TI'm a teacher at a MCPS high school. (Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS)
There's an overlooked aspect in your post and in the comments so far. The flyers were placed in teachers' mail boxes, and the teachers were instructed to hand them out.
I know my students. They (for the most part) trust me. I have a good relationship with my students.
I could not look them in the eye and hand this flyer to them. It could not come from me. I threw my stack of flyers in the trash.
If someone else wants to hand out these anti-gay (ok, "arguably" anti-gay) flyers, I support their right to do so. The cure for bad speech is not restrictions on free speech, but rather more speech. Marketplace of ideas and all that.
I'm in the process of teaching these students how to choose between competing claims - evidence and logic and the scientific method and all that. That's sort of the point of high school. I should, logically, be in favor of handing out the flyers. I just object that they can use ME as their agent.
In the system we have, it has to come from the hand of the trusted, familiar teacher. It should come from the random, untrusted hand of the random pamphleteer.
Also, B-CC High School had a school-sponsored counter-protest against the Westboro Baptist Crazies when they came to protest the "acceptance of gays" at our school earlier this school year. The principal made pro-gay-rights announcements, and said she was proud of our two GLBT-rights focused afterschool clubs. We're pretty staunchly tolerant of all lifestyles, and even so I didn't want to give these flyers to the students.
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timeasmymeasure
Won't someone please think of the teachers?!
Date: 2010-02-11 02:32 pm (UTC)There's an overlooked aspect in your post and in the comments so far. The flyers were placed in teachers' mail boxes, and the teachers were instructed to hand them out.
I know my students. They (for the most part) trust me. I have a good relationship with my students.
I could not look them in the eye and hand this flyer to them. It could not come from me. I threw my stack of flyers in the trash.
If someone else wants to hand out these anti-gay (ok, "arguably" anti-gay) flyers, I support their right to do so. The cure for bad speech is not restrictions on free speech, but rather more speech. Marketplace of ideas and all that.
I'm in the process of teaching these students how to choose between competing claims - evidence and logic and the scientific method and all that. That's sort of the point of high school. I should, logically, be in favor of handing out the flyers. I just object that they can use ME as their agent.
In the system we have, it has to come from the hand of the trusted, familiar teacher. It should come from the random, untrusted hand of the random pamphleteer.
Also, B-CC High School had a school-sponsored counter-protest against the Westboro Baptist Crazies when they came to protest the "acceptance of gays" at our school earlier this school year. The principal made pro-gay-rights announcements, and said she was proud of our two GLBT-rights focused afterschool clubs. We're pretty staunchly tolerant of all lifestyles, and even so I didn't want to give these flyers to the students.