Teachers can’t afford to be stupid and irresponsible. Our carelessness and negligence can cost far too much to be tolerated lightly. Even if we are to believe that this teacher had no idea that the book he bought for his student was for mature readers only, the lack of awareness and due diligence to simply read the front cover (let alone doing basic research on the book’s content) is reason enough to hand him a much more severe penalty than a week off:
Whilst exposure to online pornography is unlikely to be the only trigger for sexual behaviour and misconduct, teachers are entitled to raise their concerns:
They will warn that the increased availability of pornography on the internet is warping school pupils’ ideas of sexual relationships and that children are often engaging in sexual behaviour on school premises.
Teacher leaders now believe the problem has become so significant that they want new policies to be drawn up on how to deal with the issue.
They are particularly concerned about the practice of “sexting” – which sees young girls being pressurised into taking intimate pictures or videos of themselves on a camera phone and sending them to others.
They are also asking for the introduction of new lessons on the dangers posed by pornography.
Helen Porter, a biology teacher who will raise a motion about the impact of pornography on pupils at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers annual conference next week, said: “Sexual activity in school is becoming more normalised because pupils are seeing it more.
“I’ve heard of a 13 year old girl taking part in an amateur porn video – it is really sickening. Research has found that 50 per cent of youngsters had taken part in some sort of webcam sexual experience.”
Official figures show that more than 3,000 pupils were excluded from state schools in 2010-2011 for sexual misconduct.
Recent research from Plymouth University also revealed that 80 per cent of young people are looking at sexual images online on a regular basis. The average age to start viewing pornography was about 11 or 12 while sexting was considered almost routine for many 13-14 year olds.
The academics warned that schoolchildren were becoming desensitised to sexual images after accessing hard core material.
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If the police were given universal access to the photo albums of my parents’ generation, there would be millions of people in their 60’s and 70’s suddenly added to the sex offender registry. Since when did innocent bath photos constitute a sexual offense? If naked documentation of children was automatically considered material for Child Protection Services, then video of a birth must be classified as ‘kiddy porn’ (unless the baby somehow arrives fully clothed).
The problem with this case and others like it, is it completely undermines the function of a child offender registry. To have known pedophiles share a registry with loving parents is absolutely outrageous and completely unacceptable:
An Arizona couple is suing US department store Walmart after they were falsely accused of taking pornographic photos of their three daughters.
lost custody of their children for a month and say they spent more than $75,000 in legal fees as a result of the ordeal, ABC News reports.
It all started in 2008 when the Demarees took some holiday photos into their local Walmart to get developed.
A Walmart employee raised concerns with the store manager about several bath time photos the couple had taken of their daughters – then aged five, four and 18 months.
Instead of getting their happy snaps, the couple were reported to police and their children placed in the custody of the Arizona Child Protective Services Agency.
A medical exam of the girls showed no signs of sexual abuse and a month later a judge ruled the photos were innocent and not child pornography.
The Demarees regained custody of their children but in the meantime had to endure their name being listed on a registry of sex offenders.
Mrs Demaree was also suspended from her job at a local school for a year while the investigation was underway.
“We’ve missed a year of our children’s lives as far as memories go,” Mrs Demaree told ABC News.
“As crazy as it may seem, what you may think are the most beautiful innocent pictures of your children may be seen as something completely different and completely perverted.”
In 2009, the couple sued Walmart for not telling them that they could turn over photos to authorities without their knowledge.
They lost the hearing after a judge ruled that employees in Arizona could not be held liable for reporting suspected child pornography.
But the couple is now appealing the case.
On a March 6 hearing, the family’s lawyer argued that Walmart committed fraud by not disclosing to customers that employees would look at their photographs.
It was also negligent for “untrained clerks” to be given the authority to make assumptions about the content of the pictures and report them to police, the lawyer claimed.
Walmart has argued that under Arizona law employees who report child abuse without malice, such as in this case, are immune from prosecution.
The appeals court is yet to reach a verdict on the case.
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As inappropriate and unprofessional as this teacher’s actions was, a lot can be said for a teacher who has such support from their students:
The 23-year-old math teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado who is in hot water with Cherry Creek School District officials for tweeting racy photos of herself as well as posting about drug use was put on paid leave by the district, but some of her students — and fans — are standing by her on Twitter in her time of need using the hashtag #FreeCrunkBear to show their support.
9News reports that some of Carly McKinney’s students don’t think she should be punished for what she pursues in her free time outside of school hours. “It’s a teacher that’s only five or six years older than our oldest students,” an Overland High School student named Shaun told 9News. “So we kind of relate to her on a personal level.”
