teachers

Test: Which Teacher Do You Trust Least?

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Your challenge: Rank from “Most Untrustworthy” to “Least Untrustworthy”  the following unethical teachers, all the subjects of news stories over the past 30 days:

The candidates:

A. Jack Conkling, a high school social studies teacher in Buhler, Kansas, who began a rant this on his Facebook page like this:

“All this talk in the news about gay marriage recently has finally driven me to write. Gay marriage is wrong because homosexuality is wrong. The Bible clearly states it is sin. Now I do not claim it to be a sin any worse than other sins. It ranks in God’s eyes the same as murder, lying, stealing, or cheating…”

Yes, he had students among his Facebook friends, who made sure everyone in the school was aware of Conkling’s views. Continue reading →

Let’s Play “Spot the Ten Outrages!” (Public School Version)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Here we have a video, taken with a North Carolina high school (North Rowan High School) student’s cell phone during class. (yes, it just points at the ceiling. It’s the audio that matters):

Now lets’s play…SPOT THE OUTRAGE!

(There are ten!)

OUTRAGE 1: Does this sound like a class in session to you? Students are laughing and joking, barely paying attention. What kind of learning can occur in such a a chaotic environment? Do parents realize this is what school is like today?

Is the fact that a student is recording the class without the teacher’s consent an ethical breach? Once I would be tempted to answer yes: recording without permission is always unfair and a Golden Rule violation unless there are special circumstances. However, special circumstances were present, and may be present in more classrooms than our fragile sanity will permit us to accept. I now think perhaps all public school classrooms should be videotaped, all the time.Then we would quickly know the extent of our education catastrophe, as horrifying as that would be.

OUTRAGE 2: The teacher of the social studies class presents as the“fact of the day” the Washington Post sliming of Mitt Romney based on his mistreatment of a fellow student in his prep school days. In itself, this is not an inappropriate topic for discussion by a high school class, as the story raises many fascinating issues. How much do the students feel their conduct during their tender years should count against their character 50 years hence? Is it relevant to the presidential election in any way? How have attitudes toward “sissies,” gays and less-than masculine boys changed since the early Sixties, if at all? How have attitudes toward and awareness of homosexuality? What does this story say about the objectivity of the  press? Is it fair? None of these legitimate and discussion-worthy questions, however, seemed to occur to the teacher, who was simply trying to show that “Romney was a bully in high school” in a clumsy and transparent effort to indoctrinate her students in her own political views. Continue reading →

Teacher Manuael Ernest Dillow: An Ethics Dunce, But, Of Course, An Aberration

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“THIS will teach you lousy kids not to disrupt class….KIDDING!!!”

We don’t have to belabor this one. Manuael Ernest Dillow, a welding teacher at a vocational school in Abingdon, Virginia, wanted to get the attention of his students, so he lined up twelve of them against a wall, took out a pistol, and fired at them multiple times. The gun was loaded with blanks.

Oh! Well that’s all right, then!

This idiot was arrested, and it looks like there is a good chance he’ll get serious jail time. Obviously he is an aberration in the great, essential and honored field of teaching. Continue reading →

Naked Teacher Principle Sighting in Ohio

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

News from Independence, Ohio:

“A part-time Catholic elementary school teacher was fired for posting nude photos of herself on the Internet.

The Cleveland Catholic Diocese said today the teacher was employed at St. Michael’s Elementary School.

Officials declined to release the teacher’s name, age or length of time she was employed with the diocese. They also declined to explain where the photos were posted or how they learned about them.

“In accordance with the Diocesan Education Department’s policies in such matters, St. Michael’s school officials took immediate action to terminate the part-time instructor,” a news release said. “The well-being of the students is paramount in these cases and assistance has been offered to students and their parents.”

More teachers need to read Ethics Alarms  ( especially the Naked Teacher Principle)…at least until the profession develops a useful code of ethics.

By the way, how are you coming with that, teachers?

Why Does American Public Education Stink? The Answer: Incompetence, Stupidity, and Fear. The Proof: THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Ah, that look that only a dedicated New York public school teacher can spark!!!

