Lawsuit targets history teacher's comments

LA Times ^ | 12/13/07 | David Haldane

[Publius6961]

For my final grade he gave me a D-. I challenged this and the three-person review board raised it to an A. Turned out I knew his subject a great deal better than he did.
He moved to another school the next year.

Good for you!
Stories like that one make me feel all warm and fuzzy; and remind me of the following observation I heard years ago:

"Why is it that people who know the least, say it the loudest?"

[Quix]

i hate atnys suing all the time but this seems like a worthy time.

[Myrddin]

I had a socialist French female TA for my French literature class at UCSD (required humanities sequence). I wrote a paper that excoriated the impact of Marxism on women and families. The TA disagreed with my position and awarded me with a C on the paper. I took it to the professor. He read the paper and put a nice big A on the top. The prof was assessing organization, style, coherency, grammar and cogency of presentation. The TA stopped at disagreement with my position. It pays to stand your ground. Thanks for standing your ground in support of Christianity. Too many are incapable or unwilling to do so.

[Clemenza]

This guy went WAY too far. Your (public school) class should NOT be a platform for your personal religious beliefs, whether you are an atheist or a believer. It cuts both ways.

[WayneS]

WOW! Bright sunlight is not kind to her, is it?

[Eva]

Capistrano Valley HS is one of the worst high schools in the country. I know because my daughter graduated from there. At the back to school meeting in ninth grade, I asked the teacher how she could justify 40% as a passing grade and she told us that all the smart kids took algebra in eighth grade. In her history class, the teacher used a projector to put notes on the board and left the room for most of the period, every day, and when he was in the room, he drank from a water bottle constantly. The kids suspected that it was vodka in the bottle. The next summer the teacher died of AIDS. When I complained that he wasn’t teaching the class, the principal took my daughter out of the class and put her in a special class with all the problem kids, where only about six kids showed up on any given day.

This school also falsified the test results for the standardized tests, by sending the kids who would not do well on the tests to the library and marking them absent. They used to require 100% attendance on test days, so that they would have the freedom to pick which kids would be marked absent.

But the most of the parents were ok with the way the school was run. The parents complained about the one good history teacher that they had in the school because he gave homework and essay tests, until they drove the man out of the school, even though he was tenured.

[GoLightly]

This guy went WAY too far. Your (public school) class should NOT be a platform for your personal religious beliefs, whether you are an atheist or a believer. It cuts both ways.

Where's the line? Complete neutrality is a myth & forced absence of anything that is or could be a "personal religious belief" will end up promoting another "personal religious belief".

[Clemenza]

So, you are against him for what he said, but would have supported him if he would have been singing the praises of Yahweh or JC?

If you want religious propaganda, go to a religious school. If you want atheist propaganda, go to a private nonsectarian school.

[r9etb]

So the question is .... did they go to the principal or the school board before filing suit? If not, why not?

[GoLightly]

So, you are against him for what he said, but would have supported him if he would have been singing the praises of Yahweh or JC?

That isn't what I said or meant. A neutral position would force me to agree with one of the things this teacher said, "religion is not "connected with morality". Morality is directly affected by religious beliefs, whether that "religion" is one that is recognized as a religion or not.

Helping students to reconcile some of the things that a school is teaching with the religious beliefs that the students bring to school creates a difficult balancing act, mostly because it recognizes that students are not blank slates.

Any society's common denominators, such as, "stealing is wrong", might tread on the "religious" beliefs of someone, so forced neutrality would prevent schools from teaching that stealing is wrong. Teaching that all morality is individual & therefore, relative, is also contrary to the religious beliefs of some.

[LongTimeMILurker]

Don’t forget the Communists. If Repblicans were doning anything similar, the Left would call it a Conspiracy.

How would those little MP3 recorders work on gathering evidence against these teachers and professors? They’d be easier to hide, too.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Actually we get to pay.

[GoLightly]

How would those little MP3 recorders work on gathering evidence against these teachers and professors? They’d be easier to hide, too.

Why hide it? If a tape recorder gets one of these losers to self censor, you accomplish a good part of your goal. Doesn't help with grading discrimination, but that would be true with any teacher that's not vocal about their beliefs.

[newzjunkey]

That is how you have to do it unfortunately such recording may not be legal based upon jurisdiction, etc. I do wish the student well in his lawsuit.

[tpanther]

AMEN! Let’s not forget: www.ThomasMore.org

[CVHS student...]

I am a student at Capo Valley High School and I am enrolled in Dr. Corbett’s AP Euro class. Like most of his students, I am appalled at this lawsuit. Dr. Corbett is by far the best teacher I’ve ever had. He uses relates the present day politics to out curriculum. It is rather helpful and quite entertaining. There is a reason Chad is failing...he doesn’t do the work. If he studied, he would have a better grade. Many Christian and Republican fundamentalists are in support of Chad, but anyone who has taken is class or is taking his class knows that his present day political discussions supplement our learning. You people truly do need to take off your Jesus goggles think about the situation rationally.

[logic]

Too Ripe, I can't resist....

I am a student at Capo Valley High School and I am enrolled in Dr. Corbett’s AP Euro class. Like most of his students, I am appalled at this lawsuit. Dr. Corbett is by far the best teacher I’ve ever had. He uses relates the present day politics to out curriculum. It is rather helpful and quite entertaining. There is a reason Chad is failing...he doesn’t do the work. If he studied, he would have a better grade. Many Christian and Republican fundamentalists are in support of Chad, but anyone who has taken is class or is taking his class knows that his present day political discussions supplement our learning. You people truly do need to take off your Jesus goggles think about the situation rationally.

Perhaps the faculty should try teaching English so their students could express themselves in a coherent manner....

On to the serious discussion....

Are you claiming there is no bias against Christians? Are the articles mis-representing what was recorded on the tapes, or is Chad only supplying clips of the tape that give the appearance of "Christian bashing" when the teacher is actually poking fun at many "value systems" evenly?

If you're in the class and defending the teacher, then you need to give a little more evidence than a simple "Chad is a slacker and the teacher is great" statement....