Not all teachers are bad apples

Every child has to go to school, despite the number of fake colds or dogs ready at hand to eat homework, but recent sex scandals and bullying issues don't inspire much confidence in parents.

Recently, the Penn State sex scandal, which has seen a large number of athletic and school administrators ousted unceremoniously, is not the only situation that has parents fearful of what goes on at schools.

A Today Show article, "Teachers caught on tape bullying special-needs girl," states a girl was reportedly bullied by her general education teacher and a teacher's aide, all caught on tape by a hidden recorder placed on the child by her father.

Reportedly, the tapes caught the teachers making remarks like "Are you that damn dumb?" and

"Oh my god. You are such a liar. You told me you don't know. It's no wonder you don't have friends.  No wonder nobody likes you because you lie, cheat" and, on a test the student had just taken, "You know what? Just keep it. You failed it. I know it. I don't need your test to grade. You failed it."

The article continues to state that the aide has since been fired, and the general education teacher was forced to take anti-bullying training, though the student's father is trying to have the teacher fired and prevented from ever working in a school again.

Even on a much less damaging note, an Associated Press article, titled "Judge: Facebook post should cost job of teacher," states that an administrative law judge in New Jersey recommended that a first-grade teacher should be fired for a post she made on Facebook, calling herself a "warden for future criminals."

This article states the teacher posted this after a particularly hard day when the students were misbehaving in class.

Parents found out about the post through the grapevine and became upset for good reason.  No one likes to have their children called "future criminals."

But the saddest thing about these three incidents is that it makes it easier for parents to look at all educators and education officials in the same light, whether or not such accusations even fit.

When parents have to question whether or not their children are safe from teachers while at school, then the whole education system breaks down if one party is constantly paranoid of the other.

But, the truth is that everywhere, every day, children go to school, sit in a classroom, and the worst they go through is failing tests they didn't study for.

These few examples of bad people sneaking into an occupation that affects children daily are not the standard; in fact they form a very rare, very sick fraction of a fraction that appear in the education field.

According to the United States Department of Labor's 2010-11 edition of the Occupational Outlook Handbook, nearly 3.5 million kindergarten through highschool teachers were employed in 2008, and almost 4 million are expected to be employed by 2018.

So, of the millions of teachers who are currently employed in the U.S., only two that fit into the above population have harmed students enough to be worthy of national news coverage. Now, that doesn't mean we are hearing about all other cases where teachers have harmed students, and it doesn't mean that things like this won't continue to happen.

But parents do need to understand that the vast majority of teachers are caring individuals who want to help students succeed in life.  When parents become paranoid about every teacher students go to, it can be harmful to the students themselves and it disrupts their education.