Teachers have become the latest political bogey man. We are now officially responsible for everything wrong with public education, even delusional, nonexistent wrongs. We are even blamed for corrupting the political process. However, the real enemies of public education are the Duncans, Gates, Buffets, Waltons and Broads who are attempting to give the school house away to educational profiteers like Pearson and McGraw-Hill, Platform Learning, Imagine Schools, Edison, White Hat, Reed Elsevier and Neil Bush. As far as they’re concerned, the real problem is that public education is locally controlled, unionized and nonprofit, thereby limiting their access and control of this huge potential market. Public education is mandatory. Consumption is required. The funding stream is secure, so long as the anti-tax movement doesn’t succeed in abolishing taxes entirely. If only they ran the schools instead of local school boards.
Arne Duncan had a solution: as CEO of Chicago schools he privatized many of its schools. When he called “Katrina the best thing to happen to the education system of New Orleans,” it was because it allowed the government to privatize it. Within two years of the disaster, 107 out of 128 New Orleans schools had been converted to charter schools and the number of unionized teachers dropped from 4700 to 500. They also fired 7500 school employees, many of whom had school age children who would now be attending New Orleans public schools hungry, homeless or stressed out by the economic uncertainty at home, or simply fleeing the city entirely, like so many of New Orleans’ lower income residents. The “reforms” have been hailed as a success since New Orleans test scores have improved since Katrina. However, the relative wealth of city residents also rose after Katrina and affluent students generally do much better on standardized tests than lower income students.
“Waiting for Superman,” which blames teachers for the problems with public education is essentially just an expensive piece of advertising for charter schools. It was largely funded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two proponents of school privatization. Almost immediately after the film was aired, the donations to charter schools started to pour in. The venture capital Charter School Growth Fund recently secured $100 million from sources including the Walton Family Foundation. Oprah just coughed up $6 million for six charter schools.
Neil Bush, Reed Elsevier and McGraw-Hill were all well-connected with President Bush and all were beneficiaries of NCLB give-aways. While schools were forced to buy their products, money and time for real teaching and learning were diverted to test preparation and testing. As NCLB declared increasing numbers of schools to be failing, teachers were forced to work harder and longer, usually without extra compensation, to implement “reforms” that had no possibility of solving the problem. They couldn’t solve the problem because NCLB was designed to increase failure, not increase student achievement.
Even banks and investment firms can be seen as the enemies of education. They are largely responsible for the current financial crisis that has bankrupted cities, lowered property values and school funding, and made millions of people unemployed, homeless and angry. In all likelihood, we shall see test scores and graduation rates decline, as more and more families become impoverished. Meanwhile, they blame teachers for hindering real educational improvements and bemoan the lack of sufficiently educated workers to fill their nonexistent job openings, implying that teachers are the cause of high unemployment rates and the persistence of the recession.
This op ed discusses how teachers have become the latest political bogey man. When education secretary Rod Paige called the NEA a terrorist organization, back in 2004, he set the tone for today's wave of teacher bashing.
Prior to my first teaching job I spent the summer in Mexico, in Zinacantan, a Tzotzil village in the Chiapan highlands. I was there to study bilingual education among Mayan middle school children as part of a course I was taking through San Francisco State and the Autonomous University of Chiapas. In reality, the teachers at this school were monolingual Spanish speakers and the majority of students had limited Spanish proficiency. Teachers used the standard lecture format, with no modifications for the Mayan children. There were no visual aids, videos, computers, or even books in the room. The school library had exactly three books that had been translated into Tzotzil.
The classrooms were minute, filled with rows of broken down wooden desks, with a chalkboard in the front. On several of the days I was there, the principal asked if I would teach the class because the regular teacher had not shown up. Like their regular teacher, I was unable to communicate with students in their native language. Like the students, Spanish was my second language and I was not fluent. This put us all on more equal footing.
Zinacantan, like many villages in the area, maintains a strong traditional culture. Most of the men, women and children wore the traditional bright red clothing of their village. Most of the men farmed corn. There was also a small ornamental flower industry that gave Zinacantan a modest economic edge over its neighbors. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for boys to drop out before they had reached middle school to help their fathers in the fields. In many villages, it was also typical for the girls to quit school at this age to start families or to help at home. Perhaps because of their relative “prosperity,” girls in Zinacantan were marrying later and staying in school longer. In my school, girls were in the majority, and many aspired to get out of the village and become doctors or go into business.
