Student - Teacher scandal

Categories: Singapore

A teacher was reprimanded after he was caught sending messages praising his student's beauty through the school's intranet messaging system. What started as a friendly exchange of messages between a 28-year old male teacher and his 17-year old student became more personal. With time, he said "she had sexy legs" and that "she was pretty." He has also asked her to go with him to buy school supplies. These messages where chanced upon when the girl forgot to log off her account and was discovered by another student who said: 'I realised that the teacher was doing something very wrong. I thought he should be exposed. That's why I decided to save the messages.' She also forwarded the messages to his classmates, which ended up being passed to almost every student in school.

What the intentions the teacher has, is only known to himself, but there are certain things to learn from this episode.

This episode highlight the bigger danger of anonymity of the Internet. Internet is the virtual world and in a virtual world one can become anybody he likes. And these alter egos maybe vastly different from their true selves. If a person assumed a fictitious role long enough, there is always a danger of that the role grew on the person once he logged on. Humans are after all creature of habits. I am not surprise that in this case the teacher may have assumed his alter ego in the virtual world despite the fact that he is clearly identifiable. Old habits die hard.
This is compounded by the fact that there is no direct contact with the other person.

As there is nothing to help 'bring' the person back to the real world, sometimes a person may get carried away by things said and done. Because of lack of visual contact, a person cannot gauge the reaction of the opposing party to what was said unlike in a real conversation. In a real world, we react to another person not just by what is said but also by the body language and the manner of the conversation. All this is lacking in the virtual world. This case may not have happened if there is a 'real' conversation between the teacher and the student.

Electronic messagings like emails, IM are easily copied and forwarded. Most of us are guilty of forwarding some good gossips at one time in our lives. Before you press the 'forward' button the next time, think first. What is the consequence to the person in the gossip or the writer? Luckily in this case the outcome is beneficial to the student. What will happen if the outcome is detrimental because it was a malicious lie written with the teacher's name, after all the only thing to identify the teacher is the account? People had also been charged for propagating gossips and lies. Forwarding mails also has an exponential effects. You may think that you just want to share with your closest friends. Unfortunately each of them also wants to share with their closest friends. With time the forwarded message is halfway round the world.

Thankfully this episode turns up well for all parties. No physical harm has come to the student although I am sure she has suffered some mental stress. Luckily the student who discovered the incident knew that the teacher as crossed the social boundary otherwise worse could have happened. However his action of forwarding the message to his friends is another matter.