Yes?
Is there some trick to this question?
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want my 8* yo old daughter to watch you and your wife engaged in sex. I assume you do that in private?
*my daughters are 21 and 23, so this is a hypothetical.
Would you want your hypothetical 8 year old to watch other people who aren’t their teacher having sex? I assume you’d object to that just as strongly. In which case I’d suggest you focus on controlling your hypothetical 8 year old’s access to the internet rather than worrying about which of their teachers engage in sex, since that’s the real problem you’re trying to avoid.
No, I wouldn’t want my hypothetical 8 year old to watch other people who aren’t their teacher having sex. But you assume wrongly that I’d object to that less strongly if it was her teacher. Other people aren’t my child’s role model. Her teacher is.
And we cycle back around to this core bit.
Are teachers and their lives outside the classroom correctly held up as moral role models for kids in their classes?
Is being a role model in their lives outside of the classroom part of their job description?
Or is the job of role model something best provided for by parent, family, and chosen social networks?
When it comes to what I want my kids to watch, “porn that isn’t quite as bad for them to see” isn’t where I set the bar. I don’t want them watching any. That’s my job as a parent.
I believe the studies that conclude early exposure to porn is harmful for kids, and when my kids were young, I tried my best to shield them from it (and other things they were too young to see, like violence, and gore). I thought I succeeded. But, you know what? As adults, they told me of all the things they did and saw as kids that I thought I protected them from. Kids have friends, and their friends often aren’t closely monitored. Unless you ban your kids from having friends, they’re going to see things you don’t want them to, despite how good a parent you are.
And, yes, I believe kids watching porn is bad, but kids watching their teacher engaged in porn is worse—for the reasons I already listed.
And, as I posted upthread, early exposure to porn is just the secondary reason I don’t think teachers should be involved with porn. The primary reason is that I don’t believe children learn as well from teachers who are involved in scandals and are mocked. My daughters also tell me about all their teachers who were involved in scandals (more than I imagined). They didn’t do as well in those classes.
No doubt, but this story has nothing at all to do with “exposing kids to porn,” so I’m a little curious why you keep framing it that way.
Mmmm, I think that’s not entirely accurate. Of course the teacher in this story was not directly doing anything to expose kids to porn, nor is there any indication that she had any intention of exposing kids to porn.
However, I think it’s a bit unrealistic to suggest that an incident where a teacher is outed for hawking homemade porn online has “nothing at all to do with exposing kids to porn”. In reality, a whole lot of kids who find out that their teacher appears in porn materials accessible online are going to look at those materials. Part of the real-world impact of children being aware that their teacher is a porn performer is going to be increased exposure of children to porn.
I completely agree that the teacher is in no way directly responsible for that outcome, since her being outed as a porn performer was not her own doing. But it’s an entirely predictable outcome in any situation where students find out that their teacher is a porn performer.
I do think it has something to do with “exposing kids to porn”, though, as I said, this is a secondary concern.
If kids become aware that their teacher is involved in porn (from their friends, or overheard adults), I believe they are likely to see that porn (earlier than they would be motivated to watch anonymous porn) from classmates who hack into the porn website (to see our naked teacher), or hack into it themselves. Kids are curious about people they are close to, especially if they do bad things.
And, again, this is a situation where it’s very difficult for other adults to act as allies in changing community views of what’s acceptable, without risking a breach of that firewall between adults and minors concerning awareness of sexual activity.
I agree that our society in general needs (a) less shaming and demonizing about sex work and sexual behavior overall, and (b) a less exploitative and abusive commercial porn industry. But I don’t see a good way for adults to advocate for those things in the context of a schoolteacher moonlighting as a porn performer, on account of that firewall.
Are the porn performer’s fellow teachers, for example, going to support her by telling their students “Look, I use porn sometimes, like almost every adult, and it’s not a matter for shame or prying, so you need to stop hassling Ms. Fellowteacher about her OnlyFans account and just mind your own business?” While I approve of modeling healthy acceptance of sexual behavior, I just don’t think it’s ever a good idea for teachers to even mention their own porn-use habits or other sexual activities to students, no matter how good the cause.
(And no, I don’t buy LHoD’s red herring about classroom references to his children being more revealing about sexual activities than references to OnlyFans work or similar. There is no societal firewall between adults and minors concerning awareness of the existence of offspring.)
How about they support their fellow teacher this way:
you need to stop hassling Ms. Fellowteacher about her OnlyFans account and just mind your own business?”
Well now we’re hacking into websites. The societal freefall has accelerated.
In this case, it’s not the teacher “exposing kids to porn”, it’s their friends. I don’t see how that’s the fault of Ms. Nunya.
We haven’t gotten to ‘Teachers with OnlyFans sites leads directly to Hitler!’ . . . yet.
But aren’t all adults role models for children, whether we like it or not? At least in the sense that they are modelling options of how to be an adult person.
You seem to be using the term to mean “someone children look up to and want to imitate,” but if you think about it, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the classroom, children are only experiencing the teacher as a teacher. Is a teacher there to form a child’s character? To offer them moral lessons? What, exactly, is entailed in being a “role model,” and what skills and traits are required to do this successfully?
If you (and others in this thread) are going to assert that this is an inherent aspect of the position, perhaps we should articulate what it means.
That’s not what I said. I said my classroom references are more revealing than her lack of classroom references.
Well, Ron Jeremy was my role model, but that’s beside the point.
How about instead of “role model”, we substitute “someone in authority, who should be respected.”
It would be hard for students to view someone as a respected authority if they are mocked and ridiculed due to a sex scandal.
And, I believe kids aren’t as receptive to learning from someone who they mock and ridicule. Even as an adult, I’d find that difficult.
Hmm, I never thought of that. Tell kids to stop doing what they and their classmates want to do, and they’ll listen!
It is the goal of education, is it not?
Sure, it’s a goal, but the ball doesn’t always go through the goalpost.
Umm, wouldn’t the first lesson in respecting authority be you do not mock and/or ridicule someone in authority, who('s authority) should be respected?
IMHO, it’s the mocking and ridicule, for any reason, that’s the problem.