TRENDY OUTRAGE: Help Nigeria’s schoolkids (And Ours Too)
It’s easy to be outraged once it’s trendy. But what other horrors have failed to spark our hashtag outrage?
Anyone who doesn’t recoil at what happened to the victims in Nigeria (the schoolgirls, sure, but the other ones too) could have a heart “two sizes too small”.
So I ask: why the silence closer to home? We know people are capable of demanding justice for local horrors, if and when it suits them.
Who can forget the black eye still purpling an entire religious order, when past abuses against children were too easily swept under the rug?
When that story broke, trust was broken. Many faithful left, maybe never to return. And the public was furious.
As heinous as such a breach of faith is, in a religious order the victims are limited by the scope of their membership. However great the harm to their members, outsiders they do not directly interact with are mostly unaffected.
That was not accepted as an excuse. The public judged them harshly (and they had it coming). They’ve been trying to recover ever since.
What if it wasn’t a private institution with limited membership? What if it was mainstream, and affecting everyone? How would we react? Probably something bordering on torches and pitchforks? Tar and feathers? Riots in the streets? What if the victims were kids in Public Education?
Well, it IS happening, already. The reaction?
Nothing-Nada-Zilch.
To what am I referring?
It was bad enough when a former abortionist explained their PROFIT MOTIVE behind Sex Ed classes. (Womens’ Health? That’s cute. Step aside, there’s money to be made.) Remember the wall-to-wall headlines and news shows about the “Sex Ed Lining Abortionists’ Pockets” story? No?? Me neither. But what about
“#BringBackOurGirls and all that fluff and nonsense?
Fine, then, what about the incidents of teachers violating student rights? Not just the violations of religious liberty (that’s a whole other column) but the other relevant and embarrassing stuff.
Stupid stuff. Draconian stuff. GroupThink and ThoughtCrime stuff. And the Public System still isn’t bearing the shame the other group did? Then let’s keep digging.
There’s also the violence against students. Verbal abuse, or physical. Both are regularly being filmed, and uploaded to the internet. (See for yourself!) How often should it happen before we take note, or take action?
At least physical abuse will still provoke a murmur of interest. But even that dissipates quickly. Probably because it is quickly dismissed as being “an isolated case”. Just “One Bad Apple”. That’s odd, did the “one bad apple” excuse work with that religious group?
(Side note: Did you happen to notice the we/they dynamic in media reporting? If the media favours a group, they will defend it, saying the bad guys are acting alone. If not, they will usually portray this as “part of a larger problem”.)
Take a moment and think about the reports of teachers busted for sexual misconduct. Then remember that those are just the ones salacious enough to make the news. Has it been one? Two? or are they increasingly frequent? The actual numbers will make any parent sick. How about THIS headline: “100 NYC School Teachers engaged with inappropriate relationships with students over last 5 years” (link)?
What have the scandals looked like? Sexual misconduct with a minor student. Obscene texts. Plying minors with alcohol. Any of this ringing a bell?
How about these: Rewarding their sexual partners with inflated grades? A teacher pregnant with her student’s kid? (It isn’t like there’s only one such story.) And now… threesomes? Where does it end?
S.E.S.A.M.E is one group standing up for victims of “Educator Sexual Abuse and Misconduct”. Their website has a map of Eighty-Five (85!) instances where teachers in Pennsylvania were arrested for sexual misconduct with students in “the last few years”. This map does not include teachers who were not arrested, and quietly resigned to find work elsewhere.
Suppose someone, even a company’s CEO, got busted for harassment between consenting adults that looked even remotely like this behaviour. Wouldn’t shareholders demand that head on a pike?
Well guess what? YOU are the Shareholders!
Do NOT let Unions or other proxies shield any such teachers from real consequences.
Do NOT accept wrist slaps or suspension.
Boldly stand and call this what it really is: Not “harmless”, or “love”, or “consenting”…
It is abuse of trust.
… abuse of a power dynamic, and, simply stated, it is:
… the Sexual Exploitation of Children.
How many incidents need to occur before Public School forfeits any right to dictate the Sex Ed curriculum, trending a little more “progressive” every year?
It’s time to root this out wherever it is found… chase it down as relentlessly and doggedly as we once did in that religious order.
Not every allegation is valid. This is true. And every accused teacher should be presumed innocent unless / until proven otherwise. But for anyone shown to be guilty?
NO! to unreported offenses.
NO! to second chances.
NO! to “Passing the Trash” (Letting offenders move to another school to re-offend).
That was exactly the problem that Church was so slow in fixing. Remember how hard we came down on Catholicism?
Well now there’s less excuse even than before. Any school board, teachers’ union, or other group that aids and abets such people? Hit them every bit as hard as that Church was. Harder still, because they stood in judgment over Catholics learning a hard lesson and still, they chose to learn nothing from it themselves.
Image: Courtesy of: http://svteach.wikispaces.com/What+is+%27Bad+Teacher%27+Saying+About+American+Education%3F
