Is this acceptable in a school?

[noblegiraffe]

A friend of mine is a teacher in an all boys school. He was showing a group of pupils some of the football and was fast-forwarding to get to the action. The camera lingered on some pretty girls in the crowd (you know the ones they normally pick!) and the pupils demanded that he go back so they could get a proper look. He obliged, but commented that if there had been a single girl in the classroom, he wouldn't have.

Obviously this was a pretty minor incident, but do you think it was fine (and if so, would it have also been fine if there had been girls present?), or is it encouraging the sexual objectification of women? Or anything else?

What are your thoughts?

[DinahRod]

I have more of an issue of the camera lingering on some pretty girls in the crowd since the objectification is reaching millions.

[frikonastick]

um, i would have hoped the teacher would have said no.

its inappropriate to be oggling girls (in whatever format) in the classroom.

and saying if there were girls there he wouldnt have, well isnt taht just reinforcing the 'all guys together' thing. and only moan girls would stop them having their fun.

minor incident or not, all round yuck.

[frikonastick]

moany

[sethstarkaddersmum]

unacceptable IMO.
though I wonder how different the response would be if you posted this somewhere other than the feminism topic.

[Blackduck]

Not acceptable, and he shouldn't have gone back and shown it again...it's this kind of behave that re-enforces all the rubbish stereotypes.

[hocuspontas]

Just a bit of male camaraderie. No biggie IMO

[spudmasher]

Not acceptable but also not to made a huge fuss of. He has obviously considered his actions, knows they are wrong and has more than likely learned from that and will probably never do it again.Job done. Life is about learning from our mistakes.

[LynetteScavo]

If I were the teacher I wouldn't have done it, any more than I would if it had been girls wanting to see some fit blokes.

Not a feminist issue, just an "oh please, we're not here for that" issue.

[Blackduck]

No he hasn't learnt from it - all he siad was if their had been girls present he wouldn't have done it. That is a shite argument, and whilst this is no 'biggie' it is thin end of the wedge stuff and tells boys that ogling women is acceptable

[blackcurrants]

Oddly, I'm more irritated by him saying to them that he wouldn't have done it if there had been girls in the room, than if he'd just been some obnoxious, sexist old dinosaur. As it is, his behaviour is encouraging a particularly toxic kind of male camaraderie, IMO. The idea that it's ok to be sexist when women aren't there to police male behaviour is why so many men end up viewing women as motherwives who will do everything for them - including keeping their sexism in check!

Urgh.

(also seconding "we're not here for that" comments - damn right!)

[noblegiraffe]

Sorry, he said to me that he wouldn't have done it if there were girls present, not the boys. I should have made that more clear.

[BoneyBackJefferson]

why was the teacher showing them football?

[Imperator]

What is wrong with looking, and appreciating, attractive women?

[Imperator]

Its certainly not professional, but would there be an outcry if a female teacher, say, rewound the bit where Colin Firth has a wet shirt in Pride and Prejudice?

A double standard here, methinks.

[noblegiraffe]

Imperator, if there's nothing wrong with it, then why would there be a problem with girls being present?

[Imperator]

Maybe he wanted to avoid offence. One can be polite, even if one thinks that any offence taken is unreasonable. Simply a matter of courtesy.

[seeker]

The teacher should have said no and explained why not. Teachers are supposed to be modelling the best possible example to the young people in their care.

[Imperator]

Why is it a "bad" example?

[noblegiraffe]

Sorry, if it's not obvious, Imperator is the teacher in question. I told him about this thread but for some reason he seems to be talking in the third person.

Imperator, why would offence have been unwarranted if some girls had objected to you encouraging this collective ogling experience?

[seeker]

Oh don't be silly. You know perfectly well why an adult male encouraging teenage boys to "ogle" pretty girls is a bad example!

[seeker]

Ah. OK - this thread is getting weird.

[TheFallenMadonna]

Why would you be "appreciating" attractive girls in a lesson? How odd.

[sethstarkaddersmum]

@ 'appreciating attractive women'. That sounds like the sort of phrase a middle aged perv would use.
I would not be happy about my sons being in a school where that kind of thing happened at all. It also sounds like the kind of thing a teacher would do who was trying to curry favour with the boys by coming down to their level.

More rationally though, why is it a bad thing? Because while it is perfectly normal for teenage boys to look at girls and consider whether or not they fancy them, they already do it far too much and there is far too much emphasis on the way women look as compared to other aspects of their personalities. This promotes inequality between the sexes and does not make for successful relationships IMHO. Therefore encouraging them to do it in a lesson is completely inappropriate and wrong.

[frikonastick]

so first you say

"What is wrong with looking, and appreciating, attractive women? "

• dont be deliberately obtuse. you are a teacher, they are students. it was completely inappropriate for you to be 'appreciating attractive women'

then you say

"Its certainly not professional, but would there be an outcry if a female teacher, say, rewound the bit where Colin Firth has a wet shirt in Pride and Prejudice? A double standard here, methinks."

• yes. of course there would. it is as you say, unproffessional. the only double standard is in your mind

then, you top it off by saying

"Why is it a "bad" example?"

• for all the reasons already nicely laid out for you by previous posters.

HTH

[Imperator]

I rewound a short clip that was shown on BBC1 pre-watershed. I asked what was wrong with what some here have called "ogling", I see little by way of explanation in response, only shrill bleating. No one was hurt, no one was intimidated or belittled. What was intrinsically wrong with what I did? If you can't make a case for that, you have no case.

I think some of you need to get a grip. It was harmless fun, and no one has yet shown otherwise.

NobleG: the answer lies in courtesy. If people in the room had been offended, then I'd have not done it. That doesn't make what I did wrong, it just means I'm sensitive to feelings that could be hurt. Even if I think the hurt is unreasonable.