Check out this story.
Natalie Munroe, a 30-year old teacher from Pennsylvania, criticized her students on a personal blog. She never mentioned her full name, the school or any student or parent by name. The blog has been taken down, but allegedly contained profanity laced comments. The more tame comments have been reported in dozens of articles, including the one I've linked.
Naturally, there are 2 camps on this issue. One camp supports the teacher, and even if they don't condone her tact, they can understand her frustration in dealing with unruly students. This was a private blog, meant for a private audience, and didn't violate any one else's privacy.
Camp 2 thinks the teacher is out of line. She had no right to attack her students in that way. She obviously hates kids, and they wonder why she went into teaching in the first place.
It will come as no surprise that I'm firmly in Camp 1. I'm not a proponent of profanity, but so what? The blog wasn't targeted at students. And even if it was, according to Ms. Munroe herself, "They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying." So it's required of a teacher to sit passively by, while student curse them out, but if a teacher uses salty language it's the end of the world?
Teachers are generally untouchable in this country. They're underpaid, overworked, over-stressed, etc. If anyone criticizes Teacher's Unions, the Department of Education, or anything that has to do with our educational system, they are panned by the media as not caring about children. But the second a teacher questions the general attitude and behavior of the students, instead of rallying around her and giving the benefit of doubt, there's a segment of the population ready to label her a bad teacher, that doesn't care about kids. This is insanity. There are teachers in New York state that have been on paid leave for months for such incidents as sexual harrassment and theft. They can't be fired, because they're teachers. But by all means, let's fire this one for voicing an opinion.
Those who criticize Natalie Munroe, make me laugh. They should check out the blog posts and Facebook status updates of anyone under the age of 25. It routinely highlights everything that is wrong with this country. But they're critical of someone who does the exact same thing, but is criticizing said young people. As usual, it's completely hypocritical.
Thankfully, humankind has given me hope. As of the writing of this post, there are 4 Facebook pages dedicated to Natalie Munroe. The 2 positive pages, "I support Natalie Munroe" and "Natalie Munroe Blog - Support for Natalie Munroe". Thy have a combined "Like" total of 1823. The 2 negative pages, "Throw the book at Natalie Munroe" and "Fire Natalie Munroe" have a combined "Like" total of 26. This includes the official Facebook page of Good Morning America. I'm glad the liberal media is staying unbiased on this one! I'm aware that's pretty unscientific, but it does make me happy that clear thinking Facebook users outnumber the haters by 70 to 1.
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