I think I'm beginning to understand what's going on here. As most homeschooling parents know, teaching fosters a sense of intimacy. For a lot of professional teachers, they keep it cool by distancing themselves from their students or putting it in a pseudo-parental relational context. Unfortunately, there's a lot of folks out there that mistake these feelings of intimacy for love and it manifests itself in an adult relationship with a non-adult student. The teacher is unable to distinguish these feelings from real love, a commitment to the better good of the beloved, and makes choices that give them short term gratification while bringing the long-term destruction that no sensible person would choose.

What continues to bother me is the alarming frequency of these incidents showing up in the news. I suspect that many more of these incidents go unreported or under-reported. My heart questions why our society places adults in a non-familial role that produces such strong feelings of intimacy in the first place. I don't want to hit this too hard, but the Bible instructs parents, not teachers, to teach their children. Although most parents won't admit to as much, I believe that when we drop off our kids at church or at school, we are rolling the dice and hoping our children won't be exposed to this abuse. We're better off keeping them with us at both places. Putting parents back in the classroom is a good start. Keeping the kids with us at home is better.

On a related note, Tia Linscheid blogs on Home Where They Belong about what else students are being asked to keep from their parents.

• Send to a Friend!