Paedophile hysteria is putting men off teaching

[heatstreak]

Paedophile hysteria is prompting the brightest male graduates to shun teaching, Boris Johnson, the Conservatives' higher education spokesman, has warned. He told a conference of independent school headteachers in London that they were frightened off by the thought of "what happens if I bump into someone?"

"I think we're overdoing the whole thing," he said. "As a result of that a lot of brilliant potential male teachers think, oh, do I want to get tied up with all that malarkey?"

The result of the obsession with paedophilia was a ratio of 13:1 between female and male teachers in primary schools - with the result that many young boys lacked any male role models, he said. "Young male minds do need the intellectual inspiration of a male teacher - not because males are any better than females but it may help them if there is a male role model they can identify with who can help them with their intellectual development."

As an example of the hysteria over paedophiles, Mr Johnson cited a recent aeroplane trip he had taken with his children - where he awoke from a snooze to find a stewardess asking him to move from his seat. "I thought I was going to be upgraded and I was absolutely thrilled - but she took me to row 54 which was next to the toilets," he said. "I obeyed her - but my children interrupted, saying 'daddy, where are you going? - you've got to look after us!'" He said that when the stewardess realised they were his children, she said it was "perfectly all right" for him to sit with them but the airline had a policy that no adult could sit next to a child they did not know.

"I do think it is pretty bonkers that a man can be asked to move away from children," he added. "I don't want to bat for paedophiles but I think we ought to keep a sense of perspective over all this."



http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2377711.ece

[Jack Sprat]

1. Evidently it is a terrible sickness. Thankfully

most of us cannot fathom sex with a child. Children are non sexual. They may be loud and annoying at times, but they are not an object of sexual appeal. They are anything but. Apparently, there are some who actually see sex when they observe children. This is completely abnormal and an abhorrent deviant behavior. Aye, they should always avoid contact with children and seek treatment or counseling before they ever act out their perversity in real.

[hogwyld]

2. Well, on the positive side of this

Female teachers are much less confrontational, and diplomatic. Maybe this will be taught to our future generations to avoid wars.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

3. you didn't goto my high school,

[Tesha]

10. Nor mine. (NT)

[emulatorloo]

4. And you weren't at my high school either. Diplomatic? Non-confrontational? HA!

:toast:

[bananas]

9. You weren't at my grammar school, either.

We had Sister Mary Elephant.

[BoneDaddy]

11. Are you serious or have just lived in a cave your whole life?

That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in awhile, most likely born from some sexist ideology based in some dark fantasy of yours.

Pathetic.

[Pacifist Patriot]

14. LOL! Over-generalize and stereotype much?

The most sensitive diplomatic and caring teachers in my experience have all been males. Now granted, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I'm not reaching the conclusion that my experience means Male teachers as a rule are that way.

Your comments might be indicative of gender expectations rather than about those who feel called to educate. But you raise an interesting point. I wonder if there have been any objective studies on pedagogy related to gender.

[mondo joe]

27. Sexual stereotype much?

:eyes:

[B Calm]

5. My most memorable teachers were males. I think this profiling

against all males suck!

[gorbal]

6. You must have been dressed like a hippy.

"You know them crazy hippy types have no place near children." -(spoken with thick hick accent)

[Bucky]

7. What? Huh? From the news it look like it's the female teachers gettin' all the illicit action

I don't approve, but there it is on the cable news every few months or so, a different case of it each time.

[tblue37]

16. A 24-year-old female teacher in her first year of teaching at

our local high school was just arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old boy.

I believe that our society is producing a whole generation of girls who define their own sense of self on the basis of whether a man finds them hot or not. I think such girls find it hard to resist the advances of any man, and although a 15-year-old boy is a child, he "looks" like a man and is certainly capable of flirting with or even making more obvious advances to a pretty 24-year-old woman. If he flirts playfully and she flirts back, it can get to the direct advances stage very quickly.

Obviously the female teacher is at fault here, and it is incredibly dumb to think one would not be caught, since a teenaged boy will inevitably brag to his friends about his conquest. But I do think that in terms of sexual maturity, many of these 20-something female teachers are not a single inch beyond where they were in high school (or even junior high school), where their value--in their own eyes as well as everyone else's--was determined by whether they were hot enough to make it with an attractive guy.

When my son--a very tall, handsome boy--was 16, he briefly dated a pretty 22-year-old college senior who was getting her degree in secondary education. (As soon as I found out, I put a stop to it.) Needless to say, he was the exact same age as the boys she would be teaching the following year when she got a job--not to mention being the same age as the boys she taught during her practice teaching semester.

Don't forget, too, that these 20-something women were, not too long before becoming teachers, college girls (and if pretty, quite probably sorority girls), so they are still in that mindset where the main point of life seems to be partying and hooking up. It's a sick sexual culture on campuses (I teach college, so I know quite a lot about it), and it is really just a more freewheeling extension of the sexual culture in our secondary schools.

I also wonder whether some of these female teachers who have sex with their students were victims of molestation themselves when they were girls.

