Blind teacher loses job after rinsing his mouth with Listerine | Hacker News Reader

Blind teacher loses job after rinsing his mouth with Listerine

nypost.com

68 pointsbmmayer117 comments

Honestly the whole thing smells like a hit job. It is one thing for the parent to supposedly "smell alcohol" but then they went all private detective and started rooting through the man's trash (and supposedly found something with unidentified brown liquid, soda? alcohol? coffee?).

Then this:

> The city Department of Education charged Sloan with drinking on the job and sexual harassment because he had asked a group of moms that day, “Anybody want to go on a blind date?” Sloan said he used the joke to put people at ease about his disability. But in August, Sloan settled with the DOE by agreeing to retire.

Clearly someone wanted him out (e.g. group of parents, admin at the school) and used these things as pretext to accomplish that. Too bad. Happens a lot if you follow the news around teachers in union areas getting dismissed (e.g. "teacher of the year dismissed for [minor infraction]").

I suspect a group of parents took issue with him and his style of teaching, and had enough clout (and made enough petty complaints) to have him removed.

UK: we have OFSTED.Generally a source of anxiety to classroom teachers and middle managers alike but really handy if a teacher is getting heat from parents &c.

> “Anybody want to go on a blind date?”

How can this be even remotely considered sexual harassment? I'm not sure if this is a US thing, but it's not the first time something this absurd gets to me ears. Some weeks ago I read an article about a woman in the US who accused a co-worker of sexual harassment stating that he said he would like to go out with her after work.

Maybe in the world I live things are different, but since when is finding someone attractive and asking out considered sexual harassment?

I just don't get it. How do people in the US even get remotely close to each other, find a significant other, etc? Aren't people afraid to even suggest a date?

I also always wonder, on many American tv shows you hear people talk about "no dating colleagues" rules and such. Why not? Whatever anyone does in private is private. If an ex-couple has arguments on the work floor, now that is a whole other issue. But one can expect people to behave professionally, can't one? It would insult me greatly if my boss would say I couldn't date co-workers. In fact, many of my colleagues have relationship starting on the job. It may happen when you spend >8hr a day with someone.

At my company, you can't date your manager, and you can't ask someone out on a date after they say no once.

Its a rule-observed-in-the-breach. As you mention, how else can you meet anyone? When there are rules against it folks conspire to keep it secret; yet everyone knows anyway.

I'd say the rules are only there to invoke in case of a meltdown at the office. Gives the manager someone to blame/fire.

"The city Department of Education charged Sloan with [...] sexual harassment because he had asked a group of moms that day, “Anybody want to go on a blind date?”"

Holy fuck, has our society deteriorated so far that a sixty year old can't make fun of his own disability anymore without getting charged with sexual harassment?

Yes, I think it has. Welcome to the new dark ages.

Exactly my thoughts. This is madness.

"Deteriorated" relative to what? How do you think people would have reacted to that comment from a black man towards a bunch of moms back in whatever pre-social deterioration "good old days" you're talking about?

So, if he were white his comment would not have been out of order?

Makes lots of sense to me. They cannot get at the black man for being black, so they all pretend to be idiots who cannot tell the difference between having a poor sense of humor and being a pervert.

What kind of disgusting person thought it was alright to go this far? To destroy what was clearly someone's life work because she didn't like his joke, or some random thing he said? If they really feel he was in the wrong, push for censure or a penalty of some kind; this is far out of proportion.

That parent, whoever it was, had better hope their identity doesn't get out; they'll be named and shamed in viral social media and possibly have their lives ruined. It's happened before. I'm not condoning it; just saying.

I wouldn't count on it. Knowing how this stuff works they'll probably spin it into an outrage blog and then a book deal.

Well, I remember the "git pull, git push" incident when some girl destroyed one persons career over a jokes that weren't even directed to her.

It's not rare I suppose.

Can we get a more reliable source than the NYPost? The NYPost sensationalizes and mischaracterizes stories.

There's another eerily similar story of a substitute teacher who's lectern computer was infected with spyware that caused it to display pornographic images...

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/20...

These people are easy pickings because they've done nothing wrong and naively trust the system to work out for the best in the end.

I don't know how the prosecution in cases like these can live with themselves. We're already short of good teachers, and there's absolutely no shortage of real criminals to chase down.

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