12-27-2016, 09:24 PM
It looks as if some Trump supporters (including some local Republican Party cells) don't appreciate academic freedom. Above a certain level of sophistication of students (roughly middle school) teachers in some subjects are likely to introduce potentially-controversial positions. Academic freedom does not protect teachers or professors from losing jobs for incompetence (let us say a biology teacher asserting that a frog is a mammal or a teacher of any kind denying the Holocaust) or teacher misconduct (like lewd behavior). Teachers are rightly protected from student misconduct, and are not expected to change their positions on current issues just because there is a new President or that the majority has changed in Congress or the State Legislature. Teachers have the right to their opinions but of course must recognize that there usually is another side (unless a dry fact or a controversy settled definitively decades ago).
Even as a substitute teacher I have had to deal with homophobia, including a time in which a student bragged that he loved to beat gays with a baseball bat. I of course called him on it because such is a crime (assault, potentially murder) and he accused me of being a homosexual. Eventually I turned most of the class against him, which I would never do on a trivial issue. Ordinarily one does not embarrass a student in the presence of his peers because such betrays the teacher-student bond -- but he betrayed that bond by exposing me as a homosexual who deserved to be beaten up. (I dodged the issue of whether I was a homosexual or not because violent crime is consummately dangerous, and I could have never satisfied him that I was straight. I could state that homosexuality was de facto legal in Michigan because nobody has been arrested for homosexual acts per se unless they involve some deed that would be illegal for a straight person, like messing with a child). I got my point across when I said that attacking gays for being gay was as senseless as attacking people for being "dentists or plumbers".
But I know what academic freedom is and is not. I follow the basic rules and the lesson plan, and if someone wants to assert that evolution is a hoax, then I have resources at my disposal... such as that from the neck down we humans are stereotypical apes, that pig valves can be used as heart valves in humans, that DNA dictates what life is, and that Linnaeus created a system of classifications that demonstrate the relatedness of all living things. If someone wants to disparage evolution as contrary to the Word of God, then I must ask whether God forged evidence of evolution to trick otherwise-upstanding people into a damnable sin... God as a Deceiver? I want nothing to do with such a god.
I am about to set up a news story. We may see more of this.
Even as a substitute teacher I have had to deal with homophobia, including a time in which a student bragged that he loved to beat gays with a baseball bat. I of course called him on it because such is a crime (assault, potentially murder) and he accused me of being a homosexual. Eventually I turned most of the class against him, which I would never do on a trivial issue. Ordinarily one does not embarrass a student in the presence of his peers because such betrays the teacher-student bond -- but he betrayed that bond by exposing me as a homosexual who deserved to be beaten up. (I dodged the issue of whether I was a homosexual or not because violent crime is consummately dangerous, and I could have never satisfied him that I was straight. I could state that homosexuality was de facto legal in Michigan because nobody has been arrested for homosexual acts per se unless they involve some deed that would be illegal for a straight person, like messing with a child). I got my point across when I said that attacking gays for being gay was as senseless as attacking people for being "dentists or plumbers".
But I know what academic freedom is and is not. I follow the basic rules and the lesson plan, and if someone wants to assert that evolution is a hoax, then I have resources at my disposal... such as that from the neck down we humans are stereotypical apes, that pig valves can be used as heart valves in humans, that DNA dictates what life is, and that Linnaeus created a system of classifications that demonstrate the relatedness of all living things. If someone wants to disparage evolution as contrary to the Word of God, then I must ask whether God forged evidence of evolution to trick otherwise-upstanding people into a damnable sin... God as a Deceiver? I want nothing to do with such a god.
I am about to set up a news story. We may see more of this.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.