I did not teach these students anything new. I had not come prepared to teach and the school had no resources on hand to help me. Instead, I spent a lot of time getting to know the kids and reviewing basic biology with them. Despite the fact that their regular teachers seemed to take a lot of mid-week vacations, these students knew more biology than many of the students I encountered on my first teaching job in San Francisco. This was probably due, in part, to the fact that the Mayan students were at school because they wanted to be there. Anyone who didn’t want to be there was at home or in the fields. But it was also a small, tight-knit community with rigid mores. It was not a place that tolerated laziness, arrogance or selfishness, nor a place where students could develop bad academic or behavior pattern.
It was several years after the Zapatista uprising had begun. Zinacantan village had not been particularly affected by the uprising. Nevertheless, there was considerable graffiti throughout the area, around San Cristobal, Chamula, and Zinacantan, on walls and fences, not only in support of the Zapatistas, but in support of teachers, students and unions. A common slogan was, “Books and Scholarships, Not Repression.” I had been in Chiapas a few years earlier, just prior to the uprising, and don’t remember any graffiti in support of popular causes. The movement had inspired and emboldened people, even the majority who had not taken up arms. In 1995, the Zinacantan region kicked out the corrupt bosses of the PRI who had ruled the country since the revolution. They voted in the PRD who later violently attacked a peaceful rally of 4000 Zapatista supporters in 2004.
One reason why the Zapatistas were so popular among the Maya was that they were primarily Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya themselves. There was probably a sense of ethnic pride. There had been a long history of institutionalized racism against the Maya and profound economic and political marginalization. The racism and marginalization continue to this day, not only by other Mexicans, but by foreign tourists, too. People visit from all over the world, eager to see the beautiful textiles, pottery and other handicrafts. They romanticize Mayan resistance and rebellion and indigenous “harmony” with the Earth. Yet, in my experience, many tourists treat local people like living museum pieces, taking snapshots without permission, or invading their villages in tour buses during festivals or rituals.
One day I traveled by horseback from San Cristobal to Chamula, a nearby Mayan village, along with a group of eight other gringos and a mestizo guide. Because I had been living in San Cristobal all summer, some U.S. ex-patriot neighbors asked if I would chaperone their two tween-age boys. The guide was a local language instructor who I knew. We had visited Chamula together the week before. He drank too much in their cantina and had to get off the bus on the way back to puke. The others in the group were strangers.
The ride up the mountain was rugged, scenic and lovely in every way imaginable, much of it through dense pine forest. Once we arrived in Chamula, however, I realized we were in trouble. Our guide immediately disappeared into a cantina. It was the end of a village festival. There were a lot of extremely inebriated local people. Many were unconscious. A group of men gathered around us as we rode into the central square. They started to stare and point. There was a tall, blond-haired woman in our group. The locals were clearly interested in her and started to touch her hair. This, of course, terrified her, and she started to scream. This, in turn, either scared or angered the men, and they became more aggressive.
The situation was extremely volatile. We need to leave quickly, but the others were catatonic. I suggested we head out. They didn’t want to leave without our guide. “Forget our guide,” I said. “He’s in the cantina getting drunk. He’s no help to us now. When I say go, follow me.”
I have no experience with horses whatsoever. I suspect none of us did. It didn’t matter. We had to act quickly and decisively or things would get dangerous. I shouted at the men to let go of her and told everyone to ride. I pushed the men’s hands away from her and screamed at her to ride away. The rest of us followed.
Amazingly, it worked. We escaped Chamula without further incident. The trip back was much slower. It was raining. The horses were more cautious and tentative as they made their way down the steep mountain trail, but they knew the way back. My saddle was the wrong size and the dampness was causing me to slip and slide. By the end of the three hour trip, I felt like a Hollywood cowboy, with my legs bowed out, and the worst saddle rash imaginable. But we survived. The boys’ parents were very appreciative. I took a long nap, on my belly.
In the U.S., we have a plethora of philosophies and methods for educating and raising children, but when things go wrong, particularly for teenagers, we tend to blame them. By the time they have reached puberty, we assume they know the difference between right and wrong. This lets the adults off far too easy. What we teach and enforce at an early age helps set the tone for a lifetime. We do this by clearly explaining rules and expectations and consistently following through with consequences.
While this may seem simple, it is surprising how often it is absent. When I was student teaching, my master teacher allowed her students to walk all over her, yet she still gave them sweets at the end of each period. The class was chaotic, with students talking, listening to music, or wandering around the room while she talked. She was terrified of conflict and refused to set boundaries with them. If they weren’t listening, she would just talk louder. She desperately wanted to be liked and tried to buy her students’ respect with treats.
