Young teacher, the subject
Of schoolgirl fantasy
She wants him so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside her there’s longing
This girls an open page
Book marking - she’s so close now
This girl is half his age
Don’t stand, don’t stand so
Don’t stand so close to me
Her friends are so jealous
You know how bad girls get
Sometimes its not so easy
To be the teachers pet
Temptation, frustration
So bad it makes him cry
Wet bus stop, she’s waiting
His car is warm and dry
Don’t stand, don’t stand so
Don’t stand so close to me
Loose talk in the classroom
To hurt they try and try
Strong words in the staffroom
The accusations fly
Its no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov
Don’t stand, don’t stand so
Don’t stand so close to me
-The Police “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”
It’s been around forever, immortalized by song and deed, but the problem seems to be reaching epic proportions. All across the country, students are being used as sexual playthings by the very people we place our trust in to educate these young souls. But why now is the media firestorm covering this topic reaching such a critical boiling point…and why do these people keep screwing our kids?!?!?!
Is it youth they are trying to catch, so enthralled with the helplessness of their victims? Is it a pointless power play that seeks to turn the tables on boys who will someday grow to be the men who have spurned them in the past? Or is it something more sinister, something less human that spur these female predators, who stoop to the lowest gutters of depravity when they seduce children sometimes decades younger than themselves?
Again, another case of a female teacher taking advantage of one of her students, this time a seventh grader in my own hometown of San Diego. Adrienne Elizabeth Feistel, a former teacher at Rosa Parks Elementary in the City Heights section of town, took the kindness that was bestowed upon her by the family of one of her young students and betrayed that trust by trying to steal the most valuable of all assets a child might possess: innocence. But wherein lies the blame, and what is causing this seemingly never ending outbreak of female teachers molesting their naïve, vulnerable pupils. Part of the problem may be public sentiment towards the issue. According to Whistleblower magazine When 43-year-old teacher Pamela Diehl-Moore tearfully pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old male student, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta sentenced her to probation, saying: "I really don't see the harm that was done here and certainly society doesn't need to be worried. I do not believe she is a sexual predator. It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship. … And don't forget, this was mutual consent " But how is a female adult taking advantage of a juvenile male anymore consent than when a male does the same to a female student?
Entire websites are devoted to this perverse culturally oddity that seems to be sparking like wildfire across America. Sites like www.schoolteachernews.com have an entire section exclusively about “scandals”, namely sexual scandals. As of the 27th of March, there have already been 100 scandals nationwide in the news. Probably half that many never make the news due to back-door severance packages and atypical dirty dealings to keep those in power from having their names drug through the mud. 2008 saw 479 scandals reported, an astounding number of abuses, and one that frankly boggles the mind. According to the U.S. Department of Justice In 2007, for every 1,000 persons age 12 or older, there occurred 1 rape or sexual assault. That’s a scary figure, given that approximately 260+ million people in America fit that broad description. If we were to say that there are about 250,000 or so rapes or sexual assaults per given year and a conservative estimate of 500 teacher related incidents, that still leaves a staggering number to contend with: one in every 500 crimes will be committed by a teacher. As I alluded to earlier, that leaves a lot of potential predators within a given community, and the sad thing is these are the people we have to trust the most. In my city alone, with about 12,000 teachers all told, that means that the odds are we will see one or two of these shameful incidents every year by the people who we pay to educate, protect, and nurture our children.
For those of you who still aren’t buying my likening of this madness as a precursor to the pandemic, check out http://www.hottforteacher.com. It is a fascinating site that refuses to play on our pedophilic fears and instead caters to the innate and perverse sense of wonder surrounding the teacher-student dynamic. And sometimes, if it weren’t so wrong, it would be so right…just look at some of the pieces of tail that were accused and convicted of “raping” young boys:
Finally, for those of you who need to know the gory details right down to a categorical smorgasbord of perpetrators, I present http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=39783, which will test your faith in placing your son or daughter in the care of anyone ever again.
Which brings us to the school that incubated the latest celebrity child molester...Rosa Park Elementary.It is not the best school in the city. The test scores speak for themselves, and Principal Peggy Crane might be the first to admit that overall performance has a lot of room for improvement:
2007 CST English-Language Arts Standards Test Score Performance
Grade Subject School Proficient District Proficient State Proficient
All English-Language Arts Standards 29.0% 47.0% 45.0%
2 English-Language Arts Standards 33.0% 50.0% 48.0%
3 English-Language Arts Standards 17.0% 39.0% 37.0%
4 English-Language Arts Standards 31.0% 53.0% 51.0%
5 English-Language Arts Standards 35.0% 46.0% 44.0%
2007 CST Mathematics Test Score Performance
Grade Subject School Proficient District Proficient State Proficient
All Mathematics 47.5% 56.8% 55.5%
2 Mathematics 43.0% 61.0% 59.0%
3 Mathematics 60.0% 61.0% 58.0%
4 Mathematics 43.0% 56.0% 56.0%
5 Mathematics 44.0% 49.0% 49.0%
The school sits smack dab in the middle of a fairly tough, lower income part of the city which, until recently, was plagued by higher rates of crime. Like most of the communities of University Avenue, this place is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, as the upscale spread that started in the Hillcrest area creeps its way eastward. Population stands at 65,450 as of 2005, although by looking around you know that is is larger than that by many thousand. Median household income is $19,393, which is far below poverty level. Racial makeup is approximately 47% Hispanic, 15% Asian, 34% African-American. Immigrants line the streets with their ethnic shops and a general bazaar atmosphere permeates as you leave Interstate 15 and head deeper into the heart. It’s a place of beauty and ugliness all at once, frequented by people who hardly speak English and born and bred San Diegans who come to patron the dive bars and savory family-owned eateries that dot the pavement.
