Escaping the Past

Education of students is the purpose of our schools, and anything that interferes with that purpose must be looked at with a critical eye.

I understand that it would be highly disruptive to the educational environment for students to have access to, be interested in, and talk about a teacher's sex life.  It is unfortunate, though, that a woman's past--doing something that's entirely legal, don't forget--prevents her from being a teacher:

A middle-school science teacher fired after students learned she had appeared in pornographic movies had hoped not just to get her job back, but to set a precedent for people looking to escape an embarrassing personal history.

A three-judge commission put a decisive stop to both, saying firmly and unanimously that Stacie Halas should not be in the classroom.

"We were hoping we could show you could overcome your past," Halas lawyer Richard Schwab said Tuesday. "I think she's representative of a lot of people who may have a past that may not involve anything illegal or anything that hurts anybody."

Judge Julie Cabos-Owen said such a past matters in an age when technology makes porn easy to access and hard to bury.

"Although her pornography career has concluded, the ongoing availability of her pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague," Cabos-Owen said in the 46-page decision issued Friday by the Commission on Professional Competence.

I completely understand this ruling and its logic, but I still don't like it.  I admit, though, that I cannot think of how they could have ruled reasonably in a manner that I would find more appealing.