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The Education Review Office warns boys are underachieving in class and
a lack of male role models has been blamed. Are sexual abuse safeguards
harming children and damaging men's role as caregivers?
Two years ago, he was an
enthusiastic teacher, acknowledged by colleagues as having exceptional
talent. That was until seven young boys
swore the teacher had touched, rubbed and stared at their genitals in
changing rooms and the playground. Although a dozen adults, including
duty teachers, said it could not have happened, Six months and a jury trial later,
Edgar was acquitted. But his 12-year teaching career was finished. In an
outburst outside court, Edgar warned men not to take up teaching. He remains bitter and
disillusioned with a system he claims presumes guilt. "It's terribly easy today for
a male to be accused of sexual abuse. Children can make a complaint to
deflect attention from their wrongdoing or to get back at you. Teachers live
in fear, wondering when it is going to happen to them." Some of the stories in his case, says
Edgar, were ridiculous. One child recounted the teacher carrying him across
the crowded playground and indecently assaulting him while trying to put the
youngster in a microwave oven. Motivation, says Edgar, was part
malice, part fantasy. "Children don't realise the tragic consequences of
what they are doing." Police investigators assumed guilt
because he is gay, charges Edgar. "Teaching is doubly hard for
gay men. Some people still think all gay men are paedophiles." Former detective chief inspector
Rex Miller said the decision to charge Edgar was not automatic. "Police
are not homophobic. We conducted extensive interviews with children, parents,
and teachers to match allegations with time and place." Police have been accused of taking
the easy option in sexual allegation cases, preferring to let the courts
decide guilt, rather than risk accusations of not been thorough in their
investigations. But "We take particular care with
sexual offendings and have to provide proof beyond reasonable doubt." He concedes there have been recent
cases which, when examined in a courtroom setting, did not look strong. "You can pick holes in
anything once you dissect it in court. Some prosecutions might seem
borderline in retrospect. But it's wrong to say police throw people before
the court willy-nilly. We scrutinise everything." Tom Barnes (not his real name)
exists on reduced superannuation -- little more than the dole -- and does
voluntary work teaching English to immigrants. His life collapsed the day he was
charged with groping a young female pupil. Police pressed the case even
though none of the other 30 students in class could recall the teacher acting
improperly. "I pumped myself full of
Prozac to cope," he recalls. "It was terrifying. "The drugs made me paranoid.
I had a psychotic fear of being labelled a child molester." A father of two adult children,
Barnes had been teaching for 30 years. It took less than a morning for
the judge to throw out the case, noting it was inconceivable that no-one else
would have noticed anything inappropriate. "I thought I'd go back to
stuff it up their noses -- the police and board of trustees," says
Barnes. "But walking down the street I would get these nice, embarrassed
smiles from people. "It hit me I could never
relax around children again. There's some paranoid and twisted parents out
there. And what board of trustees would risk hiring me now?" These cases highlight male
teachers' fear of being wrongly accused of sexual abuse. But police are unapologetic. They
know the dangers. "There is the potential for paedophiles to use an
occupation to gain free access to children," says Churches. Yet while there have been horrific
cases of youngsters' trust being betrayed by sexual predators, there is a
growing voice that says society is in the grip of a moral panic. High-profile sexual abuse cases
send the message all men are suspect; they cannot be trusted with young
children. Early childhood educators have
clamoured to define "appropriate" behaviour following major
prosecutions such as the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre. Thirteen staff were sacked in 1992
after sexual abuse allegations. Only one, Peter Ellis, was convicted and
sentenced to 10 years' jail. He continues to protest his innocence. The Christchurch City Council was
ordered to pay $1m in compensation for unjustified dismissal to the other
accused workers, reduced to $172,978 on appeal. Hysteria, say concerned observers,
is being fuelled by good intention -- to protect our youngsters from
deviants. But the net, they claim, is being
thrown too wide. Too many innocents are being accused. Increasingly, they say, men are
afraid to show intimacy to youngsters. Perfectly natural responses are being
interrupted and distorted. Concern is mounting that overzealous
prevention policies are not only turning talented males away from the
childcare and teaching professions, but actually harming children in their
formative years. Primary teachers' union the New
Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Code of Practice stipulates no touching
of students and not to be alone with a pupil. "It's a bit hard on teachers
-- especially when little kids throw themselves at you -- but that's the
world we are living in," says Pamela Hill, regional secretary, Northern Region
of the NZEI. "Children, and adults, must be protected." Secondary school teachers abide by
similar rules enshrined in the Post Primary Teachers' Association's Code of
Ethics. They must not, for example, enter a room where students are dressing,
or invade a student's personal space by leaning over them too closely at a
desk. "We stress `don't put
yourself in any situation that could put you at risk'," says PPTA
adviser Bronwyn Cross. Several leading educators argue
youngsters are becoming more distrustful of men as they are submitted to a
variety of "inappropriate sexual abuse curricula". The Auckland District Men's
Network for teachers was formed last year -- prompted by the John Edgar case
-- to thrash out how male teachers should relate to boys in class. "We dare not give comfort and
emotional support like we used to," says acting spokesman Garth
Houltham. "Teachers today have to be stand-offish. It's a sad, negative
environment. But we won't leave ourselves in a position to be accused." Richard Johnson, from the Teacher
Education and Curriculum Studies faculty at "Society is scared to trust
men," he says. "We are changing classroom policy on the basis of
untruths. Research shows sexual abuse is most likely to occur outside
childcare centres, away from staff." The early education expert recalls
he began as an enthusiastic young pre-school teacher in the early 1980s, but
felt increasingly uneasy. He began to second-guess himself
about once taken-for-granted routines like changing nappies, wiping runny
noses and unbuttoning and buttoning a two-year-old's jeans. He worried when supervising a
group of three year old girls involved in outdoor sprinkler play, clothed
only in their underpants. Today this fear of a sexual abuse
complaint exists in Training colleges, child centres
and schools stress no-touch policies are for the protection of all staff, but
male teachers say they are primarily aimed at them. Hugging is forbidden at childcare
centres. Men are taught the "proper" way to hold a child --
side-saddle on one knee, never between the legs -- and always to have at
least one adult witness when supervising a child. Some pre-school centres admit
privately they won't hire men. "Why take the risk?" says one owner.
