Who is Alexander Price? Teacher's gossip blog said students dressed like 'prostitutes and Kardashian clones'
A teacher was banned from teaching any classes after he breached expected 'professional conduct' because of his blog. Alexander Price, 43, ran the blog titled 'The Provoked Pedagogue' as an anonymous online diary, He would post about his daily life as a teacher at the Denbigh High School in Denbigh in North Wales. But when he made several unprofessional comments regarding his students in his posts, the blog became the reason he lost his teaching position.
The former Design and Technology teacher claimed that the anonymous blog was supposed to be a "cathartic" exercise and that he made them "colourful and entertaining". A panel however concluded that Price's behavior was unacceptable professional conduct and called the posts "inappropriate, offensive, or derogatory". A hearing in Cardiff decided that Price can reapply to join the teaching register after a two-year period and was handed a prohibition order banning him from teaching in the meantime.
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One of the many problematic entries was titled 'The Problem With Prom'. It was under this entry that the teacher stated that the event in question was "a shallow, vacuous affair, about nothing more than who has spent the most on looking nice." He also wrote about the schoolgirls who attended the prom. Commented on how they looked, he said they were a cross between, "Eastern European prostitutes and trans-human Kardashian clones" and revealed that the boys at the event "snorted coke".
Further, in the prom article, he listed how the girls in school would spend "nine out of 12 months" preparing for the "vacuous affair" instead of studying. He then added, "The prom means more to them than GCSE results, the pressure builds and builds and when they should be studying they are on ASOS. Young girls in school, fresh-faced or pimpled, are plastered in make-up because they feel pressure from all angles, often including the school."
His offensive description of female students continued as he wrote that they wore "make-up so thick that when it cracks it rivals tectonic plates," and added, "Then there's the fake tan: ludicrous shades and colours that defy even the unlimited variations provided by the human gene.”
In a different entry, he spoke about the headteacher at the school Dr Paul Evans, as someone who went "slithering around the school in a foul mission." He also compared Evans to Grima Wormtongue, a character from 'Lord of the Rings'.
Steve Powell, chair of the displinary panel, said that the comments made by Price "were critical, they were disrespectful, they were likely to cause offence to any pupil or parent who came across the article. It was particularly concerning that a focus on these comments and the article as a whole was on families from poor backgrounds in an unnecessary and unwarranted way."
While Price did confess to writing the blog, his representative and he claimed that the parts that were read aloud were read out of context. Mr Price's union representative, Colin Adkins, of NASUWT said that the panel's decision was "chilling in that it has inhibited freedom of speech."
Price who claimed that the blog was not read in its entirety also said in a statement to the panel, "I find it ridiculous you say you have considered these comments in their entirety because you blatantly haven't. This process is clearly designed to cover up the failings of a failing school - a school which accepts homophobic, racist and misogynistic language from pupils as part of its normal behaviours."