6:30am July 5, 2015

➸ Teacher Fired for Stepping on U.S. Flag

fierceawakening:

madeofpatterns:
tiffanarchy:

risinginsurgency:

thinksquad:

An Illinois teacher fired was fired for stepping on the American flag while teaching a lesson on free speech. Jordan Parmenter had been using the flag as a pointer during a lesson on the subject, and then stepped on it when a student complained to further illustrate his point. He was put on leave regarding the incident on May 15, and the Martinsville school board now voted 6-0 to fire him.

Well they proved the lesson on free speech: It doesnt exist.

That is so fucking ridiculous. He was demonstrating free of speech and then essentially had his revoked.
America.

It’s not just that he was stepping on a flag though.
It’s that he was doing something that was upsetting to his student, and responded to complaints by doing that thing even more intensely. Which, depending on context we don’t have, *might* have been an ok thing to do, or it might have been profoundly cruel.
And we don’t know if there were patterns in how that teacher was treating his students.
And we don’t know from the story how old the kids involved were. It’s a different story if they were 7 than if they were 17.
Like, the story might be “school board seriously misses the point and fires a teacher for no good reason”. Or it might be “teacher finally fired for being mean to students one time too many convinces a reporter that this is about free speech”.

I think how I’d feel about that really depends, just like you say, on context we don’t have.
I’ve taught classes, and I’ve sometimes been told that beliefs I in fact hold (whether I said I did or just said “and some people think x”) are profoundly offensive – usually by students who were raised very conservative. And when these students have challenged me in this way, it’s involved a lot of grandstanding and “well, the only reason we’re even having this conversation is because You People are grossly immoral,” often said outright.
And… Mm. I do respect people’s feelings, but I also feel that there are sometimes lessons where a fundamental part of the point is making students feel uncomfortable.
I don’t mean trying to upset them. But I do mean, sometimes in something like a philosophy class, part of the point of a day’s lesson will be to get people to look at and think about why they have the intuitions they do. And sometimes teachers will use things that challenge students as a way to do that.
I don’t know why the guy stepped on it after a student said they were uncomfortable. I don’t have access to the exchange.
But I also don’t think wrapping a pointer in the flag to make a point about free speech is wrong (except insofar as the guy apparently, ironically, misunderstood free speech laws!), nor do I think it becomes wrong if someone is offended and doesn’t if they’re not.
(These types of concerns, not incidentally at all, are why I feel conflicted about trigger warnings in classes. I’m okay with them on principle, and have had teachers that voluntarily used them and I appreciated it. So in theory: yeah. Go ahead!
But I also can’t shake a niggling worry about whether they might begin creation of a climate where teachers fear to make students uncomfortable, even in ways that foster critical thinking – an important skill where schools seem to be losing what ability to teach it they once had.)

All of which is relevant to why I think the context matters.