Not every problem has an easy solution. After all, if it did, it wouldn’t be a problem.
Similarly, not every question has an easy answer. However, some do.
Not long ago a female student in a 10th Grade English class I teach asked me if I’d give her a ride home after school. No bus goes through her neighborhood, meaning she makes her daily commute of slightly less than a mile on foot. The already gray skies were darkening that afternoon and the wind was picking up, so it was perfectly understandable why she didn’t want to walk.
The girl’s request was earnest and reasonable. But responding to her appeal in the negative was easy.
In the kindest tone of voice I could muster, I clearly and firmly told her I wouldn’t give her a ride home. That particular altruistic act is frowned upon by our school district’s administration. Taking a female student for a ride in one’s car isn’t, strictly speaking, the quickest way for a male high school teacher over the age of 60 to lose his job, since hitting students, hitting on students, or dealing drugs to them would all likely result in more rapid termination of employment.
That established, even educators with the best of intentions need to employ good judgment, which means doing risk assessment before opting for any specific course(s) of action. In today’s world an adult faculty member being alone in a car with a student, regardless of the genders of those involved, is not a good idea. Considering all possible consequences of any decision is paramount. In this particular case, the only possible non-negative outcome of giving a student a ride home is the child getting where he or she needs to be without incident.
Unfortunately, the number of potentially non-positive consequences that could result from such an encounter is far greater. These include, but aren’t limited to, inappropriate behavior (or perceived inappropriate behavior) by either party, credible (or false) accusations of bad behavior from one or both involved parties, a fender bender, a more serious traffic accident, or some combination of those things.
This particular story has a happy ending. The girl I didn’t give a ride to obviously got home safely, because she was back in class the next day, looking none the worse for wear.
Ironically, the actual reason I couldn’t provide this student with a ride home was the timing of her birth. Had she been born a half-century or so earlier I know for sure I’d have taken her home, because that’s exactly what I was doing when, as my high school’s boys freshman basketball coach, I took two fifteen- year-old gymnasts home after practice every single weekday of the winter sports season of 1982. A younger colleague was horrified when I told her that story recently. “Why would you ever do that?” she asked incredulously.
The simple (and accurate) answer is that I did it because their parents asked me to. We all lived in the same neighborhood, and my bringing their daughters home saved someone’s mom or dad a 15-mile round trip to school every afternoon.
No one had laptop computers in 1982. Social media didn’t exist, nor did the Internet. Telephones needed dialing, and weren’t even remotely mobile. Music videos hadn’t been invented. Dogs could roam freely, without leashes. There weren’t organized soccer or basketball leagues for eight-year-olds. People laughed at the ethnic jokes their friends told, even those aimed at their own particular ethnicity.
I’m not qualified to say whether things were better back then, or are better now.
I just know they’re different.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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