A Nation Of Second Chances (Except For Teachers)

The United States likes to think of itself as a nation that gives people a second chance. We were settled by people looking for a second chance (and one of our original colonies was started as a penal colony). It's in our history, and that tradition continues to this day. We like the story of a person who has admitted wrong and turned their life around.

And this happens throughout our society. In our criminal justice system we have probation and parole, which are nothing more than an opportunity for a second chance (and we even provide for rehabilitative services and job training). We give politicians a second chance (Bill Clinton, David Vitter), and ministers (Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart), and entertainers (Lindsey Lohan, Mel Gibson, and numerous others).

We give second chances to people in almost all walks of life (and generally conclude that their private life is their own as long as it doesn't affect their public life). But there is one profession that does not get any second chances, and are not allowed to have a private life -- teachers.

There is only one thing I believe we should demand of our teachers -- that they not be pedophiles (since this crime is repeated far too often and would directly affect in a negative way those they have been hired to teach). But outside of that, why shouldn't teachers be allowed to live private lives and get second chances (as long as those private lives don't interfere with their public job)?

Recently an elementary teacher lost her job, even though she had two master's degrees and her job performance was exemplary -- all because it was learned she had been a "hooker" in the past. Why shouldn't she have received a second chance to live her life as she wanted? Did it really matter what she had done before, since it was not affecting the classroom or her students?

And too many times in this country teachers have been terminated because they live their personal lives as gay or lesbian. Why? If it doesn't affect the classroom or students is it really any of our business? Don't they have the same right to privacy as the rest of us?

P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula has written an excellent post about this. Here is some of what he had to say (and I agree with him wholeheartedly):

Almost all of your public school teachers have sex. Most of them enjoy it and do it repeatedly, even.


Many of your public school teachers vote for the Democratic party. Some are conservative Republicans. Some are Communists.


Some of your public school teachers are atheists. Or Episcopalians. Or Baptists. Or Scientologists.


All of your public school teachers go home at the end of the school day and have private lives, where they do things that really aren't at all relevant to your 8 year old daughter, your 15 year old son. That you pay taxes to cover their salaries for doing their jobs during work hours does not entitle you to control the entirety of their lives.


All of your public school teachers have a history. Almost all of them have masturbated. Many of them have smoked marijuana. Almost all of them have dated; most of them have danced. Some of them are gay. Some of them are heterosexual. Almost all of them have private kinks which you don't know about, because they don't practice them in public, let alone when they're doing their jobs. Some of them have been sex workers.


And you know what? All of them can be fired or blacklisted by local prudes on school boards or the school administration. Teachers: you don't get to be human. This outrages me.


When I was in eighth grade, one of the best teachers I ever had taught me geometry. Mr Anderson was fat; he sweated excessively. He always wore baggy slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, and he had a crew cut. And he was ferocious. He would yell at bad students and tell them to work harder, and if he caught you being inattentive in class he'd throw an eraser at you. Those students mocked him mercilessly, behind his back. He was also passionate about the subject — I can still see him in my mind's eye excitedly making that chalk fly across the board, talking excitedly about a proof, giggling at how cool a result was.


Every year he rewarded the best of his students with an invitation to his house for a formal party, with snacks and Nehi soda. He was single and weird, but there was no worry about impropriety — there'd be a score of us there, who would all be treated politely as adults, which was mind-blowing right there. He'd play music for us: opera and show tunes.


Show tunes. He adored Ethel Merman, and sometimes even in class he'd start humming something from his beloved musicals.


He made the adults uncomfortable, and you can guess what kinds of rumors the school jocks spread about him. The people who didn't care that he was a fantastic, enthusiastic math teacher who taught students self-respect and to love math only saw a strange man who didn't fit in, who was odd, who fit certain stereotypes, and who obviously could not be trusted.


So one year, poof, he was gone. Dismissed. The best damned math teacher they had, sent away on the heels of a sordid campaign of bigoted whispers.


Even now, it stirs a little outrage in me, that teachers get judged not by the quality of their work and their positive effects on their students, but how well they fit the conventions of the most closed-minded members of the community, by people, even, who despise good educations that raise kids to think independently.


Melissa Petro, the teacher who was open and unashamed of her past as a sex worker, couldn't be more different, superficially, than a fat flamboyant math teacher. But they do share something in common: both were pilloried by an intolerant public and cowardly administrators over perfectly ordinary and human traits that just didn't match an unrealistic expectation of teachers as bloodless mannequins of perfect propriety.