Barbara Sumner Burstyn: Disgraced teacher just a bit player in a wider show

Perhaps it's wise that an unnamed Tauranga Boys College teacher resigned over what her board of trustees say are unsubstantiated rumours of a relationship with a 16-year-old student. After all, there's a special place, somewhere between martyrdom and pariahdom, that we reserve for people who scratch the veneer of our sexual self-deception.

Just look at the sensational 11-day trial in England, where Amy Gehring, a 26-year-old Canadian supply teacher, was acquitted of indecently assaulting two brothers, aged 14 and 15, at a London school.

While denying the charges of outright sex, Gehring admitted joining the boys in a drunken sleep-over and to bunking down with another 16-year-old, who refused to complain to police.

Despite the acquittals and the presumption of, if not innocence then mitigating factors (that is, the boys loved it), Gehring has had her teaching licence revoked in Canada. The Ontario College of Teachers went so far as to fast-track her suspension "out of concern for student safety", even though she was still in England. Effectively, she was denied a chance to defend herself.

But putting aside the obvious fact that a teacher involving herself in the social life of students on any level is a violation of duty, perhaps her instant ostracism has more to do with the warped way we view sexuality than with real impropriety.

I blame Britney Spears. Wearing her virginity as if it were a burqa and she was naked underneath, Spears and her particular brand of sanitised hypersexuality is affecting us all.

She has teenage boys so ramped up and confused that they haven't a clue where to draw the line between their testosterone-fuelled imagination and the real world.

And for females - from 40-year-old mothers with belly-rings and exposed over-tanned midriffs to 6-year-olds in frilly bra tops and low-cut pants - she has spread the message of a one-size-fits-all, distinction-free, sterilised sexuality.

It's no wonder the naive Gehring, who described one of her young lovers as "really sweet and kind", could not foresee the potential consequences of her action. She couldn't even make a simple judgment call as she played out her fantasy of the sexy older woman.

Concomitant to this and pertinent to the extreme reactions that Gehring's sleep-overs have generated across North America is the misguided notion that males and females have no differences.

These days to suggest otherwise, to even think that boys at their peak age for sexual craving might have encouraged and enjoyed their teacher's extracurricular activities was, according to the equity co-ordinator for the Toronto District School Board, "hate teaching".

What politically correct, distinction-free planet has she been hiding on? Of course the boys enjoyed it. In an earlier time, when equality was not the predominant currency, society understood this. We had ways of separating the male and female.

For boys, there were coming-of-age ceremonies to mark that surge in testosterone and we understood it as a natural part of maturation. In some societies, fathers acknowledged it by taking their sons to their mistresses.

No one suggests we return to that practice but such rituals served a valid function, providing a framework of behaviour, responsibility and expectation that eased boys into adulthood.

For females, the fullness of womanhood used to mean something more than a constant re-creation of teenage sexuality. And it used to recognise the power and responsibility of femininity.

But today our rites of passage are as ambiguous as the messages we give our children. We saturate them in violent and highly sexualised popular culture. We expect them to behave increasingly as though they were a special class of adult but completely free of the responsibilities of adulthood.

And we increasingly present to them adults who dress and act as if they were teenagers; people from all walks of life with the protracted adolescence we all covertly support in our adulation of youth. And all the while we omit the fact that we are all adrift on a sea of moral ambiguity.

Until the truth hits, until the Amy Gehrings of the world act out the fantasies we've condoned by either ignoring or misreading the signposts of dysfunction in our society. Until the moment we realise that sex is not a game played by Britney lookalikes but by real people who get hurt.

But instead of using the situation to gain a little insight into where society is heading, we grab the first martyr we can lay our hands on and throw her on the stand and forget that she is no more than bit-player in a much wider show.

Perhaps, however, there is a positive spin to this situation. Everyone touched by these sorry sagas may begin to realise that a consequence-free world is a Disney construct.

For the Tauranga teacher, Gehring and their pupils it is probably the best lesson they will ever have. As they say, there are teachers and then there are educators.