Monday, January 14, 2013
I was taken aback at the extent to which people seemed to harbor a grudge against the man. Some afternoon detentions or being yelled at 40 years ago really seared deeper than I'd have guessed. As I mulled it over, I thought a bit about the culture of the school, and how it marked us.
Looking back at it what strikes me is that we were right smack in the middle of the culture wars. The school itself was brand new-- its first graduating class was in 1970, five years before us-- a year after we entered. With the exception of some of the nuns all of the faculty were young, and even the older nuns were mostly younger than I am right now. The man in question, retired now, is nine years older than I am, and when you think about it, that's not a big age gap between a teacher and his students. What is big is the gap between our times and the times he was raised and educated in. He'd have graduated from high school in 1966, and from college in 1970. Chances are that he was one of the earliest hires at my school. Back then (and presently) Catholic school teachers didn't make as much as their public school counterparts, but if that was a concern for him his subsequent career suggests otherwise- he retired from SJB. I strongly suspect that he was Catholic educated his entire life, and although the mental picture we have of college from 1966 to 1970 has a Jimi Hendrix soundtrack, odds are that he was an athlete at a Catholic college who wore a tie to class.
On the other hand, we, the Class of '75, Catholic school kids though we were, were coming of age right in the heart of the 60's. You'll hear a lot of people my age complain about how we missed it, but I don't think that's really true. Sixties culture had become mainstream for us. We were like the middle siblings who get to take advantage of the loosening restrictions our older sibs pioneered, with one difference: the faculty and administration we were largely dealing with were less accepting of our blend of adolescent rebellion and weak as milk counter-culturalism than were our exhausted parents. For them we really were the barbarians at the gate, inadequately barbered and uncouth and I think they had a hard time accepting that the kind of discipline that they'd received at our age wouldn't be as effective with us. Of course, not all of the teachers were like that, by any means-- and not even, as you might think, all of the nuns. Some of all of them were wise enough to understand that most of what they were seeing in us was simply adolescent acting out. The ones that got it I still remember fondly. The ones that didn't? Well, as I think about it, there weren't as many of them as I must have thought. I probably thought the whole set-up was stricter than it may have been because it was in my nature to push back against that sort of thing. It remains so today-- probably that's at the base of why I do what I do. Even so, I respect structure, and although the structure of my high school chaffed my impulse was never anarchic.
Ironically, judging from their Facebook pages, many of my classmates who are now reveling in the fall of a guy who spent 40 years teaching high school turned out to be conservative Republicans. It looks to me like the culture of that place had a bigger impact on them than they think, and I think that's too bad. When your idea of injustice is an afternoon in detention for not wearing a tie you are not likely to feel too bad about an arrest for allegedly possessing child pornography. It's funny how values get twisted around like that.
// posted by Bill @ 1:15 PM 
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To begin,I think child pornography is a total ick. Can't imagine anybody enjoying it let alone creating or selling it. On the other hand, it does exist and, apparently, it is available to anyone who will buy it. The buying of it, which is what encourages it, is a true mortal sin. The enjoyment of it, as with any other form of sexual enjoyment is strictly none of my (or anybody else's) business. As with prostitution and all that, it's the profiting from it that is the sin.
In what I trust is an entirely different item about your old HS, you also had a very young teacher who's wife turned out to become a preemminent dance critic for our favorite magazine and who has written an excellent review, in this week's issue, of a couple of biographies of St. Francis of Assisi. ( one of which was on my Christmas list). I remember you really enjoyed the husband's class. I wonder if they are still married.
In what I trust is an entirely different item about your old HS, you also had a very young teacher who's wife turned out to become a preemminent dance critic for our favorite magazine and who has written an excellent review, in this week's issue, of a couple of biographies of St. Francis of Assisi. ( one of which was on my Christmas list). I remember you really enjoyed the husband's class. I wonder if they are still married.
Never had him either.
A little digging reveals that apparently the guy I'm writing about may have had a single image, and his lawyer says its all a misunderstanding. Which it may well be. It makes no difference really-- his life, which had been spent, as far as I can tell, teaching and coaching with only the resentments of students who disliked his severe attitude, is now over. Acquittal, should that occur, is irrelevant to what remains of his days, and I think that is sad and shocking. It is certainly antithetical to my notion of what Christian compassion is said to resemble.
It's kind of haywire, I think. The DA will now run forensics on every computer in his house, and who knows what they will find? The reality is that all computers get virus infected, and that nobody really knows what is on their computer as a result. My suspicion is that there is child pornography out there that law enforcement put out there to pursue this sort of prosecution, and I know for a fact that a great number of the prosecutions under the state and federal statues come about because images that have been tagged by law enforcement are traced. There are people who download deliberately: they are the low hanging fruit, and are stupid besides. If that sort of thing is something you are interested in then you probably should know that traffic is traced and easily traceable. There are other people who come across contraband images inadvertently; and there are some whose computer security has been compromised, and whose machines are used as cloud storage by the actual traffickers. I can't speak to what happened to this guy-- it is none of my business. What I find troubling is the disconnect between the idea that people should be presumed innocent and the glee that his arrest seems to have inspired. The nature of the offense prevents a lot of people from thinking about the charge critically-- ironically, perhaps, the skill he tried to impart for 40 years.
A little digging reveals that apparently the guy I'm writing about may have had a single image, and his lawyer says its all a misunderstanding. Which it may well be. It makes no difference really-- his life, which had been spent, as far as I can tell, teaching and coaching with only the resentments of students who disliked his severe attitude, is now over. Acquittal, should that occur, is irrelevant to what remains of his days, and I think that is sad and shocking. It is certainly antithetical to my notion of what Christian compassion is said to resemble.
It's kind of haywire, I think. The DA will now run forensics on every computer in his house, and who knows what they will find? The reality is that all computers get virus infected, and that nobody really knows what is on their computer as a result. My suspicion is that there is child pornography out there that law enforcement put out there to pursue this sort of prosecution, and I know for a fact that a great number of the prosecutions under the state and federal statues come about because images that have been tagged by law enforcement are traced. There are people who download deliberately: they are the low hanging fruit, and are stupid besides. If that sort of thing is something you are interested in then you probably should know that traffic is traced and easily traceable. There are other people who come across contraband images inadvertently; and there are some whose computer security has been compromised, and whose machines are used as cloud storage by the actual traffickers. I can't speak to what happened to this guy-- it is none of my business. What I find troubling is the disconnect between the idea that people should be presumed innocent and the glee that his arrest seems to have inspired. The nature of the offense prevents a lot of people from thinking about the charge critically-- ironically, perhaps, the skill he tried to impart for 40 years.
This is very sad. But since when is a 37-year age gap not that big? Good grief. That's too old for him to realistically be their father.
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