened into responsibility by financial peril, I fear.
I just like the part at the end of the article where it mentions that BOTH students were suspended for 6 days. One was suspended for 6 days for seriously injuring a student who had been seated at his desk. The other was suspended for 6 days because we don’t want to get all judgemental in cases like this and we will just punish both equally.
Yes—thank you; I should have mentioned that. One student jumps the other AT HIS DESK and both get suspended. Tell me again why we should send more $$ to the schools to be spent by people like this?
The key word here is “responsibility”. Adults have an inherent responsibility to protect children from harm… including harm at the hands of other children. If that doesn’t extend to the classroom, then where? And fears of litigation? What does it take for this school system to understand that there are higher concerns involved here? A dead child, perhaps? This story brings to mind a now 10 year old bumper sticker phrase which enjoyed nation wide popularity: “Palm Beach County. We put the “duh” in Florida.”
I think this kind of story insults every teacher that has acted heroically in the face of a school shooting. Teachers have died to save their students and the insinuation from Palm Beach is that they don’t want any of those teachers there. Donald couldn’t have known that the situation wouldn’t escalate where weapons could become involved, so at the very least, he should have had a duty to remain present and watch the fight to make sure it didn’t.
I’m reminded of basic 911 emergency training. If you are the first one there, if you have taken charge of the situation, you delegate someone else, someone specific, to go and retrieve help. Then you have fulfilled your obligation to aid the victim and you can begin deciding how else to help the situation. He doesn’t have to break up the fight, he can throw himself on the victim and provide cover. What special training does one need to help another human being? And why isn’t the special training mandatory for every single teacher prior to the school year beginning?
So, why would a teacher NOT break up a fight? What would happen in recourse if a teacher DID break up a fight and was injured instead of following the employer’s procedures?
Read this and see how the court systems and districts treat you if you do not follow THEIR procedure.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/12/10/32502.htm
Remember, you are only an employee. You MUST act within the law and regulations of your job.
True, most teachers would have stepped in. Teachers that have stepped in before have been sued successfully by parents. Teachers that have stepped in have lost their jobs. Teachers that have stepped in have been injured.
So, what do you sacrifice for that kid? Your entire career? Nothing that happens in the classroom is an easy call except to follow policy. If you do it by the rules, you have some protection. If you try to protect a student, you can lose on so many levels.
Absolutely right — teachers’ injuries are often not covered by insurance if the policy is to not intervene. Some “3rd graders” are bigger than the teachers.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/kentucky-rep-dewayne-bunch-critically-wounded-high-school/story?id=13358860
Nice to have a high-horse in this area. The last time I tried to intervene in a fight between students in my classroom, the girl with the padlock-in-a-sock busted my glasses and gave me a black eye, and the guy with the box cutter sliced open my arm. The phone in the room did not work, and The school administrators told me I was under no obligation to intervene, so any damage I sustained was on my own volunteer responsibility. I am no longer a teacher.
Once, a parole officer in plain clothes walked into my middle school (5th grade) classroom looking for a student, and half of the kids in my class tried to hide behind their books. I realized that not only did half of the kids in my class know who the guy was, but obviously had an official relationship with him.
Due to privacy laws and children, the courts and school district could not tell me how many or which of my students were active criminals. I asked the police liaison officer about how many of my students were active criminals and he admitted between one-third to one-half of all my students were either convicted criminals, or had been through the court system for crimes ranging from drug offenses to felony theft, assault and battery, up to murder. And he couldn’t tell me which ones.
That’s a pretty grim story, Harmon.