MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). This letter is in response to story titled Retired Midland teacher faces hearing for alleged misconduct published July 27.
Dear Editor,
Extremely distressing and unfortunate article on former MSS school teacher Mr. (Kevin) Morphet.
I recall when we first moved here, the newspaper regularly printed the names of people who are caught stealing small items from the dollar store. This pillorying of a good teacher and family man is a hollow #metoo echo of that gossip. Both of my children are MSS graduates and former pupils of Mr. Morphet. Neither believe a word of the accusations.
As a photography teacher, he guided poses in class. Touched an elbow? Moved a shoulder forward? His casual and friendly manner with students may have led to lowering his guard in this post-traumatic Victorian age.
The article said one complaint was saying 'I love you' to a student, which, according to my son, he would do to anyone who gave him a coffee.
Every criticism of cancel culture requires an identity politics disclaimer. Here is mine. My 60s generation, got up early and worked hard to level the playing field.
No generation before us has done so much to correct inequalities, not out of guilt, but out of a sense of fairness and rightness. We know what racism and sexism really looks like. It looks nothing like these scars that never felt a wound.
As with all such trials by ordeal, we are unlikely to hear of how this ends for Mr Morphet, or if there’s fairness we fought for.
The root cause seems to be our loss of trust in all institutions combined with a fashion to believe the worst in everyone. For the sake of Mr Morphet’s family, not to mention the scores of pupils he mentored, I am in favour of not judging too quickly.
My thoughts,
David Dalrymple
Midland
