Alison Jones: 'Safe practice' casts teachers as abusers

The acquittal of Michael Neville, the schoolteacher accused of abusing his pupils, was welcomed cautiously by the primary teachers' union, the New Zealand Educational Institute.

Its national secretary, Lynne Bruce, said not that the case marked a victory but that it highlighted an "occupational hazard" for (particularly male) primary teachers.

That is disturbing enough. But what's more alarming is that the policies and practices intended to guard against this risk unintentionally maintain the idea of the teacher as a sexual abuser.

NZEI policy encourages teachers to be very cautious about touching children. So teachers put their hands in their pockets to avoid holding children's hands. They perfect the side-on hug or the high-five to avoid problematic physical contact.

The policy also reminds teachers that "visibility in the workplace protects both staff and children". It urges teachers to "avoid being alone with a child whenever possible, install mirrors, have glass panels in internal doors or leave doors open" in order to ensure teachers' conduct is above suspicion.

Thus, particularly for male teachers, the school becomes a topography of sightlines which, they believe, will provide them with security.

But this policy by its very nature unwittingly defines the teacher as a potential abuser. The paradox is that, although teachers must follow "safe practice", it cannot protect their reputations because the very demand for safe practice ensures their guilt.

How does this happen? Safe teacher practice has several problematic or paradoxical effects.

First, teachers now demand surveillance. They feel uncomfortable if they are with children out of sight. Paradoxically, the witness is there to attest that "nothing happened". The witnessing gaze, which ensures the teacher is not alone with a child, is calculated to see nothing. Its very point is that there is nothing to see.

But the demand for a witness to "see nothing" means there may be something to see if the witness were not there. To put it another way, at every moment the teacher is a potential abuser who is not abusing only because he can be seen.

The second problem in safe practice is that the process of invigilation - the same one that teachers believe affords them protection - is highly unpredictable and, therefore, dangerous. Teachers' required visibility provides a heightened risk of abuse accusation since the "witness of nothing" is a potential accuser.

One teacher I spoke to described an occasion at a school camp when he stationed himself outside the shower block. He believed he was taking responsibility for the girls' safety, standing "in full view of everyone" to make sure boys did not disturb them.

But a camp parent complained that it was "inappropriate" for a male teacher to be standing outside the girls' showers at camp. The spectre of every-teacher-as-potential-abuser is always present.

Thirdly, the "safe" teacher is charged with the responsibility of training children's desires for touch. The teacher inculcates ideas such as "having our own space", "having boundaries" or "sitting nicely" - all regimes of behaviour that work to control children's touch.

Children are told not to hold teachers' hands: "I am not your mother or your auntie; I am your teacher."

Thus children learn that teachers - especially men - are anxious about touch. This has several effects, not least of which is that some children learn they have a lot of power in speaking about touch. It is, they sense, a weapon against adults, with a potency they do not always understand.

A fourth aspect of safe practice is that it has become a measure of professionalism. The "professional" teacher does not allow children to massage her shoulders or cling to his legs. Thus it becomes harder for teachers to think of themselves as legitimately touching children.

Finally, and insidiously, the process of surveillance becomes internalised. Safe teachers become their own anxious observers. The safe teacher no longer reaches for the child, or allows the child to cuddle up; to do so would "feel wrong".

"Good" teachers will feel no pleasure (or at least feel ambivalence) when children cling, lean or sit on them.

Each of these five effects sustains the paradox: although surveillance and safe practice are considered necessary to protect them, teachers must come under suspicion because they need to be visible and act safely.

That paradox is further strengthened by the silence about sex. The headlines may scream "sex abuse" but in primary schools the word "sex" is not uttered.

It does not appear in school and union policy related to touching children or teacher visibility. It rarely arises in teachers' talk about the dangers of touch. And yet it is the unspoken accusation.

The rules - and teachers' continued reticence - are driven by the assumption that teachers as a group are potential sexual predators of children.

Because we live in a period of moral panic about risk and safety, we no longer merely identify individual paedophiles and deal with them; rather, we consider the entire population of teachers as possible paedophiles who must be watched.

In other words, what we do not speak of, we speak of all the time. To utter the edict "never be alone with a child" is to speak of sex. That teachers as a group are sexual predators is the unspeakable and outrageous truth, and the unspoken secret beneath the social anxieties about teachers' proximity to children.

To speak this truth, of course, is to speak an absurdity. As a result, contemporary, professional, safe teacher practice rests on its silence.

* Alison Jones is an associate professor of education at AucklandUniversity.