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December 21, 2007

Sexual Misconduct Plagues Schools

In October, the AP ran its results of a comprehensive investigation of sexual predation by teachers. Obviously, if you take a population of individuals as large as teachers (3M public school teachers), some bad actors are unavoidable. Indeed, even if only 0.1% of public school teachers are sexual predators, that's still 3,000 predatory teachers. Even so, the AP story is deeply troubling due to all of the systemic issues that exacerbate the problem, ranging from the culture of silence to the phenomenon of punishing/blaming the victim. As a parent, this is horrifying. It's my job to protect my kids from these types of threats, but my tools to do so are limited--especially when dealing with teachers and their authority/in loco parentis powers. If anyone has thoughts about what I should be doing proactively, I'd welcome them.

Posted by Eric at December 21, 2007 06:04 PM | Family & Friends

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