Teachers’ Unspoken Role as Protectors

This is somewhat random but I think noteworthy in light of the generally dismissive attitude toward the teaching profession we’ve occasionally seen lately ... For completely nonwork related reasons, I was recently watching an old C-Span interview with Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atom Bomb (among other books). At one point, Rhodes, who grew up in an abusive home, was talking about a project he had undertaken to collect the stories of other child-abuse survivors. He noted that one common theme among the stories was the significant role of a person close to the child who eventually intervened to stop the violence--"someone” he said, “who regarded them as human beings.” He then noted that, more often than not, that “someone” was a teacher. “I mean, God bless teachers,” he said. ...