Let’s hope you don’t get anywhere near a school. Your stupidity might be contagious or somethin’.
Rubystreak -exactly. As a nurse, I also have to follow ethics and underlying principles laid out by my Board of Nursing–NOT the hospital which employs me.
You can sure bet that I have refused a pt assignment in my almost 20 years at the bedside–I wasn’t put on leave (there aren’t enough nurses for anyone to go on leave), but things did get tense.
It is not insubordinate if you are within your practice act and acting in good faith.
I still don’t understand how the principal thought this constituted a permanent display. It sounds very much like a power play and attempt to get rid of this teacher.
If I’m not mistaken, he’s a teacher.
I’m outraged.
For a newbie to tell his boss to go to hell and refuse to comply with a directive deserves serious consequences.
The display of foreign flags is not a moral issue. In this particular case it was a legal issue and the principal was on the right side of the law.
It isn’t a safety issue either.
I’ve heard treacher complain for years about the government mandated cirriculum. Around here in Canada at least, teachers change things collectively at the bargaining table with the school board and government.
Keep in mind, the responsibility to the parents and the government who are the stakeholders and sponsers in their children’s education resides first with the principal/school board and then with the teacher.
They didn’t hire this teacher to tell them how to run their school.
Civil disobedience involves disobeying a law you find unjust. In your evolution example, the teacher would be disobeying a school official who is disobeying a law - or the Constitution in this case. Any teacher with a modicum of ethics and professional self-respect should.
I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect anyone found tearing up writs, no matter who ordered it, would be found in violation of the law. (Would this be contempt?)
I wonder what you feel about whistleblower laws? Do you think people asked to do incorrect things should either quit or take it?
Oh give me a break, it is a overly anal interpretation of the law of little consequence, under the circumstances. Does common sense not matter for anything?
Debatably. Go back and read the law.
I agree with those who perceive insubordination as more of an issue.
I’m just glad they reached an agreement. Otherwise, it might detract from the local media “All JonBenet - All the time” focus.
VOYAGER –
Well, you’ll have to point me to the part of the Constitution that covers the teaching of evolution. And don’t bother with the First Amendment, because teachers’ right to free speech is generally limited by the school board’s right to control curriculum and teacher speech. Besides, even were I to grant your point as to evolution – we’re not talking about evolution. We’re talking about hanging “flags of foreign lands” in the classroom. Not the same thing at all.
I am a lawyer. The original writ gets filed with the court. Unless you’re in the clerk’s office or the judge’s chambers, you have no ability to rip the original up. A copy is either sent to or served on the appropriate governmental entity. For counsel for the government entity to rip up their copy would be stupid and fruitless, since then the guy can just send you another copy. As to whether I would riip up an original writ given the opportunity, I’ve already answered this – of course not.
I feel they’re pretty far afield from Mr. “I Won’t Take Down The Flags In My Classroom.”
I think they should act as their consciences and common sense dictate. BUT I also think they should not be surprised when adverse employment action is taken against them if they refuse to do as directed by their superiors.
And no one is sayiing that teachers are automatons who should do what they’re told with no exercise of personal discretion. But a teacher’s decision in his or her classroom is not made in a vaccuum and is not the last word. You may want to put up pictures from National Geographic to teach about cultures of other lands, but if those pictures include nudity, I don’t think you’re entitled to act surprised or outraged if your principal tells you to take them down. You may think Huckleberry Finn is the best American novel ever written – and you’d have a strong argument that it is – but if your school district has decided that HF will not be part of the American Lit curriculum because of the extensive use of the “N” word, you are not in a position to teach it anyway.
People have to use their discretion to pick their battles. Damned if I can see why this is a battle this teacher would choose to pick, but hey – his choice. And his consequences, and rightly so.
A principal’s job ought to be deal with administrative stuff, so that the teachers can teach, not to pull piss-ant stunts like this. It seems that way too many school administrators are far more interested in power plays than in empowering their teachers and students to do well in the classroom.
