Let's call kindergarten first grade, and graduate everyone at sixteen, at the very latest, seventeen.
Nevertheless teachers who abuse their position of authority by having sexual relationships with students should be immediately dismissed and further investigated to determine if their behavior was a single occurrence of idiocy and lack of impulse control, or if they are serial sexual predators who just happened to get caught. Yes the law ought to be involved, maybe not the local cops storming the school in their militarized four wheel drive sports utility vehicles, but some legal authority who can investigate independent of any school administrations who might want to cover up such abuse.
My own high school was a Lord of the Flies experience for me, so I quit. This was before the GED test existed but I was able to get into college on other test scores and the signature of a principal who wanted to get rid of me because I was a lightening rod for trouble. And that was that.
There was no more physical violence against me in college. Eighteen year old adults outside of high school go to jail for beating a minor bloody. But some professors clearly didn't like to have minors in their classes, especially on overnight and longer field trips. They didn't like the feeling they had to be chaperons, and some felt they had to dial back their language and behavior, although that wasn't a problem for me. I'd heard and seen everything. I don't think any aspect of human behavior shocked me by the time I was sixteen.
Anyways, in 1970's U.S.A. there definitely were teachers who loved their jobs because they were sexually attracted to students, and I'd say they were divided into two groups: those younger teachers who never grew out of their high school "glory" days, and older, very calculating sexual predators. But by the time I was training to be a teacher it was very very clear that this abuse of authority would not be tolerated, and be cause for immediate dismissal.
I started teaching for noble reasons, hoping to make schools a better place than I experienced, but of course the school I ended up in as a young inexperienced big city public school teacher was an underfunded overcrowded mess. Many kids had horrible situations at home, they were hungry, had been drinking, having sex, doing drugs since grade school, etc.. Even the best students have trouble learning in that environment and it's a rare teacher who can make their classroom a place of refuge from the storms outside. There were rare days when my classes were calm and the kids were learning some science, but most days it was me putting out small fires before the entire class caught fire and exploded. It was the most stressful job I've ever experienced, always in my head, 24/7, weekends, holidays, school was in my dreams. I burned out quickly. I couldn't build that wall in my mind, that this is school, and here I am away from school, all the papers are graded, and this is MY time.
Back to the original post, 17 year olds do have sex with 18 year olds. By that age kids should know how to be safe, both the practical knowledge of birth control and minimizing the risks of sexually transmitted diseases, and the equally important emotional aspects, most especially how to recognize and avoid abusive relationships.
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