Sunday Star Times
April 8 2001
Playing it safe
by Sarah Catherall
Two former teachers
convicted last week of sexually molesting their pupils has reignited the debate
about how to keep children safe in school.
The seven-year-old boy had been distressed all week at school. When he finally
got into the principal's office, he broke down and wept.
The principal wanted nothing more than to put his arm around the child and
reassure him.
But he didn't--because he felt he couldn't.
John Langley, who now heads the Teacher Registration Board, recalls the dilemma
he felt as the principal of
"My natural reaction would have been to put my arm around him, the normal
thing you would expect someone to do in that situation . . . (but) I would have
been making myself vulnerable and I think every male teacher feels
vulnerable," he says.
This is the man who wipes sex molesters off the teaching register for abusing
and assaulting children.
Since 1989, the board has deregistered 199 teachers, of whom 161 have been male
(80%), primarily for sexual offences and assaults.
Kaperiere Petera Leef, 45, formerly of
Langley and his board are currently considering an application from Hato Petera to have Leef deregistered.
Such cases are tragic for the profession, says Langley, a father of two.
But he also constantly hears how the few bad apples are giving teachers,
particularly men, a bad image, making parents paranoid and forcing teachers to
constantly look over their shoulders. He fears that teachers'
relationships with children are becoming sanitised.
"The appalling behaviour of some has had a flow-on effect. It's creating a
clinical environment in the classroom. There are young children who would
expect a pat on the back when they have done something right, those normal
reactions between teacher and child, but those things have had to be removed
from the relationship because teachers feel so vulnerable."
"What I think is now happening is that often teachers are so fearful, that
principals are saying `don't touch at all'."
The stories he is hearing are backed up in a book published this week, Touchy
Subject, which includes new research on the controversial topic.
According to the editor, associate professor Alison Jones, of Auckland
University's education department, we are so anxious about teachers touching
young children that the few men now going into teaching are being trained to
keep their hands in their pockets and push children away when they come close.
Male teachers are being told that to protect themselves and be "good"
teachers, they should not touch young children.
"The teacher must learn that the pleasures to be had in cuddling children,
or letting them hold his hand or lean against him or sit on his knee, or grab
around his legs, or ride on his back, or tackle him during a ball game are
improper experiences," she writes.
The trainees she interviewed said they also taught kids the boundaries about
touching. "When they kind of grab me, I try and tell them gently that
that's not the way we do it here. I don't want to hurt their feelings but they
have to learn," one said.
Another said: "I have come to not even like a kid coming at me now. I'm
sort of on the alert."
Despite last week's abuse cases, Jones, a mother of two boys, argues that abuse
in schools and early childhood centres is rare. Although no hard data is
available, she argues that a preschooler is more likely to be "stung by a
bee and have an allergic reaction to it or be hit by a bus on the way to
creche" than be abused by a teacher.
She says horrific abuse is not a new phenomenon. To understand our reaction to
it, we must consider the climate of anxiety sweeping through society. We are
anxious about the food we eat, about safe sex, about safe houses, safe
playgrounds, cultural safety, living in a safe environment, and so on.
"Children have been abused and killed and treated in this way historically
in every culture. But these things mean something very different now to what
they meant 50 years ago."
She traces our anxieties to the evolution of modernity, when we began
questioning the virtues of science, no longer trusting our judgements and
relying on religion. We have lost our faith in experts and our lives are
characterised by risk anxiety, she says. At the same time, huge industries have
sprung up to cater for our fears--we now trek to psychologists, psychoanalysts
and dietitians to keep ourselves safe. "Our
anxiety about children is a social product of modernity rather than a
reflection of the real dangers to kids," she says. "Anxiety about
child abuse is only one part of a phenomenon but a very intense one. Children
are seen as the last bastion of innocence."
When Jones went to school in the 1950s, a "good" teacher would strap
her classmates--this same behaviour is now called child abuse. As Erica McWilliam, of the Queensland University of Technology,
writes in Touchy Subject, naughty children are now more likely to be shunted
off to a counsellor, while teachers are encouraged to get to know the
"whole child".
When David Butler began managing a
In the early '70s,
When the
When children crept towards him for hugs he pushed them away. Children didn't
understand why he wouldn't cuddle them. "I had a discussion with a
colleague and I said my whole teaching was being stunted. I couldn't be
physically involved with the kids and that wasn't a normal part of my teaching.
I decided I should forget that approach and deal with the consequences and to
date there have been none."
Teachers are in danger of becoming like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, says
Sarah-Eve Farquhar in Touchy Subject. She warns that
a moral panic about touching has swept through daycare
centres and primary schools since the early 1990s. The Wellington-based Early
Childhood Research Network director says "no touch" policies in
schools, kindergartens and daycare centres ignore
children's emotional needs and turn teaching into a technical job.
Farquhar laments that many teachers of young children
feel they have no choice but to avoid physical contact with children
"unless under supervision or in an extreme emergency". She has
visited kindergartens where teachers have kept children with soiled pants
waiting for their parents to arrive to change them. In other cases, children
are falling down in playgrounds and teachers are picking them up only if another
adult is around to watch.
Fears about touching pupils are reinforced by the Education Ministry and
teacher unions--in guidelines to early childhood centres, the ministry says
teachers should keep a distance from children and their families "as many
sexual offenders groom children and families to win confidence and trust of
children and their families before abusing them".
The Education Institute's 1998 code of conduct for physical contact with
children says any touch is a risk to teachers and should be restricted to seven
instances--including physical education, toileting children, changing clothing,
giving comfort and first aid and restraining children to keep them safe. But Farquhar says: "There exists no educational rationale
for teachers holding back from, or constantly checking, their physical contact
with children. The reason for these new practices is fear."
The teachers union argues its guidelines are not heavy-handed and teachers know
the importance of physical contact to growing children. NZEI national president
Amanda Coulston says teachers are in a powerful
position working with young children and need to protect themselves and their
pupils. "I've never heard of a situation where teachers wouldn't pick up a
hurt child. That's taking it to an absurd length . . . At the same time, you wouldn't take a small child into a small room and
cuddle them out of the view of others."
Coulston says a fear of being wrongly accused of
abuse is one of a number of things steering men away from teaching. "That's
a reality and they have to work with that. It's like wearing glasses and
getting used to wearing glasses."
At the same time, abuse does occur. "Sexual abuse thrives on silence and
secrecy. We advocate that schools and early childhood centres should talk
together and have guidelines as the culture of the school reduces the risk of
something like that happening," the former teacher says.
But Jones says the relationship between teachers and young pupils has become
over-regulated--a point backed by Langley, who says authorities naturally
reacted to the civic creche case by writing new rules. "We are dripping
with regulations and it's debatable whether that has led to long-term solutions
for anyone," he says, arguing that a planned code of ethics should lead to
more realistic guidelines for teachers.
When editing Touchy Subject, Jones was amazed at the number of people with
stories to tell. Women automatically watched men around their children, while
other parents felt uncomfortable around their offspring after school talks on
sexual safety. "Every single person had a story they were bursting to
tell, which was affecting their every day lives.
"Few of the people I spoke with had any idea about how to intervene in
what seems to them like a sad, bewildering and dangerous period in the
chequered history of child-adult relations and children's education," she
writes.
While we are worried about child sexual safety now, she expects in 20 years, it
will be something else.
"Maybe it will be about health issues and teachers in early childhood
centres will have to walk around with surgical masks on and wearing rubber
gloves. We could be obsessed with healthy food and there could be rigorous food
checks of what children are eating in these settings."