Even some of McKinney’s fellow teachers told 9News that they support her right to free speech and don’t think she should be fired over her tweets.
The #FreeCrunkBear” hashtag comes from McKinney’s now deleted Twitter page where she went by @Crunk_Bear. Here are some of the supportive tweets since the news broke that McKinney’s behavior was going to be investigated by the school district.
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Is it really that strenuous for teachers to maintain a level of decorum in their after school life?
A 23-year-old Colorado teacher has found herself under fire after it was revealed that the woman had been posting half-naked photos of herself on Twitter and joking about using drugs at school.
Carly McKinney, a math teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, was placed on paid administrative leave on Tuesday after admitting to a local TV station that she created the Twitter account CarlyCrunkBear (@crunk_bear) with the help of a friend.
The page, which has since been taken down, included explicit photos of the blonde teacher along with multiple posts about smoking marijuana on school grounds.
The explosive allegations came to light after 9Newswas tipped off about the Twitter account by a viewer Monday. McKinney later admitted to the TV station that she was behind the tweets.
One post read: ‘Naked. Wet. Stoned,’ while another said: ‘Watching a drug bust go down in the parking lot. It’s funny cuz I have weed in my car in the staff parking lot.’
Other messages suggested that the teacher was grading papers while under the influence of drugs and spending time on Twitter ‘instead of being productive’ during the school day.
In one post allegedly referring to a student, McKinney wrote: ‘Just got called Ms McCutie. Point for being clever, however you are still jailbait.’
In a bizarre twist, one of the most revealing photos allegedly depicting McKinney doing a handstand wearing only a paid of lacy panties was retweeted by DJ Diplo to promote his newest single, Express Yourself, iDigital Times reported.
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I respect Twitter’s stance on censorship but it doesn’t make life any easier for parents:
The new video-sharing app launched by Twitter is running into some upstart problems as it is being filled with sexually-explicit content.
The ease and lack of restrictions on the service, called Vine, allows for racy users to spread porn quickly.
Like with Twitter, users are able to search the platform by hashtags, so technology commentors began realizing the problem when a quick run of the term porn- or a vast array of more specific sexual tags- immediately produces a host of dirty videos.
This new facet of the service strikes at a potentially perilous point for the company, as they are known to be very firm believers in the freedom of the users.
As pointed out by Tech Crunch, Twitter administrators are known for their censorship-free stance and only budge when it is a question of legality.
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The internet has made the job of parents a great deal harder:
More than four in ten parents say that their children have been exposed to internet porn, an official survey reveals.
Almost a third say their sons or daughters have received sexually explicit emails or texts and a quarter say they have been bullied online or on their phones.
Many others have been exposed to websites promoting anorexia, self-harm and even suicide.
The frightening insight is contained in a round-up of responses to a Department for Education consultation on parental internet controls obtained by this paper.
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Our generation took body consciousness to a whole new level, with quite devastating results. We were taught to judge others not by the breadth of their character but by the size and shape of their bodies. It saddens me that this obsessive desire to look a certain way has seemingly overridden the desire of being a good person, resisting to gossip, being truthful and loyal to the people around us and acting with integrity. We live in a society where people would sell their souls for a preferred dress size and confidence is based on form and complexion over character development.
What has this philosophy provided us with?
Depression, peer pressure, cosmetic surgery addiction, diet crazes, suicide, bullying, anorexia and bulimia.
And what are we doing about it?
Passing the sickness on to our very young:
The internet is awash with pro-anorexia websites which thousands of girls – some as young as six – are using to compete against each other in deadly starvation games, a study has found.
More than 500 of these ‘gruesome’ sites exist and encourage vulnerable young women to barely eat and just drink coffee, smoke and take diet pills to look like a ‘goddess’.
Using the phrase ‘starving for perfection’ they say users should eat no more than 500 calories a day – the recommended level is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men.
They also include ‘thinspiration’ sections with images of super-slim women and in the last year 500,000 girls have admitted visiting them, and one in five were aged between six and 11.
University Campus Suffolk in Ipswich has carried out research into the issue and found than many of these websites are set up by people with anorexia and other eating disorders.
‘It starts with an individual who wants to share their experience and as they get a following they set themselves up as almost Goddess-like,’ researcher Dr Emma Bond, senior lecturer in childhood and youth studies said.
‘When I started this research last January I came across a website set up by a girl who was disgusted with herself because she had put on a few pounds at Christmas. She planned to fast for three days and regain control.
