The recent unfortunate case in which a minor lost her life in an incident involving her teacher raises some very important questions for all those involved in the teaching profession as well as for other stakeholders such as the parents of students who are still minors. I shall not go into the particular details of this case but I shall analyse some of the implications it carries.

Let me start by stating the obvious: teaching is not just like any other job. The teacher occupies a post of great responsibility and this is magnified when the students placed under his/her care are minors.

Indeed, in the latter case, the teacher is nothing less than a substitute for the students’ parents or guardians.

Therefore, the teacher is expected to behave as such, i.e. with the maturity and the sense of responsibility of a parent or guardian.

However, the issue is complicated by the fact that teachers too are human. Furthermore, some teachers find themselves in situations which can often be very challenging. Such is the case of young female teachers in their early 20s who are required to teach boys of 15 and 16 years of age or young male teachers who are required to teach girls who are in their last years of secondary school.

The teacher should be the friend of all the students but not more than this, certainly not a partner or companion

In cases such as these, the teachers have to be mature enough to be in a position to help their students in all their requirements while, at the same time, they must always ensure that personally they keep their distance from them and never, in any way, get emotionally involved with their students. The teacher should be the friend of all the students but not more than this, certainly not a partner or companion.

What happens if a student seeks the teacher for help in a personal problem? The worst course of action possible is for the teacher to try and deal with the problem him or herself.

Today, schools in Malta are blessed with counselling services of excellent quality which provide prevention and intervention services and offer personal counselling to all students. Moreover, the personnel who offer these services are highly qualified and really dedicated to their work and the overall welfare of their students.

On their part, teachers have to ensure that through their behaviour they do not create emotional problems for their students. For instance, female teachers have to be very careful about the way they dress in front of male students who are in a delicate phase of their development. Also, all teachers have to understand the limited psychological and emotional development of teenage students who are still minors.

It is absolutely normal for such students to idolise their teachers and, perhaps, believe that they are in love with them. The older teacher, however, should be mature enough to realise that this is only a transitional phase of a student’s development. Eventually, the student will grow out of it.

This is why it would be so wrong for a teacher to take advantage of the emotional immaturity of an under-18 teenage student. Such teenagers are in a delicate phase of growth. Sometimes, they are troubled and find it difficult to analyse their own emotions. The teacher has to guide them as a parent does and never, under any circumstances, take on the role of a partner.

Just like a parent, a teacher has, on some occasions, “to be cruel to be kind”. A student might ask for a lift after school, citing some reason or other. The teacher should not feel embarrassed when answering in the negative.

I remember a particular case, many years ago, when a young male teacher gave a lift to a 15-year-old female student out of sheer kindness, or rather, given his position, weakness.

The day after, the girl’s boyfriend, who was much older in age, came to school and was with difficulty restrained from assaulting the teacher in question for taking the liberty of letting the man’s girlfriend get into a car alone with him on the journey home.

Technological advances have also created new challenges for teachers. While I personally see nothing wrong in simply adding a student as a friend on Facebook, I think it is unethical and asking for trouble to engage in chatting, especially on a regular basis. This is the type of contact and interaction with students that should always be avoided by teachers.

Having said all this, I think that in the case of this issue of teacher-student relations, we also have here an implicit argument in favour of co-education. Some people in Malta still seem to have doubts about this reform.

However, given that such a reform has several major benefits, one of them certainly is that students will learn to interact with other students of the opposite sex during their everday experiences in an educational setting.

A consequence of this will be that a teacher of the opposite sex will no longer be someone so special in class because there will be other persons of an opposite sex, i.e. the students’ classroom peers.

Finally, teachers have to remember one cardinal principle: they are there to educate, nothing less and nothing more.

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