Does Teacher’s Pet = Pedophile Alert?

Hi Folks — Here’s another little story that reminds us how  Worst-First thinking has become de rigeur when it comes to kids in the company of adults: A young Teach for America teacher took a student out for a hamburger and was immediately reprimanded by the school.

Yes, rules are rules, and he probably should have signed a lot of forms first, but sometimes — weirdly enough — a moment comes up that is not pre-scheduled and pre-approved and pre-notarized. It’s what we used to call “spontaneity.” (Now we call it “actionable.”) So off he and the kid went, got burgers and came right back.

The child’s mom sounds livid. As reported in the Houston Chronicle, she said, “He walked right out the front door with my child…This was not a role model.”

A better role model would NOT take an interest in her son?

I GET that we are terrified of adults grooming our kids into Sandusky  submission. The Miramonte stories shake me, too. But do we really want to treat every teacher-child interaction as prelude to perversion? My mentor, social studies teacher Genevieve MacDougall, took me out of high school for a few days, with my parents’ permission. She wanted me to drive her from Chicago down to Southern Illinois to check out a one-room school house she was thinking of buying. She paid for my meals and my room at a little hotel, and it is still one of the fondest memories of my life. I dedicated my Free-Range Kids book to her!

I doubt she’d be allowed to do that today. As the teacher in the hamburger story was quoted as saying:

“I care for my students and am trying to make a difference in their lives,” he said. “I try to build positive relationships with my students, and in that effort, I bought a student in my class a hamburger for lunch that we ate back at the school with others. I regret this mistake, but I am proud of YES Prep, and the work that I do there. I am glad that Yes Prep investigated the situation and found no reason that I should not continue to teach my students.”

As parents, we must (I say it every time this topic comes up) teach our kids to recognize, resist and report abuse. But we can NOT treat every teacher who dotes on our darlings as dangerous. Let’s bring that pendulum back to the middle, where it belongs. — L.

Fantastic News (About a “Child Abuser”)

Hi Readers! Let us pause to celebrate a moment of sweet sanity. Remember Anne Bruscino, the young woman was put on New York State’s Child Abuse Registry for up to 25 years for the crime of accidentally leaving a toddler at a fenced-in, security-camera-monitored, daycare center playground for less than six minutes? (Here’s the original story, as reported by the Times Union.) Well now she has been officially taken off that list! She is free to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher!

Read the tale of this fantastic turn-around, just granted by a state appellate court. As the Times Union summed it up:

The state appellate panel’s decision [to de-criminalize the woman] underscores what some critics say is an inherently rigid system that can leave a person listed on a child-abuse registry for arguably minor errors involving children.

It was not just the the idea of minor errors getting a major punishment that appalled me, it was the reasoning behind this harshness. The original judge, Susan Lyn Preston, had argued this:

Clearly, Caitlin [the girl left behind] was at imminent risk of harm in this situation. The fact that the playground was surrounded by a chain-link fence does not eliminate the risk that Caitlin could have been abducted. A person with an evil intent could have easily gotten over the fence or lured Caitlin to the fence.

Easily?! As I wrote at the time:

Let’s see. What would it actually have taken for the girl to have been spontaneously abducted in the span of five minutes, as the judge so clearly believes was a distinct possibility?

First of all, a child abductor would have had to have been passing by the center at the precise time Caitlin was unchaperoned. Since, according to FBI statistics, there are only about 115 “stereotypical” abductions in the whole country each year (that is, abductions by strangers, intending to transport the child), this already would have been SOME rotten luck.

Then, that abductor would have had to immediately scale the fence, hide from the security cameras, avoid detection on the part of  anyone glancing out the office window, and pray that the child did not utter a single peep that might call attention to the crime. He’d also have to be out of there within about a minute, climbing back over the fence again.

This time while holding a 3-year-old.

Now, I’m not saying this could NEVER happen. If all the stars aligned AND the planets AND the world’s worst luck (and best fence-climber), there’s an extremely slight chance it could. Just like there’s a slight chance of getting hit by lightning in any 5  minutes you sit on your porch. But to say the child was in “imminent risk of harm in this situation” is the equivalent of saying that no matter how many fences, monitors and safeguards we put up, every child is at risk every single second an adult isn’t serving as a physical bodyguard. That’s a perception that is very common and really off-base.

