Just how stupid ...
Justin Bathon on Monday, May 31, 2010 at 8:19PM Reading a ton of cases this weekend (finishing up a Yearbook chapter that is overdue) and I am once again struck by a simple question ... as a teacher, just how stupid do you have to be to lose a lawsuit? And, I think, the answer is pretty damn stupid. It is amazing to me how many mildly stupid things the courts allow teachers to get away with. Between immunity statutes, the high Section 1983 bar, actual knowledge provisions for harassment, the lower search and seizure standard, etc., the simple fact is that the law is heavily construed in favor of the school and school employees. And, even then, in cases where it is the word of the teacher v. the word of the student ... typically the teacher wins. So, not only do you have to do something really dumb to even qualify as doing something illegal, but then there usually has to be a good deal of evidence to find for the student (as in, you can't even cover it up well).
So, seriously, it takes a really stupid act followed by a really stupid cover up on the part of a teacher to even make it to court.
Yet, in case after case, I am shocked by the ignorance of some teachers. Now, the worst of the worst make it into caselaw, so I am seeing the worst teachers in the America over the past few days. But, literally in the last year there were about 2 dozen federal cases dealing just with teacher sexual abuse of students, teachers taking searches way too far, teachers letting a student who had passed out from dehydration lay on the football field while they held a team meeting, teachers hitting kids, paddling for missing shots in a basketball game, a teacher playing on his computer while a student is forcibly undressed in front of a crowd in the classroom. And, this is just a smattering because it is only what is reported, the actual number is far, far higher.
So, seriously, what the hell is going on?
I have always defended the American teacher, been kind to teachers' unions, and generally given the benefit of the doubt. I was a teacher, so I know how it goes sometimes. But, can we all agree there is some kind of systemic problem in the teaching system that these kinds of horridly idiotic incidents continue to occur year after year after year? Something is broken. Pedophiles must be being attracted to teaching. The teacher dismissal process must be encouraging misbehavior. Professional standards boards must be woefully inadequate. Colleges of Education must be totally missing the boat in screening these folks. Maybe all of these things, but, something, clearly, is wrong.
We cannot continue to permit these flatly ignorant humans to enter the teaching force.
Reader Comments (5)
Let's be sure... these cases are horrific. But how many cases are there like this a year? 100? 1000? There are 3.4 million teachers in America. Even if we go with a very high end number of 1,000 cases a year (which I think, for cases of gross misconduct may be a lot), we are talking about .03% of the teaching profession... or one in every 3400 teachers.
I'm honestly very curious about how that stacks up against other professions.
Hey Chris,
I don't think it is nearly as much the number as the severity - or type of case that really bothers me.
I think without a doubt other professions (I use that term loosely) are sued more often. Obviously the medical field is sued more frequently. Lawyers the same. Engineers may be a toss up - etc. Those would be hard stats to measure, which is why I doubt anyone keeps them.
I'm not sure the frequency or percentage of the population is a good measure, though. Since teachers are public employees, they are protected far more than almost anyone else in society (politicians would be more, probably, if that is any comfort). Take negligence, teachers are almost always immune whereas private employees are not immune. That difference alone would make a dramatic numerical difference. Further, since the victims are usually students, they report at a far lower rate. In almost all of the teacher sexual abuse cases I read this year, teachers abused many students before 1 decided to report.
The only field I know really well is law and lawyers do a lot of really stupid stuff, but typically they are bad things that require thought. It is the sheer absence of thought on the part of many of these teachers that really gets me. You know the classic question, "what was he thinking?" ... well, for most of these teacher cases, I sort of have to conclude they were not thinking, or at least not thinking like a normal human, even if that is a devious human. Even with 3 million teachers, I just don't get how some of these get through the system. How do they get jobs? How do they keep jobs? I am just struggling with it.
Some of it speaks to how we recruit... what we pay... what the job entails... how the job creates stress, etc... and yes, we need to do a much better job of creating healthy, sane institutions so that teachers always have a reason to follow the better angels of their nature.
But some of it isn't as unthinkable as you think.
I know of cases where searches went too far... and it seems insane, but then you hear about the history between a student and a school, and suddenly, as wrong as it still was, you see the mental line to get there.
I know of cases where athletes battled with coaches or clowned around all season long, and an adult completely missed a real injury.
I knew teachers / administrators in this situation, and they were wrong, but the most frightening thing is that the train of thought isn't as crazy as you think.
(O.k. -- the sexual stuff, I can't speak to, because it is as baffling to me as it is to you.)
What I think we need to do is make schools much more collaborative, because in too many places, there aren't the other adults around as fail-safes. We need to do a better job of evaluating teachers throughout their career, so that positions don't become fifedoms where teachers never have checks on their behavior (see NCAA Div I coaches for how that can go badly.)
And then we also need to know that we have to work on figuring out how to re-value teachers in this country so that we can recruit and retain great people to become great teachers. And yeah, we've got work to do there.
I am assuming that the referenced cases are all court-level, not arbitrations. In Maine, and most other collective bargaining states I expect, a case would need to wend its way through the grievance process before heading into court. Even then, it likely wouldn't get far because the court would defer to the arbitrator.
In my experience, it is much too easy for an administrator to allow a student or parent to create an untenable situation for a teacher, particularly one the administrator him/herself does not like. Students/parents are believed; teachers are not. Administrators do the "investigations" despite have little to no training in good technique; ask leading questions; do not take accurate notes; do not consider that students talk with each other before or in between interviews (despite being cautioned not to do so); and generally assume that students and their parents would not lie/exaggerate/misconstrue.
In one of my cases, a witness against the teacher (accused of telling Holocaust jokes in class) was not even IN the teacher's class. The primary witness was a student who remembered the incident six weeks after it allegedly happened, but only a day after losing points for missing an assignment. Neither the superintendent or the school board took those facts, plus many more, into account. They focused on the "fact" that the student had the courage to report the incident.
It may well be that the few cases that make it into court are evidence of teacher "stupidity", but matters that make it to trial are few and far between. Many, many more careers are negatively affected, if not ruined, at lower rungs of the ladder.
@Chris - I think that is exactly the right mentality to address this and other issues. I don't think you reduce the number of teacher abuses by hiring more professional standards board staff. There has to be a re-calibration of our social value placed on teaching. \
@Nancy - The cases I am reading are all cases that involve a student issue first, not a direct employment issue. The student is typically suing the school over something stupid that a teacher did, so no grievance or arbitration procedures.
Also, I 100% agree that school administrators are horrible investigators, at least from a legal perspective. The majority of the evidence they obtain to make everyday school decisions wouldn't hold up in Court were it not for our allowance of this sloppiness because of the diminished rights provided to youth. I have actually considered teaching a class on evidence in the principal preparation program that I work for just because I think it is such a major issue.
Holding teachers accountable is a delicate balance to be sure, but I would have to dispute that many careers are ruined on shaky evidence post-tenure. Pre-tenure, sure, the at-will nature of the subsequent contracts leaves open a lot of room for abuse, and a lot occurs. But, post-tenure, I think that is a hard argument to sustain. Your position, I think, lets you see a lot of more of it than the general public, but post-tenure it is difficult to get rid of teachers, period. I think we just need to admit that and work backwards from there.