One of my students at that school, Catarina, was failing miserably. She only showed up two to three times a week and never turned in homework. Her average in the class was 16%. I arranged for a conference with her mother. During the meeting, her mother told me how out-of-control Catarina was at home, that she was hanging out with the wrong crowd, and that she didn’t know what to do. Catarina got angry and told her mother to f-off. The mother did nothing. She just continued talking to me as if nothing had happened.
While it was difficult at first, and certainly not in my nature, I quickly learned how to maintain a safe and respectful learning environment. Rule of thumb: Don’t become a student door mat. I also quickly learned that my success sometimes depended on how much support I got from deans and administrators. I taught at one school where the entire administrative team and dean behaved like my master teacher. As a result, much of the campus was out of control. Students wandered the campus during class time. Fights were common. Harassment of special education students was routine. The bathrooms were filled with racist graffiti, including sketches of students being lynched. One student came to school drunk and was back the next day with a only verbal warning.
The most egregious lapse of authority, however, occurred during lunch, when a group of students started to taunt two lesbian students, first verbally, and then by throwing bottles and cans. By the time campus security arrived, it was verging on a melee involving dozens of students. That afternoon, the principal sent out a global email to the staff, asking us to encourage our students to come to a voluntary debriefing on the incident to be facilitated by student government. The only other consequences were two-day suspensions for two of the attackers and, shockingly, for the two lesbian students, despite the fact that dozens of students were involved. The situation could have very easily resulted in hospitalizations or lawsuits. Tensions remained high on campus for weeks after the incident. Yet the administration chose to pass responsibility for reestablishing a safe and supportive campus to students.
Like most parents, I want my child to get the best education possible. Like many parents, I am scared, but not for the usual, reasons like bad teachers, low standards, lack of accountability, greedy unions, or a system broken beyond repair. These are gross exaggerations. What I fear is that the fun and innocence of childhood is being traded in for the false promises of rigor and accountability. Many kindergartens have replaced story-time and recess with rote test-taking drills. Elementary schools are eliminating science to make room for more test prep. Middle schools have eliminated shop classes because they aren’t academically rigorous. Over the past 30 years, we have fundamentally altered public education because we were told it wasn’t working. We were told that testing would improve school accountability and student achievement, yet increasing numbers of schools are failing. If we want to see real improvements in education, we need to first cut through the lies and delusions that dominate the debate.
Delusion #1: Schools today are in crisis—Public Education is Broken: Teaching standards today are more rigorous than ever. Teachers are much better prepared for working with diverse populations. The consensus in education has shifted from one that supported tracking students into advanced or remedial courses based on socioeconomic status (SES) and race to one that promotes equity for all students. So where did we get the idea that public education is so terribly broken?
In 1983, President Reagan’s Commission on Excellence in Education published “A Nation at Risk,” which falsely claimed that our schools were so terrible that it threatened national security. This myth, that the education system is broken, has been perpetuated ever since by politicians of both persuasions and their corporate supporters, terrifying parents, who worry that their children will languish intellectually, and taxpayers, who fear that today’s poorly educated students will be tomorrow’s incompetent doctors and police. Education bashing has become the baby-kissing of the new millennium. Everyone wants to be the “education” candidate, the hero who saves our children.
The problem with “A Nation at Risk” is that it wasn’t true. In 1990, Sandia National Laboratory wrote “Perspectives on education in America,” which concluded there was no crisis. Bush Sr. immediately suppressed the report, as it conflicted with his education agenda. According to the report, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup from 1975 to 1988. Reading held steady or improved among all groups from 1971 to 1988. Every year from 1970 to 1988, the number of 22 year-olds with bachelor degrees increased. In 1988, the U.S. led all developed nations in bachelor degrees earned. Students scoring 3 or higher on AP tests rose from 10.2% in 2000 to 14.8% in 2006, while the number attempting AP tests rose from 15.9% in 2000 to 24.2% in 2006. Delusion #2: Bad Schools and Teachers Cause the Achievement Gap Public education is not in crisis, but a class-based achievement gap does persist. Middle class students consistently outscore lower income students on standardized tests and graduate at higher rates. However, the achievement gap is already firmly in place before children have even started school. Burkam and Lee examined average cognitive scores of children entering kindergarten and found that kids in the highest income group scored 60% higher than those in the lowest income group. Hart and Risely found similar class-based differences in language development and IQ among children as young as three.
