Monday, September 22, 2008

Please Miss . . . can you spank me

Ah . . . I love it when stupid, ill thought out policies are shown up to be just that.

Who but the dimmest among us could not have predicted the dilemma now facing an Auckland primary school? A teacher has been moonlighting as a prostitute. And now the wowsers are wringing their hands, wondering what to do.

They can do nothing! It’s legal. End of story.

The school, the Board, the Ministry, the courts – none of them can make a moral determination that would prohibit her from shagging whoever she likes and getting paid for it.

Unless it is affecting her duties, says the Teacher’s Council. And I wondered how that might look. Does she turn up to class with that profoundly satisfied but unnervingly goofy looking post-orgasmic grin on her face? When she opens her purse in the staff room do condoms, an assortment of vibrators and a ball-gag fall out? Does she get texts from tricks during story time?

I’m assuming not.

Is she engaged in “conduct that brings discredit to the profession”? No one has established which profession she might be discrediting. Perhaps prostitutes who moonlight as teachers are regarded as the black sheeps of that fine profession. And some of the teachers I have known are the grumpiest, bitterest, most cynical mean spirited apathetic people around. It’s okay for them to teach our kids?

The Board’s hands are tied, although that would probably cost extra. And apart from giving new meaning to the parent-teacher evening (I’ll bet her schedule is filled with concerned fathers months in advance), you’d be hard pressed to disqualify her from her secondary employment.

Unless, of course, she is engaged in that most despicable, anti-social criminal of activities – failure to pay the correct taxes.

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