Let’s Play “Spot the Ten Outrages!” (Public School Version)

[Michael Ejercito]

http://ethicsalarms.com/2012/05/20/lets-play-spot-the-ten-outrages-public-school-version/

Let’s Play “Spot the Ten Outrages!” (Public School Version)

Here we have a video, taken with a North Carolina high school (North
Rowan High School) student’s cell phone during class. (yes, it just
points at the ceiling. It’s the audio that matters):

Now lets’s play…SPOT THE OUTRAGE!

(There are ten!)

OUTRAGE 1: Does this sound like a class in session to you? Students
are laughing and joking, barely paying attention. What kind of
learning can occur in such a a chaotic environment? Do parents realize
this is what school is like today?

Is the fact that a student is recording the class without the
teacher’s consent an ethical breach? Once I would be tempted to answer
yes: recording without permission is always unfair and a Golden Rule
violation unless there are special circumstances. However, special
circumstances were present, and may be present in more classrooms than
our fragile sanity will permit us to accept. I now think perhaps all
public school classrooms should be videotaped, all the time.Then we
would quickly know the extent of our education catastrophe, as
horrifying as that would be.

OUTRAGE 2: The teacher of the social studies class presents as
the“fact of the day” the Washington Post sliming of Mitt Romney based
on his mistreatment of a fellow student in his prep school days. In
itself, this is not an inappropriate topic for discussion by a high
school class, as the story raises many fascinating issues. How much do
the students feel their conduct during their tender years should count
against their character 50 years hence? Is it relevant to the
presidential election in any way? How have attitudes toward “sissies,”
gays and less-than masculine boys changed since the early Sixties, if
at all? How have attitudes toward and awareness of homosexuality? What
does this story say about the objectivity of the press? Is it fair?
None of these legitimate and discussion-worthy questions, however,
seemed to occur to the teacher, who was simply trying to show that
“Romney was a bully in high school” in a clumsy and transparent effort
to indoctrinate her students in her own political views.

There seems to be a lot of this going on, based on the isolated
reports that have happened to leak out, and I wonder how just much
more of it there is, especially when one considers the alliance
between the Democrats and the teachers unions, and the unprofessional
profession of educators generally. However much there is, it is too
much. Slanted political advocacy is not the proper role of a teacher
at secondary school level, and such conduct is unethical and
unprofessional.

One student, however, can be heard on the tape raising the question of
fairness and even-handed treatment of both candidates by asking,

“Didn’t Obama bully somebody, though?”

This reference to a passage in Obama’s autobiography, if the teacher
knew anything about ethics, might have provoked a useful dialogue
about the valid and invalid applications of that question. Whether
Obama bullied others or not does not make what Romney did better or
worse: that is a common ethical fallacy that the teacher could have
taken the opportunity to dispell. On the other hand, if the student
was making the point that Romney’s juvenile misdeeds should not be
featured in a classroom colloquy without his opponent’s similar
conduct being discussed as well, then he was on firm ground.

The teacher, however, being incompetent, biased and without any
evident teaching skills whatsoever, first denied that there were any
such Obama incidents, and when her class insisted, said,

“Stop! Stop! Because there’s no comparison! He’s running for
president. Obama is the president.”

OUTRAGE 3. The statement is, to begin with, gibberish; by definition,
in an election, the candidates must be compared. Later, as the
students argue that both candidates need to be subjected to similar
scrutiny, she tells them,

“You got to realize, this man is wanting to be what Obama is. There’s
no comparison!”

OUTRAGE 4! She is no longer a teacher now; she is just an Obama
flack, and an especially inarticulate and ignorant one. She is
appearing to suggest that Romney is engaged in some kind of wrongdoing
by seeking the nomination of his party for office of President in the
Constitutionally mandated election.

One student, anonymous but an Ethics Hero who might grow up to be
someone impressive if he could get in a school with real teachers,
protests,

“If you’re gonna talk trash about one side, you gotta talk trash about
the other.” To which the teacher responds, in OUTRAGE 5,

“You will not disrespect the president of the United States in this
classroom!”

