Education Law

Florida Teacher Needs to be Voted Off the Island

By Charles Fox

School personnel too often have an unshakable belief in their own inherent virtue and goodness; "we are here for the children after all." I run into the falsity of this belief all too often. A prominent illustration of a total lack of virtue happened recently in a Florida classroom. A teacher in Florida allowed the classroom to vote a child, who is on the autistic spectrum, to be voted out of the class. This teacher went beyond simple mean-spiritedness or  bad judgment. While the police declined to press charges, this teacher is obviously not fit to continue in this profession. She should take up any occupation that she does not have to consider other people's feelings. I have not seen such cold and callous conduct in my first hand experience, I have seen, however, lesser examples of extreme hurtfulness and bad judgment.  We all need to the ability to be self-critical of ourselves and our professions. Teachers are not immune from the bad parts of human nature.

Any interesting side-note to this story is that the vote was 14-2 to remove the student from the class. We could all learn something about compassion and standing up against peer pressure from the 2 children who voted to keep Alex Barton as a classmate.

Full post as published by Special Education Law Blog on May 27, 2008 (boomark / email).