KEY POINTS:
In the inimitable words of Mark Todd, the case of the primary school teacher who moonlights as a prostitute is a curly one.
The case arose at a Law Society seminar. Apparently, the teacher-turned-tart is in her early 30s, is a mother of two and is relatively new
to teaching children.
She was utterly unrepentant when confronted by her principal, who'd learned of her activities from a parent. How, I don't know.
That important piece of information was missing from the news stories.
The teacher told her boss prostitution was legal and that what she did in her own time was entirely her business, and that her extra curricular activities weren't affecting her ability to teach.
The principal was concerned about the reaction of parents and students if they learned about her secondary employment.
In the way of all good managers, he kicked the matter upstairs to the school's board of trustees and is letting its members decide if the woman should continue in the classroom.
It's a tricky one if you look at the situation rationally.
Yes, prostitution is legal and the woman's bonking business was taking place outside her hours of employment.
And is a teacher who bonks for money in her down time any worse than a lagered-up teacher, male or female, giving it away for nothing at a hotel on a Friday night?
And what about male teachers who've visited prostitutes - would their continued employment be the subject of a board of trustees meeting?
Being a prostitute doesn't necessarily make you a bad teacher just as it doesn't necessarily make you a bad mother.
And I don't believe having a hooker in the homeroom will turn susceptible 7-year-olds into avaricious Lolitas.
Prostitution isn't for everyone and just because your child's teacher turns tricks outside school hours doesn't mean your little girl will set her heart on being the top earner at Showgirls.
I recall sitting on the mat during story time at Tokoroa Primary and by judicious use of elbows and sheer brute force I was in the front row.
Our teacher was young and beautiful and smelled great - I can't remember her name but she was gorgeous. Every kid wanted to be in her aura.
And as I listened to the story and breathed in her perfume, I caught a glimpse, as she crossed her legs, of sparkly witches' britches.
I thought it was the most fabulous thing I had seen. I couldn't imagine owning a pair of lurex witches' britches myself - heavens, no!
But it seemed entirely appropriate to me as a youngster that someone as perfect and lovely as our teacher should have such exotic clothing.
That didn't mean, however, I became a habitual wearer of lurex underwear.
We never knew anything about our teacher's life outside the classroom.
She was a perfect being and I suppose in our childish, tyrannical, self-obsessed minds we refused to consider that she might have a life beyond us. And that's the way it should be.
A closed-minded, boring and nasty woman would make a worse teacher, surely, than an intelligent, engaged, open-minded woman who turned tricks for extra dosh.
Yet where does she get the time?
If she's the mother of two small children and a learner primary school teacher, with books to mark and essays to plan, how does she find the time to take her tottie to town? Still, I suppose that's not my concern.
I guess the only fallback the poor benighted principal has is that most employment contracts have conditions. Employers are reasonable and will grant permission to have secondary jobs provided they're compatible with the job you're doing.
I couldn't be a talkback host and a member of Parliament or a talkback host and a sitting judge.
I can be a talkback host, a newspaper columnist and a book reviewer.
Is being a prostitute and a primary school teacher a compatible fit?
If you were doing a test and asked to group occupations together, would you put those two in the same category? Probably not.
So if you want to be a hooker, perhaps it's best to leave the teacher outfit and the cane for the clients who'll pay a surcharge.
* www.kerrewoodham.com
