Sex Ed for Alabama Teachers? Bill Calls for Training to not Sleep with Students

© John Gress / Reuters

Alabama teachers are apparently the subject of too many schoolgirl fantasies. "Don't stand so close" to the children is the message behind legislation introduced to annually train teachers in how to avoid having sex with their students.

The Educator-Student Interaction Training Act would require one hour of training per year on sexual or romantic contact, social media interactions, interactions outside the classroom, and the use of corporal punishment and physical restraints in classrooms.

The bill cites increasing reports of inappropriate relations between teachers and students, in person and online.

Two male assistant football coaches were arrested in March in a Limestone County high school for having sex with different students, while a female teacher from a different school was arrested for sleeping with at least two students, the Decatur Daily reported.

In 2011, a female teacher was charged with sexually abusing three students; she pleaded guilty to two counts and was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

The legislation, proposed by Republican Senator Cam Ward, is expected to go the floor this week after being passed by the Senate’s Education Policy Committee, according to the Decatur Daily.

Committee Chairman Dick Brewbaker, a former teacher, abstained from voting on the bill last week and said he’d probably vote against it in the full Senate, calling it an insult to educators.

“I knew to leave the people in the little desks alone,” he said. “Teachers who have inappropriate relations with students aren’t doing it because they don’t know it’s wrong.”

I have to disagree with chairman Brewbaker as long as the training package contained behavioral limits that are well above the level of sexual abuse. That would mean making it a actionable, disciplinary offence for teachers to hang-out with students off campus, for teachers being alone with an individual student as much as is possible, for teachers to text, or PM a students except regarding school work. Such things would decrease the probability of any intimacy developing, or any temptation rising up.

Yes, teachers know what is wrong or right, but if a little training can help them avoid getting into a situation where they have to choose right or wrong, then that training would definitely be useful.