I've been really
bugged by the number of teachers who have been found to be having
physical sexual relationships with students, breaking the bond of trust
within which learning can take place. This is a tangent indeed: the topic of people being allowed to have private lives outside of their employment has somehow fallen by the wayside and this begins to sound like a defense of people who don't know how to conduct themselves at work or at home.
It's largely the fault of the teachers and administration, though culpability cannot rest in the hands of a minor, formal social boundaries, such as those between between teacher and student, adult and child have dissolved. Really shocking are the number of cases of female teachers involved with adolescent male students.
Students are allowed to have "crushes" on their teachers: a crush is an intense admiration and desire to be with the person to learn from them: the crusher wants the crushee to share his experience, knowledge, way of adapting to the world. It is a natural relationship, like the parent-child one, and should be inviolable: i.e. the adult needs to be the adult in these situations. "But she threw herself at me," are not words a real man uses, and certainly not a gentleman. I don't know what to say about a female teacher and male student. Bottom line: it just isn't done.
Why can't teachers be expected to be ladies and gentlemen in their professional lives, i.e. at school and in their dealings with their students and families? Administrators have rigidity confused with professionalism when they hire people who work with children, and rigidity has no place in education, which is another soapbox on which I proudly stand. The result of off-kilter hiring practices results in people who might present the "right" measurable image yet lack the necessary soul.
As a point of clarity, teachers and others trusted with people's lives are not and should not be
held to the highest standard in every part of their lives, only in those
parts that might affect those with whom they work: basically, in vernacular terms, "I don't
care what you do in your own time as long as it does not affect your
job," still works when we have a common understanding of what is and is not "done." Where, how, why, and when did that line blur?
Monday, November 19, 2012
It's the Mata Hari Factor, Stupid!
Of course not. However, all government representatives posted overseas are sent with the warning not to become involved in affairs, since emotional neediness can be used as a tool for manipulation in order to gain information. They are warned against affairs especially with host-country nationals, as the representative is a target who may have information to be leaked casually, in error, in guarded bits and pieces to be put together later.
Another factor is that a person could become involved with someone who appears to be safe and whose instability later surfaces through changes in the romantic relationship or within him/herself and as such becomes someone whose actions could endanger the security of the US and its information. The foreign service offices like to have people in proven long-term stable relationships as a countermeasure to becoming involved in affairs which could in some way endanger US interests. In the 1950s, of course, was the surface issue of blackmail. As we know, the instability of people with whom one becomes intimately involved can be a danger in itself -- another kind of blackmail: not a threat to reveal the affair but to reveal secrets that became known -- any manner of results can come out of emotional weakness/neediness and the illogical actions that it engenders. That's the situation into which Petraeus found he had fallen. As an upstanding person, he recused himself, relieved himself of duty as soon as it became apparent that even he, no doubt to his surprise, had fallen into one of the traps about which he had been cautioned. It all seemed all right at the time . . . . it always does. For that reason, he was sworn to upholding a high moral standard, keeping his emotions in check. He probably did. He knew and worked with the writer for a long time. He knew she was not a spy. However, he stepped over the line of what we call propriety into the inappropriate by becoming closer to her outside of their agreed-upon relationship: a man and his biographer. Now, looking back,could he have, in full trust, told her things "off the record" which she did keep off the record? He must wonder. She entered into the relationship as a trusted biographer, and any further relationship than that steps into territory outside the bounds of security, unknowingly, of course. The boundary had become blurred and he didn't see it when he crossed over and stepped into a situation against which he had been warned and had no doubt warned others. How embarrassing when it was revealed that she had become emotionally unstable, according to the standards of foreign service, and was now stalking another member of the "Intelligence Community," to which Petraeus, and not she, belonged.
That's why Petraeus resigned. He fell into the trap. It is so easily done. Worse, traps are not intentionally laid. That's what he forgot. Now a bucket-load of silly behavior becomes public, and with it the possibility that security could well have been breached. It was not; had this gone on undisclosed, it could have been.
No, it's not about blackmail. In short, in foreign service, in Intelligence work, it's the Mata Hari principle.
It's about being human and swearing to hold oneself to a higher standard than ordinary humans. It's expected of priests, therapists, teachers, coaches, doctors, parents -- all of us who come into intimate contact with people, who are trusted with people's lives and by means of this unbroken trust help them to thrive.
Another factor is that a person could become involved with someone who appears to be safe and whose instability later surfaces through changes in the romantic relationship or within him/herself and as such becomes someone whose actions could endanger the security of the US and its information. The foreign service offices like to have people in proven long-term stable relationships as a countermeasure to becoming involved in affairs which could in some way endanger US interests. In the 1950s, of course, was the surface issue of blackmail. As we know, the instability of people with whom one becomes intimately involved can be a danger in itself -- another kind of blackmail: not a threat to reveal the affair but to reveal secrets that became known -- any manner of results can come out of emotional weakness/neediness and the illogical actions that it engenders. That's the situation into which Petraeus found he had fallen. As an upstanding person, he recused himself, relieved himself of duty as soon as it became apparent that even he, no doubt to his surprise, had fallen into one of the traps about which he had been cautioned. It all seemed all right at the time . . . . it always does. For that reason, he was sworn to upholding a high moral standard, keeping his emotions in check. He probably did. He knew and worked with the writer for a long time. He knew she was not a spy. However, he stepped over the line of what we call propriety into the inappropriate by becoming closer to her outside of their agreed-upon relationship: a man and his biographer. Now, looking back,could he have, in full trust, told her things "off the record" which she did keep off the record? He must wonder. She entered into the relationship as a trusted biographer, and any further relationship than that steps into territory outside the bounds of security, unknowingly, of course. The boundary had become blurred and he didn't see it when he crossed over and stepped into a situation against which he had been warned and had no doubt warned others. How embarrassing when it was revealed that she had become emotionally unstable, according to the standards of foreign service, and was now stalking another member of the "Intelligence Community," to which Petraeus, and not she, belonged.
