The Secret Teacher: ‘Social media contact with students is an absolute no-go area’

As I watched Sam from fifth year hop into my colleague’s car, I wondered when the penny would drop.

For teachers, the cane has died out and the lifts home need to follow suit asap. Only prohibited in 1982, corporal punishment was such a norm in schools until then that it is still a powerful memory for a very large proportion of Irish adults.

I had not long started primary school, and yet I have vivid memories of a boy (always the same boy) getting beaten across the head years later when we were in fifth and sixth class.

Prohibited though his beatings may have been, the master in our school was well into the second half of his career and clearly intended to finish it as he had started. He wasn’t alone, and so it will be some time before all living memories of corporal punishment have died out.

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But it is only since 2015 that corporal punishment in all forms and in all settings has been prohibited in Ireland. Until then, it hadn't been banned in the home, and in fact Ireland was one of the later European nations to make it illegal.

There is undoubtedly unanimous satisfaction with the complete and total banning of physical punishment by a teacher of a child. No controversy, no ongoing debate, no calls to bring it back. But what about outside schools? Is it healthy or helpful to effectively criminalise a parent for corporal punishment?

Mild slap

At my local pool very recently a father administered a very mild slap to his young son’s hand, which had the immediate effect of stopping the boy from pulling hard on the wire separating the swimming lanes.

He had been disturbing the swimmers, and after asking him twice to stop, the dad then proceeded to combine the verbal request with a little tap on his son’s hand. The boy was neither fazed nor hurt as far as I could tell. He seemed not to react at all, other than to let go of the rope. The lady in the pool beside me reacted enough for everyone around – she was aghast and asked me to confirm that what we had just seen was illegal. She stormed off to report the dad to the leisure centre manager, who was visibly under pressure to intervene.

I cannot in all honesty say I was remotely disturbed by what I had witnessed. In my eyes that tap only just qualified as a slap, and even then only a very insignificant one, but it was a slap rather than a nudge or a pat.

But there was still that one slap, and that one lady who feared for the child

Apart from it, every single thing about the interactions between that father and son was entirely heart-warming to watch. The boy asked his father questions endlessly, and they were all answered with infinite patience: “Where are the people going?” (jacuzzi, hot tub, sauna – all out of bounds to him as an under-16, so well he might have wondered where the doors led!). “Why is she doing that?” (pool attendant taking sample from pool for regulatory testing) and “Can we go to the swings after?” (“We’ll see” was as committed as Dad got, probably hoping fatigue or some other distraction would take care of that for him!). He never raised his voice and gestures of affection ran into double figures. But there was still that one slap, and that one lady who feared for the child. She would have been a convincing and damning witness in court.

No grey areas

The elimination of corporal punishment from our schools is complete and there are simply no grey areas. How great the contrast with incidents such as the one I witnessed at the swimming pool, which urgently require something more subtle than hard application of the legal position.

Equally, there remains too much variety in how we have interpreted the (in)appropriateness of (over)familiarity between teachers and students. Children are central to all three scenarios and where children are concerned we must choose our language and modify our behaviour carefully and consistently. Only thus can we ensure that what we commit to really does serve the best interests of the greatest number of our children at any one time.

In terms of safeguarding children at schools, attention to detail now needs to shift to ensuring that a correct professional distance is maintained by teachers at all times.

Teachers also need to be mindful of the dangers of piling students into cars to give them lifts to training or matches

The glass panels in classroom doors may be unfortunate, but are a necessary protection for both parties; a reassurance to both teachers and students that when they are alone together they can be observed. Many teachers, myself included, exercise extra caution by leaving the door propped open when alone with a student.

Teachers also need to be mindful of the dangers of piling students into cars to give them lifts to training or matches. Giving a student a lift home is unthinkable. Furthermore, social media contact with students is an absolute no-go area. No direct phone contact should take place between a teacher and a pupil, and school-related work must not be sent via any channels other than school-administered accounts.

Array of problems

And yet, teachers in Ireland are still leaving themselves wide open to an array of problems by engaging in these acts. Why are there still grey areas here? Where the dad’s slap wasn’t a problem for me, my colleagues’ risk-taking often is. Our success in moving away from corporal punishment needs emulating in other areas for us to safeguard ourselves against the dangers presented by these acts of overfamiliarity.

As a profession we must uphold the highest standards of behaviour of all kinds in order to maintain the high respect we deserve.