Monday, August 13, 2012

Bully At The Blackboard - The issue of TEACHERS being the bully


This Article, "Bully at the Blackboard" from The Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance project, has some pretty stunning (in a bad way) stuff in it, including:

a teacher who teases a student for being messy, saying

“Your area looks like a pig sty. Piggy, piggy! Oink, oink!”

goading the other children to taunt him

with “oinks” and other pig sounds. Alone in the center, the boy was sobbing.

It also mentions a

2005 study in which 45 percent of sampled teachers said they had bullied a student at some point in their careers.


It's worth reading and considering the power teachers have... and how we need to make sure the teachers are not the bullies!

It makes you think about YOUR school experience in a whole new light, doesn't it?
 
Namaste,
Lee

ps - my thanks to Jasmine for letting me know about this article.

3 comments:

The Pen and Ink Blogspot said...

My bother had his first grade teacher sneer at him for being pretty. She told him her looked like a girl. He came hope weeping and made my sister cut off his eyelashes. I was away in college. Teacher bullying is, unfortunately, rather common.
Susan

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised that anyone is surprised by this. Isn't it common knowledge? We even have "the bullying gym teacher" as a stereotype, right? Although, for the record, I was bullied by two different home ec teachers and one bus driver, but never a gym teacher.

maddox said...

Thank you for the article Lee, this is very important to bring to light.

As someone who was not raised in USA, my teacher experiences ranged from OK to downright humiliating. It is inexcusable for an adult in such a position of power to abuse it in a way that causes so much harm.