Class can have an enormous impact on how we raise our children and influence school readiness. Hart and Risely found dramatic class differences in the number and complexity of words spoken to young children. By the time they have reached kindergarten, children from families on welfare may have heard 32 million fewer words than children from professional families.
Poverty contributes to a host of physical and cognitive problems that can diminish academic achievement. Poor children are more likely to suffer low birth weights and malnutrition, which can lead to disabilities. Iron-deficiency anemia, which impairs cognitive ability, is twice as common among poor children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 10% of poor students have dangerous levels of lead in their blood, which can lead to decreased intelligence. Lack of healthcare causes poor children to be absent as much as 40% more often than middle class kids, according to education researcher Richard Rothstein. In a study of Baltimore school children, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. Poor children move more due to financial insecurity. According to the Educational Testing Service, 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17%, respectively, for those who remained at the same schools.
Delusion #3: No Child Left behind will ensure that all children are succeeding by 2014 This slogan sounds great, but it is impossible to deliver. Instead of improving schools, NCLB is having the opposite effect: increasing numbers of schools are failing. The state of California projected that by the 2013-2014 school year, when all students are supposed to be proficient, 99% of California schools will be failing. The reasons for this paradox are built into the rules of NCLB which require that all subgroups (e.g., ethnicity, socio-economic status, special education, English Language Learners) must meet their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) each year. If any one group fails, the entire school fails.
Delusion #4: Obama is dismantling NCLB Obama wants to modify NCLB, not end it. He wants to include graduation rates, attendance and learning climate when judging schools. He also wants to replace the provision that every child must reach proficiency with the goal that all students graduate from high school “prepared” for college. Schools and students will still compete with each other. There will continue to be winners, losers and high stakes exams. “Proficiency” and “progress” will be just as elusive. Nothing will be put into place to help low income families. In addition to keeping NCLB, he has introduced Race to the Top (RTTT), which provides $4.3 billion in competitive grants to states that facilitate the creation of charter and for-profit schools and that evaluate teachers based on their students’ test scores.
Delusion #5: Testing & Standards Improve Schools & Make Teachers Accountable Accountability is a red herring, a distraction from the most serious problems affecting public education: underfunding and poverty. It also a big giveaway to test publishers. While testing makes these companies a lot of money, it does nothing to improve accountability or quality. At best, a good test tells us what a student knows, not how she learned it. More importantly, test scores correlate more strongly with social class than any other variable, including teacher quality, curriculum or school structure. 76% of schools with low pass rates on the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) had at least 50% of their students receiving free or reduced lunches. Similarly, 66% of California high schools with low graduation rates had at least 40% of their students on free or reduced lunch, while 80% of high schools with high graduation rates had less than 20% of their students on free or reduced lunch. A more effective means of improving test scores and student achievement would be to improve familial financial security.
Teachers are already held accountable. They are evaluated regularly by administrators and, if judged poorly, can be fired or required to undergo professional development. In California, these evaluations are based on state standards that are among the toughest in the U.S. They assess much more than student achievement, like how well teachers communicate with parents and students, create safe and effective learning environments, and meet the needs of diverse students. A good teacher does all these things, but may still have high failure rates on standardized exams if working with economically disadvantaged students.
Delusion #6: The problem with Public Education is that it is run by the government This statement is the most honest criticism made by opponents of public education. Public schools are free and one of the few areas of the economy under direct community control. Parents and employees have considerably more influence over how their schools are run than they do over their local Walmart or McDonalds, at least they did before NCLB. By bashing public education, critics hope to weaken unions and divert public funds to private, for-profit education businesses. Multibillion dollar foundations like Gates, Broad and Walton Family Foundations have pumped millions into the creation of charter schools. Gates even provided funding to states to hire consultants to write RTTT grants to help them to create more charter schools. Charter school organizers make $400,000 per year (compared with teachers, who make $30-80,000 per year).
Big Government is a compelling target, particularly when accused of trampling individual rights and freedom. However, for the wealthy, every attack on big government is an opportunity to lower their tax liability and increase their personal wealth. Tax cuts for the wealthy often lead to education cuts. However, even without tax cuts, the wealthy benefit when money is diverted from social programs like education, that benefit everyone, to entitlements like farm or oil subsidies, that benefit a small, elite group. Furthermore, when government programs are made to seem inept and wasteful, the corporate alternative starts to look appealing, facilitating the transfer of wealth from tax payers to private business.
