Dan Delong of Carlinville, Ill., at teacher at Southwestern High School in the nearby town of Piasa, will face a school board hearing November 2, after being suspended from teaching. A parent of one unidentified student thought the optional reading assignment was inappropriate for her child . . .
When this and this coincide in the same week, what are kids actually learning do you think, about the values woven into America’s power of story?
The teacher’s disciplinary hearing was Monday night, and perhaps there’s a better lesson in how it ended than in how it started, a fitting lesson of today’s American president as true to yesterday’s American precedent:
“As a nation we’ve come far on the journey towards a more perfect union. . . Time and again, we faced opposition. Time and again, the measure was defeated or delayed.
Now that’s all I need to know, to read this as American Power of Story fit for any public school classroom, especially at the high school level.
But here’s more sensational, divisive detail for anyone who can’t or won’t support individual liberty on principle and instead needs to see which side is which first and put on the correct-colored jersey, march into battle under a reliably solid-colored flag and can only understand human power of story as “opposite-meaning” akin to Carrie Prejean’s intellectually bereft concept of “opposite marriage”:
Dan Delong, an English teacher at Southwestern High School in Piasa, Illinois has been suspended for allegedly allowing [honor] students in his English classes to read an [optional extra-credit] article about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. The article that Delong allegedly had his class read was published in a 2006 edition of “The Gay Animal Kingdom” and is available at Seed Magazine.
The Washington State ballot initiative is interesting in a different way. So far it’s too close to call but this morning I saw two story angles, the first affecting not just gays but heterosexual seniors who are domestic partners but not “married” for various reasons — sin or civil right? animalistic? should it be my call or theirs? how do the politics break for the AARP e.g.?
Here’s the second, about being rightful whether righteous or not — the many sins of the two fellows leading this attack on other people’s rights to do the same:
Moral reasoning anyone?
Seems a good place to quote something Principled Discovery’s Dana wrote:
“We don’t necessarily equate advancing the Kingdom of Christ with reforming the nation’s laws to suit our beliefs.”
Think about it:
Quoting from your first comment, “the domestic-partnership law “condones conjugal relationships” outside marriage — something that’s condemned in the Bible.”
That last bit says it all, that people are still trying to make civil law and all of the citizenry bend to what they feel their scripture says is right. The thing is, scripture is meant for believers. They certainly feel it is right for us all, but whether or not the Bible says to force everyone to obey it doesn’t mean that anyone has the right to use the Bible to create or enforce civil law. I seem to remember a constitutional bit that suggests something along the lines of not allowing any one religion to set standards or something, but I’m sure I’ve quite forgotten, much like too many christians.
The argument time and again is that gay people are asking for special rights, but if those making that argument would for once be completely honest they’d see that the rights we ask for as the exact same rights that so many people take for granted. That’s I prefer the word “equality” while opponents insist on terms like “gay rights” and “gay marriage.”
It must be admitted that, while Maine was an upset, there are still good signs, and there were some wins for the advancement of equality. An openly gay person was elected mayor in Chapel Hill, NC and to city council in Detroit. A non discrimination ordinance was upheld in Kalamazoo, MI despite the efforts of some to inject religious belief.
The very idea that school is somehow a place where gay must never be allowed is ridiculous. A huge part of the anti equality movement in Maine revolved around the lie that our “agenda” would be forced on school children if we are treated equally. That just makes more people less equal because many of those kids are gay, and many of them have gay people in their family. The anti equality movement is basically saying that I and my children do not constitute a family in any way just because I’m gay.
Of course then we get back to allowing religious belief in school at all and the people who are all for it so long as it’s only their religion. These same people that want the Bible injected into all walks of life would clutch their pearls and faint at the idea that other beliefs must then get equal footing, and I think we all know that there are a lot of religions and branches and sects.
I think what really gets me is the martyrdom that christians so often insist on for themselves when they see everything as an attack, and the funny thing is, if they’d just shut up and leave everyone alone everyone else would shut up and leave them alone.
Not to mention atheists! — whose civil rights continue being openly and self-righteously trampled even by those who don’t get too het-up over civil rights for teh gay. Know any openly atheist elected officials? Why, even the openly gay and socialist fed officials* wouldn’t go THAT far!
