Marcia Amsterdam: Teacher Of The Day

It's sure starting to look that way, given the arrest of Emily Streb yesterday.

Marcia Amsterdam, 30, has been charged with raping a 13 year-old male student in her Brooklyn class.

NEW YORK -- A Brooklyn school teacher was arrested on Wednesday on charges of raping a 13-year-old male student who attended her school, officials said.

March 8, 2007 -- A Brooklyn junior high school teacher was arrested yesterday on charges of having sex in a minivan with a 13-year-old boy who attends her school, cops and city investigators said.

More here and MYSpace page here while it lasts - set to private.

Marcia Amsterdam, 30, a speech teacher at JHS 166 in East New York who reportedly goes by the name "Sexi Bodi Gal" on her MySpace.com page, is the second city teacher this week to be charged with raping a student.

Comments

[Darth Malice]

Yuck.....non hottie alert!

[seekeronos]

Yeek. Why can't people keep their hands off of little kids...

Yet another reason to privatize all of our public schools, or offer vouchers for homeschooling.

[Zifnab]

"Yet another reason to privatize all of our public schools, or offer vouchers for homeschooling."

Because... if a private employee rapes your kids, at least he's not being raped in a socialist institution? Or maybe everyone should homeschool their kids because every school-teacher is a potential rapist?

Sometimes "privatization" isn't the solution to the problem. Do I even need to point you to the Catholic Church pedo-paloza just a few years back? Catholic schools are private.

[yyy]

By all means, let's homeschool the children so there won't be any chance that the most likely perv assaulting them--a member of their own family or family friend--won't get found out.

[seekeronos]

With a private school, there is choice. If you think that your boy would be victimized by a pederastic priest, then you need not enroll him there.

But in my comment, I was looking beyond just the trend of pederasty that Dan picked up on; I am considering how the property-tax funded model of "lowest common denominator" schooling seems to be failing its public trust; normally, such a breach of trust would have certain economic impacts.

Unfortunately, there is little motivation to change our schools since they are consumed by property tax and school board politics, budget manipulations, and connivances with teachers' unions and the like.

The results are low literacy rates, the passing of underperforming students to the next grade without remedial instruction, the general liberal bias in academia itself (particularly the NEA)... and I won't even touch on the issue of "religious accomodation" which seems to exclusively discriminate against Christianity while promoting or accommodating other faiths liberally.

A good private school is dependent upon its ability to survive commercially, which would factor in reliability of its teachers as well as its ability to establish a reputation of teaching excellence. Such a model, when applied to the privatization of schools to responsible corporations, could then be organized or chartered as the community it is in sees fit - as the parents (the primary customers) could then have greater control over the education of their children.

Or homeschool them, if no suitable alternative exists.

[yyy]

Private school is never going to work for the lowest common denominator unless we change the meaning of private school. Only a fraction of public school students will ever have the intellectual chops to gain admittance to private schools, other than religious schools, as they are now configured. We would either have to water down admittance requirements for private schools or just rename our crap public schools as "private" changing nothing about the education and curriculum.

In our pursuit of 'equality' we've blinded ourselves to the reality that not all children are 'equal' not everyone can get into Exeter or even the local charter school. Some people just aren't smart or motivated and NO AMOUNT of tax dollars or charity donations is going to change that.

I am all for school vouchers, but we have to understand that simply giving someone a voucher isn't going to guarantee their child can get into a better school UNLESS we dumb down the private schools and strip them of the discipline and curriculums that enable them to graduate people who can read, write and add.

[charles]

seems to me there are too many teachers out there willing to inflict their damaged psyches on the students

wonder where they might have gotten the idea that this is acceptable behavior?

[Zifnab]

"If you think that your boy would be victimized by a pederastic priest, then you need not enroll him there."

That's the rub, you don't know if your boy is going to be victimized, any more than the 13-year-old's parents knew his teacher was going to victimize him.

"A good private school is dependent upon its ability to survive commercially, which would factor in reliability of its teachers as well as its ability to establish a reputation of teaching excellence. Such a model, when applied to the privatization of schools to responsible corporations, could then be organized or chartered as the community it is in sees fit - as the parents (the primary customers) could then have greater control over the education of their children."

This only works as far as there are commercially available private schools. Currently, if you don't like your public school, you are free to send him or her to a private institution. Many offer scholarships or workmanships or discounted rates to low-income families. There is no restriction on creating or operating private schools within the bounds of the law. And I can point you to just as many bad charter and private schools as you can point me to bad public schools.
http://www.weac.org/news/fromourreaders/2003-04/choice.htm
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/02/those_pesky_cha.html
http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/schools/berkeley/berk-pubvpriv.html

But privatizing public schools isn't about more choices, its about less. Taking out the public backbone to the education system doesn't increase the tax dollars spent on education in general. Vouchers still need to be funded and people still need to be taxed to raise those funds. But where PTOs and neighborhood communities control public school boards, in private school systems the only people in charge are the owners. Parents have no more control over their local private schools than they have over their local grocery store. Privatization reduces the control the community can leverage on the school itself. And unlike in a public institution where your student has the right to be educated, private schools can boot your kids with the arguement that they have the right to refuse a customer service.

