Editorial | No fat teachers?

In the face of Kirkton Bennett’s claim that he was denied a teaching job because of his weight, the Ministry of Education must urgently clarify who has the authority to hire Jamaica’s public school teachers and the criteria to be used in the employment.

If Mr Bennett’s allegation is true, this would, on its face, amount to an egregious case of discrimination, lest it be provided that his apparent obesity rendered him totally incapable of doing the job. In which event most Jamaican employers will face an immediate crisis, given health data that up to one quarter of the island’s population is obese, and just over half overweight.

Mr Bennett is a 35-year-old male. He has a bachelor’s degree in English language education, as well as an MBA. He is now working on a PhD.

He has taught English and social studies in Jamaican high schools, private education institutions, and at an NGO that helps people who suffer stigma and discrimination because of the HIV/AIDS status catch up on their education and training while receiving health and social support.

CAME TO BLOWS

Recently, Mr Bennett told this newspaper, he applied for a teaching position at St James High School in Montego Bay – the institution where, last week, the principal, Joseph Williams, and school board’s chairman, Christopher McCurdy, came close to blows at a staff meeting to which Mr McCurdy apparently invited himself.

That public brawl went viral on social media.

It was the same school from which two teenage girls were expelled last year for kissing each other, causing a spat between the principal and the chairman.

According to Mr Bennett, he faced two interviews for the St James High School job, the first of which he felt went well.

He was called to a follow-up interview, at which the school’s dean of discipline and guidance counsellor were part of the panel. Senior teachers were being used, he was told, because a new school board was not in place.

It was the guidance counsellor, Mr Bennett said, who raised questions about his weight. He wanted to know how Mr Bennett “navigate(d)”, given his weight. There was also this question: “Do you have any comorbidities?”

Mr Bennett claimed that, the following day, he received a call informing that he didn’t get the job and that his weight was a “sticking point”.

“I was shocked and immediately wrote a letter and emailed it to the principal indicating that I was disappointed,” Mr Bennett told The Gleaner.

WEIGHT WASN’T THE REASON

Mr Williams says that Mr Bennett’s weight wasn’t the reason he didn’t get the job, although there seems to be no denial that he was questioned about obesity during the interview. According to Mr Williams, Mr Bennett lost the position because he was juggling other jobs and would unlikely to be able to fit into St James High’s shift system. The principal seemed to suggest that it also had something to do with Mr Bennett’s hurry to get another job to replace the one at the NGO, which he would lose because of the loss of American funding.

There is a question of whether the principal of St James High School and his senior staff had a job to offer.

Section 43 (1) of Jamaica’s Education Regulations says: “The appointment of every teacher in a public educational institution shall be made by the board of management of that institution after consultation with the principal of the institution and shall be subject to confirmation by the minister.”

It seems therefore that, even if a board was not in place, the principal and his senior teachers were in no position to legally offer anyone a job.

It is true that a person’s health status, including weight, can impact his or her ability to do a job. Those circumstances usually involve significant physical exertion.

In those cases, the requirements are stated upfront, such as the criteria for joining the army.

It is questionable that obesity is an impediment to teaching. In any event, it doesn’t seem right that an arbitrary group of teachers, who, judging by the Education Regulations, are without standing, should be questioning a potential colleague, asking about his health and likely comorbidities.

At least, in Mr Bennett’s case, it appears highly discriminatory.