Boston Public episode last night....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

You guys ever watch that show? It’s not bad, but the episode last night was interesting.

I’ll try to keep it short.

Teacher died - kids mourn - other teacher decides to hold a ‘prayer assembly’ - principal finds out tells her not to do it again (It’s against the law and shouldn’t be taught in school) - teacher gets upset…

And she goes on to say, (and I’m paraphrasing). “The children are upset, they need prayer. They need guidance. We need spiritual students, not atheists…it’s no wonder they are running around shooting each other.”

“Ohhhh” I thought, “They are going to tackle this subject this week.”

But they didn’t. The principal later said that prayer wasn’t allowed, and that was it.

That was when I got a little pissed off. (Yes…I can actually say I was offended! Something that only happens if someone makes a personal attack against me.)

We’ve all seen shows where, for instance, someone is talking about how ‘wrong’ being gay is, but there is always someone else to show the opposite side of that coin.

That didn’t happen with Boston Public last night. It seemed as though they were trying to show what the ‘reality’ was, but decided to hide behind ‘it’s the law’ and not ‘it has no place here’ and there was nothing in the defense of atheism.

Since when have ‘athiets’ been the only ones resposible for shootings? What makes these Christians think that athiest are immoral murderers!!!

It’s funny how it’s ok to pick on some people but a crime to pick on others…

(Granted it is still a TV show…but it seemed to me like it was catering to a specific crowd.)

PS: I also have a feeling this thread may be moved…I just figured I needed to rant and that it belonged in here…

2

I think that the principal made it quite clear when he told her to “Shut Up! And Listen!” as she was ranting about the need for prayer. Made it pretty clear that he was serious about the separation of church and state. Particularly in his school.

To be fair, we atheists get our fair shot at ridiculing the fundamentalist and more hardline theists among us. I don’t think we have all that much to gripe about.

To me, last night’s show was dealing with far too many serious issues and none of them got sufficient time to be fully developed. That show tries to do too much in one episode. But perhaps they are just trying to capitalize on the perceived short attention span of today’s viewers.

3

This show annoys me so much. If David Kelley had done 5 minutes’ worth of research he would have found that corporal punishment is not legal in Massachusetts (M.G.L. c.71, § 37G), contrary to what that old biddy said. And how do all those dozens or hundreds of students keep having all those student-organized assemblies without anyone really noticing that they are all gone from class? And how did not one student ever mention to anyone that that teacher has been spanking them, apparently for years? And how did they all let her? I could see how little kids might be too afraid of authority to resist, but upperclassmen? Especially when they are almost all portrayed as ranging from very confident to arrogant to outright defiant.

Yeah, I know it’s just a TV show. But it still bugs me.

4

FWIW, they did address this on another episode. Multiple episodes, apparently. I’ve only seen a few of this show, one of them was a crossover with The Practice and it included comments about this elderly woman teacher who spanked her students. I saw a brief bit on another episode of BP where she was in court because there was this accusation that she spanked the students because she got a sexual thrill out of it. Not that it changes your mind or answers your questions, but yes, they knew about it and dealt with it previously.

I have no opinion on the show or the subject as it was addressed in the show WRT the OP.