Yahoo Finance Teacher struck off over gossip blog post comparing pupils to 'Kardashian clones'
A teacher has been banned from the classroom after penning an anonymous blog that said female pupils dressed like “Kardashian clones”.
Alexander Price, 43, was struck off for two years after being found guilty of professional misconduct for his online diary about life at Denbigh High School in north Wales.
A misconduct hearing was told he offended pupils, parents and colleagues with his blog, The Provoked Pedagogue.
Price, a former design and technology teacher, denied his blog posts amounted to unacceptable professional conduct, saying he was trying to highlight the problems of a “failing school”.
He insisted the posts were “cathartic” and “colourful and entertaining” but the panel ruled they were “inappropriate, offensive or derogatory”.
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In one post, titled The Problem With Prom, Price called the event a "a shallow, vacuous affair, about nothing more than who has spent the most on looking nice”.
He said girls looked like a cross between "Eastern European prostitutes and trans-human Kardashian clones" and said boys at the event "snorted coke".
Price wrote that girls would spend “nine out of 12 months” planning for prom, and that it “means more to them than GCSE results”.
He wrote: "Young girls in school fresh-faced or pimpled are plastered in make-up because they feel pressure from all angles, often including the school.
"Parents getting paid alone to pay for hair extensions and lip pumping, botox for some and dermal peels for others – make-up so thick that when it cracks it rivals tectonic plates.
"Then there's the fake tan: ludicrous shades and colours that defy even the unlimited variations provided by the human gene."
He said some pupils had "literacy so poor they cannot read the instructions on sachets of brown goop that leak into every pore."
He described prom as "the ugly end of society where only the rich has value and everyone else has to emulate".
In another article, Price referred to headteacher Dr Paul Evans as Grima Wormtongue, a sycophantic character from The Lord of the Rings books.
He described the headteacher as "slithering around the school in a foul mission”.
Panel chair Steve Powell said Price’s comments "were critical, they were disrespectful, they were likely to cause offence to any pupil or parent who came across the article”.
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He added: "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."
Price's union representative, Colin Adkins, of teachers union the NASUWT, said the ruling was "chilling in that it has inhibited freedom of speech".
In a statement to the panel, Price said: "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."
Price has been handed a prohibition order banning him from teaching.
The hearing in Cardiff was told he can reapply to join the register after a two-year period.
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