The American Scholar: The Vocation of Teaching and the Penn State Scandal - American Scholar
My husband and I were on our way to Paris for our honeymoon when there was a commotion toward the front of the plane. It filtered back to us that someone was sick, and my husband, who had just finished his residency in internal medicine, immediately went forward and spent the rest of the trip ministering to a young woman who had gone into diabetic shock. I will always remember my Paris honeymoon for that plane trip, when I was left for seven hours at the back of the plane while my husband saved someone’s life.
My husband’s action was not simply a function of his morally upright character, morally upright though I think he is. It was also a function of his training as a physician. A doctor is supposed to step forward when someone is in distress. In recent years we hear reports of physicians, fearful of litigation, who shirk this duty, but they are exceptions. Doctors who don’t provide aid when the occasion demands it violate the sacred code of their profession.
Let us turn now to the Penn State scandal. Educators in this case failed to intervene where many people were apparently in distress. This failure has been explained in moral terms, and, certainly, one cannot discount the moral element. We assume that any morally upright person who knew about what is reported to have been going on in that locker room would have intervened on behalf of the abused child, just as we assume that anyone on that airplane to Paris would have tried to help the sick woman. But there is an additional responsibility that comes with being a teacher—an understanding of moral duty not in absolute terms but in vocational ones.
The university president, athletic director, head coach, and graduate assistant coach (a confusing appellation, if ever there was one) apparently failed in their moral duty to alert the police that young people were being abused. But the emphasis on morality misses part of the point. Teaching-of which coaching and college administration should be a subset—are professions that are supposed to support learning, much the way that medicine is a profession supporting health. As part of this mandate, teachers have a responsibility to intervene when learning is inhibited or under attack. Doctors not only support good health, they also intervene to alleviate sickness. Why isn’t the mission of teaching (and coaching and the administration of education) seen in the same terms?