According to the Rosa Parks Website, the School Mission Statement reads:
Each student has the right to learn.
Each teacher has the right to teach.
No student shall keep other students from learning or keep teachers from teaching.
Students are accountable for their own behavior.
No student shall behave in a way that hurts himself/herself or anyone else.
But is the credo working? Overwhelming, yes, as Rosa Parks is part of the highly vaunted social experiment known as the City Heights Educational Collaborative. Along with sister schools Clark Middle School and Hoover High, Rosa Parks is a study in the effectiveness of throwing additional money and resources in what had been an underserved part of the cities educational system. $30 million in funding over the last decade has produced mixed results, but ask anyone who sends a child to any of these schools and they will tell you it’s mostly been a rousing success story. But problems remain, and an article in voiceofsandiego.org (http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/12/20/education/857cityheights121208.txt) will testify to the fact that things are only partly rosy, with many thorns still sticking out and stabbing at the heart. So, how did a teacher like Feistel slip through the cracks into a school that could be considered a beacon of progressive educational reform and community action. How could the parents, and more importantly the administration, not seen this coming? Can the blame be linked to an apathetic public system that seldom claims the cream of the crop, especially when one takes into consideration the public griping the California Teachers Union is always doing about the pathetically low salaries they earn. But are teachers really underpaid, and is that why deviants like Feistel can slip through the cracks, where the demand for qualified individuals far exceeds the supply.
According to the BLS, the average public school teacher in the United States earned $34.06 per hour in 2005. When you figure in total hours worked, it comes to about $47,000 a year (remember, most teachers take summer session off, when they don’t pull a paycheck). This is a salary that has the average American teacher regarded as middle class, and given that a Bachelor’s Degree and teaching credentials are standard fare, they are paid about what they would be worth in other fields on the open job market.
The average public school teacher was paid 36% more per hour than the average non-sales white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty and technical worker. Full-time public school teachers work on average 36.5 hours per week during weeks that they are working. By comparison, white-collar workers (excluding sales) work 39.4 hours, and professional specialty and technical workers work 39.0 hours per week. Private school teachers work 38.3 hours per week. Some argue that private schools further thin out the pool of higher quality applicants, but surprisingly public school teachers are paid 61% more per hour than private school teachers, on average nationwide. Teachers hardly seem to blame for the rising occurrences of a few bad apples among their ranks getting frisky with the student population, but what about the administrators above the teachers. These are, after all, the people that hire candidates and place them in positions easiest to do damage to impressionable youth.
Enter current Superintendent Dr. Terry Grier.
Grier was essentially an untouchable golden boy in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he could do no wrong. Ironically enough, Greensboro holds the dubious distinction of being the place where teachers go to die. It pays the lowest wages in the country to these poor souls while Grier, who took credit for programs he never initiated and fudged statistics in his favor regarding the improvement of his students, brought in a salary in excess of $250,00 per year.
On one Blog, a responder who called herself Aunt B said:
Our junk apparently is your treasure, San Diego.
As a teacher in GCS, I'm ready for a superintendent that remembers what it is like to be in a classroom. Not an upper crust that sits in his golden throne, refuses to let media in to his inner sanctum, and vacations around the world. I'm ready for an educator, accustomed to being a public servant and willing to make the difficult decisions for the children, not his resume.
Guess Terry will need to sell his NC beach property for San Diego Beach Front. Good thing he sold his Greensboro home long ago in preparation for leaving Guilford County.
Another blog commentator who goes by the name of Stormy, irate that Grier had been presented the 2008 North Carolina Superintendent of the Year Award stated:
I assume this award was based on a criteria based upon accomplishments, rather than a political process or popularity vote. Your article said that Grier was cited for winning based upon three accomplishments: "The organizations credited Grier with halving the high school dropout rate to 3 percent, increasing student participation in higher-level courses and formulating an incentive plan that pays math and reading teachers extra to work in low-performing schools."
