Reply #60: utter abject nonsense [View All]

[iverglas]

and a big old straw person to boot:

I think teachers & students have the right to the freedom of expression,you can,t stop being a person of faith at the school door.

Second point first: no one suggested that anyone stop being anything at any school door. Teachers may BE anything they want; what they SAY in the classroom is a matter over which the public has say.

"Freedom of expression" does NOT mean that teachers may impose speech about something that has nothing to do with the curriculum they are hired to teach on a captive audience of students.

Teachers have the same right as anyone else to possess pornographic images and to use four-letter words in conversation: free speech, y'know. Does this mean that they must be permitted to exhibit pornographic images in the classroom, and use four-letter words in their lectures?

People have the right to be racists and misogynists and bigots. Does this mean that teachers must be permitted to call their students names?

STUDENTS have a right to an education in the public schools, and have the right not to be have their exercise of that right interfered with by anyone -- students, teachers, administrators, guests -- treating them differently on the basis of their personal characteristics.

Students who do not share this teacher's beliefs were being discriminated against by being forced to listen to his insulting and intimidating speech. And even if such a teacher would never have treated dissenting students differently when it came to assigning their marks, a student with any sense would be very much afraid that dissenting would result in a lower chance of success in the class. Both the immediate negative effect and the fear of further negative effects, depending on his/her response to the first problem, would plainly have a stifling effect on the student's ability to do what s/he is in the class to do: learn.

The teacher is free to say what he wants to anyone who wants to hear it. He is not "free" to violate the terms of the contract to which he has voluntarily become a party, which requires that he teach his students the curriculum he was hired to teach, not insult and harass them, without suffering the consequences: disciplinary action of whatever sort is provided for in that contract.