We have another video raising questions over the rules relating to free speech for students in high school. This video (below) was taken in North Rowan High School in North Carolina where a teacher screams at a student that he can be arrested for disrespecting President Obama. The teacher went ballistic after a student responded to the account of Mitt Romney bullying a student as a teen by noting that President Obama admitted that he had bullied a student in his youth. [Update: the teacher has been suspended pending investigation].
In my view, the class seemed unruly and the students were combative with the teacher. However, the teacher seemed equally unruly and more importantly misstated the law on comments about the president. Notably, the student was right on both the law and the facts on bullying.
After the student notes that Obama admitted to bullying a girl, the teacher screams “Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?” She tells the student and the class that “you are not supposed to slander the president.” The student correctly states that you can only be arrested for threatening the president, but the teacher will hear none of it. She insists that it is ok to call Romney a bully but not Obama because the former is running for president while the latter is president. Accordingly, under the teacher’s rather mutated view of civics and constitutional law, “there is no comparison.”
The teacher sounds increasingly unhinged and screams that the men are not “equal” and adds “Let me tell you something … you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom.”
What concerns me is how such misinformation is conveyed to students who shape their views of basic liberties in our public schools. I feel it is appropriate for teachers in high school to lead discussions about politics, which can obviously get partisan and unruly. I also believe that it is important for the teachers to enforce civility rules. However, alleging that the President or Romney was a bully is not uncivil. It is a contemporary issue in the presidential election. It happens to be an excellent issue to raise in class to show that bullying can cause not just immediate but later problems for students. It also allows for a discussion how relevant such bullying is to the question of character to lead the nation. The key is to control the discussion while getting the law and facts right.
Source: Salisbury as first seen on Reddit.
“He also said that if he’s asked who he’ll vote for, he’ll reply, “I’m not going to vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover!” Many of the congregants cheer and reply, “Amen.””
Fair enough you say, Propaganda I say. First step to dehumanizing those you oppose. First amendment rights out the window. Just a mirror of what the preacher says: “We hate them and we shall kill them. Thus saith the Lord.”
Can we not do better than they do? NB Not ALL the congregation stood up and said Amen.
When will you have the courage to not stand up and cheer next time you sit in a similar situation.
Difficult, isn’t it?
Jill,
Relax, you just happened to touch the wrong key in your fumbling. Happens to me often. first, look to see if you have jumped to the previous tab, if so go forward to the one you were on….if not. see if you have cancelled that JT page. if so, reactivate, your post will be there or will be posted. The fascists are not out for you nor are supporters of Obama. Calm toi.
All these key shortcuts are a pain for us norms, but the supertechs, or normalst as they call themselves, love them.
Labels, and unqualified labels. Can we not discuss anything without these cnnvenient but analysis killing labelling? No names, if you are heare you know who you are, so intelligent are you.
Creeping fascism==fear; southern hatred of Obama=dumb rednecks unqualified to vote.
You’re beginning to sound like 30 sec spot ads.
All of us, except me. Mine are the 4 minute videos. Equally balanced. HA.
Absolute rubbish all around delivered with the most uneducated tones of voice all around. What a disgrace to the U.S.
The one dying ember of hope was the guy who showed he was aware of the first amendment until he was clobbered with rubbish and essentially silienced.
Rachel,
I don’t hear anything in the teacher’s remarks that suggest anything but ignorance. Not liberal, not conservative, not much of anything except ignorant, at least on the topic under discussion.
And college profs are supposed to challenge your beliefs. How else are you to know that your beliefs are sound? They are also trying to open you up to critical thinking (if you didn’t get that in high school). If your beliefs don’t hold up to their challenges, maybe you should reconsider what you believe. If they do hold up after the challenges, you’ll have a much better and stronger grasp of them.
And this teacher doesn’t understand the Miranda Rights rule either. She acts like she thinks she’s a lawyer…but she misstates all the laws she references: slander, First Amendment laws, Miranda law. And to Randolf Erb…the Soviets started the cold war when they invaded Finland alongside Hitler in 1940, long before the US was involved in the war. Seems you didn’t work too hard on that Yalta report.
This lady should have never been allowed inside a school in the first place. I am a 18 year old college student in Florida and I have enough on my plate dealing with liberal or atheists professers constantly challenging my beliefs. Funny thing how these people constantly get away with perverting facts and screaming at you trying to change your beliefs and they hardly get punished for it. If this teacher had been a conservative and acted the way she did the school board would have roasted her alive instead of the school protecting her and giving her a paid vacation. Again funny how liberals seem to have friends in high places (wink-wink).
Cell phones in class. I am the teacher. I say to principal: its me or the cell phones. If they show up with them I put them in the vice and crush them. If they can not leave them outside the class room then the kid does not get in. If they bring one in then I crush the cell phone in the vice. Ok. Next problem.
Torture guy. Alberto Gonzales, is no longer there, either.
Could you name them goes for both the people Obama has murdered and the Bush cabinet members?
