Career Fear: When Speaking Out Is "Career Limiting"

The Toronto District School Board has been outed. A damning report reveals that incidents of crime have gone underreported, with big-time negative consequences for students and staff:

"A school safety panel revealed yesterday that employees of the Toronto District School Board told them they feared that revealing school safety issues or anything that would reflect negatively on the board would be "a career-limiting move." (emphasis added)

As a result, hundreds of incidents that should have been reported were not. This 'culture of fear' led to a failure of the system and its overseers to protect students from violence, including robberies and sexual assault, on school grounds, the report said."

Culture of fear. Career limiting move. What are we to do when we want to keep our jobs but also do the right thing? I do have some advice, such as my article on how to Whistleblow The Right Way, and Push Back When Asked to Do Wrong. But we all know it's not easy to do the right thing all the time, and the cost of doing so can be sometimes be brutal.

Still, letting innocent kids get hurt so you can continue to enjoy your perks? It's not how I want to have my children educated.