I REFER to Dr M Relich’s letter, “Just plain wrong” (TESS, August 27). In the letter you published from me on August 13 I actually wrote: “If a teacher was 50 and a student was 13 (not 17) it would be a different matter and he would deserve all he got.” So I was not as “ageist” as your correspondent points out.
However, I fear he is the one who is prejudiced and living in the past if he really believes that there is something morally re-pugnant about a relationship between a teacher and a senior school student.
How on earth does it undermine public confidence? Will the lessons taught be any the poorer? A student of 17 is a young adult, legally and emotionally, and in any other walk of life such a relationship would pass without comment.
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