Messages By: retreat

I only caught the preview for this show and probably won't be able to watch it on Monday. I was struck, however, with how extreme the example was. To be sure, Dr. Phil needs to intervene to protect these children. The child's physical illness is as real a signal of abuse as the cuts and bruises that result from physical assault. Still, I wonder at the focus on extreme examples. I could argue that those cases are the place to start in a culture - help folks recognize this as abuse and motivate as many parents as possible to alter their behavior or seek help. I would scarcely deny the need to offer the children in these families protection. But there are far more subtle cases of abuse - those that leave no signs of illness, no immediate scars of abuse. They leave the victim denying that abuse even occurred. I worry that these situations are as prevalent, present far less compelling television, and remain 'invisible.'

Think the program missed the boat by focusing on resolving the truth in the situation. After all this litigation, both sides are entrenched in their respective positions and . . . for all we know, actually believe those positions to be true.

I teach educational methods courses for middle and high school teachers. I watched the show hoping that I could use the situation to provide a context from which to help my prospective teachers understand the need to draw boundaries that protect both themselves and their students. I was greatly disappointed. There was little from the show that was transferrable to an educational setting. Instead it was reduced to a "he said/she said" with a bit of technology thrown in to convince us that even lie detector tests are unable to resolve the truth.

I couldn't judge where the truth lie from what I saw. I wanted to believe the teacher, but found her so focused on lookintg for inconsistencies in the young men's stories that it seemed an intellectual game. Perhaps that is what defending yourself in a courtroom leads to. On the other hand, I wanted to believe the young men . . . but found myself wondering whether they had invented a "truth" that they now felt compelled to defend. The "truth" is that we will probably never know what really happened. And, in the long run, it is the teacher's reputation that has been permanently damaged. I probably have less sense of the costs the young men have paid.

From what little the program shared, it seems possible that this teacher didn't understand the need to draw very, very clear boundaries. The fact that she eventually married one of her former teachers suggests that those boundaries were not necessarily clear in the beginning. (On the other hand, if the romance developed well after her time as a student under that teacher (her future husband)), then perhaps it isn't relevant. I'm not particularly interested in over-speculating.

The reality is that our culture encourages a lack of boundaries in most of its institutions. There are so many social and psychological problems in our culture, that pre-service teachers often feel compelled to respond to those issues. In training pre-service teachers, we work very hard to help them understand that their first (!) responsibility is to teach and provide feedback to their students on their intellectual performance. Anything they do in responding to the larger social and psychological probelms that students present that undermines their capacity to teach anbd provide meaningful feedback to their students is inappropriate. That ranges from becoming "friends" (so students wonder whether their grades come from the friendship or from their actual performance on homework) to inviting students over to their home (so students wonder whether the student-teacher relationship is now manipulable) to engaging in sex (so students wonder whether their grades arise from their sexual complicity). The few stories I heard about how this teacher communicated with her students (sexual innuendo in the classrom to "coded" notes) suggests to me that she didn't have a clue about the distance that she needed to put between herself (as teacher) and her students (as those for whom she needed to be seen as an 'outside cheerleader.")

Like so many of the "rules" or "rituals" that a culture has, today's generation of children and parents wants to reject them as meaningless. Anything that draws separation seems to be held in contempt. In reality, the most loving, caring thing a teacher can do is provide clear feedback on the student's abilities and a willingness to understand but challenge the student to move beyond whatever barriers that student experiences. It is the role of the "caring outsider" that best helps young people move beyond whatever chaos and confusion they experience within their family of origin.

Had your program brought out elements of what this teacher's interactions with students were . . . vis-a-vis what are acceptable teacher-student relationships, given some of the social chaos our students feel in today's families, it would have been more helpful. You got close to that a couple of times and the teacher admitted that she had made mistakes. Those mistakes . . . that detail could have been extremely helpful. I don't know whether she did or did not step over the line. Nothing in the two day presentation was particularly compelling. I do know that her actions, her behavior as a classroom teacher put her and her students at risk. Those young men, even if they were lying, are damaged by the incident.

I guess I think that is the better story to tell. As it is, your show seemed to simply suggest that teachers molest students or that students accuse teachers of molesting them . . . and that we can never know the truth.

I'm disappointed.