Part-time students would lose eligibility for Pell Grants under a bill proposed by House Republicans.
Also on Community College Spotlight: An allegedly racist cartoon has stirred controversy at a California community college.
Idiocy implodes
October 5, 2011 By
After threatening a professor with disorderly conduct charges for Firefly and anti-fascism posters on his office door, administrators at the University of Wisconsin at Stout have backed down, reports FIRE. Free speech is an important value, said the administrators in an e-mail.
It is important to note that the posters were not removed to censor the professor in question. Rather, they were removed out of legitimate concern for the violent messages contained in each poster and the belief that the posters ran counter to our primary mission to provide a campus that is welcoming, safe and secure.
In retrospect, however, it is clear that the removal of the posters - although done with the best intent – did have the effect of casting doubt on UW-Stout’s dedication to the principles embodied in the First Amendment, especially the ability to express oneself freely.
UW-Stout will let Professor James Miller display his posters and will review procedures for “handling these kinds of cases.”
Among those protesting the decision was actor Adam Baldwin, one of the stars of Firefly, who’d asked Miller if he knew of other “violent” posters on campus. UW-Stout tolerated numerous ”Kill the Bill” posters — a take-off on the movie Kill Bill – as part of a campus-wide protest held in February against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill.
Warning: Idiocy at UW-Stout
September 29, 2011 By
A professor’s posters that call for fighting fair and warn of fascism aren’t protected by free-speech rights, claims the chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Stout (UWS).
James Miller, a theater professor, started with a poster featuring a line from the TV series Firefly. The sci-fi space pilot played by Nathan Fillion says: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.”
A literate person would read the message: I fight fair.
Campus police removed the poster because it “refer[s] to killing” and “can be interpreted as a threat,” reports Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). When Miller asked for respect for his First Amendment rights, the police chief responded: “If you choose to repost the article or something similar to it, it will be removed and you could face charges of disorderly conduct.”
Miller put up a “Warning: Fascism” poster. “Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets.”
A literate person would read the message: Fascism is bad because it leads to violence, which is bad.
Campus police removed it because it “depicts violence and mentions violence and death” and could “be constituted as a threat,” according to the university’s “threat assessment team.”
Despite FIRE’s publicity campaign, which lead to a wave of ridicule, Chancellor Charles Sorensen, Provost Julie Furst-Bowe and Vice Chancellor Ed Nieskes defended censorship in an e-mail to faculty and staff, claiming the posters “constituted an implied threat of violence.”
This was not an act of censorship. This was an act of sensitivity to and care for our shared community, and was intended to maintain a campus climate in which everyone can feel welcome, safe and secure.
Everyone can feel welcome, safe and secure except for people who like to express their opinions.
The university administration’s idiocy boggles the mind.
‘Kindness pledge’ divides Harvard
September 17, 2011 By
Harvard is asking first-year students to sign a pledge to uphold the college’s values:
. . . In the classroom, in extracurricular endeavors, and in the Yard and Houses, students are expected to act with integrity, respect, and industry, and to sustain a community characterized by inclusiveness and civility.
As we begin at Harvard, we commit to upholding the values of the College and to making the entryway and Yard a place where all can thrive and where the exercise of kindness holds a place on a par with intellectual attainment.
Originally, signatures — and blank spaces by the names of non-signers — were to be displayed in entryways, but that idea was dropped.
Pressuring all students to sign the pledge sets a terrible precedent, writes Harry Lewis a computer science professor and former dean of Harvard College.
It is not a pledge to act in a certain way. It is a pledge to think about the world a certain way, to hold precious the exercise of kindness. It is a promise to control one’s thoughts. . . . A student would be breaking the pledge if she woke up one morning and decided it was more important to achieve intellectually than to be kind.
. . . the right to be annoying is precious, as is the right to think unkind thoughts. Harvard should not condone the sacrifice of rights to speech and thought simply because they can be inconvenient in a residential college.
The kindness pledge — as it’s now known — is “hilariously inappropriate and offensively coercive” adds Charles Fried, who teaches First Amendment law at Harvard.
“Harvard needs bold, courageous, iconoclastic thinkers, but this pledge indicates that the dean would really prefer good little boys and girls who don’t make trouble,” writes Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, which defends free-speech rights.
It seems especially ironic that a fundamentally elitist institution like Harvard would claim that inclusiveness is one of its greatest values. Keep in mind, this is an institution that rejects the overwhelming majority of people who apply, then pits them against each other for grades, kicks out some for failing, heaps glory upon those who succeed with particular distinction, and takes credit for the earth-shattering accomplishments of its hyper-elite graduates.
The pledge is anti-intellectual, Virginia Postrel writes. Kindness seeks to avoid hurt.
