hiddendriver34 said:Teachers aren't signing some blood oath in the faculty lounge to protect one another.
The vibe in a teachers' lounge is just like any other workplace in the States—people have their favorites, they have their rivals, they grab coffee and gossip. I don't see any reason why a group of teachers would go out of their way to tank a student's grades just because that kid blew the whistle on a colleague!😲 Do you honestly think that's how it works? That they'd sabotage a kid just out of "loyalty" to a coworker?!
Well, it isn't just about loyalty, 🤣
public institutions often work in a way where you either have people stabbing you in the back because they have nothing better to do, or everyone protects each other because everyone has a "favor" to call in. It's that "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" mentality—better to stick together and cover for one another.
Nobody is saying teachers will actively target students with bad grades, but there is a very real fear of making waves. If you speak up, you might feel the fallout in other areas. For example, if you testify that a teacher actually said something inappropriate, there's a risk that their colleague might grill you with tricky questions during an oral exam—like in Physics, for instance (didn't they mention they should have reported the Physics teacher since not everyone gets straight A's in his class🤔)?
There's that fear of what others will say, how they'll look at you...
Of course, it can go the other way too; teachers might feel pressured to give better grades to those who step forward just so they don't end up being the ones scrutinized. 😂
And sure, both you and I dream of a perfectly fair society where one professor's actions shouldn't influence anyone else's behavior, but experience tells us that in America, it doesn't always work that way, and who knows if it ever will.
I think we need to have an honest conversation about the human dilemmas involved: why things don't get reported, why people don't fight back, and why, during those big curriculum protests, most parents still ended up showing up to the PTA meetings (which could have been canceled altogether)...
Most of the kids and parents fall into the "don't rock the boat" category.
That’s why they sign up for religion classes. We're seeing a situation right now where kids signed up for religion just by inertia—everyone else was doing it, so they did too. They liked the teacher, or he seemed fun (judging by the photos going around), or he handed out easy A's (that's what some kids mentioned in an article). Who can blame these kids for not wanting to cause trouble? They're in shock. They don't realize how damaging this person's teaching actually was, because like any predator, he knew how to charm them. Now, they feel like they've been betrayed because one kid had the guts to report him, making them all feel like they're on the losing side.
When someone is out on a boat in a calm, sunny sea and a storm hits, sweeping them into the water, even if they know how to swim, the sheer terror of nearly drowning leaves a mark. The cognitive and emotional aftermath can last for days.
They went from a place of total security to a world that feels unsafe.
The kids in that class (except for the few who realize how harmful the teacher's rhetoric was) have experienced genuine trauma from being exposed to aggressive content and hate speech. They've lost their image of the "cool teacher" and those easy A's.
And now they'll have to deal with even more stress, potentially being re-traumatized when they have to testify.
Man, that's just life.
The media is spinning this narrative that parents are preventing their kids from testifying, rather than just explaining the actual legal process. In reality, there’s a specific procedure where parents are called to request witnesses—including children—and parents have the legal right to decline having their child give a statement about what happened during that specific hour for various reasons.
On top of that, the police can call in any other witnesses they need, whether it's school staff or students from other classes mentioned in the initial report, or anyone else whose names come up during the investigation.
At the end of the day, the news outlets that were the first to jump on the story about students being "forbidden" from testifying clearly had an agenda—they were trying to intimidate people. Nobody wants to be the center of attention here, so please, don't go looking for trouble by making too much noise. 😬
(I am honestly curious if this whole thing was leaked on the principal's orders or by his lawyers—and they aren't exactly unknown figures. As a parent, I'd be asking myself if I really wanted my kid exposed to those people.)
I'm teaching my child that being a witness to something and reporting it to supervisors or the police is part of being a responsible citizen.
Whether it's misconduct at school or something more dangerous out on the road, any information provided to the police or the courts can be vital.
With that in mind, if my child had been there during that period, I would absolutely give her permission to testify via video link. She should just recount exactly what she saw and heard. Whether that leads to the teacher facing consequences is entirely up to the judge, not her.
The teacher is the one who messed up, and he should be the one held accountable, not the students who spoke up.
I can empathize with parents who are scared or just don't want to cause friction—especially since it's the end of middle school and some have younger siblings still in the building. But at the same time, this sends a really dangerous message: that covering up wrongdoing is acceptable, or that it's okay to flee the scene of an incident and just wait for things to blow over (or worse, for the case to be dropped entirely).