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Topic History of: Kato Harris just the latest
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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JK2006 |
And how about trust between adults and children? Parents, relatives, doctors, scouting leaders, priests, fosters, social workers, friends? It really is the secret weapon of mass destruction, removing love from children. |
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Andy |
Article by Sir Anthony Seldon from the Telegraph - behind a paywall so I have copied & pasted content.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/deat...-male-teachers-risk/
Kato Harris was a teacher with a flourishing career apparently ahead of him in a school in Ascot, Berkshire. Then, in December 2014, a pupil he had never taught nor could recall ever talking to accused him of rape. He suffered a 17-month ordeal, when he endured public shame, went through the courts, and saw his career unravel. He was cleared by the jury after just 15 minutes.
Mr Harris is now unemployed, living in a bedsit and is unsurprisingly bitter about the whole experience and lack of support he believes he received. Tragically, he now says: “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have become a teacher. I would never work with children again.” Teaching, he warns other men, is too great a reputational risk.
As a head teacher for 20 years, I spent my time encouraging people to teach in schools, believing it to be the finest profession one can possibly pursue. So Mr Harris’s remarks are incredibly distressing. But are we in danger here of losing perspective?
There are risks for teachers now, one cannot deny. In this feverish atmosphere, stoked by social media, it can be assumed that any teacher accused of a crime is probably guilty. Even if cleared, there will be a stigma forever attached to the accused’s name. The impression that all teachers, particularly in boarding schools, are potential paedophiles, has been encouraged by lurid stories in the press, and by a host of books, most recently Alex Renton’s account of boarding life, published this month.
Let me be very clear. I can think of no worse crime than paedophilia. For a teacher in power to betray the trust of young people is profoundly evil. Abuse can create lifelong damage among those who have been sexually and physically affected. The behaviour of some schools in the past, as well as churches, in protecting the guilty is sickening. Had they been candid from the outset, much abuse would have been avoided, and hundreds of lives would have been unsullied.
But the great majority of teachers (and clergy) are obviously innocent and the honour of their profession needs to be defended. It would be the height of insanity if the Harris case became widely cited as a reason for men to avoid teaching. The country is crying out for young men and women to enter the profession. Teachers change lives, they challenge, inspire, correct and stretch young minds, introducing them to the very best that has been taught and learnt and written about in civilisations across the centuries.
I worry that if the impression catches on that every young teacher will become prey to false accusations, the idea will grow that teaching is a dangerous profession. It will be the poorest children in the schools that can’t find quality teachers who are likely to suffer the most if this trope finds widespread credibility.
Calm and level heads are needed if the sad story of Kato Harris is to be used as a force for good rather than to spread panic. We need this to be a wake‑up call.
Above all, it should remind us trust is the value that most needs to be fortified in schools, because that is exactly what is at risk of being lost in the modern era. Trust between the teacher and the student can be precarious. It needs to be strengthened.
I suspect that one reason schools in general might have become prone to accusations that are sometimes proven to be vexacious is because the focus for too many years has been on examination results as the only legitimator of the value of a school. While all good heads and teachers I know have forever been saying that teaching is a moral activity, and that good character, as well as wellbeing, need to be an integral part of school life, too many government ministers have erroneously seen this kind of talk as an excuse for second-rate standards.
What the politicians have done is to hollow out schools of their moral quality – and the ethical desert that we see all too often in education is the result. As stable family life declines and good religious institutions lose influence, for many young people it is the school that is the key source of stability and morality in their lives. It is a morality that we have lost at our peril.
Sir Anthony Seldon, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, was master of Wellington College and head of Brighton College |
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JK2006 |
True - and then there is the False Memory Syndrome where people are persuaded (often by themselves) that something happened which didn't. Example - if someone was once abused, much better to think the abuse was committed by Elvis Presley than by a street sweeper. |
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md |
JK2006 wrote:
And it's not just teaching (we've been linked to the excellent FACT for 12 years) - how about Foster Parents, carers, vicars, priests, doctors... avoid children at all costs. There is bound to be a loony amongst them even if it takes 40 years to emerge and make false allegations which cops are instructed to believe and jurors are instructed to find you guilty. Let the little bastards rot in misery; that's what society has decided (disgusting but there it is).
It could also happen in the smallest of encounters such as the one I found myself in (described in a recent post on this forum) when a young child accused me of hitting him with my bike in an isolated location. This showed to me how easy it is to be falsely accused by a child, that everyone really is only one step away from a false accusation. I still imagine a scenario of what I would have done had the mother been someone who believed her son's every word, thought that I might have harmed him in some way or spotting an opportunity, reported the matter to the police secure in the knowledge that she would have received their unstinting support. Under the current guidelines, they would have believed her son's accusation and would have dismissed of my own account as a lie. If the authorities are going to persist with the policy of believing accusers, then those who they accuse should also have every right to be believed. |
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JK2006 |
Yes that is the problem; those who simply see the extremes and the simplistic. It is beyond their imagination that anybody could want to be decent, be kind, contribute to a better world. One wonders why those people don't find the acid and bile in their blood causing physical problems sooner than they do. One would think strokes would strike far faster and earlier. |
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