Teachers were lap-dancing, but it’s the students who might be in trouble?

Let’s talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Over the past couple of weeks, the big international story out of Manitoba has been two teachers at a Winnipeg high school pep rally — filmed on cameraphone, one giving a simulated lapdance to the other, then faking some oral sex. Classy, right?

I’m not going to post either of the two (!) videos known to exist of the event, but if you want a rundown of it, plus all the furor surrounding it, plus some great commentary, you literally can not do better than JHH’s take at Slurpees and Murder. I fully agree with the point of his post: the teachers were stupid, but they didn’t expose the students to anything that students aren’t already steeped in. I present proof:

But, since this is unarguably the biggest story to come out of Manitoba since a certain bus beheading a couple of summers ago (and we wonder why it’s so hard to attract tourists) every media outlet is jumping all over the sex! students! angle.

Now the Winnipeg Free Press has unearthed a school division policy that says students can be punished for using cell phone cameras in schools. In this brief story about a school board meeting, “school board chairwoman Jackie Sneesby refused to rule out punishment for the students.”

Well, of course she refused to rule it out. Fearing the loss of their scoop, I can only imagine that Freep education reporter Nick Martin (who also runs an excellent blog, by the way) posed her the question of student punishment right out of the blue. I’d bet it hadn’t even occurred to her until someone asked.

But it is a question that bears asking — if the students broke code-of-conduct rules, shouldn’t those rules have consequences? It’s Parenting 101 that you enforce your own rules, and teachers act in loco parentis, right? (That’s a phrase which is much funnier in this context if you read it with the Spanish “loco” instead of the Latin.)

So students broke the rules. But so what? This is a clear-cut case for whistleblower legislation, right? The students exposed a wrong, and their oh-no-it-broke-the-rules behaviour should be excused because of the social good that it’s doing.

Except Canada doesn’t have any whistleblower legislation, neither federally nor at the provincial level, a fact which astonished me when I just Googled it. Sorry students, no protection there. No First Amendment defense, either, for us Canucks.

Of course, the whole prohibition against cell phones in schools is ridiculous in the first place. Like airports, school authorities seem to think they can engineer behaviour by banning things.

There are tons of good reasons to allow cell phones in schools — communication with family members, emergencies, even the calendar and calculator functions.

If teachers find that cell phones and related devices are causing issues in class, make the students responsible for them. They are going to have to grow up and be responsible adults in just a few short years, and they’re going to have to deal with cell phones and other devices at work, at home, and in social situations. They should know how to turn them to vibrate, or turn them off.

If a student with a cell phone causes a distraction, go ahead and punish the behaviour. That punishment may even include taking away the offending device. But don’t issue a blanket ban. Because you won’t be able to keep up.

Banned cell phones, did you? What about iPods? What about Game Boys? What about calculator watch from the ’80s? What about laptops? Can I bring a laptop to class if I only take notes? What about a Kindle — which can only be used to read books? What about books?

You know what? If a student was reading Stephen King in class, hiding it under the desk, the teacher would take it away. (I know, because I did this in junior high.) But the school wouldn’t out-and-out ban books, for crying out loud.

This is all, I think, a desperate attempt by teachers and administrators to make school today more like the school they think they remember.

But school ain’t like that anymore. Students don’t take typing class, they have computer class, to cite just the most obvious example. And a progressive division would embrace technology like cell phones, and find a way to incorporate it into the curriculum.

However, it is much easier to be reactionary and disciplinary than it is to be thoughtful and progressive. And, since schools these days are basically human-rights-free gulags, students have about as much access to technology during their schoolday as the average North Korean.

Consider the story that I heard about a Brandon high school, which decided on the basis of no evidence that they needed to search the school for drugs.

Students were put in lock down — I shit you not, confined to classrooms — while the division brought in drug-sniffing dogs — again, I shit you not. And, even though you may think that because there is a lock on it, and you have the key, you may think that the locker is yours (I guarantee you that if a students broke into another student’s locker, there would be hell to pay) but no, that locker is not your private space, it belongs to the school, so we can search it whenever we like, and I hope you’re not keeping anything private in there, like birth control pills you don’t want your parents to know about, or notes from a boyfriend or girlfriend, or a prescription for depression, or perhaps your diary. Heaven forbid that something you have put under lock and key be actually kept private.

But the drug-sniffing dogs didn’t detect any drugs in the lockers. So, girls, yes, you’re in lockdown, but please put your purses outside the door and in the hallway, so the dogs can sniff them, and if we feel like it, we can root around in them, too.

What is this, Shawshank? (They still found no drugs by the way, which proves absolutely nothing about drug use in our schools and youth, but may happen to prove that the students are learning, at least about concealment.)

So now I know why cell phone cameras are banned. Because an enterprising group of students might actually be able to make a compelling case that high school these days is hell — and it ain’t the jocks vs. nerds. No, overbearing teachers and administrators have set themselves up in opposition to the students. And that’s a recipe for chaos.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush. When I was in high school, there were great teachers and awful teachers. But by and large, the most effective ones were kind of permissive, letting us get away with some youthful exuberance while simultaneously guiding that energy into a mildly productive course. We felt they were on our side, even if they had a job to do that we didn’t always want to follow.

Sure, some students need hardcases on their ass. But mostly, students just want teachers who respect them. I did. And in return, we mostly offered respect right back.

Two teachers giving each other a lap dance, though? It smacks of trying to be co0l — and trying much too hard. No one’s going to respect that.

And how do you treat someone you don’t respect? Maybe by mocking them? Pointing and laughing? Making fun? Or, in the modern vernacular, by posting a video of their embarrassing behaviour to YouTube.

All of which is good, because it exposed some stupid staff behaviour that wouldn’t have been exposed otherwise. I happen to believe that there is a lot more stupid staff behaviour going on — including overly  harsh drug and technology crackdowns — that should be exposed.

I have no doubt that, had the authorities found drugs in their fruitless but invasive search, they would have trumpeted it in a news release that they were Keeping The Students Safe. Well, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Students! Produce more videos of your schools. You’ll do more for accountability than the division ever will.