Posted on 02/03/2005 5:53:21 PM PST by Ender Wiggin
Recently, a group of Hudson High School students and parents have charged that some teachers at HHHS, specifically in the Social Studies department, are teaching with a liberal bias and stifling the conservative students' opinions. In addition, these students have criticized the administration for violating their commitment to allow students their First Amendment rights.
This issue began with the creation of a Conservative Club at Hudson High School. The co-presidents of the new club, Chris Bowler and James Mellilo, hung posters around the school associating themselves with the High School Conservative Clubs of America (HSCCA), and included the Web site, www.hscca.orgon the posters.
School officials promptly removed the posters from the walls after discovering what they saw as violent material on the site. Bowler and others then began to speak out against the teachers and school administration.
Both Bowler and the Metrowest Daily News editor charge that teachers used the Web site as a means to tear down the posters because, supposedly, the teachers are trying to suppress the conservative viewpoint.
In an interview with Metrowest Daily News reporter Carolyn Kessel Stewart, Bowler is quoted as saying "I believe the teachers used (the Web site) as a red herring to tear down our posters."
Seemingly agreeing with Bowler, Editor Richard Lodge on the Opinion page of the MetroWest Daily News stated in his Dec. 12 commentary titled Hudson High Conservatives: "Educators (should not) be picking through political Web sites for statements they find offensive. That gives the impression that they are looking for reasons to stop the conservative students from meeting."
In reality, it was not only teachers who expressed concern over the Web site and its content. The principal of Hudson High, John Stapelfeld, noted that although some teachers approached him about the Web site, he received most of the complaints from concerned parents and other community members.
"Some publicity that got to the press didn't reflect the fact that what is my concern is the violence associated with the Web site that the Conservative Club chose to advertise," said Stapelfeld.
He also feels that the "Conservative Club does have a right to exist."
Hudson High School teachers were first attacked in a Dec. 9 letter to the HSCCA Web site written by Chris Bowler. Bowler made claims that his Advanced Placement American Studies class "turned out to be largely anti-American studies."
Bowler is also said to oppose a poster hung in the classroom of Social Studies teacher Beth Ferns. The poster is filled with quotes that negatively portray President George W. Bush. Ferns encourages her students to bring in other political posters and says that the poster is "basically to spark discussion."
Lodge wrote in his editorial that "if she really wanted to encourage free debate and make every student feel welcome to participate, she'd hang up a pro-Bush poster on her own instead of waiting for a gusty student to force the issue."
An important point that has not been raised in the letters and editorials in the MetroWest Daily News is that not all students agree with Bowler and the Conservative Club's view of teachers.
After accusations were made by Bowler in his letter to the HSCCA that teachers are biased because they are showing "Fahrenheit 9/11" to their classes, junior Roseanne LeBlanc, who took the Social Justice class at Hudson High, commented that she did not feel that her teacher, Caitlin Murphy, was biased. LeBlanc pointed out that they did not only watch "Fahrenheit 9/11" in Murphy's class, but also viewed a pro-Bush film called "Faith in the White House."
During a discussion in an American Studies class, Ashley Fitzpatrick, also a junior at Hudson High, said "that just because you feel discomfort doesn't mean your opinion is being threatened."
Her statement came after teacher Katy Field explained that "as social studies teachers, part of our job is to question students' ideas in order to force them to support their claims with evidence."
Field went on to say that some students may have misinterpreted these questions as threats to their opinions, and that students may have misconstrued the teachers' efforts to encourage critical thinking as attempts to suppress the students' ideas.
These Conservative students are raising serious questions over the professionalism of teachers without any real evidence to support that teachers are biased in their classroom. Although teachers may be openly liberal, that does not mean that they will judge students based on their opinions or that they will promote a liberal agenda in their classroom.
It's unfortunate that the only views expressed recently in the media are those of a small group of people. This is especially troubling considering that many students do not agree with the accusations this group has made against the teachers.
While the First Amendment must be protected, it's disappointing that it is being used by a minority group to bring into question the professionalism of Hudson High's teachers.
Ping to #39 and #40
Sounds like a Worker's Paradise there! Thanks for posting and please post more!
I hear that teachers show violent films- don't they show the scene from Amistad where someone is whipped to death as a mom commits murder/suicide with her baby in the background? And Schindler's List, and the slaughterhouse movie?
"concerned about possible complaints"- can't be too careful!
