http://guruhandbook.com/2010/11/11/teachers-as-predators/

Teachers as Predators

Teachers make the best predators because they are already on the inside of the student's trust. They know how to assume authority, control attention, and evoke compliance - all essential predatory skills.

Predatory teachers use their teaching platform for personal profit at the student's expense. Instead of attending to the student's benefit and being mindful of their own integration, such teachers take from the student, sacrificing both the relationship with the student and their own integrity.

These teachers are socially maladapted. That is, their actions not only harm the student but also harm the concentric circles of community and social trust that surround and infuse the teaching relationship, rippling that damage out into the larger society. The resulting problems can affect many people over long spans of time.

Why are students vulnerable to such teachers? Deep study with a teacher echoes our most profound early experiences, in which knowledgeable and powerful entities take critical care of us. Thus even experienced and mature adults can be as vulnerable as children to charismatic and insightful teachers. These teachers can move us, take us off balance, and convince us that they know us better than we know ourselves. This makes it easy for them to manipulate us, to take things that are not in our best interest to give.

What motivates such teachers? Some do not fully realize what they are doing. Some find ways to rationalize, to refuse to see how their actions serve themselves at significant cost to the student.