[MadHound]

8. Yeah, I can see this

It was actually a serious consideration of mine before I decided to enter the profession. But an interesting note contrari-wise, the schools are begging for male elementary teachers, and a male elementary teacher will have an easier time of getting hired. High-school, not so much.

[Pale Blue Dot]

12. Bunk. Absolute bunk.

Of course this guy's a Conservative. The article is all logical fallacy, no proof.

[BoneDaddy]

19. Not everything that is conservative is bad

man, talk about black and white thinking.

[Pale Blue Dot]

23. Here's what IS bad:

Taking a statistic, such as the fact that female teachers outnumber male teachers 13:1, and stating, with no scientific evidence whatsoever, that the cause of this imbalance is fear of false prosecution on pedophilia charges. Without any corroborating evidence, the reason could just as well be social stigmas about gender identification, the "glass ceiling" for women, or even alien mind control (for all we know).

This conservative (yes, I said it again) author clearly has an agenda: Stop the zealous investigation of child molesters. The reason for this agenda? Your guess is as good as mine. But what is obvious is that the man clearly HAS NO EVIDENCE to back up his claim.

I was a Cub Scout Cubmaster for 2 years. I am about to enter a program that will allow me to become a middle school English teacher. I was not, and never have been, worried about being falsely prosecuted for pedophilia. The reason is that I follow two simple rules:

1. Do not molest children;
2. Do not put yourself in a position in which you can be falsely accused of molesting children.

These rules are incredibly easy to follow. In the case of rule #2, the only plausible reason I can see to violate it is if you also want to violate rule #1.

So the author, like most (if not all) conservatives, has jumped to his own conclusion based not on evidence but on his own beliefs. Why he has those beliefs, I'll leave to you.

[NewJeffCT]

28. good points

My cousin's husband is an elementary school teacher. He had mentioned how he would not even think of having any of his students alone in the classroom with him by himself. So, it sounds like his rules are about the same as yours.

I certainly don't think it's fear of pedophilia that keeps men out of teaching in general, however. I just think most guys tend to think of certain professions as female-oriented: teaching at the elementary & junior high levels and nursing come to mind and close-mindedly don't want to pursue careers in those fields.

Personally, if I was single, I would love to be in a situation where I was outnumbered 13-1 by women! :evilgrin:

[localroger]

13. It's not just a problem for men

How many MSM news articles have we had recently about a female teacher caught having sex with her teenage students? And what about that poor substitute who was recently convicted of the horrible crime of not turning off an adware infested PC?

Although it's much worse for men, it's not really safe for anyone to be around other peoples' children any more. And touching or disciplining another person's child is out of the question. As far as I can tell this basically makes it impossible to safely teach.

And it's not even just pedophilia witch-hunts. The article mentions the phenomenon of parents "storming" schools to make demands on behalf of their children. I've seen people threaten lawsuits and physical violence because another adult attempted to correct their child's genuinely obnoxious behavior. Given that a typical teacher encounters about 200 students per semester, any one of which could have such a litigous douchebag parent, and it's just not worth it.

[Jonathan50]

15. I agree with you

It isn't worth the risk any more to teach grade school age children.

And for men, I would say even middle and high school age would be a risk.

[tblue37]

17. See my post above. (eom)

[Jonathan50]

25. Go and read this thread and get back to me

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x459905

Take a look and see how anyone who didn't call for locking the couple up for life was treated.

And then tell me that pedophile hysteria isn't a fact.

[tblue37]

18. You might like to read my article on my

Teacher, Teacher website, entitled "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum," about the impossibility of teaching kids who are totally unsocialized, but whose parents won't allow them to be controlled in any way by the teachers:
http://www.teacherblue.homestead.com/inmates.html
I tell some real horror stories in the article, but I barely scratched the surface. I could report many more.

BTW, remember the 5-year-old girl in Florida who was taken away in handcuffs by cops after trashing her classroom and the vice-principal's office? The handcuffs were ridiculous, but the v-p called the cops becuase she had no permissible methods for controlling the child, other than to beg her to stop. The child had all the power, and naturally she abused that power. Little kids can't use such power wisely, and they shouldn't be allowed to wield it, any more than they should be allowed to drive cars.

[The Straight Story]

21. Break out the paddle... (nt)

[BlooInBloo]

22. It's true - parents are commonly incompetent. It's also true that teachers are as well.

I certainly don't buy the "It's all them!" squawking that (government, parents, teachers) do.

It's all of them, in roughly equal parts, and in different ways.

[BoneDaddy]

20. Don't worry

the male hating, testoteronaphobe emasculating gender extremists on this board will find some way to blame men for everything... just wait and watch.

[Jonathan50]

24. Wow..

I haven't seen much if any evidence of that sort of thing here..

[Pale Blue Dot]

26. Ad hominem

"An ad hominem argument is any that attempts to counter another’s claims or conclusions by attacking the person, rather than addressing the argument itself. Taken broadly, this fallacy can be any argument that a person’s claims is false because of a negative quality possessed by the person."

http://www.theness.com/articles.asp?id=38

[Fenris]

29. Locking.

The thread author has been banned. And Boris Johnson is a moron.