Delusion 7: Charter Schools are More Effective Than Traditional Public Schools Charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools and often do much worse. In 2004, the U.S. department of education found that 4th graders in charter schools did significantly worse in reading and math than those in public school. Charter schools also tend to be much more segregated. Nearly 80% of Latino and 70% of black charter school students are in schools that are over 90% minority, nearly double the rate in traditional public schools. In 2007, public school enrollment was 47% white, 22% black, 21% Hispanic and 3% Asian. Private, religious school enrollment was 73% white, 9% black, 12% Hispanic, 3% Asian, while private, secular school enrollment was: 69% white, 11% black, 9% Hispanic, and 6% Asian. Poor students make up 40% of public schools, but only 17% of private religious and 10% of private secular schools.
Delusion #8: Teachers unions protect bad teachers and block parental choice. This delusion implies that there are great numbers of rotten teachers in need of discipline or dismissal, which is simply untrue. Unions do provide legal services for members accused of misconduct. It is important to note that in the contentious school environment, there are often frivolous accusations made against teachers, who are entitled to representation and defense. Most unions provide peer evaluation and support to help struggling teachers grow professionally. Unions also support beginning teacher mentor programs and professional development, both of which have declined dramatically due to budget cuts, not union obstructionism. Unions support tenure because it is a necessary prerequisite for authentic collaboration between teachers and administrators. Schools cannot function without open, honest input and criticism by those who work with children. Without tenure, teachers can be fired because administrators do not agree with their comments or criticism.
A second problem with this delusion is the assumption that parents get to choose how their taxes are used. Teachers are highly trained professionals who know how to do their job. Can you imagine if people demanded “choice” for their police, fire and public health protection? Parents do have the choice to have their children excused from NCLB testing, and SHOULD, as a form of civil disobedience. If enough parents do this, the charade will have to end.
The National Education Association (NEA) is spending $15 million to get pro-education candidates elected in November, while the California Teachers Association (CTA) routinely outspends all other state lobbyists. Figures like these make good fodder for anti-teacher rants by conservatives, but they also anger teachers. As an organizer for a local that is affiliated with both the CTA and NEA, I often find myself talking to irate members who are frustrated with the top down paternalism of our state and national organizations, particularly with respect to how our dues are spent. For all the money CTA funneled into political campaigns, the California legislature still cut $17 billion from education over the past two years, fired teachers and increased class sizes. Politics is a losing game for unions. Candidates are fickle, unreliable allies of working Americans. They are wealthier than us, with substantially different financial interests. When forced to make tough budget decisions, they side with business, not labor.
Take Jerry Brown, who the CTA is lavishly supporting for governor in California. His billionaire opponent, Meg Whitman, is clearly an enemy of public education and unions, but can teachers and parents count on Brown? The answer is no. As Mayor of Oakland he appointed three additional members to the Oakland school board and tried to impose his own hand-picked superintendent in a power grab that angered teachers and parents alike. He created two charter schools, the Oakland Military Academy (OMI), and the Oakland School of the Arts (OSA), neither of which performed better than Oakland’s traditional public high schools despite the fact that he personally raised $12 million for the schools, allowing them to spend almost twice as much per student as Oakland’s traditional schools.Not surprisingly, the military school serves predominantly lower income students, while the art school serves a mostly middle class clientele. In general, Brown has been a strong supporter of charter schools, while giving little indication he has the stomach for helping traditional public schools.Indeed, as mayor, he diverted city staff members to charter school duty, even moving the City Manager’s office from City Hall to OMI headquarters at the Oakland Army base.
I’m not interested in telling anyone how (or if) to vote. If you want to vote for the lesser evil, more power to you. My argument is that my union’s vast resources should not be given to a lesser evil who may or may not make some favorable decisions. A union’s strength does not come from buying politicians. It comes from mobilizing its members to fight for better working conditions and a better society. They accomplish this most effectively through organizing and educating their members and the public around critical issues of common interest. One example is health care. With insurance rates increasing 25-40% annually, workers are being forced to pay more out of pocket, a de facto pay cut that worsens each year. Lack of healthcare causes poor children to be absent as much as 40% more often than middle class kids. This can have a profound impact on academic success. In one study of Baltimore teenagers, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. A single payer system should improve attendance and graduation rates by ensuring that everyone has health coverage. It reduces uncertainty in school budgeting and prevents insurance companies from holding employee pay hostage. Countries with universal coverage have higher life expectancies, lower infant mortality and healthier citizens at a fraction of what we spend. Yet insurance giants have spent millions to convince us the opposite is true. Instead of buying politicians who might vote for single payer, unions should educate members and organize them to fight for it.
