Posted on 12/02/2007 11:50:04 AM PST by NYer
You no doubt are a product of public education.
When all else fails, try changing the subject with a personal attack.
I agree with you 100%.
News stories about teachers who have sexual relationships with their students or who abuse students, are very common. As this story points out, there have been more than 2,500 proven cases of abuse over a recent five year period. That is 500 cases per year. Yet, the media consistently treats these cases as isolated incidents and not as symptoms of an institutional problem or defect.
Contrast this with the way that the media handled the clerical sex abuse crisis. 4,400 priests have been accused of abusing children over a 52 year period. This number represents 4% of diocesan priests and 2.7% of religious priests. Moreover, the bulk of the accusations were made between 1975 and 1990. That is, the majority of these alleged incidents of abuse occurred more than seventeen years ago; only a small number of cases concern abuse that was committed recently or currently. Yet, the media has treated these cases not as isolated incidents involving a small percentage of the clergy but as
a widespread, institutional problem caused by the Church’s hierarchical structure and its requirement of clerical celibacy. The reaction of the press, of victims’ rights advocates, and of lawyers to this scandal has been nothing short of hysterical. And the enemies of the Church have seized upon it as “proof” that the Church itself is evil.
The fact that these same people seem to be completely unconcerned about the prevalence of sex abuse in the public schools is proof that they are not as concerned about the protection of children and young people as they are about bashing the Church. What hypocrites.
4,400 priests were accused of abusing minors but some of these men have NOT been found guilty. In fact, some of these men are innocent. In this country, one is still presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. But I guess this doesn’t apply to priests.
“Accused” does not mean guilty. Not everyone who is accused of sex crimes is guilty. Some are and some aren’t.
I never said it did, now did I???
I'm hardly one to defend the press, and I freely admit the public schools have problems. But, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are almost 49 million children in the public schools currently. I'd hardly call 500 cases of abuse per year prevalent.
Christ stated that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18). Individual clergy may commit sins, even popes commit sins because in the Church there are both "weeds and wheat" (Matthew 13:30), but the Catholic Church remains without error.
Thanks for posting this.
Presuming a 25-students-to-1-teacher ratio (close to what the NEA desires, but I'm really just trying for simple math here), 500 "accused" cases a year would translate to 1,960,000 public school teachers (or roughly 1.6M if we grant one teacher for every 30 students) - if you have more accurate numbers, please post them!. 500 cases a year, times 50 years (to attempt an apples-for-apples comparison with the Catholics' John Jay Study) gives us 25,000 cases over the last half-century.
While 25,000 hypothesized "accusations" is roughly six times the number of Catholic "accusations", 25,000 cases out of 1,600,000 teachers gives us a 1.3 to 1.56% ratio of sexually abusive teachers out of the entire public school system over a fifty year period - more than twice the volume of Protestant pastoral abuse, and less than half the volume of Catholic priest abuse.
If we're after equal treatment in the media, I would expect there to be at least double the number of Catholic news stories as Public School stories, and four times as many Catholic news stories as Protestant news stories based on the percentage of perverts that exist with their respective organizations. IMO the disproportionate amount of coverage is the result of increased interest, when those organizations are caught protecting the abusers at the expense of the victims.
Matthew 5:25:
”Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
The author’s intent was clear. Your understanding of it is not.
No. I was agreeing with the remarks that he made in post #5 about the lack of outrage over the abuse of minors in public schools versus the hysteria surrounding the sex abuse scandal in the Church.
As for his remarks about “A. M.,” why I didn’t even realize that he was talking about you. After all, your criticisms of the Church are always so restrained and so constructive.
Talk about nit picking! Perhaps “prevalence” is the wrong word. However, the sexual abuse of minors in the public schools is not exactly rare or unusual either. Moreover, the media’s lack of interest in this story is puzzling because it was so very concerned and outraged about the clerical sex abuse scandal. There is clearly a double standard here.
Pinging for future comment. Sounds like something we’ve been saying for a LONG time.
Basically it is that the press is not really interested in protecting kids but in discrediting the Catholic Church. The public schools, on the other hand, are a bulwark of liberalism.
The key here is “accusations.” As a former teacher, I can tell you that just as many accusations of priests were hushed up, so too accusation of teachers. The schools responded by encouraging the teacher to leave the district and find employment elsewhere. If he—and it was usually he—went quietly, his file would be cleared. In short, no paper trail. There are some 12,000 school districts in the United States and no real hierarchy. Unless the teacher protested his innocence, no one above the level of the Superintendents’ office would be aware of the matter. Given the constant need for teachers in the United States, the teacher would have no trouble getting job, provided he were willing to travel anywhere.
That's a very good point. IMO it's not the abuse per se, but the hypocracy (of a celibate Catholic priesthood, or a monogamous Protestant pastorate) that keeps the press interested. You'll never find the press covering abuses committed by homosexual and pedophilic organizations, because there's no perceived hypocracy therein. The press doesn't care how many lesbian relationships a "womenpriest" has, because frankly the press already expects that sort of behavior from them. In other words, you can't break a vow that you never made, or one that your beliefs don't require you to keep.
Consider that the government-run public school system is officially amoral and atheistic/polytheistic by law. There is no hypocrisy or outrage at this kind of behavior to be reported, unless the parents' religious morals were violated by the teacher, because the school technically can't have any religious morals to break. The non-Christian population IMO wishes they were in the students' place! Check out the posts on any "teacher abuse" thread. Half of the FReepers post comments akin to "I wish I had that teacher in high school!" whenever one of these stories comes out, if the teacher is deemed physically attractive. Where is the Catholic outrage at those congratulatory comments?
If we can't blame the Vatican for the priest scandals, should we blame the NEA for the school ones?
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