Calling the reaction to layoffs as just a matter of "self-esteem" dismisses the real problems with a layoff based economy. For the individual worker, there are a host of practical problems - what if you lose your health insurance? what if your kids lose their health insurance? can you pay the bills? will you have to relocate? move away from your family and friends? All of these things are understandably stressful, and if you live in constant fear of having to go through it all again (and again and again), who wouldn't have problems? Not to mention the economic difficulty, for most people, of trying to constantly plan for unpredictable periods with no income. Unless you're making a large salary, that's hard to do.

But in the larger sense, what does this do to our economy as a whole? Most commentators cling to the boondoggle of "retraining". But retraining for what? Despite the hype, it seems that technical and scientific jobs are being outsourced the same as factory jobs, although not as quickly. The only thing that survives are the "hands on" jobs that you can't send away. My local paper did an article recently on retraining - computer programmers retraining as hairdressers, engineers retraining as party planners. I have a friend who used to be a biologist, and she's now giving facials. It's not that giving facials is bad - she actually makes more money than she did in science - but can an economy based on facialists and party planners survive?

I think there's a lot of ambivalence about the visa issue. As a scientist, I'm very skeptical about the use of H1-B visas: I think they're pushing down salaries, increasing unemployment in the sciences and driving American students away from science careers. But at the same time, I work with a lot of foreign-born scientists who have overcome great obstacles to get where they are. Do I side with the collective good, or with the nice people who work with me?

One thing I've wondered, though. Sports coaches are hardly ever mentioned in articles about teacher abuse - and yet at my high school, they were the ones who spent the most time with students in a "personal" way. It wasn't uncommon for a coach to take a player aside for one-on-one coaching, or to drive a player to a game, etc. But that never seems to be the example that's given - it's always the English teacher who can't be trusted, not the football coach.

When I started out at my public high school, I was a sheltered kid, unsure of myself and painfully shy. When I left for college four years later, I was confident in my abilities and ready to conquer the world. I owe that change to a few teachers who took a special interest in me – a Latin teacher who created after school activities for the school misfits, a chemistry teacher who met with me before and after school when I was struggling and made me believe I could be a scientist, and a debate coach who got up at 5 am to drive us all over the state to attend tournaments. I guess many of these things would be forbidden under the new rules, and that’s a shame.

But a couple of years after I graduated, I heard that one of those teachers was in trouble. He’d had an affair with a 15 year old student, and lost his job. At first I thought it must be baseless, but evidently not. It was hard to think that the teacher who’d led me to greater heights was also the kind of person who could do this to one of his students. Whether it was consensual or not, it must have left her with permanent scars. I couldn’t help but think, that could have been me.

I agree with the author that the best teachers do more than just stand behind a desk and lecture. I learned as much out of the classroom as I did in it. But I can also see the potential for abuse. I don’t think the answer is to cut off teachers from out-of-class contact with students, but there has to be some middle ground.

I'm not all that tolerant of kids who behave badly in public places. But at the same time, I hate to see the "solution" as discouraging all kids from traveling (or going to restaurants, or attending theatre, etc.) I grew up traveling - I went to the Louvre at age 8, and I remember it very well. (I only wish I could afford to go back as an adult.) But my parents required me to behave well, and I did. I hate to see the spoiled kids ruining it for the well behaved ones.