Some of the people are even posting pictures of themselves in very few clothes on thousands of blogs and on social media like Twitter.
Official figures show that one in 200 women and one in 2,000 men have anorexia – which means they starve themselves or exercise excessively to stay slim – although some experts believe the true number is much higher.
Around eight per cent of women and one per cent of men develop bulimia at some point. They binge on excessive amounts of food then make themselves sick or use laxatives to stop gaining weight.
Many sufferers of eating disorders hide their problem from family and friends by pretending they have already eaten to avoid meals and wearing baggy clothes to conceal their skeletal shape.
Doctors believe that anorexia or bulimia is more common in people who are perfectionists, tend to worry a lot or are often depressed.
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I was staggered to read of the rising numbers of underage rapists, some of which are as young as 10 years-old. How can this be happening? As a Primary School teacher it is absolutely unfathomable that children that young could commit such an atrocious act.
Surely online pornography is just a quick and easy excuse. It must be more complicated than that:
Children as young as ten are being arrested on suspicion of rape amid fears that online pornography is twisting their view of sex and relationships.
The scale of sexual offences committed by primary school children was revealed in disturbing figures from police forces across the country.
Twenty-four forces arrested children under 13 for suspected rape in the past year while seven detained at least one ten year old.
The figures, obtained by the Daily Mail under a Freedom of Information request, highlight growing concerns at the influence of online pornography on impressionable young minds.
Yesterday NSPCC spokesman Jon Brown said there was ‘undoubtedly’ a link between children carrying out sexual assaults and easy access to online pornography, which gives them a ‘distorted picture of what sexual relationships should be about’.
John Carr, from the Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety, said: ‘There is already a widespread feeling that the internet is playing an unhealthy part in the early sexualisation of children and these revelations about the arrests of ten-year-olds for rape will add fuel to the flames.’
The figures were uncovered in a survey of all 52 police forces across Britain.
Seven said the youngest child arrested for rape was aged just ten while six said the youngest was 11, and 11 forces said the youngest suspect was 12.
Forces reported only the age of the youngest child they had arrested for the crime, meaning the actual number of very young children detained in each age group could be much higher.
According to the figures, 357 children aged 18 and under were found guilty of a range of sex crimes including rape, sexual assaults on other children, grooming, incest and taking or possessing indecent photographs of minors.
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Some children get a kick out of watching their parents get irate with school administrators and teachers. They sit back and gladly let their parents fight on their behalf.
Whilst it is important for parents to seek explanations from their child’s school when something comes up, such support is best exemplified with a calm and stable approach. It never works to the child’s benefit when the parent gets too flustered or seeks revenge:
Steven Werner is protesting a Michigan principal’s decision to educate his daughter on porn, calling it an act of bullying and demanding a written apology.
The 10th grade girl went to school on halloween wearing a pink and black female pirate costume the other week, but was called to the Utica High School principal’s office for an outfit that resembled a porn star, Werner tells WJBK. The costume features a short black dress and knee-high black stockings with pink bows.
Werner says that Principal Janet Jones proceeded to tell the teen that she looked like a porn star in the outfit. When the girl asked what a porn star was, “she elaborated to [the girl] what a porn star was and what they do for a living,” Werner said.
“She did say that all men watch porn and it’s a fact of life and I should get real,” he told WJBK. “My daughter was pretty shocked that her principal would explain to her what a porn star is and what a porn star does and about the pornography industry, and I thought it was wrong.”
While the teen wasn’t sent home for her costume, she was told to hide the bows on her stockings, WDIV reports.
“The principal should have just come clean and said, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.‘” Werner told WDIV. “I checked the costume, and it looked appropriate. She wasn’t planning on going into porn, and the school doesn’t teach it, and they should keep it out of school.”
In protest, Werner is driving around town in a trailer that says “Mrs. Jones taught my daughter about porn. ‘All men watch porn.'” He says the move is an effort to raise awareness of community happenings, telling WJBK that Jones’ move “is a form of bullying.”
I’m going to take some educated guesses on this report, so please don’t confuse my theories for the facts.
I believe that the child does know what porn is and wasn’t shocked by the comment of Mrs. Jones. Whilst the comment, if said, was humiliating and not appropriate, I can see how schools prefer some basic modesty from their students. That being said, it seems Mrs. Jones could have handled it better.
Mrs. Jones, if this report is in fact accurate, didn’t bully the young girl. The only one in this story that was involved in bullying behaviour was the father, whose response was undignified and completely over-the-top.
Supporting your children is completely understandable, but a character assassination against the child’s principal is counter productive and immature.
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