Many school districts have diversity statements. If this clown won’t sign onto these, he should get the boot. If he does, he needs to live up to them.
In the good old days what a teacher did outside the classroom was probably going to stay outside. But if his blathering goes viral in the school so that his students know about his bigotry, it might compromise his ability to teach.
In any case, I’d ask anyone who says that what he does outside should not affect his job about if they’d be in favor of a teacher posing nude getting fired.
I know which of these things I consider immoral.
I agree with the first paragraph. The second as well, but it raises a gnarly issue. On the one of the spectrum we might have a guy with a hateful anti-gay blog, and that, I agree, would be inappropriate for a teacher. On the other end, we have a teacher who has no public soapbox and keeps it out of the classroom completely, BUT some gay activist student or parent learns of his position and makes a big stink about it. Creating the very distraction around the teacher that would understandably arise around the teacher with the anti-gay blog. In assent, then, the guy gets punished for a thought crime.
So, in the end, if the school can ensure that they will not allow someone’s private belief to be reason for punishments, then fine, get rid of the guy with the public hateful blog. But if they are not willing to fight for the right of someone to hold private belief that, say opposes SSM, then I think they need to let any teacher hold pretty much any belief they want—as long as it does not enter the classroom. I don’t prefer this option, but I think the largest crime here is to allow a teacher to be pushed out via a manufactured firestorm.
Yep.
Well, keep in mind that he manufactured it. He was the one who chose to publish an article comparing the schools to gas chambers for Christians. He’s the one who’s written a book called “Behind Enemy Lines.” This isn’t just him spouting off at a bar and someone overhearing him, or him being a jerk on his Facebook page, or even him writing about how he hates gays in a random book. He’s writing from a position of authority, using his status as a public school teacher to make specific claims about how evil public schools are.
I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I’ve come down before on the side of students wearing bigoted judgmental homophobic t-shirts, after all, and I certainly wouldn’t want my own free speech rights impinged. But I tend to think that a gay student in his class, on finding out about his published materials, would have a hard time feeling safe in the classroom. Given the importance of establishing a safe learning environment for students, I tend to think that he ought not have a job any more.
And certainly I’ve been warned enough times that in North Carolina, teachers can be fired for stuff like having scandalous Facebook photos of themselves that parents see.
Posing nude? I know several people who did that for money in college-- they posed for life drawing classes. One went on to become an art teacher, and a good friend of mine. You’re going to have to be a lot more specific about what you mean by “posing nude.” If you mean texting pictures of their junk in ways that make it pretty easy for it to end up on a free public website, that shows poor judgment, and if it’s yet another example of questionable judgment on the part of the teacher, I might have a problem with it.
You’re going to have to be a lot more specific in what you mean by “posing nude.” In general, I don’t have a problem with it. You surely aren’t talking about a teacher posing nude in the classroom for the students? Yes, that I have a problem with.
I wish no one held homophobic views, but as long as some people do, I have to accept that those views exist, and people are permitted to hold them. I don’t like it that some people hate Jews, but people have a right to hate us. I was really uncomfortable with some anti-hate speech activism my synagogue was involved in about ten years ago, because the proposed legislation was difficult to enforce, bordered on thought-policing, and the small part that was practical was already covered by littering laws (it was already illegal to leaflet people’s windshields, so there was no need to regulate was those kind of leaflets could say). Anything that is censorship, however carefully worded, is going to come back and bite you in the ass, somehow. It rarely fails.
Disparaging the workplace would be cause for firing in the private sector. I’m wrestling with whether this could be firing for cause in a government job and not be a first amendment violation. It might be a narrow exception that wouldn’t spill over onto infringing other rights of speech, because it is very specific, has a private sector analogue, and “slippery slope” arguments fail, I think, but it still might be a violation in and of itself. I am not a constitutional scholar in my spare time.
I do know that the Supreme Court has ruled that high school students do not have full protection under the first amendment as a special class. Maybe as a special class, they also have a right to be protected from certain things that adults are expected to face. After all, we don’t allow advertisements for cigarettes (billboards) within a certain distance of schools, and that is not a first amendment violation. Maybe teachers can be subjected to special limitations, just as advertisers are. So maybe we can allow an exception for “disparaging the workplace” for public school teachers, because that certainly would undermine students’ confidence if they were to discover teachers doing it.
Two teachers. Ms. Smith hates Jews, but she keeps it to herself; you know of her hatred because she attends a famously antisemitic church, or because she glowers at Jewish students, or because someone once heard her give a drunken rant when she’d had too many beers down at the baseball stadium. Mr. Jones hates Jews, and you know it because he’s written pamphlets for Stormfront about how Jews are responsible for the corruption of American society, and he thinks the schoolboard is run by Jews and tells good Christians they shouldn’t come to a Jewy public school.
Ms. Smith? Okay, I hate her, but I think she’s probably not in need of a firing. Mr. Jones? I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask Jewish students to sit in his class, or to ask non-Jewish but non-bigoted students to sit in his class.
Ms. Smith isn’t keeping it to herself if she’s glowering at Jewish students. I don’t see how either of these examples are of people keeping their beliefs out of the workplace. One is glowering at students. The other is explicitly tying the school to his beliefs.
“Glowering” might be putting it too strongly–let’s say that Jewish students get a feeling from her that they can’t confirm, but feel that maybe she’s antisemitic. Assuming it can’t be confirmed, I’m not sure firing her is appropriate.
I’m confused, though, because you said her hatred of Jews was discovered because she glowered at the students, so you’re talking about something that’s overt enough to reveal her hatred. And I’m saying something overt enough to reveal her hatred is not keeping it out of the workplace.
