Chicken hawk clerics, pedophile teachers and cultural immorality

During the intense coverage and outrage over the sexual abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests I always found my eyes rolling in exasperation when someone mentioned public school teachers with a seeming, "but they do it too" mindset. Two wrongs don't make a right, and at the time the focus was very deservedly on the chicken hawk clerics and their enablers (IMO they deserve a special part of Hell reservedly solely for them).

That said, there IS a lack of attention paid to lecherous teachers in our public schools. This isn't a regional problem, it's nationwide and has been going on for decades. As an example of it's longevity; in my own high school a year after my graduation in 1970, one of the track coaches was busted for supplying pot to teenage girls who he was seducing. This happened at the same time the assistant football coach was banging one of the cheerleaders. The high school was no inner city snake pit but set in a middle class rural area of the Mojave desert. Yet anyone who knew would at most just shake their heads and move on.

As I said, it's been happening for decades. Here's one of the latest examples, found via Lucianne.com at the New York Post website; http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/head_of_the_crass_qWrc4xPXr5UxSo8Npym2vO

IMO, the teacher mentioned here should be tarred and feathered. Preferably at a school assembly. Do it as often as necessary, everytime those feathers start falling off.

New York and it's schools don't exist in a vacuum separate from the rest of the nation. I'd bet a dollar to a donut that anyone reading this post knows of similar incidents in their own area.

But the media silence is deafening, probably due to lack of a conservative ox to be gored but also (and more importantly) due to a lack of outrage found in our culture today. We've become numb to the scandal involved in a teacher taking advantage of his students. So much so that a major city school district and it's union find it more expedient to continue paying a pedophile educator rather than give him the boot.

It's a marker in the road our culture passed a long time ago. We need to backtrack and start taking the road less traveled, the one that encourages us to hold ourselves and each other to higher standards. The road that teaches us to disregard accusations of "being judgmental" when dealing with each other. Criticizing one another with the understanding that personal redemption is always possible is different from offhandedly condemning someone to wear a scarlet letter for life. That distinction has been lost in an eagerness to exercise "compassion" and "understanding". Compassion and understanding can be a part of honest criticism, we've forgotten that. Used improperly it also contributes to the original problem.

Our morality took a nosedive long ago, a lot of my fellow travelers would say it started in the 1960's but I'd place it 40-50 years before that. Whatever.

We need to get back to a sense of decency. We need to regain our sense of outrage over stories like the one I've linked to. Failure to do so only furthers our slide into the complete anarchy of a culture thats lost all sense of right and wrong.

One of the first steps would be an increase of parental involvement in the local school systems. Even for someone who may be homeschooling their kids this would be important. Your kids are affected by the general tone of the culture in your area, no matter how large or small that be. A prime purveyor of the popular culture is found in the schools and if your children's friends who attend public school aren't being bombarded with messages from that culture I'll eat this keyboard. Your tax dollars support that school system, don't you deserve your money's worth for it?

Parental involvement at school board meetings, talking to the teachers on a regular basis, etc. makes the education administration more sensitive to a feeling of accountability. From the experience of being involved (however marginally) with the schooling of my 26 year old son from a former marriage I'll attest to that. No one at the school LIKES having an irate parent in their face, believe me when I say that particular squeaking wheel will be greased!

This is a part of personal responsibility for our children's welfare. Sitting in the recliner and bemoaning the lack of morality today does nothing except wear out the recliner. We're either a part of the problem or a part of the solution.

Just my opinion.