21 October 2007

If only women and married folks could be teachers...

























While driving all over Texas today, I heard this report on sexual abuse in the public school system several times.

And I bet I thought the same thing every faithful Catholic thought when he/she heard that public school teachers were molesting our kids: "I wonder if the media will call for radical reform of the public education system? Or, perhaps argue that women and married folks should be allowed to study for and be hired as public school teachers? Or, maybe call into the question the very idea of 'public education' at its root?"

And then I bet most of them concluded this brief fantasy in the same way I did: hysterical laughter and teary eyes.

Frankly, I'm surprised to see this much coverage. Wanna bet it's gone by Friday?


3 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:50 PM

    Father,

    I must protest.

    Nary a week passes without a story of another female teacher who seduced, molested, or otherwise sexually abused one of her students.

    I don't have any statistics, but we've all seen that women are just as capable of abuse as men. The biggest danger is our society almost accepts that kind of abuse as something for the younger boys to be proud of.

    At least our society knows it's abuse when men abuse, and they send them to prison. Women don't seem to be punished at all, and society says "way to go tiger!" to the young boy for his supposed sexual conquest.

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  2. MS,

    I agree. But you're missing the sarcasm of my title. After the sex abuse scandal broke in the church, the usual dissident suspects starting blaming the all-male priesthood and celibacy for the misconduct of a few priests. The usual demands (yawn) for the ordination of women and married men went up (yawn). It was quickly pointed out by those in the know that public school systems--that hire both women and married folks--were nests of sexual abuse. Thus, putting to the lie the notion that gender exclusivity and marital status have anything to do with a proclivity to molest children.

    Fr. Philip, OP

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  3. Anonymous12:38 AM

    Of course it's silly to speculate. Why don't we wait for NCR's definitive commentary on the poblem of sexual abuse in schools and education: Patriarchy, hierarchy, Pope Benedict, the magisterium, the oppression/suppresion of "simply marvelous" scholars and theologains, and the loss of the sacred feminine in the Catholic Church will be conclusively found to be at the root of this problem.

    GJMOP

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