Emasculating the teacher

Posted on July 24, 2007 - Filed Under |

HAVE we become a community of super-sensitive, squeamish, soft-touch sissies we can’t take discipline, as schools impose them on our kids, anymore?

This question begs following the spate of media-sensationalized “abuse” of pupils by their teachers or teachers-in-charge, some reaching not just print, broadcast and television media but even the courts.

While we can admit that excessive physical pain inflicted on pupils should not be countenanced or tolerated, some of these may simply be in the nature of giving a rowdy, troublesome kid in school a measure of fear for authority, the way we in our primary or elementary grades were brought up. After all, what is education without discipline? It would be nothing but imbibing knowledge without set code of conduct.  More...These days, let’s admit it too, with the wide, constant and uncontrolled influence of media – especially television and radio –on young people’s minds, such recognition of authority has become more and more blurred, indistinct, hazy. The result: a more aggressive, cynical even violent behavior among some kids who tax the innate patience of teachers so, unfortunately leading to, more or less, physical contact with the unruly tyke.

This is where the Parents-Teachers-Community Association should be coming in, giving a fair hearing for both sides, minus the glare of media and absent the activities of third-party kibitzers bent on  fleecing the embattled teacher “to settle (with the complainants”) or else..” A fair and common ground must be established in the community where instances or reports of teacher abuse can first be heard – even without the intervention yet of  higher school authorities – and hopefully resolved to the satisfaction  of both parties. And blood money should be out of the question.  

Where monetary considerations come in by way of a dispute settlement, that is, whether a teacher-party is guilty of the misdemeanor charged or not, one can only wonder where such ”surrender” would lead to, or when it will ever end?

Comments

Leave a Reply