"There's a stigma of a man wanting to work with young children,"
says another. Centres worry what parents will
think if there is a male on staff. "It's bad for business." The slide in the number of male
teachers at New Zealand's early childhood centres, kindergartens and primary
schools concerns Sarah Farquhar, a lecturer at Massey University's Department
of Learning and Teaching. "We need men for healthy
child rearing." Farquhar has done surveys on why
men are under-represented at pre-school and primary school. An alarming trend, she says, is
men leaving early childhood teaching in droves, scared off by the fear of
being wrongly accused of sexual abuse. In 1971, males made up 37.8% of
primary teachers. That has plummeted to barely 20% (or 4787 from a total of
24,608) today. Of the 5740 primary school teacher trainees, barely 1000 are
men. "Children need to see men in
caring, nurturing roles, says Farquhar. "So many boys today are from
single-parent families. Soon there will be no men in early education. Where
are the role models for these boys?" A teacher with 15 years'
experience recalls the incident that shook his confidence and made him
forever wary. The mother of the engaging little
girl under his supervision was a good friend. One day the infant complained of
"being sore down below." The family doctor raised the possibility
of molestation. "The mother told me she
immediately thought of me and her husband. "We laughed about it later
when it turned out to be a urinary infection. But it struck me that thought
is always there, in every mother." He says many men today father with
fear. "I know dads who won't take a
bath with their child." Anton Wartmann, a senior teacher
with the Canterbury-Westland Free Kindergarten Association says male teachers
are nervous. He is one of only eight men out of
180 teachers at the association's 62 centres. Ten years ago, he reckons he was
naive. "I thought if I got accused of anything my conscience was clear.
Now I've seen how drastically an accusation can affect a teacher. "It's traumatic for them and
their family, even if there's no substance to it. You only need to be accused
once." Author Lynley Hood is putting the
finishing touches to her book on what she views as the politicising of sexual
abuse over the past 25 years. Earmarked for release later this year, the book
focuses on the Men have become stereotyped as
dangerous sexual predators, she says. "This issue is not whether sexual
abuse happens -- of course it does -- but how widespread it is and how much
is it a threat to society. "A generation of women has
been brought up to believe all men are rapists." Some male teachers are convinced
sexual abuse has been politicised to keep men out of early childhood
teaching. They cite cases of women
childminders killing their charges, but say they have not heard any calls to
stop females caring for babies and youngsters. The issue has been manipulated and
sensationalised, says Russell Ballantyne, from the Dunedin Kindergarten
Association. He claims an element of the
women's movement in government and early childhood colleges are happy to
maintain a climate of mistrust. "They believe men have no place teaching
small children." Ballantyne points to brochures for
early childhood teaching courses: "They all feature women working with
children, never a man." There is bias in recruitment
literature, concedes Lorraine McLeod, associate dean of early childhood
education at the Auckland College of Education. But she says the low male
participation also reflects the profession's meagre pay ($22,000-$37,000) and
low status. Phillip Ozanne is one of a handful
of men studying early education. At 32, he is a latecomer to teaching. "I've always wanted to teach
young kids," he explains. "They have so much learning
potential." His wife is a secondary school
teacher. As part of his studies, Ozanne spends eight weeks a year at
kindergartens and day care centres. Most have no-touch policies. "That's hard if a child is
bawling their eyes out. But some centres let me cuddle." Ozanne says it can get lonely
being the only man among 20 women. But other teachers have been supportive.
"It's the parents that need convincing." Educators are unanimous in
agreeing men are crucial for the balanced development of young children,
especially boys. Yet, they say, there seem to be no initiatives to retain or
attract male teachers or efforts to confront social phobias. Farquhar says the Government must
step in and stem the crisis by funding and promoting recruitment of male
teachers. Teaching colleges, she says, must also
address their orientation toward females. "This issue is urgent. It
must be taken seriously. Government, unions and training providers need to
get consensus or teaching will soon become women-only." A third of boys have no father at
home. Half the nearly 10,000 divorces in Boys are often adrift in life,
failing at school, awkward in relationships and at risk for violence, alcohol
and drugs, says Steve Biddulph, author of Raising Boys. "If we get men
involved with under-fathered boys, before they make trouble, we can turn
their lives around." A major rethink has begun in the Researchers at the Touch Institute
are studying how instinctive, caring physical contact can be reintroduced
into the classroom. But early educators in They say the change in public
perception will start when society sees more men as primary caregivers in the
home. John Edgar is adamant he will
never return to teaching. "I would feel like a figure of suspicion. My
teaching style was energetic, not authoritarian. It's not healthy for kids to
be taught by a cold disciplinarian." Tom Barnes is rebuilding his life
after moving back to his home town. He insists he has not become
cynical. "Unfortunately, many teachers
live in a sheltered environment. They can be naive, unaware there is a nasty,
vicious world out there." |
