NH School Teacher Punishes Student By Cutting Her Hair
A recent incident at at New Hampshire school is raising a lot of eyebrows, and has gained worldwide media attention. And many people are outraged that no action has been taken because of it. In case you missed it, WMTW reported that a teacher at Somersworth Middle School allegedly cut a student's hair off in the middle of class as punishment for misbehavior. According to the student's mother, she was asked by the teacher to stop playing with her hair during the class. When she told his that he couldn't do that, the teacher then grabbed her daughter’s hair and cut off what she described as a three-inch chunk. Following the incident, the teacher was off for three days, while the school conducted an internal investigation. The teacher then returned to teach the same class, and even more shocking, the student was returned to the class as well, with the same teacher.
As the father of two daughters who are close to the age of this child, I am outraged. I can't even imagine what I would do if this happened to one of my girls. I did a bit of research, and it appears that cutting someone's hair without their permission is widely considered to be a crime. So if this teacher committed assault on one of his students, then why was he allowed to return to work? And why isn't he facing criminal charges?
This story was reported by several national and international outlets, and the majority of the comments I've seen on social media indicate that most people are as outraged as I am. For some reason, the teacher's name wasn't mentioned in any of the stories I've seen. I've been looking for updates to this story, but haven't seen any developments since last week.
I will say that in a lot of cases, there are two sides to a story...and maybe there were certain factors at play here that I am unaware of. But as I keep thinking about this, and I just can't think of anything that would justify this sort of behavior.
Are you as fired up about this as I am? Do you think the teacher should have lost his job, or even faced criminal charges? Please weigh in with your opinion, in a comment on the Facebook post.