And you are so right, it makes no sense to ban the poster with the website when the Hudson Sun publishes it.
Do you know anybody there who could put a camera phone to good use, showing what posters ARE allowed? I bet there are a raft of vegan, ACLU, Amnesty International, and so forth propaganda all over.
An indication of its politics is that the Foundation sent a representative to Cuba to give an award to Elian Gonzalez and his father. That's a pathetic clue of how twisted its view is of constitutional principles and freedom.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest, "Was Howard Dean behind a Daring Art Theft?"
I haven't seen a poster, but I went to the site, and the violence must be a group of links to the videos of beheadings by Muslims. I can see how some parents would be concerned, and I can also see that it is necessary for these links to be made available nonetheless.
You Bet!
Thanks, didn't know that. Hmmm, gotta do more research into First Amendment Foundation.
Hey, maybe we can get the Protest Warriors to show up and support the HS "policy"! :)
...snip...
Good curricula in the area of ethical development are harder to find than in the areas of empathy or conflict resolution. Hudson has selected material from an elementary literature program developed by the Developmental Studies Center in which students read literature that portrays prosocial themes.
In addition, we have created a core ninth grade English-Social Studies Civics course whose essential question is: "What is the responsibility of an individual in a just society?" A central part of this course is the Facing History and Ourselves curriculum. This curriculum engages students in the study of the roots of two twentieth-century genocides, the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. The curriculum confronts young people with the human potential for passivity, complicity, and destructiveness by asking how genocide can become state policy.
It raises significant ethical questions and sensitizes them to injustice, inhumanity, suffering, and the abuse of power. At the same time it is academically challenging and helps complicate students thinking so that they do not accept simple answers to complex problems. In the process of studying both a historic period and the personal and social forces that produce genocide, students confront their own potential for passivity and complicity, their own prejudices and intolerances, and their own moral commitments.
The curriculum develops students' perspective-taking and social-reasoning abilities and students emerge with a greater sense of moral responsibility and a greater commitment to participate in making a difference. The only drawback is that there arent more such curricula that are appropriate for other grade levels.
...snip...
So they teach about Holocausts and Genocides without violence? How could you possibly do that?
Seems like the use of links to Islamic beheadings on the HSCCA site is in context, at least based on what I read from Dr. Berman above. "It raises significant ethical questions and sensitizes them to injustice, inhumanity, suffering, and the abuse of power."
I think there may be something in what you mention about violence by Muslims not being acceptable you will find few people who even remember who it was that attacked the WTC the first time.
"Service Learning" is making kids do community service projects for school credit.
We hear about Cambridge in the news once and a while. Is it as wacky as it sounds? The radio talk guy I listen to usually prefaces the name with "The People's Republic of".
Children's Social Consciousness Sheldon Berman This book breaks new ground in our understanding of the development of social consciousness and social responsibility in young people and the educational practices that promote this development. Berman shows that children's awareness of the social and political world emerges far earlier and their moral abilities are more advanced than we thought. Berman provides educators and researchers with the developmental understandings and instructional strategies necessary to enable students to become active, caring, and responsible members of our social and political community. |
Promising Practices in Sheldon Berman and Phyllis La Farge, editors This book is about teachers -- how they build social responsibility into the curriculum and day-to-day life in schools. It showcases the innovative practices of a number of teachers in diverse settings across the country and offers rare discussion on their insights and actual classroom practices. Each chapter focuses on integrating the skills and issues of social responsibility into K-12 classrooms and schools. William Kreidler and Sara Goodman discuss how elementary educators teach basic conflict resolution skills and train students to be mediators. Seth Kreisberg describes one teacher's efforts to democratize his high school classroom. Beth Wilson Fultz discusses how science teachers are addressing science-related social issues, and more. Promising Practices also includes chapters on community service, multicultural education, and global education. Promising Practices is a mosaic of the varied ways that educators teach social responsibility. But it goes further. It gives the reader an opportunity to hear, first hand, about the issues and struggles that teachers confront. It reveals the strength and commitment these teachers have to helping students understand that they make a difference to the world. |
FYI, here is a response a friend of mine received from Sheldon Berman:
(My take: canned response, no truth here, trying to wallpaper over cracks in wall)
Thank you for your email. I am sorry to inform you that you have been seriously misinformed. The school administration supports the development of political clubs and has supported the Conservative Club. We know of no harassment that has taken place based on a student's political view.
