Prof. Pat Sikes
Posted on 11/12/2005 5:46:05 PM PST by scripter
Is another taboo about to be broken?
A British professor who has been studying pupil-teacher relationships for 25 years concludes sexual contact between them should not necessarily be criminal conduct – in fact, she says, they can be positive experiences.
Prof. Pat Sikes |
Pat Sikes of the University of Sheffield was seduced by her history teacher at the age of 14 and later became his wife. Now she has written "Scandalous Stories and Dangerous Liaisons: When Female Pupils and Male Teachers Fall In Love."
It contends classroom affairs are more common than is usually imagined. She writes that expressions of sexuality are part of the everyday exchanges of school life.
"And nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the seductive nature and 'erotic charge' often characteristic of 'good' teaching which provokes a positive and exciting response," she writes.
Sikes met her own husband, David, in 1970 on his first day as a teacher at age 22.
"It wasn't until two years later, on the evening he left to take up a post elsewhere, that we declared our feelings. I returned after the summer vacation as his girlfriend," she said.
The couple finally married when Sikes was in her 30s.
Sikes condemned "exploitative" relationships and said her study was based on stories volunteered by those who had no regrets.
I hope not. Yet another reason to homeschool.
OK well I think it should be REQUIRED!!!
Moral absolutes ping.
"OK well I think it should be REQUIRED!!!"
Amen. ;)
The teacher-student modality triggers strong attraction in young women - they naturally gravitate toward men who possess both knowledge and authority. That's why the policy was established in the first place. Since the teacher-student relationship naturally triggers so much potential romantic feeling and is so prone to abuse by unscrupulous male teachers, it was important to establish strong boundaries.
This is an exercise in self justification. If it happened in her life and she was ok with it so it must be ok and natural. Now if only the rest of the world would buy into it she wouldn't have to deal with feelings of guilt.
I'm sitting here at my desk in a public school helping out with discipline during a movie in the auditorium on a Saturday afternoon. (The actors from the film are here for a signing and to answer questions, a treat for the town and the school.) Then I read this story. Is this from "The Onion"? Have you ever been in a room full of high schoolers? What kind of grown man would want to have any sort of liasion with that? But let's take this halfbaked idea to its full expression. Imagine a school where teachers and students can date and have affairs. What happens when they break up? What about jealousy? What about rivalries? What about those girls out there who are, let us say, a little loose in their approach to men? Why not just open a copulatorium for a little release between fourth period and study hall? Has this professor even come close to imaging the ramifications of her ideas? It's times like this that I want to tell people that I work in another profession. My God, what a stupid, stupid idea proposed in this article.
I married my college professor (after he and I had both left college). I was 27, he was a very youthful forty when we married. That was 23 years ago. We have two children.
The liberals have been trying to desensitize people to pedophilia for the last 20 years. First they "normalized" homosexuality, now they are going for pedophilia.
The slippery slope is getting steeper and steeper.
I teach in a high school in PA where a 50 + male teacher married a former student 9she graduated last year. She's 19 now. His current students have no respect for him and call him a rapist and freak.
Not only is this "study" based on anecdotal evidence; it is anecdotal evidence from a self-selected sample.
I believe it's statutory rape no matter what state you're in. Whether it's a:
Should be "imagining." That's what happens when you combine a hot temper with a keyboard.
Kinda means you were not looking at all student teacher relationships now dont it?
Darn! I just pinged out an article about this (deleted)! I'll ping it in a while...don't want to overload the pingees.
People NEED to know this stuff - especially parents and those intended to be parents. Or grandparents.
IMO, I agree.
That's a great question. I wonder if she'll feel the same way in 10 years.
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