Over at Popehat, Ken has been on another roll, and his latest effort, as depressing and enraging as it is, is a real contribution to our understanding of the kind of entrenched foolishness, cowardice and incompetence in our nation’s public school administration that is gradually rendering the schools useless and our children uneducated.

Spurred by a New York Post story that seemed too horrible to be true, Ken set out to research the claim that the New York School system has compiled a long list of topics that are banned on student tests for a variety of reasons, prime among them that someone, somewhere, will be offended by them.  After some digging on the New York City Department of Education’s websites, what he found  was worse than how the Post had described it.

In an Appendix, he discovered a list of  test question topics “that would probably cause a selection to be deemed unacceptable by the New York City Department of Education… In general, a topic might be unacceptable for any of the following reasons:

  •   The topic could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students that might hamper their ability to take the remainder of the test in the optimal frame of mind.
  •     The topic is controversial among the adult population and might not be acceptable in a state-mandated testing situation.
  •     The topic has been ―done to death in standardized tests or textbooks and is thus overly familiar and/or boring to students.
  •     The topic will appear biased against (or toward) some group of people.

Using those criteria, and undoubtedly using astounding numbers of hours and taxpayer dollars, the Department came up with the following jaw-dropping list of banned test subjects. I’ll flag with red the taboos that are especially outrageous or idiotic, though perhaps I should note the two or three that might be appropriate. Continue reading →

Sexual Predator Teachers: 1) Not Funny 2) Epidemic 3) Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Child rapist teachers! LOL!

Two nights ago, Tonight Show host Jay Leno included in his monologue a joke about Christine McCallum, the Brockton, Mass. teacher convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old boy over 300 times. Jay can make jokes about whatever he wants, but the fact that we are laughing about this kind of conduct by teachers rather than asking hard questions and insisting on some accountability for the schools shows how tolerant our society is of a supposedly essential institution and a once respectable profession that have both fallen into rot and ruin.

In 1996, when Mary Kay LeTourneau was revealed to have made an undereage student her lover and fathered a child by him, it was national news. For me, it was the first I had ever heard of a teacher abusing her power and profession to that extent. This month alone, March 2012, I have counted thirteen such cases making the local news across the country, including McCallum, and I’m sure I missed some. I’m also reasonably sure that for every one of these cases that get prosecuted, many more are covered up or never discovered at all. Continue reading →

More Public School Political Indoctrination

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Here is what’s scary to me: a teacher considers giving his middle school students the assignment of doing opposition research on the Republican presidential candidates, and no ethics alarms go off for him at all. Fairness? Objectivity? Abuse of power? Prudence? Bias?

Not a ding.

Michael Denman assigned his 8th grade students at Liberty Middle School in Fairfax County the task of researching the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the four presidential hopefuls looking to challenge President Obama and forward them to the Obama campaign. The students were told to research the backgrounds and positions of each of the candidates ,find their “weaknesses,” and  to prepare strategy papers to exploit them in the campaign. Then they were told to find a contact in the Obama campaign to send them to. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: “Brad”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“How much did all these hacks get paid to do this? What a waste of money. Are they bothering somebody? Leave them alone. They obviously want to be together, and who are we to say that they shouldn’t? How much did this judge and all the hacks get paid to issue this decision? Somewhere, somehow this waste has to stop.”

—“Brad,” a commenter on NECN.com’s story about Lisa Lavole, a former teacher who was out of jail on parole after three years for the offense of having sex with her 15-year old student and running away with him. She was taken back into custody when the same student, now 18, was discovered hiding in her closet. One of the conditions of her parole was that she had to stay away from her former victim.

Lisa Lavole, doing her Norman Bates imitation

While perusing the comments to news stories often gives me more insight into the state of our culture’s ethics than reading the stories themselves, there is always the downside that many comments make me want to chuck ethics as a futile and pointless career choice and begin honest work as a bookie or a pimp. “Brad’s” comment is a case in point.