Really? Could you name them? I know Rumsfeld, Cheney, Yoo, Addington and Bolton are not in Obama’s administration They support Romney.
Obama put key architects of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial crimes, torture etc. as heads of agencies in his administration. I’m not certain you want to point to the number of Bush leftovers both men have surrounding them. Obama might win that count!
Still the much deeper point which is going unaddressed is why so many good people do support pastors who call for killing/torturing people and a president who already does torture and kill people, as well as a govt. which supports the Ugandan president who wants to kill all gay people?
This is all wrong. We need to understand why this is happening.
The teacher in question could use additional training in classroom management and debate-moderation skills, although if she allows cell phones in her class she has already lost the battle in any event. My younger brother who has taught public high school in Southern California for 30 years tells me that of the 40 kids he has in his class this semester, only three of them bothered to do a major term project — and none of those three did it correctly. “They spend most of their time looking at their cell-phones” he says. Since he finally earns a decent paycheck after so many years of working for peanuts, school administrators think that they can get him to quit if they pack his classes with the worst behavior cases they can find. It hasn’t worked yet, but still they go on trying. He usually begins each new term by telling the misfits and malcontents seated before him: “We all know why we’re here. They don’t like me, either.” I don’t know enough about this particular teacher and school administration to say whether or not a similar situation pertains here.
As to the merits of the case under discussion, though, it would seem that the teacher and students haven’t kept up with certain recently enacted laws. Otherwise they would have used terms “indefinite military detention” and “drone assassination” instead of the quaint misnomer “arrested.” As Noam Chomski put it recently: “If Bush didn’t like someone, he had them disappeared. If Obama doesn’t like someone, he has them murdered.” Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.
When it comes to constitutionally guaranteed freedoms: Bush/Cheney, bad; Obama, worse; Romney, either or both, depending on the day and position of the sun overhead.
Pastors have been mainly homophobic until recently. Romney has 37 people on his staff from the Bush administration. Many were the architects of the Iraq and Afghan wars plus torture. He does not merely employ homophobes with otherwise good intentions.
It’s not actually off topic. People are not thinking clearly in our society. They are accepting actions and ideas which cause harm up to and including the torture and murder of other human beings. Again, I feel this has intensified since 9/11.
Now good people support a man who commits murder and torture. Other good people support hatred and cruelty towards gay men and women. The US govt. is itself a heavy contributor to Uganda whose president also believe gay people should be murdered.
I grant you that many supporters of those who torture and murder or who want to do these things are not good people, but many are. If it was only bad people who supported these actions the wouldn’t have traction. Yet, this govt. and these pastors all have support from people who are good?
We desperately need to understand how it is that we have come to this in our nation.
Way off topic–but another story from North Carolina:
Charles L. Worley, North Carolina Pastor: Put Gays And Lesbians In Electrified Pen To Kill Them Off
05/21/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/north-carolina-pastor-gay-rant-starvation_n_1533463.html
Excerpt:
The barrage of anti-gay sermons delivered by North Carolina-based pastors to hit the blogosphere continues with yet another disturbing rant caught on tape.
The pastor, identified on YouTube as Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C., condemns President Obama’s much-publicized endorsement of same-sex marriage while calling for gays and lesbians to be put in an electrified pen and ultimately killed off.
“Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there,” Worley suggests in the clip, reportedly filmed on May 13.
He continues: “Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out…and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out…do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”
He also said that if he’s asked who he’ll vote for, he’ll reply, “I’m not going to vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover!” Many of the congregants cheer and reply, “Amen.”
Maybe that teacher just finally had with white christian homophobic southerners.
http://www.towleroad.com/2012/05/nc-pastor-wants-to-build-electrified-fence-to-contain-starve-and-ultimately-kill-gays-video.html Some of these Obama critics in North Carolina are getting really scary and guess what they are not teachers. They are preachers and, no, they won’t be fired. I don’t think too many people are afraid of Obama at least not in the south. They hate him openly and are acting out on his support of gay marriage.
What this teacher did is wrong, yet in many ways she was expressing the zeitgeist in America today. Glenn Greenwald writes about how Connie Chung told Martina Natarolva to leave the US and go home because she criticized the fascist policies of Bush. Oprah screamed at a young woman who dared to question why we were going to war against Iraq. Many people take great umbrage over even mild criticism of Obama, demanding to know why you “don’t like him”. So what gives?
This is part of the creepy and creeping fascism in the US since 9/11. In part, although the teacher did not mean it this way, she was speaking truthfully. It is dangerous to criticize the president. It can get you spied on, arrested, jailed, beaten by police, even tortured. Think of the people in the occupy movement or Bradley Manning. They have paid a price for speaking out.
BTW, my post was erased on the first try. I have no idea if this will go through.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/21/nc-teacher-captured-on-video-suggesting-student-could-be-arrested-for-obama/ Teacher unions are not as strong in the south. This results in lower pay and sometimes lower quality.