Comments

Merit Decision: Court Nixes Non-Testifying Child’s Statement to Teacher about Abuse. Strong Dissent by Chief Justice O’Connor, who Invites U.S. Supreme Court Review. State v. Clark — 1 Comment

  1. The underlying disagreement in my view can be asked as follows: what are the roles and duties of a teacher? Giving the teacher a /mandatory/ reporting requirement is a new development historically. Take the comment about the teacher being a “nurturer”. Certainly, that is not a role that has even been stressed in any School of Education I have been involved with. It certainly is not a role that is consonant with the history of American eduction and reading, writing and arithmetic. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong to see the teacher as a nurturer but it is a new idea.

    The flip side of this is the idea of the teacher or the school as the local parent. Which is to say that in the parental role most decent parents would see to it that their children are of sound body as well as sound mind. From this perspective it makes perfect sense to see the mandatory reporting role as secondary.

    The key issue as I see it is power. The reporting requirement is /mandatory/. So even if one see the teacher as a “witness” they are still being a mandated witness. Worse, they are not being asked to be a mandated witness in a neutral sense but a witness on behalf of the state. The state is requiring them to be the “eyes and ears”. So how is this any different than when a law enforcement agency deputizes a person? For all intents and purposes it is the exact same thing. In the end, I think the dissent elevates form over substance. The teacher may well indeed be a “nurturer” but it is not the nurturing role that mandates her to report: it is the power of the law. And it is that coercive power which is the deciding factor in favor of the majority.