Teachers Have No Private Lives
Well, at least that’s what I thought growing up. Yes, we knew the marital status of female teachers because back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was in elementary school, we called them Miss or Mrs. That was before the neutral term Ms. that was comparable to Mr.
But I can tell you that even though I had a Mrs., a Mrs., and a Mrs. in my first three years of elementary school…I no more knew what their husbands looked like, what their families did, or frankly what they did after 3:30 p.m. weekdays than I knew how to fly to the moon…which, since that was the heart of the Apollo era, was something people knew.
That’s because teachers taught us fundamentals. I knew how to read, and write, and do math, thanks to them. Sure, it was a simpler time…but I shudder to think what’s in today’s curriculum for children of that tender age.
I was reminded of this because of the new Florida law that prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in elementary schools. My first thought was shock that such a thing might ever come up…I didn’t even know my teachers had first names, much less anything else about them.
Then an elementary teacher went on record as saying he opposed the law, because it might mean he could no longer talk in class about what he and his husband did on the weekend. First, the law doesn’t mean that. But more importantly–how does that even come up, what a teacher did with their family on the weekend?
Maybe I’m misremembering my childhood. Or maybe it’s a reminder that we need to get back to those days.