The teacher was the one who brought up the candidates for President
for discussion, and the student has not said anything disrespectful.
If the teacher wanted to retreat from the topic she raised herself
after proving too dim-witted and biased to moderate a fair debate,
that is her prerogative, but invoking the false accusation of
disrespect is both cowardly and misleading. Criticizing elected
officials on the basis of deeds and character is not disrespectful.
The student, in resbuttal, invoked his rights to express a civil
opinion, by announcing, “I’ll say what I want.”

All right; that’s defiant and insubordinate. The teacher was still in
charge and hadauthority, even if she had been abusing it and had no
more business wielding it in a classroom than my Jack Russell Terrier.
I think, however, that on balance defiant and insubordinate was called
for here, as shown by the teacher’s juvenile, emotional and completely
inappropriate response, and OUTRAGE 6,

“Not about him, you won’t!”

The student now protests that in this the teacher is still proposing
a double standard:

“Whenever Bush was president, everybody talked shit about him!” True
enough. Now, it would be appropriate for a competent teacher to use
this comment to segue into a discussion of how difficult the
Presidency is, how harsh criticism goes with the job, and how the
hyper-partisanship in the nation beginning in the Clinton
Administration has made discourse increasingly crude and uncivil. She
might have also told the student to watch his mouth. But no. Her
actual statement was:

“Because he was shitty.”

Crude, devoid of content or educational value and more politicking by
the teacher, this is OUTRAGE 7. This is how they train teachers to
teach in 2012, is it? When the exam asks, “Describe the governing
approach of President Bush, and speculate on why he was such a
polarizing figure,” presumably the answer sought will be, “He was
shitty.” There’s your A!

Then, in a spectacular finish, the teacher goes into a full-fledged
rant, telling her students that those who criticized President Bush
were arrested for saying derogatory things about President Bush:

“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about
Bush? Do you realize you are not supposed to slander the president?”

Well, no, now that you mention it, I don’t realize that, and neither
does anyone who has studied civics or the Constitution, because it
isn’t just untrue, it is spectacularly untrue. Now the teacher is
lying outright, or displaying such ignorance that the students would
be justified in stampeding toward the exits lest she rot their
developing brains further. But our Ethics Hero stands his ground, and
replies,quite correctly,

“You would have to say some pretty fucked up crap about him to be
arrested. They cannot take away your right to have your opinion. …
They can’t take that away unless you threaten the President.”
Whereupon the teacher should have taken a seat at a students’ desk,
and they should have commenced teaching her. OUTRAGE 8.

Really, however, none of these eight outrages, as thoroughly
depressing and nauseating as they are, compare to the ninth and tenth
outrages. OUTRAGE 9 is, of course, that teachers this ignorant,
foolish, incapable and box-of-plastic vomit stupid are hired anywhere
in the United States, to waste precious time and resources while
either making our children as idiotic as they are, or, in best case
scenario, being completely irrelevant to their intellectual
development at all.

And OUTRAGE 10 is the most outrageous. For though the entire,
miserable display of teaching incompetence was recorded and put on
YouTube, and though the Rowan-Salisbury school district knows the
identity of the teacher and has viewed the video, it doesn’t see the
need to do anything. Spokeswoman Rita Foil told the press that the
“teacher” is still employed with the district and has not been
suspended or disciplined. In a statement on behalf of the school
system, Foil declared:

“The Rowan-Salisbury School System expects all students and employees
to be respectful in the school environment and for all teachers to
maintain their professionalism in the classroom. This incident should
serve as an education for all teachers to stop and reflect on their
interaction with students.”

This teacher needs a lot more education than that. If any teacher this
uneducated, this unprofessional and this incompetent can be judged
sufficiently skilled to continue teaching above the developmentally-
disabled shellfish level, every parent in the nation should be on high
alert. All the money, tests and standards in the world will not
create a functioning educational system if it is run by teachers like
this Obama-worshipping dolt, and the irresponsible administrators who
tolerate her.

Outrageous.

_______________________________________________

Pointer: The Blaze

Facts: Salisbury Post

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