Sheldon H. Berman
Superintendent of Schools
Arrogant censorship David Limbaugh February 11, 2005 An incident at Hudson High School in Massachusetts provides an object lesson in the occasional arrogance of liberal bias. A group of students decided to form a conservative club as "a counterweight" to the majority political viewpoint at the school. Student Chris Bowler put up posters to publicize the club's first meeting in December. Within hours, school administrators reportedly removed the posters because they contained a link to the Website of High School Conservative Clubs of America (HSCCA), a national organization for high school conservative clubs. HSCCA's Website included links to videos of beheadings by Iraqi insurgents, and the high school would not allow even an indirect reference to those links. It also blocked access to the HSCCA's Website on school computers. "The material was way beyond what I believe the school should be advertising," said Principal John Stapelfeld. What? Just because the school permits students to use its facilities to promote something doesn't mean the school itself is endorsing it. In fact, just because the local club listed the HSCCA's Web address doesn't mean it endorses everything HSCCA endorses. But for the sake of discussion, let's concede that the school's club was encouraging the viewing of those videos. What in the world is wrong with that, and what business was it of the principal's to censor the posters? Principal Stapelfeld insists his political bias didn't enter into his decision. According to the Boston Globe, he was initially "thrilled" about the idea of a conservative club that would spark political discussions. So, what's his beef with the video links? The Globe reports that he "said the brutal images implicitly condoned violence as a way of 'solving problems' and did not reflect 'mainstream conservatism'" -- as if this liberal were an authority on mainstream conservatism and as if it's fine to censor farther-right conservatism. When I first read this I did a double take, thinking I'd misunderstood. How can links to videos of beheadings of innocent people by terrorists -- unless shown by terrorists to potential recruits -- be construed as condoning violence, much less as a means of solving problems? It doesn't take a genius to understand that the HSCCA was linking to those horrendous videos to show how evil the terrorists are and how they use violence purely for the sake of violence and terror, without provocation and certainly not as a means of "solving problems." Let's give Stapelfeld the benefit of the doubt and assume he got himself confused on that one. Perhaps his other statements express his concerns more clearly. According to the Globe, he felt that showcasing these violent acts "did not address the more central problem of growing anti-Americanism abroad." "Unfortunately, said Stapelfeld, "we really haven't dealt with the fact that we're not well received in the world anywhere." In this revealing utterance, we have the principal's naked liberal mindset on full display. What he is really saying is that he -- like so many other liberals -- believes the Bush Administration has alienated the rest of the world because of its "unwarranted" military action against Iraq. And by promoting the viewing of these videos, his students would be engaging in offensive behavior that will further alienate other nations. But on what remotely legitimate basis would other nations have to be offended by American students encouraging Americans and other peoples to view videos the terrorists themselves produced and distributed, advertising their own violence? How could genuinely civilized human beings of other nations take issue with civilized Americans for reminding the world, via unedited terrorist-produced videos, of the abject depravity and brutality of the terrorists? Indeed, isn't it necessary for us to focus on their inhumanity from time to time to avoid becoming desensitized to it? Perhaps what really bothers the principal (and other liberals) deep down is that by showing the terrorists in their true element the videos demonstrate how utterly justified our cause in Iraq is -- a reality that liberals simply cannot abide. How dare we use the terrorists' own videos to turn people against them? I suppose that instead, we should be trying to negotiate with the sweethearts. In short, the principal is betraying his own transparent political prejudices. But what alarms me significantly more than his bias or even the high-handed censorship it produced is his arrogant obliviousness to it. This absence of individual and collective self-reflection is all too often the signature of today's liberal, who apparently believes his positions are so pure that his motives are beyond scrutiny. Memo to Principal Stapelfeld: Your wrongful removal of the posters is only exceeded by your refusal to own up to your reasons for doing it. |
So the kids have "right wing lawyer" help now? Heck, they must be Right Wing themselves! Sounds much worse than conservative!
Lawyer joins fray in Hudson poster snit
By Carolyn Kessel Stewart / News Staff Writer Metrowest Daily News
Friday, February 11, 2005
HUDSON -- A legal team known for supporting right wing causes is working to lift the high school's ban of a controversial Web site launched by the recently formed student conservative club.
