From Huffington Post:

Wisconsin’s state Assembly has passed a bill that would make watching pornography at work reason to revoke an educator’s license.

The bill passed through the state Senate last month, and fortifies a current policy that has permitted teachers watching pornography on school district computers to relocate and teach at another school district without having the reason publicized, The Sheboygan Press reports.

Currently, a law exists that permits license revocation for incompetency or immoral conduct, defined as behavior that endangers the health, safety, welfare or education of a student. The new provision would add to “immoral conduct” the intentional use of school equipment to “download, view or distribute pornographic material in violation of the educational agency’s policy.”

The bill also calls for publicly posting the names of educators who are investigated for violating the policy on the school’s website.

“Parents have every reason to expect their child’s school building will be free from pornography, and school leaders have a responsibility to keep our schools safe,” Republican state Rep. Steve Kestell said in a statement after the Senate passed the bill last month. “This legislation will make it easier for local school leaders to provide a safe environment.”

Kestell and Republican state Sen. Luther Olsen co-authored the bill, which now heads to Gov. Scott Walker for consideration.

The legislation was drafted in response to several cases in which school districts were unaware of an educator’s past misconduct in another district or were faced with lawsuits by educators who were dismissed for watching pornography in school.

In May, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that the Middleton-Cross Plains School Board had spent around $300,000 over the course of a year while battling a complaint by former science teacher Andrew Harris, who was fired for viewing pornography at school. Seven other high school staff members and one administrator were also investigated and disciplined for similar misconducts.

Kestell and Olsen’s bill doesn’t come without costs. The submitted fiscal estimates show that the new provision would increase costs that would not likely be absorbed within current budgets.

While the legislators note that it’s unclear whether the added clause would lead to more reporting by school administrators, the launch of an investigation by the state superintendent would cost the education department $350 for docketing a hearing into a complaint and $135 per hour for pre-hearing conferences, hearings, research, writing and travel costs.

The state would also likely have to hire experts to determine and define at those hearings what is considered pornographic material.

Although Jill has never viewed porn at work, this story resonated with us. Technically speaking she can’t view porn on her work computer, as the built-in anti-porn filters are such that even attempts to view a diagram of the female reproductive system on Wikipedia would be blocked. (Hell, she tried to look up information on the show Friends and even that was blocked.) Of course she teaches kindergarten, so there’s no need to look at such diagrams in her class; leave that frustration for the – what? Fifth grade teachers? Sixth grade? When do they teach sex ed these days? Or do they? Between the Chicken Little fears of the conservative general public and school budgets that are thinner than Olive Oyl on a grapefruit diet, I’m guessing that sex ed as public school curriculum is all but extinct. Jill looks at porn on her phone pretty much everywhere she goes when a little sexual release is needed, but she’d never view porn at work.

I don’t feel that pornography should be viewed by teachers while at work. But neither do I feel that porn-watching is a suitable lunchbreak activity for employees in most fields, particularly those whose computers are company-issued. It is the right of the employer to install software to block any websites they choose, from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to Monster.com. Blocking porn makes good sense, as it’s one thing to work on your Fantasy Football team during a few minutes of downtime and it’s another to feel justified in rubbing one out in your cubicle because you’re on a break.

Which is not to say that everyone who views porn online has to masturbate to it right then and there. I’m sure some potential workplace masturbators are very conscious of their co-workers and would gladly listen with headphones or even mute the volume so as not to offend or traumatize their colleagues on the other side of the cubicle wall. But rules are rules, and despite the fact that I don’t feel that a teacher who watches porn on school property, possibly using a work computer with antivirus software and other measures to protect the machine against malware or other outside intrusion, is in any way harming the children under his or her supervision, I can’t entirely fault the State of Wisconsin for doing what they feel they must to shield themselves from the slings and arrows of political correctness.

Generally speaking I find that teachers, usually intelligent and mature people, aren’t given enough leeway to make their own decisions. Years ago when Jill wanted to take a personal day she was allowed to do exactly that, without giving any reason or requiring any oversight. She could have spent her day running errands, watching her goddaughter’s performance in a school play, going to the movies or, yes, having sex (sometimes with me). Today she is allowed seven sick days a year. Sick days must be approved by her principal, and occasionally the district as well. If they are not, she doesn’t get to take them. Hey, she’s a kindergarten teacher, not a kindergarten student. She – and hundreds of thousands of teachers the world over – deserve more respect than this. Which brings me to my next point.

The passage that I found most alarming, and which places me firmly in opposition to the bill – as though I have any say, living in California – is the following:

I have a major problem with this part of the bill, as I do with the witch hunt that I would expect to ensue after releasing the names of individuals suspected or accused but not convicted of an activity that, while harmless, is something that I’m sure much of our sex-negative society would consider a sex crime akin to indecent exposure or even child molestation. I think it is morally and ethically wrong to publicize the names of suspect in such investigations if there is the slightest chance that the individual is not guilty.

When I was a kid, I had teachers who I absolutely hated. I’m talking about teachers who were inconsistent, unfair, or so jaded by their careers or personal lives that they just didn’t give a shit. Had the internet existed in, say, 1988, I – or more likely one of my peers – might have looked at porn on their work computers for the sole purpose of screwing said teachers over. And while the teachers in question would likely be exonerated, I’m guessing that this would be little consolation to their families after a lynch mob took the law into their own hands or, speaking less dramatically, saw their entire careers and personal lives ruined. Few people falsely accused of crimes see their names cleared with the same publicity with which it was besmirched.

Even without the above-cited passage, I find this bill difficult to swallow. As the article states, the financial burden of this bill would be substantial. As I said above, I’m all for treating teachers like adults, but if this is such a concern for the State of Wisconsin, why not install some free filtering software on all school-issued computers and use whatever money is left over to fund art, music, or other programs that today’s children have never been able to study as part of their public school curriculum?

-Jack