A 17-year-old Michigan high school student attempted to choke a male teacher.16 Afterward, teachers got no additional protection. Two months later, a 14-year-old attempted to choke a female teacher — in the same school. The school immediately withdrew all female teachers from the school, reducing the staff from twenty-one to nine. Now here’s the rub. The male teachers were still expected to remain but now they had to handle classes that were more than twice the size. The larger the class size, the greater the chance of violence. Protecting every woman put every man in jeopardy — without the men’s consent.
Corporal punishment as boy punishment
Corporal punishment in schools is still legal in twenty-nine states.17 But in most school districts practicing corporal punishment, a teacher who slaps a girl with a ruler fears a parent will slap the teacher with a lawsuit. And a male teacher who spanks a girl with his hand can forget about tenure or retirement pay. In practice, corporal punishment is boy punishment. Many schools protest the propensity to hit black boys more than white boys, but no schools protest the propensity to hit exclusively boys. We don’t protest violence against boys because it is invisible.