That's why Petraeus resigned. He fell into the trap. It is so easily done. Worse, traps are not intentionally laid. That's what he forgot. Now a bucket-load of silly behavior becomes public, and with it the possibility that security could well have been breached. It was not; had this gone on undisclosed, it could have been.
No, it's not about blackmail. In short, in foreign service, in Intelligence work, it's the Mata Hari principle.
It's about being human and swearing to hold oneself to a higher standard than ordinary humans. It's expected of priests, therapists, teachers, coaches, doctors, parents -- all of us who come into intimate contact with people, who are trusted with people's lives and by means of this unbroken trust help them to thrive.
Tnose Who Have Eyes . . .
let them see.." is not censorship. For security reasons, of course official press statements are circumspect; who would announce, "I know who you are and where you are and I have a secret plan on how to get you and yours without you knowing I know who you are and where you are and what I'll do about it?" Like the Shah of Iran told Barbara Walters before all hell broke loose, "My people can't handle the truth."
. . . and this is just a preface to the post of "As I See/Saw It" Benghazi.
More preface: When the United States makes a press statement on a satellite news agency, as all of them are, the statements are carefully constructed not just to announce to American Citizens what is going on but to people all over the world.
"Think Globally, Act Locally"
The statements, then, released to the press on Benghazi were not just for people in the United States in front of their televisions tuned in to their local news stations. In the case of the Benghazi to middle east blow-up, do the people now castigating the composers of press statements here, the releasers of detailed information here, not think that those responsible for the deadly attack on the consulate (not the Embassy) were not watching the news to see the results of their actions? Sheesh.
Now, as to How I See It, i.e. as I saw it at the time the news broke:
(insert to come)
. . . and this is just a preface to the post of "As I See/Saw It" Benghazi.
More preface: When the United States makes a press statement on a satellite news agency, as all of them are, the statements are carefully constructed not just to announce to American Citizens what is going on but to people all over the world.
"Think Globally, Act Locally"
The statements, then, released to the press on Benghazi were not just for people in the United States in front of their televisions tuned in to their local news stations. In the case of the Benghazi to middle east blow-up, do the people now castigating the composers of press statements here, the releasers of detailed information here, not think that those responsible for the deadly attack on the consulate (not the Embassy) were not watching the news to see the results of their actions? Sheesh.
Now, as to How I See It, i.e. as I saw it at the time the news broke:
(insert to come)
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Preface:
I'm often scratching my head over what I hear people on the news saying and asking, often wondering what set the hounds loose on a celebrity; I'm often surprised at my changed reaction on seeing the principals involved in news stories I heard or read and stand suitably chastised. Likewise, "what I thought" has often been turned on its head when I have gained more background information on an issue, a person, an event, current or historical. It has something to do with Primary Sources. It has a lot to do with looking for the human factor involved, the personal human stories behind the news, behind history. The news, conversely, has become something of a Byzantine story factory since it expanded from 30-60 minutes nightly to 24-hour news cycles of competing purveyors of news, which now even includes talk-show opinion, both of the host and of the public.
I have seen breaking news that made me question if I were somehow involved in a delusional vision I could not shake off, wiping at the television screen as if it could somehow solve the disconnect. The first time that happened was while casually watching the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "Is this real?" "Am I seeing this?" It happened when watching the smoking twin towers when the first imploded, full of people, the way we have seen so many buildings carefully and gracefully collapse inward in engineered demolition.
(why is demolish spelled with an s and demolition with a t?)
I have been on the site of big news stories that are only a small part of the whole story; contextualization of news helps put stories in perspective. We see where the cameras focus, what the lens shows us, and then the 24-hour news cycles broadcast the bits repeatedly in a decontextualization of the news.
I'm often scratching my head over what I hear people on the news saying and asking, often wondering what set the hounds loose on a celebrity; I'm often surprised at my changed reaction on seeing the principals involved in news stories I heard or read and stand suitably chastised. Likewise, "what I thought" has often been turned on its head when I have gained more background information on an issue, a person, an event, current or historical. It has something to do with Primary Sources. It has a lot to do with looking for the human factor involved, the personal human stories behind the news, behind history. The news, conversely, has become something of a Byzantine story factory since it expanded from 30-60 minutes nightly to 24-hour news cycles of competing purveyors of news, which now even includes talk-show opinion, both of the host and of the public.
I have seen breaking news that made me question if I were somehow involved in a delusional vision I could not shake off, wiping at the television screen as if it could somehow solve the disconnect. The first time that happened was while casually watching the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "Is this real?" "Am I seeing this?" It happened when watching the smoking twin towers when the first imploded, full of people, the way we have seen so many buildings carefully and gracefully collapse inward in engineered demolition.
(why is demolish spelled with an s and demolition with a t?)
I have been on the site of big news stories that are only a small part of the whole story; contextualization of news helps put stories in perspective. We see where the cameras focus, what the lens shows us, and then the 24-hour news cycles broadcast the bits repeatedly in a decontextualization of the news.
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