This is going to be a bit disjointed, but I hope I’ll make it worth your while if you take the time to read things all the way through.
Let me begin by stating that I have a number of criticisms for how education is done in the US, for teachers unions, and school administrations - based in part on some truly awful experiences in schools. In spite of all that I think that teaching is a vital, necessary, and laudable position that should be respected and valued.
It just seems to me that teaching is so often hemmed in by such unreasonable expectations that it’s almost insane to consider getting into the field at this time. Teachers (and especially female teachers) seem to be getting held to standards of conduct that are completely out-of-whack compared to the normal standards most of the rest of expect to be held to.
Withteachers getting fired for having pictures showing them consuming beer and wine while on vacation, there’s something fucked up going on with the standards.
When teachers are finding that things they did years ago, and heartily regret are causing them to lose their jobs, there’s something fucked up. I don’t give a shit that it may have been porn that they did. I don’t see why it’s an issue when it’s something that the teacher in question is performing their duties in the classroom to expectations, or even beyond those expectations.
For that matter, I think it’s particularly vile to punish any kind of former sex worker for something they’d done years ago. The so-called “Hooker Teacher” in NY may have misjudged the public reaction to her high profile statement about having done sex work while she was younger. That doesn’t mean that she was an ineffective teacher. That doesn’t meant that she was a poor role model for the elementary school children she was teaching.
I’ll admit I’m mostly focusing on alleged moral backlash coming back against female teachers. It may just be that’s what I’m noticing, or it may be that I’m correct to think that the double-standard is alive and well, still. Men may support various adult businesses, and it’s simply the way things are. Women, however, are permanently tainted by any kind of even incidental association, it seems.
I’m not so naive as to believe that this shit is new, or surprising. It is simply wrong, wrong-headed, and counter-productive. If your goal is to eliminate or even minimize the various sex trades, the way to do that is to help people out of that work, to show them that they can leave their past behind and that it’s what they are currently doing that they will be judged upon, not to permanently tar them with a reputation that will continually push them back into the same niches that you wish to eliminate.
Lest anyone think that this is a female only problem - take a look, sometime, at the reports about problems that ex-cons have in finding employment. Once again, in spite of claims to want to see people reformed, the actual result in the marketplace is that once convicted there’s a significant fraction of the population that will write off those people, permanently. With the completely inevitable consequence that they’ll find it hugely easier to return to crime for their livelihood than to try to maintain any kind of rehabilitation.
Here’s a clue, people:
If you want a better world, if you want to see less ugliness in the world, support people when they manage to change themselves. Don’t keep kicking them in the fucking teeth for daring to try to put their past behind them.
To get back where I started with teaching and teachers, I’d far rather have Tera Myers, Ashley Payne, or Melissa Petro teaching my children or The Monster, than I would want to see them at the mercy of the teachers and administrators at, say, South Hadley High School.
Real problems, causing real harm, to real children. Goddammit, why is it so fucking hard to see what’s important?