“We took the allegations seriously,” said Chris Patton, a communication officer with Lake County Schools. “All teachers are bound by a code of special ethics (and) this is a code ethics violation investigation.”
Fox News has this story about a teacher in Florida who has been suspended for opposing gay marrige on his personal facebook page.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/19/florida-teacher-suspended-for-anti-gay-marriage-post-on-personal-facebook/
Let us set aside the debate over gay marrigae for a second. The issue is whether this teacher should lose his job over what he posted on his personal Facebook page. As far as I can tell, he didn't use epithets to describe homosexuals, such as the F-word. Nor did he send his views (on Israel) via e-mail to students in his class as did a "prominent" professor at UC Santa Barbara a couple of years back. Instead, Mr Buell expressed his apparently religious-based views on gay marriage in a personal forum.
I myself have expressed my own opposition to gay marriage on this blog. Does that mean that UC-Irvine should terminate me from my part-time teaching job there? According to some people, I guess so. Yet, it appears that UCI respects my right of free speech, especially since I don't take it into my classroom. I can assure you that any gay student in my classes will have no problems whatsoever and would not even know what my views on the subject-or any other issue-were.
Two final points:
1 This school district-especially Mr. Patton- needs to brush up on the Constitution-specifically, the First Amendment.
2 I wonder what action they would take had the teacher been Muslim and expressed the opinion in class that homosexuality was punishable by death-based on his religious views. (Silly me. That would be Islamophobic.)
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7 comments:
On its face, and on principal, I agree.
I'm trying to examine how I would look at it if the teacher posted on his Facebook page that "niggers are subhuman" etc.
Would that impact his fitness to teach, especially in integrated schools? Probably.
Is writing about gay marriage different? Yes, it can be. He hasn't, so far, been accused of saying that gays are unfit for higher education, for example. He hasn't said you can't teach them science, math, or geography.
He has said, on his own dime, outside the classroom, that two otherwise perfectly human individuals who are of the same sex should not MARRY.
It is also an expression of opinion on a matter still very much a publicly debated issue -- no matter how much some people think its already settled. Further, it is a matter of religious belief. So, it does not pertain to any ethics relevant to his ability to teach.
But we should remember... sixty years ago, Readers Digest was carefully presenting "both sides of racial segregation." One hundred eighty years ago, slavery was very much a matter of public debate, not a settled constitutional issue.
There are subjective lines of judgment involved here.
Siarlys,
In the future, pls try to use "N-word" instead. If we all truly put that word to bed, it can disappear from the English language. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am not comfortable with it even in your innocent context.
How is this teacher guilty of an ethical code violation according to that daffy Mr Patton?
I will keep in mind that you are not comfortable with it. I always put it in quotation marks when I use it. But one thing I HAVE noticed in Milwaukee is that people of dark complexion use it loudly and in public dozens of times a day. I remember the time a young man in a corner of the library at the Boys and Girls club was lecturing some younger kids on something ending in "... because we n____." I still regret that I did not walk over and tell him "Ain't no n____ in this club." I have said that on other occasions, out loud, but didn't think fast enough that time.
I agree we should put the word out of business. I've been reading up on some of the military training camps in 1941, and one officer had a reputation for not allowing the word to be used by any white person talking to a black person, or by any black person talking to another black person, even for fun. I've heard high school tour groups at the Schomburg Center emphatically told by a tour guide that it is NEVER OK to use the word. But she did pronounce it to tell them so.
Dog Scoop shouldn't use it either.
Anyone who is in the business of educatin the younguns needs to abstain from Facebook, My Space, etc. If one blogs then they need to do it in stealth mode.
I don't know... Gary teaches at a publicly funded university, and he speaks in his own name. I use a family name and a foreign analog because I don't want the whole cyber world to come crashing into my personal life, although most of my friends know my nom de plume. I would say this teacher has a sound case if they try to retaliate against him for his free speech.
The teacher probably would have a good case but who needs all that drama. Stealth mode is better for those employed in a public school (k-12) setting.
Stealth mode has its advantages. But if the internet is moving in the direction envisioned by Arthur C. Clarke, where the whole world population could some day have on line discussion and debate on global political issues, then vote on them, it is going to be a problem if employers can coerce your civic participation like that. It goes back to when the secret ballot was instituted, because powerful and wealthy men could take down names when votes were cast publicly. Only now, part of the civic participation WILL be publicly available. This might be worth drawing a line in the sane and fighting over. We can all get together long enough to suppress a little political correctness here.
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