I wouldn’t because in my experience, within 24 hours they will be on to the next thing.
Some parent concerns yes, but not every little thing. I pointed out in a previous post issues principals and teachers need to deal with and most are from parents that have no clue how education works. But that a different point. It is a dangerous world when a person can lose their job because someone shoves their moral beliefs onto another’s life outside of work. How would you feel if I demanded you got fired from your job because I saw you drinking alcohol at a restaurant and as a result of MY morals you actually got fired?
I’m going to turn that around into the issue I see in this thread: If you are going to discipline a teacher for doing blackface, then should that apply to any person in any job? Or just teachers because they are held to a different standard?
There is significant evidence that those of us with no explicit bigotry, with explicit rejection of bigoted beliefs, have implicit biases that impact how we do our jobs. Pretty sure most bias is not explicitly recognized as such.
Should those of us with those implicit biases not be allowed to teach?
I’m not sure that those who explicitly endorse bigoted beliefs will be more likely to exhibit bias, and likely don’t advertise it.
Okay, I get that values get expressed along the way. The subject may be chemistry but teachers are also models so having a known bigot as a model is best avoided? Makes some sense.
And I agree, in my book being a part time legal sex worker does not create the same odious role model. I just get uncomfortable conveniently drawing the line for forbidden expressions outside of work comporting to my book?
Teachers have an up close and personal position to impact the values of children. More than celebrities or politicians who are also sometimes held to account. Not as much as peers but sometimes more than parents.
So if teachers there is cause.
Exactly.
I don’t follow that logic at all. To me, if even implicit bias can have a significant impact on a teacher’s practice, it seems self-evident that a consciously held bias would have a much stronger impact: confirmation bias would be much stronger. Furthermore, having a subconscious idea that one student might be stronger or weaker in a nebulous way is very different than having a specific, stated idea like “that kid is genetically incapable of learning this”.
Furthermore, if you’ve stated views that some students are inferior in a public setting, your students will know you think they are inferior, or that some people are inherently inferior. That’s fundamentally different than your students knowing you do sex work: the first involves the student and their ability to trust your judgment about them. The second does not.
Educators do have a responsibility to police themselves for implicit bias. I do so on a daily basis, as do many of my co-workers. That’s nothing like a person who sees their biases as grounded in intrinsic, immutable truths. The former is something we can work to mitigate. This isn’t a “both sides” situation.
I feel like this applies to pediatricians, too: my son’s doctor gave us all sorts of advice about his education and milestones. I’m sure implicit bias sneaks into that sort of advice–but if a pediatrician personally really thought Black children were less intelligent than white children, or felt pain less, or were more likely to engage in anti-social behavior, that would be far more concerning than just the sort of baseline implicit bias that we all grapple with–even if they said it didn’t affect their professional actions. I mean, wouldn’t that worry you in a different way?
Would a government-run public clinic fire a doctor for doing this sort of sex work, if they became aware of it? I honestly don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t think it was appropriate to fire them. I imagine a private practice would.
You also mentioned this idea of conveying “values”. I want to clarify that I don’t think it’s about subconsciously passing on values. I think that’s easier to monitor for, and you can fire people for what they actually do, not what they might do. But explicitly holding biases about students is more nefarious.
Posts like this is why I wish we had a like button.
There’s a dinosaur in my school lobby.
About eight years ago when it was being built, through a series of fortunate events, the architect was able to (legally and ethically!) acquire the almost-complete fossilized skeleton of a hadrosaur. The 30-foot-long skeleton is mounted on the wall, and you see it every time you walk in the building.
It’s wonderful and delightful, and when it was being installed, I told my wife, “This is going to be a jolt of wonder every day when I walk in this building.”
I wish that were true. Most days I don’t even notice this 65-million-year-old fossil that’s close enough for me to touch. Most days I walk straight past it without looking up.
Which is to say: people can get used to anything. I think of it as the Dinosaur Effect.
Kids will be super-distracted by whatever pervy dad posted the OF screenshots online. But if people don’t keep feeding their distraction, they’ll just add it to the list of things they learn about the world, and they’ll move on to the next thing.
Thank you–I appreciate it!
So you have no problem if someone in your work did blackface and had to work with coworkers and clients that may be black? Or should the teacher be fired for it and your coworker just told to “Don’t do it again.”?
