Education

Unethical Quote of the Week: Drew Curtis’ Fark

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

“Seduced by your teacher at 16 thereby robbing of your childhood, oh yeah that’s surely worth 10 million…”

—Drew Curtis’ Fark, satirical news aggregation site, commenting on a mother’s 10 million dollar lawsuit against Brooklyn and the teacher who had repeated sex with the mother’s 16-year-old son, whom she was supposed to be tutoring.

Erin Sayer—teacher, child molester, sex fantasy. “How to GO kid! I’d hit that, for sure!”

Let me begin by saying that Fark is one of my favorite sites. It is consistently irreverent and funny, and its news links have inspired some of the most interesting exchanges on Ethics Alarms. Let me also say that I understand that the point of the site is to make snarky, often irreverent, sometimes obscene and intentionally outrageous tongue-in-cheek comments about news stories  trivial, major and odd, and that for the most part, it accomplishes its mission with wit and good humor.

This comment, however, is wrong, unethical, because whatever value it has as humor is outweighed by the harmful attitude it reinforces. Whether it is the  sentimental, , “Summer of 42” myth of the beautiful right-of passage of a teen-aged boy with the help of a loving, lovely, adult woman, or the macho “All right–I sure would have loved to have had a roll in the sack with MY hot high school teacher!” reaction of the locker room crowd, the idea that an adult teacher seducing and having sexual relations with a minor student is anything but sexual assault, rape, and a dastardly breach of trust, position and power does affirmative and continuing harm. The currency and resiliency  of this enabling attitude (read the comments to any online news story about a female teacher prosecuted for having sex with a student) emboldens sexual predators in the schools, reinforces an indefensible double standard ( a male teacher who has sex with a female student is an unequivocal villain, but a boy being raped by a female teacher is a lucky stiff) ) and worst of all, makes student victims more vulnerable.

The cultural assumption that a boy who is seduced by a teacher has been given some kind of gift is in the same category as the claim that women who are raped secretly “want it.” It is important that this theme be rejected, which means that websites like Fark shouldn’t reinforce it even in jest, because the jest does reinforce it.  Hitting communities, schools and teachers with tough jury verdicts is an essential part of eliminating this far too common crime in our schools. Ten million dollars in damages properly states how wrong and intolerable the conduct is, and like all forms of rape, it is nothing to laugh at.

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Facts: Fark

Source, Graphic: Daily Mail

(Again, thanks to Jeff Field for catching a typo!)

Unethical School Disciplinary Decision of the Year: Highland Middle School, Anderson, Indiana

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

This story just can’t be true as reported—can it? Please, please, let it be a hoax!— but every source confirms it, so I am awarding an early Ethics Alarms 2012 Award for the Unethical Disciplinary Decision of the Year to the addled, ethically-inert and incompetent administrators of the Highland Middle School of Anderson, Indiana. I am doing this now, instead of late December, when the rest of the awards are handed out, because no school, anywhere, could make a more unjust and outright stupid disciplinary ruling, this year, or any year.

By the way, this horrifying tale is a rare “Naked Teacher Principle”-“No-Tolerance”  policy hybrid. And what do you get when you cross these two? Jaw-dropping, blood-pressure-spiking incompetence! Imagine: Continue reading →

The American Family Association Snaps

/ Jack Marshall / 98 Comments

Oh-oh. The American Family Association  is losing it….

The American Family Association, which holds that it supports “traditional values,” has been feuding with the liberal, diversity and civil rights-minded Southern Poverty Law Center, which designated it a “hate group.” In turn, the AFA has called the SPLC some other nasty things. They really don’t like each other.

Not liking an adversary group is hardly unusual, but detesting one so much that it robs you of whatever common sense, rationality and proportion you have is both self-destructive and unprofessional, and a clear sign that the group’s judgment is poisoned by emotion and non-ethical considerations. This is what the American Family Association is demonstrating now.

It is difficult to imagine a school program less sinister than “Mix It Up at Lunch Day.” One of the efforts sponsored by Teaching Tolerance, the October 30 nationwide effort has encouraged schools for eleven years to urge students  to sit with kids they don’t normally eat lunch with, giving members of different groups and cliques an opportunity to branch out, and to get to know students who are different from themselves. The phenomenon of high school gradually sorting itself into exclusive groups of various levels of social status was neatly captured in “Mean Girls,” where the school’s lunch table cliques were divided into “freshmen, ROTC guys
preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, Cool Asians, Varsity jocks, Unfriendly black hotties, Girls who eat their feelings, Girls who don’t eat anything, Desperate wannabes, Burnouts, Sexually active band geeks,” and, of course, the dreaded Plastics, the social queens, and the Outcasts. “Mix It Up at Lunch Day,” properly handled, is a splendid idea.

