Teacher Sex Scandals

I was just watching CNN and they were talking about teacher sex scandals... The piece involved three teachers arrested in the past few days for having sex with students... you can see it here (I don't know how long they archive video on CNN, so if it disappears, I'm sorry). So, this story brings me to a problem I've had for a few years regarding these types of incidents. Actually, I have a few problems with it all, but I'll get there, eventually... probably.

All I ever see on the news anymore when it comes to "teacher sex scandals" is stories about female teachers having sex with male students. While you certainly can find stories of male teachers getting in trouble for having sex with female students if you do a search (like this one), the vast majority of stories you're going to come across involve female teachers and male students (including a majority of the stories in the aforementioned search)... Is this part of a "disturbing new trend" (as Dr. Phil put it in a recent show), or is it something that's been going on all along and is just now coming to light because people are looking for the "next big thing?" What I mean is that teachers, both male and female, have been acting inappropriately with their students probably since the inception of schools... and when I was a kid, times were different in respect to the perceptions of men and women... at least I honestly think that. Women were perceived as wholesome and men were perceived as, well, not. When you heard about a "teacher sex scandal" when I was younger, it was always about a male teacher... but were there improprieties happening between female teachers and their students? Absolutely.

The CNN piece, at one point, mentions a "double standard" regarding the issue, saying something to the point of, "If this had been a male teacher, he would have been buried under the jail." I found that rather amusing. No, I actually found that to be hilarious... When I was in high school, I can think of at least four different male teachers that had inappropriate relationships with students. Were any of them arrested? Nope. Were any of them fired? Nope. All that happened was one "retired" and the other three were simply shipped out to other school districts (one of which got two girls at my school pregnant before he "disappeared")... where two of them got in trouble for having inappropriate relationships with students... again.

There were also at least three female teachers that I know of that had relationships with male students. One was fired, flat out, and the other two "got away with it" and continued to teach at the school for many more years.

...and these were just the ones that everyone knew about... who knows what else was going on that we didn't hear about through the wonderful social network that is high school (I mean, c'mon... if a girl farted in the basement, three minutes later everyone knew about it in the third floor study hall).

I had an ex that had sex with a teacher... All that came out of it was her getting an STD and him getting off (pardon the pun) clean, despite everyone and their mothers knowing about it.

Now, I will say this... Most of my female teachers growing up were, how you say, old... but there were a few teachers that popped around through my high school years that I would have gladly had inappropriate relationships with... and while I would have known it was wrong, I would have enjoyed the hell out of it.

Yes, male teachers do get arrested today for improprieties with students... you may have to dig quite a bit deeper to find the stories about them, but they're there... but if a female teacher gets busted for it, it's freakin' national news from the start... I can't remember the last time Nancy Grace devoted a show to a male teacher getting caught with one of his students... has she ever?

I guess my point is this... no matter how you slice it, male teacher or female teacher, it's wrong... so how about equal time on the news for the male teachers that get caught? Or at least stop being so uber-dramatic when a female teacher gets caught and making it a national news story, anyway. It's been going on forever, for cryin' out loud. If you think this is some "new trend," you're totally fooling yourself.