*Frank and Sanders are both identified as Jewish, bad enough when it comes to America as a Christian Nation! Atheist and they’d surely be dead, politically if not literally . . .
More:
History of Identity in America: Our Insecurities and Need to Belong
Because teaching vile, contemptible lies is bringing down America
Easter, Passover and Presidential Politics — this one’s got Abe Lincoln, Terry!
Comic book religions
Can you at least THINK about it?
Recent polling data might lead us to conclude the American population of atheists is as large or even larger than our gay population, and many times as large as the Jewish percentage of Americans, for example. So what about civil rights for ALL?
Not from Rick Warren’s world view, that’s for sure:
Here’s the Value I think ethical schools and the rest of us everywhere need to teach all kids about “our differences” and yes, because it includes their gay, black/brown and/or atheist friends and family members:
JJ: Not to mention atheists! — whose civil rights continue being openly and self-righteously trampled even by those who don’t get too het-up over civil rights for teh gay.
Will atheists be last in line – and all alone? That’s what I’ve heard.
You’ve reminded me of something written by Greta Christina:
I remember being a little let down after reading what she had written. Like she said, you defend others because it’s the right thing to do, not in expectation of something in return. That said, I think I did presume a mutual alliance of some kind. But, now, whenever I see a video like the one I just posted about the “silence of friends,” I think about what she wrote.
I fail to see how the article in the Illinois case is relevant to an English literature class. A biology teacher I could see including it as an optional assignment, and I personally wouldn’t have a problem with that assuming there were other articles available from which to choose. I might not care for the political agenda behind the article, but it does fall within the purview of science. An English course, however, should be assigning literary masterpieces, not some pop science article…
It doesn’t matter, is the point. One parent objecting to any academic resource shouldn’t even get the resource removed, much less the TEACHER.
It wouldn’t have helped if the magazine piece had been more clearly in the teacher’s field of expertise btw. Literature, theatre and the arts generally are suspect no matter what.
Politicized education stories from Dr. Seuss to high school musicals:
Who is Dr. Seuss and what should his story teach kids?
School theatre and citizen censorship
For Banned Books Week one year, we had concurrent news stories about concerned parents literally “kidnapping” offensive books and refusing to return them, single-handed censorship affecting the whole community.
In that discussion I had fun illustrating what came up again last week with Cat and Dale and Southern Female Lawyer — that in the South, good argument is no argument, and it’s more art than science. One compliments and self-deprecates and feints and slathers on the slop and sugar, in twisted-sister-sounding but deviously effective ways . . .
Really, CW? You think that’s what English literature class in public high school is? Reading only “literary masterpieces” (as defined by?) and never using any current magazine articles for anything? No comparison of writing styles? No interest in how different issues are treated through the ages? Even as extra credit?
And if this had been in a science class, you don’t think the same parent would have had the same hyper-vigilant objection to their precious darling being exposed to the idea of animals having sex, let alone gay sex?
And, yes, it will be the atheists who go last in the march toward freedom. Even though I’m sure many gay people are feeling that they are at the end of the line today.
Nance
And I won’t climb up on my interdisciplinary soapbox for the moment, but what about this “age appropriate” thing — the school board extracted a public apology from the teacher and formally reprimanded him, for treating honors sophomores as scholars rather than factory fodder or a uniformed army for god or country.
High school sophomores are generally about sixteen years old, old enough to choose to be in college rather than high school, stop going to any school, have sex and/or a crisis of faith, discover they and/or childhood friends are gay, get married and/or become a parent.
If that’s still not old enough for public education to purposely challenge their thinking, then age-appropriate looks like a false front, a disingenuous argument meant to delay long enough to keep most kids from EVER being old enough to get a real liberal arts education rather than mere training for duty, work, law and order.
So what do the experts (from Harvard, let’s say) see as appropriate literature study for honors students? Funny you should ask — look how controversial THIS is!
*I clicked on the Gone With the Wind card at the website above, oh boy, what a read! (is it fit for high school English scholars though, or is it dangerously inappropriate? Who decides?)
Speaking of Maine, that’s not far up the coast from Gloucester, where teen pregnancy by choice is the (inappropriate imo) high school theme despite whatever schools and parents think they’re teaching about any sort of sex gay, straight or immaculate, and about which CW and I have had the conversation before:
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From Pregnant teens gone wild:
Hi CW, I think I very much agree with this view.