But, you see, it is the inspiration of the dreaded Southern Poverty Law Center, so the AFA has decided that it must be evil. Pointing out that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “fanatical pro-homosexual group, ” the association is urging parents to block their children’s schools’ efforts to hold “Mix It Up” day, by complaining, protesting and, if necessary, keeping their children home. Continue reading →

Our Incompetent News Media, Making Us Dumber

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Let’s see: what is the proper and fair response to this? Is it…

“So now do we understand why the U.S, is lagging in science proficiency?”

Is it…

“Why in the world do we pay any attention to the judgment of these people?”

Is it..

“Hey…maybe NBC really DID edit that 911 call so it made George Zimmerman sound racist by mistake!”

Is it…

“I don’t get it…what ‘s wrong with that graphic?”

Or is it…

“There are so many unqualified, ignorant and careless people holding significant jobs in this country that it’s amazing things aren’t worse than they are.”

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Pointer: Instapundit.

 

 

Ethics Quiz: The Conundrum of the Anti-Gay Marriage Diversity Officer

/ Jack Marshall / 121 Comments

…But be sure to think about it who will see it before you do!

Ethics, law, fairness and common sense are locked in a complex battle in this story, which comes out of Gallaudet University, the famous Washington D.C. school for the deaf.

Dr. Angela McCaskill, Gallaudet’s chief diversity officer, has been put on administrative leave and may face dismissal because the school learned that she had signed a petition opposing Maryland’s same-sex marriage law.  McCaskill apparently signed the petition at her church after her preacher spoke against gay marriage. A measure is on the Maryland ballot that could overturn the recently-passed state law approving same-sex marriage.

Does she have an absolute right to sign a petition in favor or opposing any political or social policy? Yes. Is this a petition something a university official in charge of promoting diversity is wise to sign? No. Is a university whose diversity officer chooses to sign such a petition behaving fairly and responsibly to decide that it should have someone else in that position?

Hmmmm.

And that’s your weekend Ethics Alarms Quiz:

Is it fair and responsible for a university to fire its diversity chief because she signed a petition opposing gay marriage? Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Georgia Rep. Paul Broun

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Paul! See that guy holding the sign that says, “Atheists Go Back to Your Apes”? YOU COULD BE THAT GUY, PAUL!

An ignoramus and proud of it, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA.) is apparently serving in Congress while waiting for a juicy role as one of the fanatically religious townspeople in “Inherit the Wind,” should a local production materialize. For it was good people like Broun, with his level of education, certitude and Godly conviction, who occupied the town of Dayton, Tennessee during the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” the famous legal battle over the teaching of evolution that inspired the fictional stage adaptation of the event authored by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, perhaps the best high school drama club play that ever graced Broadway.

Those science-hating, God-loving people of Dayton’s  imaginary stand-in, “happy Hillsboro,” get to do a lot of revival meeting singing, and scream “Praise God” and “Read your Bible!,” and join in choral renditions of “We’ll hang Bert Cates from a Sour Apple Tree,” a reference to the play’s junior high science teacher, who, like the real John Scopes, dares to defy Tennessee law and teaches his students that the world isn’t only 9,000 years old, that Adam didn’t ride around on a triceratops and that mankind evolved from more primitive primates. Broun would be terrific at the singing and screaming, I’m sure. Continue reading →

Here It Is, The Ethics Exception You’ve Been Waiting For: When The Naked Teacher Principle Doesn’t Apply

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Naked Teacher Principle: The Principle states that a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result.

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Ms. Webb, NYC school guidance counselor, circa 1995. Va-va-voom.

Tiffany Webb is, or was, a 37 year-old  guidance counselor in the  New York City public schools. She had excelled at her job for 12 years until photos she posed for as a 20-year-old lingerie model turned up on the internet.  When a student showed  photos of Webb that he had found online to her principal, it was recommended that she be fired. After an investigation, an Education Department committee voted 2-1 to do just that, concluding, ‘The inappropriate photos were accessible to impressionable adolescents. That behavior has a potentially adverse influence on her ability to counsel students and be regarded as a role model.”

