Talk about a shocking news week for teachers in Texas! First there was the explosive story of a teacher inciting 20 of her students to beat up one of their classmates (did I mention that the children were 6-years old!) Now comes yet another published story which doesn’t read any better.
The parents of a third-grade boy have sued two Texas school employees, alleging that they forced their son to strip and shower in front of them because he “smelled badly, was dirty and had bad hygiene.”
The eight-year-old was singled out last November and taken to the nurse’s office at Peaster Elementary School where he was forced to remove his clothes, the suit alleges, the Courthouse News Service reported.
The two school officials then “began violently washing his body with a washcloth, scrubbing him over a large portion of his body, stuck cotton balls in his ears, all while ridiculing and harassing him about being ‘dirty,'” the complaint claims.
The child’s parents, Amber and Michael Tilley, said they lodged a police report over the incident but no charges were laid.
On Thursday, the Tilleys filed their lawsuit against Peaster Independent School District and Peaster Elementary School employees Julie West and Debbie Van Rite in federal court in Fort Worth.
“It’s terrible, and we don’t want anything like that to happen to any other children,” Amber Tilley told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
According to the lawsuit, the incident left the boy “visibly and severely distraught,” and he had to see a therapist after.
“He just kept on and on, wanting to take baths,” Amber Tilley said. “You know, he just felt so disgusting.”
She added that her son did not have a problem with body odour or cleanliness.
The school district and Peaster Elementary did not respond to calls for comments Friday.
Tags: Amber and Michael Tilley, Child Welfare, Education, eight-year-old, hygiene, News, Peaster Elementary School, Peaster Independent School District, Shower, Strip, Teachers
Topical Teaching 
June 18, 2012 at 11:19 am |
I wonder if this and other such examples are not cases of, “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”
Thankfully such incidents are rare in Australia.
There is no doubt education budgets everywhere are under severe stress. I am beginning to wonder if this is not because there is so much regulation today that so much of budgets is taken up with compliance issues.
Then there is the expense of so much costly technology. I remember in the early 70’s schools were awash with all the latest technology, provided through the largesse of the current government. It was fantastic! No it wasn’t. There was no provision, and neither could there be, in the budget for maintenance of all this gear. In time schools had store rooms and cupboards taken up with hundreds of items of broken and worn out gadgets.
There are 2 essentials for education to work. Effective interaction between well trained teachers and students and a place for it to happen. If you get these essentials right the you can provide whatever gimmicks and geegaws are necessary out of the existing budget. If you don’t get these essentials right you spend an increasing amount of your budget on unnecessary repairs to your system, indeed shoring up a broken system, having increasingly less money for the essentials.
These examples of stupidity we keep hearing about are symptoms that the system is broken. The essentials are being ignored and more and more time is spent on endless details. Get the essentials right and you won’t need to worry too much about such details. They will be taken care of automatically.