Humiliation of children in the name of education

It's not often I get a "two-fer" when I log in to read the latest headlines, but today was one of those red letter days.

Two stories about the abuse of children by their respective schools or educators jumped out at me as I scanned the pages.

First, we have the Tennessee kindergarten teacher (since suspended for one day with a letter of reprimand for her file) who encouraged her students to gather around a crying classmate to call him a pig and make oinking noises at him because he did not keep his area neat.

I can guarantee that this teacher has just damaged that child's love of learning for years to come. Little kids don't soon forget public humiliation. I have a friend who's 47 and she still remembers a humiliating experience in which a fourth grade teacher called her up to the front of the class and asked her if she was "spoiled at home."

I have another friend whose son, now nearly 21, was humiliated on purpose by a teacher way back in 2nd grade and to this day he does not care to read for pleasure. He made the mistake of reading too many books for a reading program and the teacher thought he was showing off. Nevermind that he was and is an outstanding and gifted student. She made him sit in an empty classroom with a teacher's aide while the rest of his class enjoyed a pizza party across the hall.

It's easy to humiliate little kids. They're small, virtually defenseless, and the odds are that if you do it they either won't tell or else they'll tell but no one will believe them.

Guess all the anti-bullying efforts touted nationwide don't apply to grownups.

The Tennessee teacher tasked with caring for and educating the most vulnerable members of the school population abdicated her responsibility. A one-day suspension is laughable. A lawsuit and permanent removal from the classroom would be much more appropriate.

Next!

Our next story comes from Illinois where an elementary special education teacher ordered all of her students to remove their underwear so she could determine who among them soiled their pants.

Special education students are such an easy target for intimidation, folks. Some of them can't speak, others can't hear, the rest are often physically incapacitated in some fashion so as to be unable to defend themselves. They often require extra physical care depending upon their disability, but, hey, the schools provide special education and receive additional state and federal monies for it. They know what comes with the job.

According to the news article, the teacher saw feces smeared on the floor so she had each of her seven students go into a bathroom and remove his or her underwear. The third and fourth graders were then required to present their underwear to the teacher for inspection.

No word on which, if any, of the students was the guilty culprit.
In this case, the school did the right thing and fired the teacher -- the real guilty culprit.