Should You Lose Your Job Because of Tattoos

A lot of parents are gung ho about getting their kids out of the house and back to school. Online learning has it's challenges. And if the kids get back to school, they can get back to work or work from home easier without distractions.

So you're ready to take you kid back to school. Your kindergartner.

You meet his or her teacher.

And they are covered in tattoos.

Meet Sylvain Helaine. 35 and a schoolteacher in France.

He likes tattoos a little bit. O.K. A lot.

And at the moment, it's causing him a little bit of a problem at work.

He's a kindergarten teacher. And parents have started complaining.

A schoolteacher whose body, face and tongue are covered in tattoos and who has had the whites of his eyes surgically turned black said he was prevented from teaching at a French kindergarten after a parent complained he scared their child.

He said last year he was teaching kindergarten at the Docteur Morere Elementary School in Palaiseau, a suburb of Paris, when the parents of a three-year-old child complained to educational authorities. They said their son, who was not taught by Helaine, had nightmares after seeing him. (Reuters)

The powers that be decided that he could keep his job but he'd have to stick with teaching kids 6 and up.

Now according to Helaine...

“All of my students and their parents were always cool with me because basically they knew me,” said Helaine, who estimated he has spent around 460 hours under the tattooists’ needle.

“It’s only when people see me from far away that they can assume the worst.” (Reuters)

Questions:

• Should someone lose their job because of tattoos?
• Depending on the profession, do you think this is too much?
• How would you feel about sending you kid (kindergartner) to school and this is their teacher?
• Is this discrimination?
• Does this really all lie on the teacher?
• The school didn't fire him just changed who he could teach. Was that an ok decision?
• The school did hire him so now they decide to change his assignments because of tattoos and complaints?
• How do you feel about all this. Talk to us on app chat and online in our socials.