Blog Entry 5                    "You're Fired!"

                               

         

       For my final entry, I wanted to do a little twist on the theme I have for blog on discipline in the education system by focusing on how teachers are disciplined for their conduct outside of school and whether or not there is validation to these punishments. In class we watched a YouTube video about a teacher who was fired for posted hateful comments about homosexuality to his Facebook page and I found it extremely interesting and I wanted to investigate more cases of teachers being punished, perhaps even fired, for the way they conduct themselves outside of the classroom. An opinion article in the Los Angeles Times describes many cases where teachers are being “fired or suspended for perfectly lawful activities during off-work hours when those activities are deemed inappropriate by parents or school officials." Some teachers were blogging about students, sending explicit text messages to their partner, holding alcoholic beverages in their hands in photos on Facebook or just caught in the background of a suggestive picture. At the end of the work day these teachers should be able to go back home and live their own life and do as they please. As long as they are not harming anyone, why should they be fired for what they do in their free time? Any other employee of another company, say for example Sobeys, would end their day at the end of their shift and not have to worry about complying to anyone’s rules, except the law, of course. Why should expect our teachers to always have their behavior in check and always be on the clock?

One teacher, who was fired for a picture of her holding a beer in her hands while on vacation in Europe was uploaded to Facebook, is currently being fighting back and demanding her job back. Her profile was set to private, and yet, someone managed to see her pictures and told the principle. I understand we think of our teachers as role models but realistically, children learn from everyone in their environment. So why should a teacher be fired over a photo of them having a beer, when that student could quite possibly witness their own parents drinking one or two every single night? We can’t say “Don’t drink, you are underage, it’s wrong” and then get mad a teacher uploads a picture to Facebook (that the student might not have even saw), when they are witnessing it everywhere they look: at home, on TV, in magazines, music videos and movies.

This reminded me of the performed ethnography we did in class, and one of the characters named Rahima Ali, a muslim woman, held the personal belief that homosexuality is wrong, but did not show it at school. Being in that sort of environment, she had to take care to respect the orientation of all people in the school, but outside of school, she is rightly allowed to hold whatever views she wants. It also reminded me of Deacon’s article and how one of the three Foucauldian themes of the ‘techno-political’ history of the school was ‘moral orthopedics’ – that schools are supposed to create the moral ‘skeleton’ for us growing up and should be something that teaches us right from wrong and good from bad. Teachers are supposed to teach students the curriculum, but are also teaching them morality and ethics in addition, through saying ‘Yes, you can do that, that is good’ or ‘No, you may not do that, you are not old enough, it is bad if you do that now.’ Teachers help teach the morals students have growing up, but they shouldn’t have to hold back from having a beer or two or going to a bachelor/bachelorette party that may have strippers simply because they tell the students not to. The big difference is, these kids are young, and underage, while a teacher is in their late 20’s and older. They shouldn’t have to restrain themselves. I understand the point that, well maybe they shouldn’t put the images on Facebook, but what if they do not even know the pictures are there in the first place? A teacher was suspended for a month, without pay, simply because she was at a party and a male stripper was there and she as caught in the background of a picture that was uploaded, without her knowledge. So, even if they don’t have a Facebook account or knowingly upload these pictures, a teacher can still get suspended for simply being at a party. How is this fair?

I guess the point I am trying to make is that, yes we should be telling students it is wrong to do certain things because they are underage, but these teachers are not underage and these actions are perfectly legal. Why should they be getting disciplined for doing something that, if any other type of employee at any other company would do, would just simply be ignored or overlooked, just because they are teachers? A balance can be found; a balance between teaching children, but being able to live your own life, without worrying about losing a job because you had a beer on vacation and wanted to show your family and friends via Facebook.

I am not sure if anyone else find this topic as interesting as I do, but I looked into more news articles about this and I found some more if you are interested. I will list them below:

The Guardian

Metro

Media Shift

Images obtained from:

Cartoon

Woman carrying box

Donald Trump