There are several ways in which a teacher can make
a child's life miserable. One is by bullying the child directly. Another is by
allowing or even encouraging others to bully the child. In a naturalistic
setting, children can simply run away from a tormenter or turn to their parents
or older siblings for help. But in an institutional setting, the child has no
escape. Anything that the child does in self-defense will be interpreted as
misbehavior and punished. As an institution, a school has a natural tendency to
protect itself, and by extension the child's tormenter, instead of protecting
the child.
If parents notice that something is wrong, they may
try to solve the problem by talking with the teacher. Unfortunately, bullies are
unlikely to mend their evil ways just because some powerless person tries to
reason with them. In fact, the parent-teacher conference may simply give a
dysfunctional teacher the pleasure of bullying not just the child but the
parents as well.
Theoretically, a parent could solve this problem by
appealing to the principal. But in many cases, the principal automatically sides
with the teacher. A principal's failure to correct a teacher's misbehavior can
make the problem worse. When bullies realize that they face no consequences,
their misbehavior can escalate to an appalling level.
A recent case shows how bad this problem can get.
Stuart Chaifetz's 10-year-old autistic son Akian had always been sweet and
nonviolent. Then, his teacher started complaining that Akian was hitting
teachers and throwing chairs around in class. Yet a behavior specialist who was
called in to observe the classroom never saw Akian misbehave and couldn't even
provoke him into misbehavior. As a result, Chaifetz started to suspect that the
real problem was the teacher.
To find out what was really going on in Akian's
classroom, Chaiftez wired Akian for sound. The recording revealed shockingly
cruel and unprofessional behavior from Akian's teacher and a teacher aide. As
Chaifetz explained, "The six and a half hours of audio I had proved that my son
wasn't hitting staff because there was something wrong with him--he was lashing
out because he was being mocked, mistreated and humiliated. His outbursts were
his way of expressing that he was being emotionally hurt at school." After
Chaifetz played this recording for the principal, one teacher's aide was fired
immediately. However, Chaifetz eventually discovered that the teacher was merely
transferred to another school. He then published portions of the videotape on
Youtube. He started a Facebook page called No More Teacher Bullies. Its motto:
"When a teacher bullies a child, especially one with Special Needs, they need to
be immediately fired, and their actions made
public."
Of course, not every child who is miserable in
school is being bullied. Sometimes, the problem is ineffective teaching. If, for
whatever reason, a teacher is not getting through to a particular child, why
should that child have to serve out an entire year in that teacher's classroom?
Why should a child have to suffer potentially lifelong damage because of the
failure of an adult?
I had some really good teachers when I was in
school. I've also seen first-hand the damage that the occasional bad teacher can
do to a child. What I never understood, even as a child, was why children had to
stay in a classroom that was destroying them. Why does the school administration
insist upon it, and why do parents tolerate it? How can the parents or the
school administrators expect the child to trust any adult after such an
experience? How many cases of "oppositional defiant disorder" could have been
prevented by taking a child out of an inhumane or ineffective classroom right
away?
The simplest solution to this problem is to make it
routine for children to be transferred out of classrooms that, for whatever
reason, aren't working for them. If a child's grades or behavior are poor or the
child simply starts hating school, or if the teacher shows disrespect to the
parents, why not just transfer the child to a different classroom? The
transaction can be like an amicable, no-fault divorce: no questions asked and no
hard feelings. The reason for the transfer can be simple incompatibility.
Transfers can occur for reasons other than bullying, but they are particularly
important in bullying cases. The child is immediately delivered from torment,
and the teacher learns a lesson about boundaries.
Keeping the child in a toxic classroom is not only
harmful to the child, it obscures the cause of the problem. If a child starts to
improve in the next school year, after summer vacation, the improvement could be
due to maturation. But if the child starts to improve immediately after being
transferred, the problem was obviously in the
classroom.
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