It would be difficult to pack more flawed ethical reasoning and rationalizations into a mere 60 words. The woman was hired to teach, and instead used her authority, age and power to entice a child into a sexual relationship, and then take him away from his parents and his home. By the most charitable interpretation she is a sexual predator and a rapist, as well as the betrayer of the community’s trust. Of course part of her punishment involves keeping her away from her victim, whose mind and emotions she had damaged and warped. To Brad, however, it is a “waste of money” to enforce legitimate laws, protect children from predatory adults, and make certain that at very least adults who prey on the children in their charge don’t benefit from it. She turned a child into a sex object and lover, and Brad thinks it’s a waste of time and money for society to make certain that she can’t keep reaping the benefits of her crime after her prison sentence. Continue reading →

Well THAT Didn’t Take Long: The Next Step in School Censorship of Student Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Huh. You know, I just didn't think it would come from the schools! Well, live and learn...

Ethics Alarms has been steadfast in its position from the very first reports of schools presuming to punish students for what they post online, in their own time, in their own homes. That position is, and will forever be, that this is a gross abuse of power that must not be tolerated, much less encouraged. Every time I have written about this, there have been defenders of the practice. This story, from Minnesota, should convince them of how wrong they are. Continue reading →

Three Tales of Ethics-Free Horror in American Schools

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Common sense-free, too!

Today we have three tales to drive you to private school, home school, or to move to Bolivia. The first poses a challenge for readers who object to “The Naked Teacher Principle.” I call it…

“The Porn Star Teacher Corollary”

In Oxnard, California, rumors were flying at Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School that one of the teachers could be seen in at least one porn film. Eventually other teachers  came forward and showed administrators an X-rated video on a smartphone that appeared to confirm  that the educator, who teaches science to seventh- and eighth-graders, was moonlighting in the pornography industry. She is on leave, and don’t bet that the teachers union won’t fight to protect her job. Meanwhile, the school district decided to make certain that as many kinds as possible would find Miss Brooks doing God knows what online, by sending this message to parents:

“It has been alleged that one of our teachers is depicted in at least one pornographic video and possibly others on the Internet. These allegations do not involve any Oxnard School District students… We are asking teachers to discourage the children from searching for and/or visiting these inappropriate sites. We ask that you be particularly vigilant over the next few days with respect to the Internet content being accessed by your child on his or her telephone or other Internet-ready device.”

Yeah, that should work.

Oh, I almost forgot. What is “The Porn Star Teacher Corollary”? It’s simple, really: “If you are or were a porn star, don’t teach in secondary school. If you teach in secondary school, don’t start making make porn films…whether you’re naked in them or not.”

The next two horrific sagas show school sensitivity at its rock bottom worst. First we have…

“Mother’s Day”

The Wingate Elementary School in Gallup, New Mexico discovered that 15-year-old student Shantelle Hicks was pregnant, so it kicked her out. This a school cannot do in 2012, and when a terse letter from the ACLU got her back into the 8th grade, the administrators had to get creative about how they would deal with this bad apple corrupting the good students. Two weeks after her readmission, they forced Shantelle to stand up in a  school assembly and announce her condition.  She says that until then, none of her classmates knew.  After that, according to her law suit, school officials told Hicks she was a detriment to her school mates, and requested she attend another school.

You just can’t train school administrators to come up with solutions like this.

It has to be an innate talent.

Finally, we have a chiller about another school that is alien to the concept of fairness, which I have dubbed, cheaply but appropriately,

“What??”

St. Scholastica High School in Chicago expelled a senior for disciplinary problems that included not listening to her teachers, ignoring directions, and failing to respond to requests.

“This pattern of poor behavioral performance is an indication to us that she is unable to meet our behavioral standards,” Principal Colleen J. Brewer wrote in the girl’s expulsion letter.

You guessed it! The girl is deaf. She has hearing aids in both ears. A doctor who examined her found that her hearing problems were “severe enough that, even with hearing aids (it would) affect her ability to not only appreciate the spoken word but also nuances and interpretation of speech. This may lead to an attempt on her part to react to her on interpretation of a communication without realizing she is misinterpreting part or all of a conversation.”

And yes, there is another law suit here as well. Law suits, however, at best only get money for the damage done by teacher and school administrator incompetence. The damage to the children involved may never be repaired.