Many years ago I knew a male student teacher who was in his final year before qualifying as an art teacher and on a studentship; the terms of the studentship required him to teach wherever he was posted by the (State govt) Education Dept. He would have been about 22 at the time and was engaged to a 17 year old girl (?) who was to be an art student in her final high school year at Altona (let's say) High School. At the time, the same age of consent rules applied as given by someone above, ie 16, so their engagement was legitimate.

Anticipating a problem for himself, his fiancee, the principal and the responsible bureaucrats in Head Office if he were posted as an art teacher to the school where his fiancee was an art student, he put in the application for position that he be posted to any school in Victoria except Altona High.

Guess where the bureaucrats posted him? You got it in one! And despite appeals, that's where he was posted to teach. It was most difficult for all concerned.

A couple of asides come to mind.

I've been fortunate enough to be successful in my attempts to restrain any lingering feelings of attraction to students under my care and have even been successfully scrupulous in avoiding attachments to uni students who, although not under my care, were still at the same institution that employed me. But I've also tried to encourage adolescents to learn to understand their own emotional development. On those occasions (thankfully rare) where those emotions were directed to me, it was a difficult tightrope to traverse, but I was lucky enough to be able to keep them at a professional distance while providing them with some understanding of how to deal with such emotions. Taking the safe but coldly distance path seems inadequate when you're a good teacher in a position to teach well.

The other consideration is a lexicography one, posed by the situation where a teacher is sexually involved with their student. In Oz in the early 60s there was a famous case where a philosophy professor was sacked, officially (but not really) because he was sexually involved with one of his students. This hit the newspapers at around the same time that Sammy Davis Jr's marriage to someone who was "white" was being discussed in the same newspapers. "Miscegenation" was the term used to described a racially-mixed marriage and was, at the time, verboten in many US states.

There was a similar term used to describe a sexual relationship between teacher and pupil but, for the life of me, I can't recall it. I remember asking about it on Mudcat, quite some time ago, and someone kindly posted an answer. But I can't remember the term and thus search for it. I blame it on "senior moments" but perhaps someone can remind me.

Cheers, Rowan