Taping A Student's Mouth Shut

A teacher from Florida taped two students' mouths shut in class in order to get them to stop talking.

She has not been suspended for this act, but the Daily News does report that the mother of one of the students is furious and wants an apology from the teacher.

Frankly, I think this teacher needs to be suspended, not only because I am opposed to corporal punishment, but also because taping a child's mouth shut to stop unruly behavior shows how little classroom management skills this teacher has.

I suspect this taping episode is NOT her first foray into bad classroom management practice and she clearly needs to learn better ways to handle discipline and rules in the classroom.

Of course the Tiger Mom of Education Reform, Michelle Rhee, has bragged about taping students' mouths shut to keep them from talking when she was a teacher in Baltimore.

For some reason, Rhee is never called to account for this episode in corporal punishment and bad classroom management.

Perhaps it is because her education reforms are exactly in line with the corporate education reform movement and they want to ride her celebrity as far as they can take it?

Okay, forget the perhaps part - that's EXACTLY why Rhee is never called to account for the taping of the students' mouths.

Maybe if this Florida teacher who taped the mouths of her students shut starts some "Children First" kind of group that promotes corporate-style reforms like merit pay, longer schools days/years, and charter schools or better yet, union-busting reforms like the end of teacher tenure and seniority, she can be a hero to the education reform world too, just like Michelle Rhee?

Okay, forget the maybe part - if she starts a group like that, she too can receive Gates Foundation largesse, be feted at the White House by President Accountability, become a hero in a pseudo-documentary about education reform, get a regular column at corporate education sites like Gotham Schools and make appearances on Oprah to promote herself and just live off the fat of the education reform philanthropic land.