Thank goodness the appellate court panel brought this case back to reality. The only unfortunate coda? Bruscino’s lawyer,  Kevin A Luibrand,  says he has seen at least  four similar cases in the past two years!

And so we fight on, for a world that does not believe our children are in terrible danger every time they are in public without an adult, no matter how briefly, no matter what the circumstances. — Lenore

There Vill Be NO Teacher-Student Conversation!

Hi Readers! Here’s a new development on the what-can-we-worry-about-next front. It’s from Kelso, Washington, a town of about 12,000:

A proposal by the Kelso School Board aims to create a more professional relationship between teachers and their students.

The proposal makes it a fireable offense to show students pornography, harass or touch students inappropriately, or to smoke or drink alcohol with students. Along with those common sense rules, teachers will not be able to talk about their family or personal lives in the classroom. [ITALS MINE]

That’s right — lumped right in their with porn and pawing is the offense of teachers being open with their students. I think of how gleeful my high school son was talking about his history teacher’s passion for her hometown Pittsburgh Steelers,  and how my younger son loved hearing stories about his teacher’s kids. In Kelso those conversations would be verboten: They reveal personal details!

Mustn’t have teachers and kids connecting like human beings! It could be (somehow, in some strange dark fantasy world of fear) dangerous! — L.

“No Touch” Policy is Insane for Music Teachers

Hi Readers — I touched (ha ha — so to speak!) upon this issue in my Golden Helicopter Awards: The fact that the British Musicians Union has told its members (ha ha again) not to lay (ha ha) a finger on any child they are giving music lessons. Most cheeringly, England’s Education Secretary, Michael Grove, has called these restrictions daffy. Here’s some of his wisdom, via The Telegraph:

It plays to a culture of fear among both adults and children, reinforcing the message that any adult who touches a child is somehow guilty of inappropriate contact,” he said.

“If we stigmatise and seek to restrict all physical contact between responsible adults and children, we will only undermine healthy relations between the generations.

“If we play to the assumption that any physical contact is somehow suspect then we will make children more suspicious of adults and adults more nervous and confused about their role in our society.

“We will drive good people away from teaching for fear of crossing some arbitrary line and our children will lose out as fewer and fewer adults feel comfortable working with young people.”

Well said! Let’s not make the non-skeevy skeevy! — L

Get Real!

Hi Readers! This just in from the middle of the country, where delusional do-gooders dwell:

Dear Free-Range Kids: Greetings! I live in Lincoln NE, which is a fairly level headed community for the most part. I was reminded of this yet again recently with an incident involving my wife…

Parking is nuts at our school (a good reason to walk), so one day my wife didn’t get there in time to get a good parking spot. She had to park somewhere else besides “the usual,” which ended up being in a drive up lane right in front of a play ground area. So, when my 2nd grader couldn’t find where she parked, my wife left the younger four in the car to go find her. After all, what could possibly go wrong for our kids, who were buckled in a car parked in front of a school patrolled by dozens of grade school teachers, parents, and other kids — right? Well, something did go wrong.

My wife returns about five minutes later to find three very worried teachers standing in front of our van. They each proceed to lecture my wife on the dangers of leaving children unattended in a car, citing two unknown individuals sitting on a bench at the school playground. They told her they were going to report her.

The next day, the principal of the school calls. This is why I like our level-headed community. He informed my wife that he wasn’t going to do anything about this, and acknowledged that we live in a “very paranoid world,” and that people often “over react” to things like this. Here’s the kicker that I hadn’t really thought of before. He also expressed the concern with leaving kids unattended in a public setting such as that, not because something might happen to the kids, but because the parent might get in trouble.

Hi — Lenore here: Great principal! While I love the idea of an involved community, I wish those teachers stopped to GET REAL! Who wants FOUR kids? What could POSSIBLY happen to them in such a public area? What makes two people sitting outside immediately SUSPICIOUS? And weren’t they — the teachers — actually looking out for the kids, as a nice community does? So why all the haranguing? Sheesh! — L

Outrage of the Morn’: High School Students Not Allowed to Light Bunsen Burners?

