Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Teach The Children Well


It upset Amanda Anoai to hear her 11-year-old son tell her he'd been teased and bullied at school about his long hair. But it enraged her when she found out that the bullies weren't his schoolmates, but a teacher.

Anoai has claimed in a federal lawsuit that a teacher and a teacher's aide embarrassed and humiliated her son by tying his hair into pig-tails and forcing him to stand in front of at least two different classrooms and encouraged students to mock him with feminized versions of his name. The teacher even took a picture of the boy with her camera phone.

She said her son was used to being teased about his long hair and that it had never really bothered him, because it was mostly his friends playing around. But this time, rather than being good-natured fun, his teachers humiliated him. And because he was so traumatized, Anoai transferred her son to a different school and now must drive him there since the district does not provide bus service.

Milford Schools Superintendent Robert Farrell, also named in the lawsuit, declined comment, as did the teacher, Tori Bothe; the school principal, Jill Chin, could not be reached.

Anoai's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, accuses school officials of violating the boy's constitutional rights and failing to protect him against "offensive gender-based harassment." Her lawyer, Eric Deters, says the problem isn't that a kid got teased at school, it's that adults encouraged and participated in the humiliation of a student.

How can we expect our children not to be bullies and tormentors of other kids who are perceived as "different" when they are learning to bully by their teachers?

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:57 AM

    That's awful. I remember being teased by teachers because I was gay. It's a horrible feeling when the adults are the ones doing the abuse.

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  2. I can't even begin to tell you how furious this makes me. Why some people went into teaching I'll never understand.

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  3. Anonymous7:37 AM

    I think this person and her superiors should spend time behind bars to make a statement about child abuse.
    I moved out of that country. What is wrong with people there? These are children, and they have it worse than we did (I am 50) Where in the hell is the RAGE.
    good luck to all

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  4. How incredibly sad and disgusting this happened in the US. If a teacher had done this to me, I can say without a doubt my father would have paid him a visit.

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