BURUNDI
So if the teacher is potentially breaking a law, either intentionally or out of ignorance, that’s none of the principal’s affair, huh? Guess he should wait until a suit gets filed and it becomes “administrative stuff.”
Again, for the 900th time, I’m not defending the principal’s over-zealousness in this case. But the teacher was insubordinate, and on the basis of his insubordination, regardless of the back-story, I think it’s a bit silly for anyone to be surprised he was placed on administrative leave. 'Cause that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re, y’know, insubordinate.
Would you not consider that ensuring the school is not breaking the law to be administrative stuff? Mind you, I’m not saying that the principal was right, I’m just thinking that - right or wrong - he was acting within his job description.
You’re not kidding. Holy shit, when I took World History in tenth grade, my teacher had his class COVERED in foreign flags-one of our assignments was to make a fabric flag for a nation assigned to us.
Jesus Christ, and we WONDER why our kids are so stupid when it comes to geography and world events.
No, I don’t consider it part of the principal’s job description to patrol the classrooms looking for errant flags. If the principal of a school has nothing better to do with his time than to wander the halls on illegal flag patrol then it’s time for the school board to consider cutting his position.
Do you consider it part of the principal’s job to patrol the classrooms at all? If so, why not?
Maybe Carmody Middle School has off-the-chart test scores. Maybe none of their students get pregnant or do drugs. Maybe every Carmody alum goes on to graduate from high school and become a productive citizen. Maybe every teacher there is inspiring and brilliant. If that’s the case, then maybe, just maybe I could see the principal wasting his and his faculty’s time with this bullshit. Otherwise, I’d say the man has got bigger fish to fry.
Whatever. I just think that the principal was trying (again, rightly or wrongly) to avoid problems with the law. A stitch in time saves nine, and all that. Was he correct, and the school had a lawsuit filed against it, how much of his valuable administrative time have been taken up with dealing with that?
I don’t buy it. To avoid problems with a law about permanent flag installations, he orders the teacher to take down flags that have been up for two days. Then when the teacher refuses, he suspends him. That’s a pretty hamhanded way to avoid legal trouble, especially since the remedy available to him if someone does make a fuss is dead easy. The principal is incompetent, or he found a way to get rid of a teacher he doesn’t like. In which case, come to think of it, he’s still incompetent since it didn’t work.
It’s not a bad little school, according to the online report. Click detailed report for the .pdf if you’re really interested.
When one’s boss is a complete idiot, it is your DUTY to be insubordinate.
Everybody who is up in arms about this is missing the point. The teacher was insubordinate, and got nailed for it. What was the principal doing in the classroom? Well, gee…it was the second day of school. Maybe he was doing his job and walking the campus, seeing how things were going and getting a feel for the year. Hell, Monday I had all 4 of my administrators in my room. They were stopping by everybody’s room, letting the kids see them and checking that the year was starting smoothly. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the principal had an in-service over the summer that covered legal issues faced by districts, and this law was part of the presentation. He saw the flags, told the teacher to take them down, was told to kiss off, and disciplined the teacher. In other words, he did his job.
Was he over-zealous? Yes. Did he misinterpret the law? Yes. Was the teacher an idiot for refusing to comply? Yes. Plenty of stupidity here to go around. But the teacher wasn’t standing up for any great moral or ethical issue, because there wasn’t one involved at all.
Rubystreak, your example is totally irrelevant to this issue. In asking you to change a grade, your administrator was violating the law (at least the law in California, where the teacher’s grade stands no matter what.) That involves ethics. This one doesn’t. And I don’t care where or what you teach…you teach what you are told to or you go somewhere else. It isn’t the job of the teacher to set curriculum. That is the job of the district and the school board. If you don’t like what they want you to teach, then leave. You have absolutely zero ethical ground to stand on if you refuse. You were hired to do “A.” If you want to do “B” and they don’t want you to, then your ass is fired, and quite rightly. You will also find that the union can’t do diddly about it either. The union doesn’t set educational policy. Even college professors have to do what their administrations tell them to do. If they are hired to teach a class on English Lit., and they spend the semester teaching Huck Finn, then they will find themselves unemployed the next term.