Hi Readers ! This just in. Read it and…give your kids some matches! (Yes, yes, properly supervised, of course.) — L.

Dear Free-Range Kids: I am a high school science teacher, parent, and grandparent and a former cubmaster, and I couldn’t agree with you more!  This summer I taught a workshop on building model rockets for 12 to 14 year-olds. None of the 17 kids in the workshop had ever sprayed spray paint, most had never used a utility knife, and two did not know how to tie a knot.

Many of my high school students light their first match in my class when lighting a Bunsen burner ( a task many teachers will no longer allow students to perform). If we deny kids the ability to use tools, we make them crippled.  If we deny kids any risk, they will make their own through risky behavior. — CDB

My question: How did they make it to middle school without ever tying a KNOT? — L.

P.S. This post goes really well with this cartoon!

Guest Post: Stranger Danger Stupidity

Hi Readers — I think a lot of us have been in “stranger danger” situations like the one described by Renee Jacobson, a teacher for 20 years, below. Her blog is called “Lessons from Teachers and Twits,” and it’s a twit that she learned this particular lesson from. — Lenore

HEY LADY: I AM NOT A CREEP! by Renée Schuls-Jacobson

I was in the epicenter of suburbia, standing in a Target store, holding up two bathing suits, and feeling a little indecisive. A little blond-haired girl who couldn’t have been more than three stood in her bright red cart while her mother, standing an arm’s length away, sifted furiously through a rack of summer shorts.

“I like the pink one with the flowers,” the girl offered, unsolicited. “It’s pretty.”

“I like that one, too . . .” I said. “But I think I’m going to get the black one.”

Suddenly, the little girl’s mother swooped in, a deranged lioness. “We don’t talk to strangers!” she shouted loud enough for not only her daughter to hear, but for everyone in the entire department. Clearly, the message was more for me than for anyone else. Then she pushed the cart (and her little girl) far, far away from (dangerous) me.

Heaven forbid, her daughter and I might have got to talking about shoes.

Okay, I get that there is this weird, American fear about strangers. I don’t seem to have that fear, but I know a lot of people do. That said, 99.99% of the world is composed of strangers, so I have always been of the mindset that one of my many jobs as a mother includes teaching my child about how to respond appropriately to strangers because – let’s face it – sometimes, a person needs to rely on other people.

At age 10, my son doesn’t have a cell phone. He can’t call me or text me for immediate rescue. So if, for example, we happen to get separated at the grocery store and he really can’t find me after searching the aisles for a few minutes, he has learned to go to Customer Service and calmly state that his mother has gotten lost (ha!) and ask for me to be paged. Or, if we are at an outdoor venue, I have taught him to find a mother and ask her – this stranger – to call me.

He knows not to get into a car with someone he doesn’t know. He knows not accept anything from anyone offering him candy or kittens or balloons or free iPods. He knows not to go anywhere with a stranger asking for help. He’s known these things since he was small, and he’s actually had to put some of them into practice. I guess I’d rather have my kid feel he can trust other human beings.

So, really, what did the mother in Target succeed in teaching her daughter by sweeping her away from me so violently? That people are terrifying. That no one can be trusted. That the world is a scary place, and that her daughter is utterly unequipped to function in it. She taught her daughter not to speak. That even casual conversation is dangerous.

In short: That mother didn’t teach her daughter a thing about safety. She taught her daughter about fear. And as far as I’m concerned, she also taught her daughter a big lesson in how to be downright rude. –Renee Jacobson

The Fear That Crept ‘Round the World

Hi Readers — Here’s a letter from Korea (where my book was just published in translation!). What’s upsetting is how parental paranoia seems to be creeping around the world, like a virus. — L.

Dear Free-Range Kids: I’m an elementary/middle school English teacher in South Korea, arguably one of the safest countries in the world. Here, kids work very hard, spending almost all of their time studying in school and in private academies. However, what little free time they have is entirely their own. It’s not unusual to see older kids and young teens (10-16 year olds) out on their own, travelling to academies or out with their friends until quite late in the evening, often up until about 11pm. Here, children are pretty safe and adults would have no reservations about helping a child in need.

However, this is beginning to change. A couple of incidents over the past two years or so have made parents more wary about their children’s safety and the same paranoia that afflicts western society is gradually taking a grip. For teachers, more and more restrictions are being placed upon us, too.