So, let's review those accomplishments. One, He gets credit for a 3% dropout rate when 2/3rds of the students never graduate (this doesn't compute). Four of the high schools in the district were cited by a national publication as "Dropout Factories". Several of those schools are being threatened with closing by Judge Manning if they don't improve. This represents accomplishment? Two, he gets credit for increasing the number of students taking AP test, when the taxpayers pay $700,000 per year for the test, and the pass rate is abominable. (Most districts do not pay for tests for students, but many reimburse upon successful completion.) This only counts to get listed in Newsweek as having the best schools in the nation, based upon taking tests, not passing tests. Third, he gets credit for Mission Possible, which is a program without a record of success as yet. Yes, he implemented a potentially good program, but we really haven't seen any results reported as yet, have we? They may be there eventually, but it is going to take a few years to really call this a success.
http://blog.news-record.com/staff/debatables/2007/11/terry_grier_superintendent_of.shtml
http://erikhuey.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/grier-gets-giddy/
According to an article in the Union Tribune under Grier's leadership, Guilford County Schools made significant academic strides including dropout rate that declined by half to 3 percent. The percentage of high school students graduating in four years was also improved to about 80 percent from 66 percent. In addition, the number of students taking college-level Advanced Placement exams went up to 8,393 in 2007 from 2,864 in 2000. But how much was he responsible for? If you believe the pundits, not much, as he was more of an authoritarian, autocratic dictator than the shining heart he claims to be.
Dr. Grier claims to be trying to lower the drop-out rate here among his many other agendas:
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/station/features/Dr__Terry_Grier__One_Year_Later_San_Diego.html
But is Grier really to blame for coming here and cashing in? Perhaps the culture of arrogance was started in 1998 with the beginning of Alan Bersin’s reign as superintendent. A former lawyer with no formal training in education, Bersin was the type of iron fisted administrator that would use bulldog tactics to attempt the forceful improvement of our fair school system. In an article about Bersin in the San Diego Jewish Journal in 2003, clues began to point towards unwillingness from the top brass toward working with the field generals in the battle for classroom success. "It's been that style of leadership since day one," complains Terry Pesta, current president of the San Diego teachers' union and a 30-year teaching vet. "Everything's been dictatorial. It's 'Our way is the only way.'"
Pesta went on to claim, "Morale among our members is at an all-time low. It's almost not that teachers are being evaluated on how well they teach, but on how well they're being a team player." Thankfully to most in the teacher’s union, Bersin moved on to pastures where a bull of his stature could trample ground underfoot without fear of repercussion. In 2005, he accepted the position of State Education Secretary; After all, he had the full backing of an actor playing the role of governor. In an article for the Union-Tribune in the same year, the insults…and defensive maneuvers…began in full force. "I'm not a governor that represents the unions," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "I represent the people. And I'm most interested in improving education."
But Bersin’s detractors couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, D-San Diego, showed little restraint in hiding his disdain for the head honcho. "Bersin's legacy as superintendent of San Diego Unified School District has been one of divisiveness," Ducheny clambered, obviously irate that a man who had done next to nothing to improve the school system as a whole, and possibly made it worse by alienating the teacher’s union. "His controversial approach combined with his narrow focus on test scores has angered both teachers and parents. To make matters worse, there is still no credible evidence that his so-called reforms made any significant impact on student test scores."
So has education improved, and more importantly, is the toxic environment that resides within the hallowed, sometimes rotting halls of our public schools any better at nurturing and protecting our children? The San Diego Unified School District has 227 schools, serving over 130,000 students with about 7,000 teachers. The average class size is right around 19 students, meaning that the overall quality is pretty good, not the horrible situation you might expect from the second largest district in the nation’s most populated state. According to Melissa McEwan (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/10/so-called-public-school-plague.html), the problem really does lie in the system and the administrators, who not only cover for these abusive teachers, but also have the gall to allow them to continue their criminal ways at other schools, much like a catholic priest accused of sexual misconduct might flee the community he lives in only to find a place at another church in another town.
In summation, I think that you have to look at a whole variety of factors. Society as a whole is sick, this much is obvious. Some experts point to the decline of the American nuclear family, and I think to some extent they are right; Parents just don’t have the time or energy to really care anymore. Also, you have to look at this epidemic from a historical perspective because a certain percentage of people in power have always broken the laws and done whatever they wanted because they thought they would be able to get away with it. Men have also historically undermined the right of women to some extent, dating all the way back to the times cavemen quite literally beat their women into submission in order to propagate the species whenever, and with whomever, they pleased. The fact that a growing number of female teachers are featured in the news could be explained away as some demented example of reverse sexism, a la Demi Moore’s character in the movie Disclosure. Whatever the case may be, a few simple coincidences popped up in my research:
1) Teachers are underpaid for the amount of stress that comes with the job, but are probably accurately paid per hour when you add in benefits and the fact that they have tremendous job security once they’ve paid their dues and provided they don’t live in California.
2) The fact that teaching is an honorable profession and pays fairly well overall means that quality people are attracted to this profession and people of questionable character probably don’t slip through the cracks all too often.
3) School administrators are, for the most part, out of touch with what goes on in the classroom, are overpaid, and treat the school system as part social experiment, part networking circle to ascend to positions of higher pay/greater influence.
4) If San Diego can be looked at as a microcosm of all public school systems, it can be theorized that declining conditions and apathy will continue to drive the number of these sexual dalliances higher and higher.
5) In short, if finances allow, send your child to a good private school…and beware of religious schools taught by overly friendly priests!
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