Friend Aptonym is absolutely right in this respect: the thing that gives civil disobedience its moral force is not mere refusal of individuals to obey the law, it’s their willing acceptance of the penalty for breaking it. No other course asserts individual rights while recognizing (and, frankly, pleading for the exercise of) society’s role in protecting them.
Unfortunately, there’s just no junior course in civil disobedience – by the time it’s necessary, it’s past time for the safety nets, and your conscience is your only shield. I never got to that point, but I can easily imagine my children there.
I think it could be if it happened too often. What if a student doesn’t do his homework and decides to invent a National Day of Protest for a fictitious cause?
When I was a TA, I made the rules simple: just about anything would be excused with two conditions. (1) That the work would be made up, preferably in advance; and (2) that any consequences of missing class (good reason or bad) were the student’s responsibility. If I chose to give a pop quiz and they were absent, they had no right to complain. (I never did.)
I think this makes sense, especially in things like language classes where class participation may be integral to the class.
I think examples of good protests would help in that regard. People today, especially here in the SF Bay Area, grow up with this notion that the point of a protest is to “get away with it” and to “stir shit up” because, honestly, that’s what everyone does. Then they wonder why nobody respects them and their natural conclusion is that they aren’t stirring enough shit up.
Every year when I create my list for the SDMB Death Pool, I base my choices on who I think will pass that year, with no thought toward whether or not I’d like to see that happen. There is one exception to this rule – my final pick each and every year:
What you do if they suddenly decide they are Ba’hai or Wiccan or something and must have a holiday off–you call them on their bullshit and move on.
Even at a complete extreme–a kid’s taken a vow of silence for the whole year or something–I am sure I could find a way to work around it. You never answered any of my questions–if I know half my class will be out for Good Friday (likely) and so avoid scheduling a major test or crucial class discussion, is that “implicitly endorsing” a religion? Is honoring an Eagle Scout’s day of silence “implicitly endorsing” the boy scouts?
It could be, I guess. If you have two kids who are engaging in a day of silence, one because of his Eagle Scout project, and the other just because he wants to be a smartass, and you punish the smartass and not the Eagle Scout, then you’re giving the Eagle Scout a speciial status, and implying that his silence for the Eagle Scout position is justifiable.
The same is true about not scheduling a test on Good Friday. On the one hand, you’re acting pragmatically, but on the other hand, you’re basically telling the students "Practicing your religion is a valid excuse to miss miss my class (and I get the impression that if you did have a test on Good Friday, and students missed it for religious reasons, you’d let them have a makeup test).
My daughter’s boyfriend got an Eagle, and he didn’t do it. It’s kind of an odd thing. We were silent for most of a day for the Order of the Arrow ordeal, but that was in camp, not in school.
I think being silent in class is much more effective than staying home. First of all it drives the point across, without doing something that might be appealing for the kid.
I got a question - is texting allowed? If yes, lots of kids would hardly notice they were silent.
And hats off to Doper teachers for being so receptive.
Could I have a cite that he was defrocked? Since we agree that bearing false witness is a sin, I would hope that care would be taken not to engage in it.
As far as I know, he left the pastoral ministry to start the National Federation for Decency (which is the precursor of the AFA). I’ve never seen a cite that he was defrocked.
That’s why I said “I believe” – I had read that he had been, for refusal to pastor a charge instead of carrying out his “ministry,” but not from a reliable source. So I echoed it as an allegation I was not positive of but gave initial presumption of accuracy to.
If you have information one way or the other, I’d like to know for sure.
Let me get this straight. If it’s a “minute of silence”, then the atheists get all bent out of shape. But if it’s a “day of silence”, then the Christians get all bent out of shape. :dubious:
They’re not the only ones who feel that way, unfortunately. The Charlotte(NC)-Mecklenburg County school system just passed an anti-bullying policy that was opposed by “Christian conservatives.” (The article’s words.)
The opposing view seems to be, let the bullies alone, they’re keeping kids from turning gay. :rolleyes:
ETA: Meant to emphasize that the CMS board passed the policy at least.
Or you could send your kid to school and instruct him/her to giggle, jabber and scream into their cellphone non-stop.
Except it’d be hard to distinguish that sort of protest from a typical day at school.
Now that the AFA has ceased its boycott of Ford for Promoting the Homosexual Agenda, I’m glad to note that we bought our Ford while the company was still Evil.
Last year, some of my kids at work participated in the Day of Silence. While at school, they only answered direct teacher questions (apparently this was what the school would permit, which is really the point of this post). When they got to work, they tried not to talk at all. Yeah. Not gonna work in customer service jobs, eh?
No well-known Christian/conservative person or group got into that. In fact, at the time that story was raging along, Falwell, through the Moral Majority newspaper, and Robertson, on The 700 Club, both debunked it.
Also, the Amway Corp. debunked it but P&G traced promotion (tho not origin) of the story to some Amway distributors and sued them for defamation.
The committee (Church and Society) recommended non-concurrence by a vote of 86-0, with the Plenary upholding that by a vote of 864-44. The fact that the UMC still refers to him as “Rev” indicates to me that he hasn’t be defrocked.