Pacific Justice Institute, www.pacificjustice.org sent a letter to the principal of Hudson High School, John Stapelfeld, that seeks to force the school to allow the display of the website address for High School Conservative Clubs of America http://www.hscca.org on club posters. The letter states:
We have been contacted by Chris Bowler, a student at Hudson High School and founder of the Conservative Club. Mr. Bowler has suffered adverse treatment in the promotion of his club, in that school officials removed his promotional posters. It is our understanding that the posters were removed because they referenced www.hscca.org, the official website of High School Conservative Clubs of America.
Mr. Bowler has been told that the website cannot be referenced because it promotes violence. However, even a cursory perusal of the site reveals that, far from promoting or encouraging violence, it condemns terrorism and radical Islam through the most poignant means availableunmasking it and showing its true colors. At the same time, in keeping with the goals and mission of the Conservative Club, the site primarily promotes the ideals of freedom, patriotism, and traditional values. It is hard to imagine a site which is more devoted to civic issuesor more protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
As you are no doubt aware, the First Amendment prohibits content- and viewpoint-based restrictions on speech. Similarly, the Equal Access Act requires that Hudson High School treat the Conservative Club equally with similar clubs and student organizations. More than 35 years ago, in its landmark decision Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), the Supreme Court declared, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gates." Id. at 506. The court further stated that "students may not be regarded as closed circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. Id. at 511.
Ironically, Tinker upheld the rights of students to protest war-related violence and murder, much as Mr. Bowler is attempting to do. While political speech can often be controversial and cause uneasiness among some people who hear or see it, such effects are clearly inadequate justification for school officials to engage in viewpoint discrimination and censorship. "[W]here there is no finding and no showing that engaging in the forbidden conduct would 'materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school,' the prohibition [on speech] cannot be sustained." Id. quoting Burnside v. Byars, 363 F.2d 744, 749 (1966).
It can hardly be argued that mere reference to an external website which condemns violence and extols traditional values somehow "materially and substantially interferes" with school discipline. We are aware that Hudson High School has not found it necessary to inhibit the promotion--by teachers, no lessof the violent and highly controversial film "Fahrenheit 9/11," or the promulgation of posters vilifying President Bush. These contradictions can only lead to the conclusion that Hudson High has practiced and is practicing viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of Mr. Bowler's First Amendment rights. This, in spite of the fact that Hudson High prides itself on being named a "First Amendment" school.
In the related and equally-controversial topic of religious speech by school clubs, the courts have provided further helpful insight: "While the school is certainly permitted to maintain order and discipline in the school hallways and classrooms by limiting the number and manner of both printed and oral announcements for all student groups, 20 U.S.C. §4071(f), it may not discriminate among students based on the religious content of [their] expression. . . ." (emphasis added) Prince v. Jacoby, 303 F.3d 1074, 1087 (9th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 813 (2003). In like manner, censorship of the Conservative Club and Mr. Bowler because their reference to an external source of information is allegedly "disruptive" impermissibly restricts speech based on others' reaction to the speaker's views. See, e.g., Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).
We therefore request that you immediately cease all speech restrictions on Mr. Bowler and the Conservative Club, specifically allowing the use of posters which mention the HSCCA website. The Pacific Justice Institute hopes that the articulation of constitutional principles set forth in this letter will serve to inform you of the obligations owed by your school district. Please let us know your position on this matter no later than February 13, 2005.
The letter is signed by Matthew B. McReynolds, Esq., Assistant Counsel
Conservative teens say school is biased against them
By Peter Schworm, Boston Globe Staff | February 10, 2005
Soft-spoken and casually dressed, Chris Bowler does not look the part of a political firebrand. But his new conservative club has ignited considerable controversy at Hudson High School.
To advertise the club's first meeting in December, Bowler put up a poster that included the website of a national organization for high school conservative clubs. The page includes links to videos of beheadings by Iraqi insurgents, saying the links are meant to show what terrorists can do.
The posters immediately drew administrators' ire. Within a few hours, the posters were removed and access to the Web page was blocked on school computers. An attempt to display the posters last month was also squelched.
"The material was way beyond what I believe the school should be advertising," said principal John Stapelfeld. "It seemed to be supporting violence more than supporting the conservative message."
Bowler and his supporters believe the response stems from a political bias in the school against conservatism. To them, it's ironic that students should be censored in a school that has won praise for innovative civics and community service programs...snip....
Ping to new articles on Hudson High Conservative Club thread.
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