There is power in a union, but it comes from its members, not politicians. Lobbyists may be effective for corporate America, but for the rest of us, organizing gets the goods.
When people hear I’m high school teacher they often respond, “Wow, that must be tough!” and it is, but not for the reasons one might think. Americans tend to fear teenagers. The news is filled with stories about teen pregnancy, youth addiction, gang violence, teen suicide, and the rare teen rampage, contributing to the hysteria that all high schools are Columbines waiting to explode, or Blackboard Jungles that eat teachers alive. In reality, youth crime, addiction and pregnancy rates have been in steady decline for years and, for the most part, are far lower than they are for adults. When teenagers are harmed by violence, it is most often at the hands of adults. When teens get pregnant, the father is most often an adult. (See Mike Males, Scapegoat Generation, Common Courage Press, 1996). Grownups are the ones who create misguided education policy and who cut education funding. It is the misbehavior of adults, not kids, that truly makes the job so tough.
My first encounter with adult misbehavior at school occurred midway through my first year on the job. I had one particularly small class of juniors and seniors taking chemistry for the second or third time. I had been working harder than I ever had in my life, spending as many as fourteen hours a day grading papers, contacting parents, writing and rewriting curriculum. Even with all my hard work, there was a handful who had given up and stopped attending. So, on the Friday before winter break, when only two girls showed up for class, I decided it was pointless to teach a lesson, and gave them the period to do as they pleased. They spent most of the period gossiping about boys, their favorite rap artists, clothes and the like. I mostly graded papers and ignored them. However, when I overheard them talking about what a “letch” one of my colleagues was, I immediately butted in.
“What do you mean he is a letch?”
“Well, you know,” replied Carol, a petite, blond-haired Filipina. “He’ll stare at your boobs, and say gross things.”
“What kind of gross things?” I asked.
“Well, one time he told me that I had a pretty bra.”
“And how did you respond to that?”
“I told him to f-off and he told me that was the best offer he’d gotten all week.”
“And have you had similar experiences with this man?” I asked Editha, a slender, African-American girl who was a straight A student.
“Well, there was this time I was in the hallway during passing period and he came up from behind me and squeezed my hips and said, “My, you’re getting chunky.’”
Needless to say, I reported the incident, but not to my principal, who had a reputation of being ineffectual on discipline, and part of a good old boys network that included the accused teacher. Instead, I spoke to a female assistant principal, and the school social worker, both of whom were dismissed the following year. The social worker told me that this teacher had been accused of similar offenses several times over the years by various students and teachers, but had consistently slipped through the cracks and gotten away with it. “I’ve confronted the principal on this twice,” she informed me. “His response was, ‘Oh, that’s just part of Latino culture. Let it go.’ Well, I am Latina and it’s not a part of the culture I grew up with!”
After several weeks, I was called into the principal’s office to discuss the matter. The principal was a friendly, good-looking man, who generally wore the same vacant smile, whether happy or mad. As soon as I was seated he said, “What do you have against this man?”
I was starting to become unhinged. How could he ask me such a question? Certainly he had read my report. Was it possible he truly didn’t understand what sexual harassment was?
“The accusations made by the girls, the ones in my report, are clearly sexual harassment.” I stammered nervously. “One student accused him of grabbing her by the hips! I don’t think it’s my responsibility to define the meaning of sexual harassment, but this is clearly an example of it!”
He pondered this for a moment. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
I nearly exploded. “I expect you to do exactly what school regulations require you to do: investigate, file a report and, if guilty, discipline the man. No more and no less.”
A few days later, the accused teacher approached me in the halls. “How could you make such accusations against me?” He was nearly in tears. “It has ruined my family. It has made me ashamed to come to work. Don’t you know how we do things here? Normally, when you hear rumors about a teacher, you go talk to him first. Ask for his side of the story. Give him a chance to deal with the situation.”
In the end, I never found out what happened. The principal was probably protecting the accused teacher's privacy, which I suppose is fair. Yet somehow my privacy was not protected. So maybe I was kept in the dark for other reasons. In any case, the accused teacher did not stick around. The following year he became the dean of one of our feeder schools, with his own private office and the responsibility of doling out discipline to students referred for behavior problems.