Criticism — even objective, impersonal, well- intended, constructive criticism — isn’t kind. Criticism hurts people’s feelings, and it hurts most when the recipient realizes it’s accurate. Treating “kindness” as the way to civil discourse doesn’t show students how to argue with accuracy and respect. It teaches them instead to neither give criticism nor tolerate it.
Lauding intellectual “attainment” rather than inquiry or excellence, is a “strange, and revealing, choice of words,” Postrel adds.
Last spring, then-freshmen were asked how they believed Harvard ranked various values and how they rated those values themselves. “Success” is Harvard’s highest value and “compassion” rates near the bottom, students said. On their personal lists, they listed compassion fourth after hard work, honesty, respect.
A Harvard Crimson editorial endorsed the kindness pledge, if voluntary, and called for the college to provide “stronger moral education.” “Students receive more reminders to turn in their study cards” for course registration “than they do to be nice,” the editorial lamented.
Something’s missing in these dichotomies — “course registration versus niceness; success versus compassion; ‘attainment’ versus kindness” — Postrel writes.
Where in the list of ranked values are curiosity, discovery, reason, inquiry, skepticism or truth? (Were these values even options?) Where is critical thinking? No wonder the pledge talks about “attainment.” Attainment equals study cards and good grades — a transcript to enable the student to move on to the next stage. Attainment isn’t learning, questioning or criticizing. It’s getting your ticket punched.
Harvard represents success, but also wants to represent “compassion,” Postrel writes. Both “depend on other people, either to validate success or serve as objects of compassion. And neither is intellectual.”
Remedial math is ‘burial ground’
April 19, 2011 By
Remedial math is a “burial ground for the aspirations” of college students, says a speaker at a Carnegie webinar on redesigning developmental math at community colleges. Only 6 to 8 percent of remedial algebra students go on to college-level math.
Also on Community College Spotlight: Free speech is under fire at community colleges, charges FIRE (Foundation on Individual Rights in Education). An Ohio college told a student she can’t hand out anti-abortion pamphlets after class. A Georgia college removed an anti-Confederacy painting from a faculty art show.
Teacher suspended for dissing students
February 16, 2011 By
The young English teachers’ students were “rude, disengaged, lazy whiners,” she wrote on her blog. But 30-year-old Natalie Munroe wants to keep teaching the unmotivated brats at a suburban Philadelphia high school. She was suspended with pay after students found her blog, which did not identify the school or students but called her “Natalie M.”
“My students are out of control,” Munroe, who has taught 10th, 11th and 12th grades, wrote in one post. . . . ” They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.”
And in another post, Munroe — who is more than eight months pregnant — writes: “Kids! They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS.” She also comes up with a colorful list of comments that she felt should be available on student report cards.
“Parents are more trying to be their kids’ friends and less trying to be their parent,” Munroe told AP. “They want everything right now. They want it yesterday.”
A former student, now in college, Jeff Shoolbraid told AP that much of what Munroe said was true and that she had a right to voice her opinion. But she’s not fit to be a teacher, he said in an e-mail.
”I just thought it was completely inappropriate. As far as motivated high school students, she’s completely correct. High school kids don’t want to do anything. .. It’s a teacher’s job, however, to give students the motivation to learn.”
And what is the student’s job?
The comments were “tongue in cheek” caricatures of students, Munroe told ABC News. Apparently, she made the rookie error of thinking that only her friends would read the blog. Now she’s hired a lawyer to defend her free-speech rights — the school has no online policy for teachers — and demand her job back. I suspect she’ll be accaused of violating the “professionalism” clause in her contract, but I can’t predict how the case will play out.
Many teacher bloggers criticize students’ motivation and work ethic. Some fantasize about what they’d like to say to parents. Few teacher bloggers write only about their frustrations, but I’ve run across some very frustrated people out there.
I’d hate to see teacher bloggers feel constrained to write only happy talk. But it’s wise to assume your students, their parents, your colleagues and administrators will find your blog eventually.
Update: Natalie Munroe’s new blog is here.
Ed Week’s Teacher has a forum here.
‘Antigone’ faces tyranny again
December 27, 2010 By
New York City dual-enrollment students adapted ‘Antigone’ to criticize high school closures and were closed down by school authorities.
A right to say ‘Christmas’ and ‘Jesus’
December 4, 2010 By
Pencils stating “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” were confiscated from goodie bags distributed by an elementary student at a school holiday party in Plano, Texas. Another student was told not to give out pencils saying “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so” at her classroom birthday party. Students were prohibited from saying “Christmas” at school and could not write “Merry Christmas” on holiday cards sent to retirement homes, a parent charges.
Elementary students have free-speech rights, as long as they’re not disrupting class, ruled a federal appeals court.
The lawsuit will now proceed in district court, and the families will have to prove they suffered religious-viewpoint discrimination to ultimately win the suit.
Here’s more on the suit from School Law Blog.
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