The line on the sand between one’s public and private life has not just been blurred and severely compromised by social media over the years. 

For some in the teaching profession or basic education sector, it has been entirely washed away by the allure for followership. 

We are now witnessing, silently, a growing and utterly disturbing ‘trend’ where educators (“teachers”), voluntarily and involuntarily entrusted with the minds of the nation’s children, are actively and in full public glaring eyes engaging in “soft porn” content creation to grow their follower counts, social media engagement, and at times to generate undeclared third-stream income as influencers. 

This is not a mere matter of personal lifestyle choices and preferences; it is a growing crisis of professionalism, safety, moral and maybe legal responsibility that warrants urgent intervention to curb and suppress. 

The loose Wikipedia definition of soft – porn: Softcore pornography or softcore porn is commercial still photography, film, imagery, text or audio content that has a pornographic or erotic component but which is less sexually explicit than hardcore pornography, lacking sexual penetration and other sexual activities. It typically contains nude or semi-nude models or actors in suggestive poses or scenes, and is intended to be sexually arousing and beautiful in an aesthetic sense. 

Remember the idiom “sex sells”, which at its foundation it’s a phrase which makes reference to a practice of employing suggestive or alluring visuals and also innuendo with intent to psychologically facilitate a connection of a product with emotions of pleasure, excitement, or aspiration. 

Scholars often posit that humanbeings are biologically wired to afford attention to sexual imagery therefore, what marketers, now educator influencers, would utilize to derive appeal to make their products (bodies- content) and ensure they are noticed in highly concentrated spaces (social media) to create a memorable emotional connection (subscription or followership) with the consumer, potentially the very learner they teach.

The justification often offered is that such content is “empowering”, this is common in an epoch of body positivism, identity politics and individual moral determination. 

It is also argued that it exists in an often-virtual space separate from the classroom, area of physical contact and direct engagement. However, this narrow argument tends to collapse under the compounding weight of lived reality, particularly in our country which grapples with endemic sexual violence in schools. 

When an educator posts provocative and suggestive material content, they are certainly not engaged in a victimless private act.

They are publicly broadcasting a standard of accessibility and sexuality that learners, who are almost certainly following them on secondary accounts, will inevitably consume.

This growing unpleasant behaviour represents a profound and growing failure of individual and communal moral guardianship. In South Africa, teachers are not just subject matter experts; they also and more importantly in loco parentis, that is, stand-in parents. 

By continued curating of public image deep rooted in titillation rather than tutelage, they directly and loudly undermine the very authority required to maintain discipline and respect with impunity. 

It discharges a signal to learners that social validation and affirmation outweigh intellectual cognitive development, and that one’s body is a commodity to be traded for “likes”, what the western philosopher Karl Marx describes as commodity fetishism – relations among things. 

This is undesirable at the very least and dangerous precedent at most, especially in a society already struggling with high rates of gender-based violence and abuse of children; children who don’t have a voice and unable to formally organise themselves. 

The South African Council for Educators (SACE) Code of Conduct: The Code of Professional Ethics was drafted intently to prohibit this. The Code explicitly requires and expects educators to “acknowledge the noble calling of their profession” and “act in a proper and becoming way such that their behaviour does not bring the teaching profession into disrepute”. 

Even though the Code may seemingly be vague on digital footprints and behaviour, the intent is non – ambiguously clear: maintain the dignity of the profession, which leads to the apparent challenge of enforcement. 

The current robust, routine and continuous inadequate oversight and vetting implies that many educators are appointed and function without continuous rigorous digital background checks as is common in other professions. 

We rely on a system of trust, bona fide, that is publicly and perpetually being systematically torn by a “click first, think later” generation of educators.

Legislatively, while “soft porn” may surf on the edges of the Films and Publications Act concerning child pornography and explicit adult content, it often falls short, finding itself in a legal lacuna, grey area. 

However, this matter, at least for now, is less about the criminality of the content and more focused on the unprofessional behaviour it engenders. It surely would be rather an uphill assignment to teach against sexual objectification in a Life Orientation class to a learner who would have just viewed online graphics of that same teacher performing sexually suggestive acts online or a colleague, another educator at the very school or another school. 

The hypocrisy breeds disrespect towards all educators and cynicism, generating a school environment less safe for learners and staff.

The South African Schools Act emphasizes the safety and well-being of learners. With the increasing prevalence of smart devices and social media, the school ecosystem is now seamlessly “logged – in” to the social media feeds of teachers. 

Filters have been disabled, and access is for all with data. When educators primarily prioritize their “personal (digital) brand”, for whatever reason, over the inherent vulnerability of the children in their care and influence, they become complicit in a culture that normalizes sexual violence. 

It often starts with a “harmless” sexy photo or video, strutting suggestive strategic poses, cleverly revealing the body, its certain parts and structure, yet it creates an environment where boundaries are porous and respect is optional, individually determined and not a communal requirement in the spirit of social stability, cohesion and development. 

We cannot, as a society with values, permit the radical pursuit of internet fame and monetisation to erode the thin fabric of our education system.

The Department of Basic Education, SACE, School Senior Management Teams and School Governing Bodies must implement stricter social media policies for all in the value chain, including continuous mandatory digital vetting and clearer sanctions for public behaviour that undermines the integrity of the school eco – system. 

We must remind educators that while they are entitled to a private life, like all citizens in our constitutional democracy, the public performance of that life ends where the safety and dignity of the child begin, limitations do exist. 

In the fight against the sexualization of our schools and learners, the teacher must be the first line of defence, a buffer, not the source of the attack, not a soft – pornstar.