There is a troubling case in Michigan where Alan Barron, a public school teacher at Monroe Middle School, has been suspended for teaching an eighth grade class on racial segregation and discrimination that included a video discussing how white entertainers would once use black face paint. The lesson by Barron, 59, also included discussions of Jim Crow. While the notion of academic freedom is different in elementary and middle schools than on the graduate level, it is still troubling to see such a suspension reportedly based on the simple depiction and discussion of such forms of discrimination. There is no indication that Barron was doing anything more than showing the practices, which are still commonly referenced in books and even contemporary politics. Indeed, we continue to see cases involving black face arise and this lesson gave students background understandings of such controversies. (He has now been reinstated).
Barron is set to retire this year after 36 years in the district. Parents and students objected that the lesson was interesting and accurate. However an Administrator who sat in on Barron’s class said that it was offensive.
Barron also is supervisor of Monroe Township.
My concern is that this teacher was suspended on what appears the reaction of this one supervisor. Teachers on every level need to be able feel some flexibility in teaching such subjects. History is a particularly important subject in the shaping of citizens. They need to know our checkered history on race and such videos visually register with the students. Indeed, the students found the class to be extremely valuable. To curtail such history to avoid potentially unpopular or uncomfortable subjects is a myopic and self-defeating act in my view.
What is missing from these stories is any indication that the supervisor’s actions will be reviewed or at least explained.
History be damned…
… This way we CAN repeat it!
Freedom requires self-reliance. If the Founders expected Americans to be completely self-reliant, why don’t you? If people pay for their food, shelter, transportation, etc., why don’t they pay for their education. I just don’t understand. What rational set of elected officials would allow governmental workers in the form of teachers’ unions to strike against the American taxpayer. Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers. It’s unacceptable for a governmental worker to strike. That would never happen in the military and governmental workers are essentially the same as the military. You don’t and should never go in to governmental work to get rich or for high levels of pay. And the government should never have been allowed to takeover an entire industry such as that of education. Not in a free America.
Are you on welfare, food stamps, unemployment extensions, etc.? Are you employed by the government or otherwise through affirmative action?
John, We’ve already seen what happens with the cost of a college education, especially at private colleges. Now you want to put the profit motive to basic K-12 education? Were you home schooled by parents who were home schooled?
frankm, thanks for Nina Simone!
Paul,
The Founders OBTAINED FREEDOM for Americans; freedom from a monarchy. The current equivalent of the monarchy of 1776 is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Americans must obtain freedom from that dictatorship.
Being forced to buy a product is anti-American. If a product fails, Americans must be free to purchase an alternative.
The right of freedom of education should have been upheld by an objective SCOTUS in support of the Preamble and Constitution. Private schools exist but are denied dominion by the judicial branch. The SCOTUS should not deter freedom of education as it supports the “blessings of liberty,” the Preamble and the Constitution.
Education is not infrastructure or general welfare that is needed and consumed equally by all citizens as water, electricity, roadways and mail are. Every child requires an amount of water daily; all children will not succeed in calculus and chemistry class. Fork lift drivers don’t need and can not assimilate the same education as a nuclear physicist.
Americans must have freedom of speech, thought and education. Freedom and self-reliance must prevail over insurrectionist collectivism. Votes may not be cast against the Preamble and Constitution. Votes may not be cast to eliminate our “blessings of liberty” or to make equal the outcome of our lives, even as “all men are created equal.”
This reminds me of and old Civil Rights song by Nina Simone ” Mississippi goddam” (Caution some may find the lyrics offensive):
Mississippi Goddam is a song written and performed by American singer and pianist Nina Simone. It was first released on her album Nina Simone in Concert which was based on recordings of three concerts she gave at Carnegie Hall in 1964. The album was her first release for the Dutch label Philips Records and is indicative of the more political turn her recorded music took during this period. The song was released as a single and became a civil rights activist anthem.[1] It was banned [1] in several Southern states, ostensibly because of the word ‘goddam’ in the title. Together with “Four Women” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” it is one of her most famous protest songs and self-written compositions.
The song is her response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi; and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children. On the recording she cynically announces the song as “a show tune, but the show hasn’t been written for it yet”. The song begins jauntily, with a show tune feel, but demonstrates its political focus early on with its refrain “Alabama’s got me so upset, Tennessee’s made me lose my rest, and everybody knows about Mississippi goddam”. In the song she says: “Keep on sayin’ ‘go slow’…to do things gradually would bring more tragedy. Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you feel it? I don’t know, I don’t know. You don’t have to live next to me, just give me my equality!”
