A high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia who was suspended for a profanity-laced blog in which she called her young charges “disengaged, lazy whiners” is driving a sensation by daring to ask: Why are today’s students unmotivated — and what’s wrong with calling them out?
As she fights to keep her job at Central Bucks East High School, 30-year-old Natalie Munroe says she had no interest in becoming any sort of educational icon. The blog has been taken down, but its contents can still be found easily online.
Her comments and her suspension by the middle-class school district have clearly touched a nerve, with scores of online commenters applauding her for taking a tough love approach or excoriating her for verbal abuse. Media attention has rained down, and backers have started a Facebook group.
“My students are out of control,” Munroe, who has taught 10th, 11th and 12th grades, wrote in one post. “They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.”
She should not have been suspended.
She should be immediately fired.
I have read some of her obscenity laden contempt for her students. I am not impressed. These are the immature rants we would expect of the least educated among us.
It is perfectly okay to criticize and severely criticize students for their attitudes and other problems. Her rants are not so much criticism as some form of primal scream therapy.
I teach as well. If a teacher doesn’t have any idea what she was up against, she wasn’t listening in all those teacher training classes.
If she has this level of contempt for her students, she should find a more attractive field.
My students deserve my best efforts and my respect. They live in a difficult world and are about to be sent into a devastating job market. I may not like some of the things they do. I may not approve of some of their beliefs and attitudes. But I can write or talk about it without descending into talk that would be a disgrace for the least of my students.
We have a right to expect more of someone claiming an education.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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