Something running through my head throughout this thread. If it is all about the children and professionalism and whatnot, what if it were a child psychiatrist that had their sex film released and his/her clients saw it. Should they be fired from the hospital? What about those working in CPS?
I think the problem with compating a sex tape to racist content is that its easy to argue that being racist directly impacts a tracher (or pediatricians) ability to deliver fair and equitable performance.
A better comparison might be drug use. For example, a video of a teacher appearing to do lines of coke on vacation. There are people who have no objection to that, but a lot of people do. It doesn’t directly impact instruction. Legality aside, would it really make sense that the “values” of a coke-snorting teacher would somehow be passed on?
I have found much of what I thought was “self-evident” is, when evidence comes to bear, not in fact true. I’ve personally learned to substitute “my wild assed guess” when I think or read that phrase.
It is “self-evident” that the group who responded negatively to “Black Lives Matter” with the “All Lives Matter” mantra would include more explicit racists. But nope. By far it was those who believed they reject racism, who rejected conscious bias, with implicit racism, that responded that way.
I am happy you do. And I am skeptical enough to doubt that you are as successful in your effort as you likely think you are.
Another something that is “self-evident” to many: successful training in awareness of implicit bias will help reduce it. Unfortunately so far in the real world it is only “self-evident”; actually testing of it is disappointing. Being cognitively aware of implicit racism is important but I am pessimistic that our individual efforts to become conscious of how our implicit beliefs impact our behaviors do squat. I suspect despite best efforts to self-police myself I remain clueless of what I still do, without conscious awareness, every day.
The impact of implicit bias is huge throughout medicine, including pediatrics. My WAG is that it is second in impact to structural factors, and that explicit racism is at most a distant third.
Of course response to examples of explicit racism would be biggest and most immediate. It is easiest and most performative. Yes I think it should be done but it is likely not actually causing much positive change.
This is getting afield from this OP, but across many areas, from medical errors to climate change impact to bigotry, the biggest attention is often given to punishing individuals, to send a message maybe, while the problems that need addressing are at a systems level.
Back to the subject!
My WAG is that any pediatrician who was known to be doing sex work on the side would be out very quickly in either sector. And I am not sure if I agree with you or not. Would I be thrilled that my early teen daughter was getting examined by someone who posted videos as “King Dong”? Rationally maybe it shouldn’t be of concern? I don’t per se think his doing that is a moral wrong, and believe whatever consensual kink my kids’ teachers or doctors might have on their own time is none of my business. But honestly I’d be uncomfortable with that.
Answered above.
Sorry, I didn’t mean you per se but meant the general you for anyone in this thread that is using this logic
I personally disagree with action X
Action X is legal and not against any written policy (although I do think blackface would be against most corporate policies)
Therefore any teacher that performs X should be fired
But this only applies to teachers because reasons
I wonder if the fear is that people who exploit their sexuality can’t contain their sexuality. I don’t see why King Dong can’t have a day job, but I think there’s the thought that any sexuality beyond the quiet bedroom is a sign of someone who respects no sexual boundaries and is therefore dangerous.
I assume nobody here would have a problem with a teacher who had daily sex with one long-term partner. What if they made a sex tape for their own amusement? What if her now-bitter ex posted it to OnlyFans and took out an ad on a local billboard?
I’m pretty sure this would be both illegal and against OnlyFans’s rules.
Yes, of course, but should she be fired? It would still distract the students, and show her as sexual in her free time.
I don’t think it only applies to teachers but again I think there is broader sympathy to applying it to teachers because of their outsized potential impact on kids.
I’ll speak to my own response, maybe more emotional than anything else: yeah the decision to sexually exploit is the uncomfortable part, not the sex. In the case of the bitter ex the person being exploited is pure victim, and the ex, sexually exploiting without consent, is a horrible excuse for a human being deserving great consequences.
Would it distract them so much that the teacher would no longer be able to effectively do her job?
If we hypothetically grant that it would, then it might indeed affect her employment—not in the punitive sense that the word “fired” implies, but in a way similar to a teacher who had a health issue or injury that left them unable to do their job.
But that’s a big “if.” One of the things we’ve been arguing over in this thread is whether a teacher having sex videos posted online poses an insurmountable obstacle to them being able to teach effectively. And my impression is that most, if not all, of the participants in this thread who are actual classroom teachers are saying that it would not.