Trusted occupations: teachers are never abusive to students

Photo: Jade Ray

Here's a photo of Heather Hargett.

A recent San Diego Union Tribune article about a high school girl who is suing a teacher for kicking her and telling her to leave the room because she was too ugly to deliver singing telegrams on Valentine's Day brought on an onslaught of comments from people defending the teacher.

I believe that many teachers need a more positive attitude toward children in general. Just because a teacher has a few teacher's pets isn't good enough. Every child should be treated with respect.

Here are some snippets of the pro-teacher comments that were posted regarding Leonel Sanchez' story about teacher Heather Hargett and student Jade Ray of Grossmont Union High School District. The consensus of these people seems to be that there are no abusive teachers, because if there were the school would have done something about it:

"With 50 witnesses and 5 months passed, I have to suspect this would have come out a long time ago if the story was as outrageous as the student is claiming..."

"The story seems pretty un-believable really. It will be interesting for sure when the facts really come out. With so many eye witnesses, I can hardly believe that the child would dare make something up but who knows in this day and age..."

"...So she was embarrassed, so what- who is high school wasnt?"

"...The girl suing should be counter sued and if she is givin money, it should only go to fix her "ugly" attribute..."

"Freddieboy, if that were my WIFE on the receiving end of a false complaint that could ruin her career, that kid AND her parent(s) would be getting a lot more than a lawsuit."

[Note from Blogger: Don't worry. If schools fired teachers for being hostile and disrespectful, there would be a teacher-shortage of huge proportions. That won't happen.]

On the other hand, two people supported the student:

"I had a high school physics teacher who always singled me out to embarrass me in front of the class... I finally walked out when one time he said, "gosh, your parents must be really ashamed."... I hope the kid wins."


"The teacher should have been Fired and the School Board should've addressed the situation with her parents promptly to ensure she went back to that school. This is a story of just a poor educational system."

[Blogger's note: I think ALL teachers need to be supported more--and challenged more--to help them behave maturely in the classroom. I know there are lots of teachers who are more abusive than this one. This situation sounds familiar to me; a lot of teachers get socialized into girl-clique attitudes. The cliques form on teaching staffs and even in classrooms. This sounds like a typical "mean girls" moment. I'll bet there were sycophant students who laughed with glee when the girl was (literally) kicked out.

Maura's advice to Heather Hargett: We've come a long way in race relations, but there's plenty of sensitivity and actual racism today, so it might be a good idea not to call your black students "ugly". You're in a particularly bad position, being blond and attractive. It's not a big stretch for us to imagine that you really do believe that you're prettier than Jade. Just for the record, you're not.]