A Teacher’s Right to a Private Life: Community Control or Professional Autonomy

Do American professional public school teachers have the same rights to a private life as other citizens? This is an astute and incisive analysis of every teacher’s dual life - as responsible exemplars to society’s youth and as their own professional and private selves. Using historical and legal analysis to capture the tension between these two guises, it explores the balance between the weight of expectation from teachers’ communities on one hand and the need for autonomy in professional environments on the other.

A Teacher’s Right to a Private Life explores some of the core questions that surround this debate: what kind of out-of-school behaviour should constitute dismissal, and what should be protected? To what extent should teachers serve as role models adhering to the values of the community in which they work? How does the special position of trust and responsibility enjoyed by teachers weigh up against their liberty to fashion a life for themselves? Should their private lives be subject to greater scrutiny than those in other professions?

This is an enlightening guide for education and legal scholars, local and state level policymakers and community leaders on how the legal framework around these core issues has emerged and evolved over time.

Todd A. DeMitchell is Professor Emeritus of Education Law & Labor at the University of New Hampshire, USA
Richard Fossey is Professor Emeritus of Education Law & Policy, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA