When I attended high school, male teachers routinely tutored female students in rooms with closed doors. This was the ’80s., about a schoolgirl with a crush and a teacher trying to resist temptation. Prior to graduation, a friend and I elaborately fantasised about how she might seduce her religious studies teacher, who was unusually attractive for a religious studies teacher and blessedly aloof.
, the professional regulatory body, a teacher who engages in a “sexualised relationship” – whatever that means – with a former student within two years of the latter’s graduating risks getting struck off. Even if the former student – or “learner” in the new bureaucratic parlance – is over 18. Adulthood, at 18, is likewise an arbitrary designation. Even in the absence of predation, a recent high school graduate is still likely to be unduly affected by a teacher’s aura of power and authority. As the Institute, and Victoria’s Education Minister point out, as a community we’ve developed heightened expectations around the ethical exercise of power. As we should.At this juncture you’re likely sensing a pivot.
In this sense the new rules reflect a lurch towards institutionalised paternalism whereby we deem adults in certain settings incapable of knowing what’s good for them. And in truth, 18-year-olds rarely know what’s good for them.