I’m confused, as well–are you suggesting that if Jewish students report they got mean looks from Ms. Smith, she can be fired for it? If not, I’m unsure what your objection is to the formulation. To be clear, I’m not going to die on the hill of “keeping it out of the workplace.” If you don’t think that’s an accurate summary, that’s fine.
We have a pretty similar case over here. A teacher who’s leading the fight against unacceptable teachings in school (about homosexuality and gender), advised parents not to send their kids to public schools, or to keep them at home in protest in some instances, etc… I believe she’s been fired.
It’s not a matter of freedom of speech. She can speaks all she wants. She might not necessarily, however, keep working for an employer she denigrates, be a public teacher who actively sabotages public education, stay a civil servant when her willingness to implement policies is more than in doubt, and so on…(and that’s assuming that she keeps her nasty opinions for herself when in the classroom).
That’s irrelevant. I think Americans have overplayed the “gay is not a choice” card. Might have been useful in their peculiar context, but who you sleep with is simply nobody else’s business, whether it’s a choice or not, and laws shouldn’t be based on the old book Christians are wawing around, period.
You said that the reader was aware of the hatred because of the glances, not that the Jewish students are the source of the reports of the glances. I thought by that that you were arguing that it was incontrovertible that Ms. Smith hates Jews, and her hatred is apparent in her glowers at Jewish students.
We see this so differently. I see high school classrooms sanitized from controversial ideas, unpopular opinions and students who graduate who just cannot handle the fundamental truth that if you can’t handle people offending you, you can’t handle expsoure to the ideas that shock you into thinking and exploring past what your parents and your community want you to.
I think the class subject box can be stiflling rather than stimulating, arbitrary rather than interdisciplinary and the less we micromanage a teachers style the better.
High school students don’t need to be sheltered from authority figures on soapboxes, they need to learn how to think about how to knock them off that box or how to build their own or if they want to get back on topic, how to move that soapbox.
if my kid comes home complaining about a pontificating teacher, the last thing I am going to do is involve myself. Espcially if his ideas tick my kid off. I think that is likely to be a very good start.
This. Otherwise, pretty much anybody who’s got strong opinions on anything (and that would include anybody who’s in a religious order and billions of sports fans) wouldn’t be able to become a teacher.
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My good teachers were perfectly capable of keeping their opinions to themselves while in class. We knew Father López, aka Lupi (for Loopy de Loop), 11th Grade History and 12th Grade History of Philosophy, was a Republican - but the debate on “Monarchy vs Republic” was completely in the hands of us students. Don’t ask me what his personal opinions on abortion or divorce are, two other issues we had debates about.
One of the things the bad ones had in common (well, all but one) was that they either couldn’t keep their opinions and preferences out of the classroom or didn’t want to. The 11th Grade Philosophy teacher who made it clear to his two groups of all-Science-Track students that he despised Science and anybody interested in it. The bullies. Those who graded boys and girls on different scales (why, oh why, should “cleanliness” be valued and even required in a Maths exam if you’re a girl but not if you’re a boy?).
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The actual question is “should unprofessional assholes have teaching jobs?” and the answer is “no.”
But is criticism of one aspect of the curriculum “denigrating” anything. Let’s say that an atheist teacher in Texas recommend to parents that they send their kid to a private school who not only taught evolution but didn’t mention creationism, is that similarly “denigrating” the school. I get the idea that you approve of the firing of the teacher in the example you shared. How about in my example. Should that public school teacher similarly be fired?
And if someone who is against the ritualistic sacrifice of non-cultists can be a public school teacher, so can an advocate for said rites.
This analogy fails so hard that it hurts. You don’t seem to understand the difference between a bigoted, divisive, exclusive position and an inclusive, unifying, and tolerant position. Case in point:
Honestly, I don’t care so much about the teacher mentioned in the OP as I do about you understanding this. Promoting tolerance of homosexuals and equal rights for homosexuals is not the same thing as acting as though they were damaged or evil or whatever. Tolerance and intolerance are completely different beasts. A teacher who believes homosexuals aren’t evil or damaged may bother his Christian students who believe otherwise, but that’s their problem for being intolerant. A teacher who believes homosexuals are evil may bother his homosexual students, but that’s neither their fault nor can they do anything about it - it’s the teacher’s bigotry on display.
You know, there’s difference between “exposing someone to controversial ideas and unpopular opinions” and “perpetuating longstanding, systemic bigotry and discrimination”. A classroom is meant to be a learning environment. By exposing students to a teacher who believes that it’s okay to discriminate against homosexuals, you’re not just making it harder for homosexuals to study under that teacher, you’re teaching other students that that kind of behaviour is okay when it simply is not. This is not to diminish the first effect; that’s kind of a big deal as well. We’re dealing with children and teenagers, not adults. These are people who may not be as well-equipped to deal with an environment of bigotry and discrimination. Of all the ways to teach them about what they’ll face, I can hardly think of a worse way than a situation where they cannot do anything about it and at the same time are expected to deal with the myriad of problems that come with being a teenager. I’ll just namedrop Anoka-Hennepin and leave it at that.
But this is a terrible analogy. The question of evolution is not an issue of tolerance. It’s an issue of the value of a school. A school which teaches evolution in its biology classes is objectively better than a school which does not, all other factors being equal. Evolution is a fact, and schools which denigrate it do a poor job of educating their students, and make it far more difficult for them to pursue any career path in any biological field. This is utterly incomparable to the teaching of any social mores, let alone the distinctly incorrect idea that being gay is a choice, or unnatural, or anything like that.
You’re assuming too much. If I wasn’t clear, BOTH schools teach evolution, the private school leaves out Creationism.