Her firing came as she was scheduled to gain tenure. Naturally, she’s suing.  I hope she wins, because while the committee’s rhetoric is in line with the sound reasoning behind the Naked Teacher Principle, the facts dictate that this is the point—and all rules have such a point point— where “ethics incompleteness” occurs and the rule, however valid it is the vast majority of the time, accomplishes unethical rather than ethical ends.

The Naked Teacher Principle doesn’t apply to Tiffany Webb because:

1. She is not naked, though the photos doesn’t leave much to the imagination, either. OK, forget #1. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: CNN Morning Anchor Carol Costello

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“There was criticism when Jim Lehrer was initially named to be a moderator. People said: ‘oh, another white guy; he’s too old to be doing this; we live in a new world — we don’t need an old-fashioned journalist doing these things any longer.’”

—-CNN Morning host Carol Costello, communing with PBS head Paula Kerger over Mitt Romney’s (obviously correct) assertion that public support for PBS has got to go, and joining in the despicable Democratic spin that President Obama’s less-than-stellar performance in the first debate was moderator Jim Lehrer’s fault.

Worst of the worst? I mean, if you don’t count MSNBC?

Carol Costello, Soledad O’Brien; Soledad O’Brien Carol Costello. Who is the most biased, smug, unethical news host not on MSNBC? Just when I think O’Brien has locked up the prize, Costello comes roaring back with something like this.

She ought to be fired. It’s as simple as that. Her statement is racist and ageist in the worst sense or the words; her implication is an unforgivable insult to a veteran newsman infinitely her superior, and her the content of her statement is proof of a deficient mind. Fire her. The AARP should demand it; the Republican should demand it; the Democrats should demand it, and CNN should see it as essential to maintaining whatever shred of credibility and integrity it has left. Continue reading →

The Eventual Firing of Daniel Picca: Why Our Children Are Not Safe In Public School

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Wait…is that a CHILD’S hand?

Today, in a scathing editorial, the Washington Post related the shocking story of the firing of Daniel Picca, a Montgomery County, Maryland  elementary school teacher who was suspected by school officials of having inappropriate relations with male students since at least 1995. This was, said the Post, ” a stinging indictment of a school bureaucracy that for almost two decades believed it had a problem but reacted with a seemingly endless flow of ineffective warnings, letters, reprimands and — most appalling — reassignments of the teacher to other schools and other students.” Montgomery County, it should be noted, boasts of one of the finest public school systems in the nation….or so we have been told.

Picca, as was detailed by a hearing examiner  in 2010 and by an administrative law judge this year, had been warned for 17 years about his conduct with young boys, including inappropriate touching, having students sit on his lap, “wrestling” with the boys and inviting some to an extracurricular “Strong Boys Club” of his own invention, where he encouraged male students to remove their shirts, according to student testimony. In 1995, county child protective services  said that Picca was responsible for “indicated child abuse.”The school system now says it missed this, somehow—not that it didn’t have plenty of evidence already. Continue reading →

Jury Summation: 20 Conclusions Regarding Elizabeth Warren’s Law License Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

1. Elizabeth Warren may have engaged in the unauthorized practice of law in Massachusetts at various times.

2. It is not as clear that she has done so as her primary accuser, Prof. Jacobson, appears to believe, nor is it as certain that she has not done so as her reflexive defenders assert.

3. If she did practice Massachusetts law without a license, it is very unlikely that she did so intentionally.

4. It is also likely that at this moment, she herself is unsure whether she did or not.

5. I very much doubt that if she did as Prof. Jacobson asserts,  that would lead to discipline by the Massachusetts Bar. The discussion of the issues surrounding Warren’s situation make it clear that a) the whole area of unauthorized practice when it involves state and Federal law is relatively unresolved and murky, with even  legal ethics experts in disagreement, b) it would be impossible to separate the professional regulation of the matter from its political content, and 3) any time members of the disciplinary committee slap their foreheads and say, “Damned if I know!” when the discussion turns to what the rules require, discipline is unlikely, and properly so.

6. The fact that Warren may have blundered into UPL between the varying requirements of her two bar memberships and her intermittent practice in Massachusetts does not make her unfit to practice law.

7. It may, combined with her unwillingness to candidly and thoroughly reveal all documents that bear on the issue, call into question her fitness to be a U.S. Senator, especially one running on the proposition that regulations on another profession (the financial sector) need to be strictly followed and tightly enforced. It definitely is worth exploring and explaining to voters, which the mainstream media clearly does not intend to do. Continue reading →