• FishLake
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    8 months ago

    Reliving nightmares of teaching mandated reporter classes. Here’s the definition for child abuse in the stupid state I live in.

    “Abuse is defined as any physical injury, sexual abuse or emotional abuse inflicted on a child other than by accidental means by those responsible for the child’s care, custody and control, except that discipline including spanking, administered in a reasonable manner, shall not be construed to be abuse.”

    It is far and away the ugliest and bizarre things I’ve ever been required to teach. I’d spend hours in front of stimulant addled teachers in the most rural places on this dying earth trying to hem that definition in, without breaking the law, just to feel like I wasn’t enabling an abuser. A LOT of educators thought the law’s exception was NOT expansive enough. Laying them end-to-end would reach the nearest ocean.