“So what’s the big deal? She’s a great teacher!”*

Ethics Alarms has been light of late on tales of public schools  intimidating, indoctrinating and abusing children, all while teaching them that too often adult authority does not deserve the respect it demands. Of course, there is a reason for the relative dearth of horror stories from that sector: school is out.

Never fear, however: somewhere, some school administrator is embarrassing the education profession…in  Idaho, for instance, where Summer Larsen, a fourth-grade teacher at Declo Elementary School in Declo, Idaho, had the brilliant idea of having students who made their reading proficiency goals punish those who did not by drawing on the their faces with felt-tip markers. Continue reading →