[yyy]

Parents have no more control over their local private schools than they have over their local grocery store.
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Parental control hasn't gotten us very far in improving public schools. In fact, what it has gotten us is nutty school boards who want to teach the Bible in science class, omit sex education and institute prayer.

Parental control over private schools is simple. If you don't like the school curriculum or rules or teachers or philosophy then you don't entroll your child there.

Vouchers won't solve everything, that is true. But 'parents' public school teachers, and administrators have done a terrible job so far, with the only answer to poor performance being more money.

[Zifnab]

"Parental control over private schools is simple. If you don't like the school curriculum or rules or teachers or philosophy then you don't entroll your child there."

This only works as far as the number of schools in your area allow. I'm all for magnet public schools and the initial premise behind NCLB - track a school's progress and reform it if the school is a failure - but pulling down the public school system on a whole does nothing to rectify the problem.

Certainly religious schools and private charter schools - the ones most commonly targeted as alternatives in a school-choice program - are no less free of Panda's Thumb propoganda than their public counterparts. I don't know where you plan on enrolling your kids as an alternative, but I imagine if you had a private school in mind, you would have already enrolled your kids there.

Every instance of school shinanigans I've seen began with one parent or teacher pulling strings with the administrators. And the only way the shinanigans came to an end involved a great number of parents and teachers showing disapproval. But when the entire neighborhood is against you, privatization doesn't solve the problem anyway - the businesses will still cater to the masses and you still get screwed.

[seekeronos]

Truthfully, a child's instruction in righteousness and morals and child discipline begins in the home.

It is true that some folks don't have the intellectual chops, or the drive to succeed, that some others do. That is why we have people like Bill Gates and Donald Trump, and others who are lucky to have their workaday semi-skilled jobs.

This need not be the case, or at least, as excessively as it is demonstrated in our society at present. Much of our educational malaise is attributable to the undoing of solid values in our schools, like resepct for authority, diligence, earning your your own way, and the like. This began first with the parents at home, and then spreads to the teachers and administrators, many of whom now (particularly the younger teachers who were born in the 1980s) raised under very liberal, permissive parentage ala "Doctor Spock". The teachers themselves know not how to properly tend other peoples' children, and the latest generation of parents themslves are dealing with a slack hand - not necessarily by will, but by ignorance - as the grandparents (mostly of the 1960/70s vintage) raised those children with the zeitgeist of the Summer of Love.

But, if such things are addressed as early in the childrens' development as can be detected - if parents can care enough about their kids to motivate them, get them reading and thinking instead of plugging them into to the McTV set to have their senses dulled by the latest episode of "Lost"; if parents can be empowered to properly discipline their children, applying the "rod of correction" so as not to spoil their children (look at the attitudes of kids from 10-15 years of age now, and see that most of them have barely any moral compass ... because their parents had none of their own to offer as a model!!)

Teaching the Bible as science? Setting the Duane Gish/Ken Ham school aside, I think that the cosmological history and even evolution, to a degree, are Biblically supportable (I'm something of an Gap-Age Creationist myself) ... it is hard to justify that the earth is any less than several billion years old.

Yet I am willing to give glory to God for creating it - regardles of the method involved. If anything, science tends to reveal the majesty, the ordered thinking, and the power of God rather than it tends to disprove Him.

Coming back to the topic... a greater abundance of private and/or parochial/church sponsored schools would be both free and able to impart the discipline and the moral guidance that the liberal education establishment has been so lacking in the past generation or two.

And not all schools need be geared toward college or university as the endgame: there is no shame at encouraging a young student's talents toward a manufacturing, agribusiness, or industrial based vocation, if that is where his strengths lay.

If diverse corporate sponsors are invited to endow a privatized school system, they can also help secure future talent and contribute to the education of that talent, nurturing it as they grow and learn.

[yyy]

I try to base things on facts. The facts appear to speak for themselves as far as the 'success' that has resulted from at least two generations being mindlessly told how 'special' they are and having the child's self esteem deemed more important than his or her ability to function in society. Graduating children who believe they are 'special' and who have never been allowed to fail lest it harm their self esteem has led us to the situation we have today: an ever expanding criminal underclass, and everyone else in society spending every penny they earn to feel 'special' and happy and as you said no moral compass whatsoever. The facts of declining test scores and abilities speak for themselves as well.

It's my opinion though, that we are dumbing down almost ALL of society, since grade inflation has been detected even at Ivy League schools, if the Harvard grads are no longer properly educated, where is there to go but down?

However, my moral compass and yours are probably very different, or at least what I would consider a base line moral code that is divorced from a religious one.

Science can never prove or disprove the existence of god, at least not for the forseeable future. I think it would be great to teach religion to high school students, all different religions, it might even help them come away with some universals as far as moral behavior. It just doesn't belong in science class as the 'alternative' to evolution.

[Hard Right]

I think they are taking the, "We must find ways to keep kids in school," thing too far. Jeez.