Sometimes we are all needy, but where do you draw the line?

B'H
My world view is very different from many peoples. I will be the first to admit that and there are some surprising kinks or knots in it, but then I like normality and order. Chaos never pleases me over much and one of the hardest things to come to terms with when I was bullied out of teaching in NSW and pronounced unfit to teach by a principal who was both a bully and an illiterate English teacher ( I kid you not and you only have to go to the website of a certain High School in southern NSW where he is now ensconced - it is a different school to the one where he was principal when I was transferred there, compliments of his old mate a principal at another high school who I had complained about - hence the transfer,  you will understand the impoverished level of his English and you will understand why he is a principal and not in a classroom). was the lack of order in my life. It was a stark contrast to the ordered and routine existence I had as a teacher to be thrust into the never-never land of the mentally ill and chronically unemployed dropouts from society on the say so of a malicious principal.
I see a teacher's role in the classroom in communication is to help kids make sense of a rather weird and changing world, but to be tolerant of differences. We must be. The problem is where does the dividing line lie. I have never espoused all the views of the lefty bleeding heart brigade. I am after all a fairly straight forward right wing liberal. I can see or sense some people will want to shut down this blog now. I do not believe in climate change a la Al Gore. However I have compassion for all people and empathise with their social and financial conditions especially if they have had a rough time because of certain conditions that they cannot help or it is beyond their control to change. Some people go out of their way to attract trouble and violence to themselves and others are less then cautious about who they associate with socially.

There are certain people I will not associate with because of the implications for my family (my young son) if they happened to go off the rails and it does happen. No one can give 100% guarantee about the future behaviour of any individual. People who have abused children either their own or someone else's - can you be sure that they will not do it again? No, not really. But by the same token do we ostracise them and risk further alienating them from the mainstream of society?  Again that certainly seems the safest path to follow at first glance and certainly they have to be watched 100% of the time that they are around children. Furthermore they should not be employed in a capacity where they come into contact with children. That is putting a stumbling block before the blind. These people have a weakness and nothing will change that. An alcoholic is always an alcoholic. A drug addict is always a drug addict.  Child molestation is a bit the same with some more serious implications for the person and those around him or her.
Sometimes it is best to bring your enemy closer to you. The reasons why are two fold.
1. You will find it easier to keep an eye on him/her.
2. You may be able to influence him /her for the better
Think about it. You alienate them, they end up becoming more and more enmeshed in a me and the rest of the world mentality and lose that sense of social boundaries that they presently have.