Warning: The following article contains upsetting information.
A teacher at Steenberg High School in Retreat has been barred from returning to school after it was revealed that he used corporal punishment, showed students explicit content, shared details of his sex life, and used racist language, Cape {town} Etc reports.
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The Grade 8 teacher, who taught Geography and Math Literacy, was recently found guilty of misconduct and now awaits the ruling of a presiding officer for a decision on his punishment.
In the meantime, he is not allowed to return to school.
The allegations against him came to light earlier this year when pupils approached Philisa Abafazi Bethu founder and gender-based violence (GBV) activist Lucinda Evans. The learners were in Grade 8 at the time of the incidents and are now in Grade 9.
According to the mother of one of the learners, the male teacher told her then-13-year-old daughter that she ‘looked like someone who is going to fall pregnant in school…because she was disruptive, but then it went on for a month and a half where he didn’t allow her back into the classroom because she refused to take a hiding over her hands with an iron ruler, so he said he wouldn’t teach her.’
The mother told Daily Voice that she then approached the teacher but said that he was ‘very arrogant and cocky’.
‘I later learnt the principal went to lodge a case against him in the second term of school,’ she added.
Evans says the teacher would separate the girls and boys in the classroom, ‘…and let the boys sit on one side of the classroom, where he would show them porn websites and tell them they could use it to masturbate on.
‘He also told them to wear their ties according to the length of the penises.’
In another incident, the teacher reportedly called one of the boys ‘blackie’. ‘He also told my son that he was picked up in a dustbin and a darkie,’ said the boy’s mother.
She added that the learners have been offered counselling, noting that the teacher should be deregistered and banned from teaching.
Western Cape Education Department spokesperson Millicent Merton confirmed that the teacher was found guilty of misconduct. ‘The educator will not return to the school until the outcome of the sanction.’
According to police spokesperson Anelisiwe Manyana, a case of common assault was opened against the teacher at the Steenberg police station.
‘According to reports the parents and students allege that a teacher is targeting them and hits the students with a ruler at school. No arrests have been made.’
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Picture: Tuyen Vo / Unsplash