Teen pregnancy is dysfunctional in this culture and economy, a major threat to any girl’s opportunities for true life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. So teen pregnancy certainly makes no sense for girls to “want” or for us to dream of and work toward for our society. It is not a good thing.
And yet I imagine you and I also agree that the changes leading to a better life all around, are not something we can inflict on teens or their families and community. Society cannot decree that the people of Gloucester are dysfunctional so we will force them and their teens to live and choose and work our prescribed way.
We the public will not step in and retool the failed fishing economy of this town by assigning the boys to certain jobs and making them stay in residence there for their whole lives, and produce for the common good. No government local or federal can by public policy terminate these dysfunctional pregnancies against the girls’ own choice, nor require every girl in high school next year to take the pill, etc. Nor sterilize the girls and put them to work too. We won’t pass laws based on our ideas of what is best, forcing OR forbidding all teens to have sex, get pregnant or stay pregnant, get married or stay married, keep their babies or give them away, etc.
The contraceptives and sex education issue — “birth control” — interested me as public policy because it was all there in the school and community already, but so clearly ineffectual. I’m thinking this tells us more about how ineffectual if not irrelevant, the whole “public education” system is to this community, how it just doesn’t change lives for the better no matter how good the intent or the tax money spent. (All the academics I mean, all the professional teachers, not just health and sex ed.)
If a Gloucester generation had been really educated rather than merely schooled, wouldn’t it have helped this community in all sorts of ways we could agree would be better for everyone than girls getting pregnant and having babies?
“One parent objecting to any academic resource shouldn’t even get the resource removed, much less the TEACHER.”
Never? What if it was an African-American parent in an overwhelmingly white school objecting to a resource perceived as being racist?
Schools go out of their way to be sensitive to the feelings of certain minority groups. Why are traditionalist Christians (who are very much a minority in this country at the current time) not accorded the same courtesy?
In general, I feel that government-run schools ought to err on the side of avoiding controversial materials unless there is a compelling enough educational argument in favor of including them. So Huck Finn in an English class, yes. Evolution in a biology class, definitely. Some parents likely will object, but the educational value of those topics is widely accepted.
An agenda-driven pop science article in an English class doesn’t meet that criteria IMHO. I don’t think the guy ought to be fired over the incident, but I do think the school ought to institute a policy of requiring administrative review before teachers assign materials touching on “hot button” issues.
Nope.
Do that and we might as well stop even pretending it’s education, and just crawl back into the primordial ooze.
Why are traditionalist Christians (who are very much a minority in this country at the current time)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
Although there is always a cry of persecution from the religious right, I have never seen numbers to support the claim.
Nance
What’s traditional about Sarah Palin’s pentecostal evangelical witch-hunting and wolf shooting, anyway? Never mind Bachmann who is just traditionally loony tunes . . .
And however much of a minority Christians might claim to be even as they also claim this is a traditionally Christian nation of which they are the rightful heirs, atheists as we just established are the true persecuted minority at less than 20% — and openly, systematically unprotected from discrimination in every sphere.
I could not find any more recent numbers, but the Barna Group did a survey back in 2001 asking respondents how they came to make moral decisions. Only roughly 1 in 4 said it was based on religious principles. A similar percentage indicated that all 8 of the following behaviors were morally objectionable: cohabitation, homosexual relations, explicit sexual behavior in movies and videos, explicit sexual behavior and nudity in magazines, use of profanity, getting drunk, and sexual fantasies about someone other than one’s spouse. And those numbers included not just Christians but everyone.
3/4 of Americans may claim “Christian” as their religious affiliation, but only a minority of those are traditionalists. Certainly I can see evidence of this among my extended family. All of them would claim to be Christians (even my middle brother, the self-proclaimed “Christian Deist”) but only my grandmother and I are traditionalists.
So the first paragraph is the test of who is and who isn’t a TC?
And, according to a 2001 survey, only 25% of the population meets that (imo stringent) standard?
While 75% claim affiliation with some of the items in the test?
That’s not a minority. That’s a movement within a majority.
Nance
A ruling, arrogantly self-absorbed majority trying to pull the ladder up behind itself.