She performed the song in front of 40,000 people at the end of one of the Selma to Montgomery marches when she and other black activists, including Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte crossed police lines.
http://youtu.be/LJ25-U3jNWM
Privatize schools and colleges.
Public school is unconstitutional. It would be a “blessing of liberty” if we were able to choose curricula and schools. If people can afford houses, cars, vacations, etc., they can afford tuition. Public school is redistribution of wealth to derelict parents and teachers’ unions. For most districts, public school is simply daycare.
The Constitution does not mandate education, what students are taught or that they be politically indoctrinated. The cost of school is skewed by governmental and striking teachers’ union interference. Tuition and teacher educational level and wages will be set by competitive market forces. Most and certainly advanced degrees are not necessary for teaching the same subject over and over. Degrees have very little effect in the classroom. The are obtained only to provide artificial and disingenuous “justification” for more and evermore increasing teacher pay and compensation packages. $120K+, bonuses, proficiency pay, medical, dental, vision, four week vacations, sick leave, spring break, Thanksgiving through New Years, and all summer off.
Public school has a 50% failure rate as it pays absolutely ridiculously absurd wage levels to teachers who don’t need or use most of their “educational background” or degrees (high school diplomas with particular course training will do nicely).
50% or more of teachers should be terminated. We pay for the Maserati version and all we need is that of the Yugo. Enormous efficiencies are rejected by teacher’ unions to continue make-work, high-paying, do-nothing and obsolete jobs. Curricula should be condensed with superfluous and athletic segments eliminated. Classes should be automated with big screens or at-home classes on home computers. One national CD for algebra, chemistry, history, etc. should be played over and over for each class. There is no need for bricks and mortar public schools.
Centralization is not arguable as most people drive their children to school wherever it is located.
Privatization of the education industry will compel it to innovate, grow and flourish. Families will enjoy the “blessing of liberty” of choosing appropriate and affordable education.
Public school is not a “blessing of liberty” and is not congruent with the Preamble and Constitution.
John – New Orleans has gone to only charter schools for its public education. Since it had the opportunity to start from scratch, they decided charter schools were more effective then reopening their public school system.
Wow, the one place in the U. S. where kids don’t have YouTube.
Hello. Most of what anyone learns in history is going to be ‘offensive’. There’s no way to avoid it! We’ll never grow if we don’t or can’t learn.
Was the teacher black and the supervisor white? Whatever the race of the two, this is indeed a chilling sign. Michigan has experienced a coup d’etat in the governorship and in Detroit as democracy and just dealings with public servants in the city has been very shabby and authoritarian. The treatment of the teacher was authoritarian and bigoted and anti-democratic in that he was doing what schools are supposed to do in a democracy: teach history honestly and openly, irrespective of the thin skins of people whose race in the past and all too often in the present practice discrimination against those who are not like them.
Paul;
Innocence lost means there’s much to gain via knowledge of it all.
Helen;
Don’t concur – teach GW (and point out the hypocrisy).
As for other”hand” matters –
well………
I do not think that students should be taught about George Washington at all. he had slaves. Or Jack Mehoff for that matter.
I imagine this teacher could not lecture on the Holocaust, Pol Pot, the Cultural Revolution, the list goes on.
Paul Schulte and I have taught in public schools. PC is out of control. This does not shock or even surprise me.
The suggestion that kids “should not be exposed” to this subject matter is the same logic that likely led to the removing of the educator.
Our schools need ethics 101, discrimination 101 and legal 101 classes.
Subject matters germane – ALWAYS!
Those who forget the past………
This is truly assinine. Teaching the kids there are parts of history to which they should not be exposed.
leejcaroll – if you would read the textbooks for US History for high schools, you would see that there are clearly areas of history that students should not know.
“History is a particularly important subject in the shaping of citizens. They need to know our checkered history on race and such videos visually register with the students. Indeed, the students found the class to be extremely valuable. To curtail such history to avoid potentially unpopular or uncomfortable subjects is a myopic and self-defeating act in my view.” – JT
Well said.
‘When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness’. Alexis de Tocqueville
from history to mystification by…skipping on content! or Form without Content!
PC gone amok as usual. They would have a hemorrhage in a good history of the theatre class. ‘Blackface’ or ‘blacking up’ was good for a full lecture. And Birth of a Nation has the villain in blackface.