Myself, I grew up in the Scottish glens. There, I had complete freedom and have very fond memories of dissapearing for entire days; leaving the house at 8 or 9 am with a packed lunch and returning in the evening, filthy dirty, tired, scratched, cut, bruised and utterly happy. My friends and I would cycle to town, a distance of 8 miles, on public roads. We were always aware of the dangers of traffic and strangers and acted accordingly.

These days, in the UK, children don’t get to be children. They are treated like fragile objects, like pets. Restricted to the garden or even kept indoors, supervised and monitored at all times, their friends are vetted and held in suspicion, and every opportunity for some good, mud-raking, knee-bruising fun is denied or restricted by health and safety paranoia.

I fail to see how the current generation of kids can grow up to be responsible, sensible, world-wise adults if they cannot learn the important lessons that sensibly unrestricted childhood and good old fashioned play bring. — T.B.

Recess Coaches: Good Idea?

Hi Readers! Well today a topic we’d discussed a little earlier (and earlier still)  has made the front page of The New York Times. “Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has a New Boss,” is about a recess assistant hired at an elementary school in Newark, NJ, where many of the kids had ostensibly been spending recess deliberately running into each other, or arguing, or banishing other kids to the sidelines.

The Times mentions that the coach broke up a “renegade game of hopscotch,” making it sound as if she is outlawing all that is joyous about childhood. (So does the headline.) And if there is an element of official kill-joying,  I hope the coach learns to back off. But her job is also to teach the students a vast array of what sound like fast, fun “just add kid” games — games with rules so simple that the children “can focus on playing rather than on following directions.” She lets them yell as much as they want, and jump around, and run.  Another school’s recess helper has taught kids how to settle their disputes with the age-old rock-paper-scissors, rather than  squabbling. (Or using a real rock. Or scissors.)

When we discussed this issue here a few months back there was concern that these “helpers” could actually be “squashers” — squashing kids’ inherent creativity, or problem-solving abilities, or even their right to daydream. After emailing with a couple of readers this morning, however, here’s an idea that makes sense:

One reader suggested that this would be a good program for kids who had gotten into recess-time trouble: make them participate in the organized games. Another suggested it would a be fine program, providing kids could opt out. But synthesizing these ideas makes even more sense: Make this program mandatory for everyone for a little while, and then allow kids to opt out. With all the kids participating, it wouldn’t get the reputation of punishment. Meanwhile, ALL the kids would learn a bunch of games — games they could eventually organize themselves, even outside of school. Or even during recess, without adult help!

In times past, and in some places to this day, kids grew up KNOWING how to play “Mother, May I?” and freeze tag and Duck, Duck Goose. When those games get forgotten, they’re like a lost language. They don’t spontaneously re-appear. Someone needs to teach them to the kids again. So  let’s teach them. (Let’s just make sure it’s not as painful as real language lessons.)

Meantime, by allowing kids to opt out a little later on, we’ve got the best of both worlds: Kids who want to go  off and play that game of hopscotch on their own still can, so we haven’t lost the “free” in “free time.” All that has been added is a new repertoire of games and maybe some skills at solving disputes.

I’m all for free play, as you know. But if what’s really happening is free-misery, it makes sense to reassess recess. — Lenore

"Should we fight or learn a game?" PHOTO: National Archives

Calling All Teachers!

Hey Teachers (and everyone else, of course): I’m going to be talking to a few teachers groups in the near future and would love to hear tips from any of you who have figured out how to incorporate some Free-Range ideas into your classrooms.

Is there a way you’ve figured out to add free time or encourage independence? Do yo have any great thoughts on making homework shorter and/or recess longer? Or, if you’re teaching older students, any smart ways of helping them to feel and act more grown-up (in a good way)? Any special tips for those teaching special ed or gifted classes? How about tips for dealing with parents who are particularly intrusive or hovering? (And administrators, too.)

I’ve got some great talks I give to parents and conventions and the general public (see the “Speaking Engagments” tag, above). But I’d love to have some real-world insights about school to share with teachers eager for new ideas. Thanks for any help you can give. And thanks for being a teacher!  (Enjoy your weekend!) — Lenore