A German language teacher at Western Hills High School in Fort Worth, Texas sent 14-year-old honors student Dakota Ary to the principal’s office for telling a classmate that he believes “homosexuality is wrong.”
Ary was then suspended as punishment. Homosexuality isn’t wrong,, but the school was.
Ary, who was raised in a church that believes homosexuality violates God’s laws, has a right to believe whatever he chooses to, and also has a right to express those beliefs as long as he doesn’t denigrate fellow students or incite violence or a disruption. There are words for schools punishing students for their beliefs, and among those words are “indoctrination,” “coercion,” brain-washing,” and “unethical.”
The initial wrongdoer here was not the student, but the teacher, who despite being charged with teaching German apparently felt it was also her job to advocate gay rights. The fact that the school administration didn’t immediately detect that an ethical line had been crossed by her conduct and that the student was a victim of enforced conformity should trouble the parents with children at that school and every other. You wonder why home-schooling is on the rise? This is one reason.
Once the Liberty Counsel became involved, the school backed down as they had to, since they were 100% in the wrong. It would have been much preferable if the A.C.L.U. had risen to the challenge rather than a militantly anti-gay public interest group, but Dakota might have graduated before the A.C.L.U. saw fit to help him.It defends one’s freedom of speech, but some kinds of speech are more important to the A.C.L.U than others.
“They’ve righted all the wrongs,” said the Liberty Counsel’s Matt Krause of the school. “This should have no lasting effect on [Ary’s] academic or personal record going forward.”
That doesn’t mean all the wrongs have been righted, though. The suspension, though withdrawn, still sent a message; this is a school after all. Watch out what you think; watch out what you say. The majority decides what views are “right,” and you will be punished for not falling into line.
No student should learn that lesson in the United States of America.
Ethics Alarms 
Unfortunately this happens not only at public schools but universities as well.
That’s a given…but theoretically, at least, 18-21 year odd are adults and have the experience and strength of character to resist it. Applying this kind of coercion to children is no better than bullying.
I respectfully disagree: 18 – 21 year olds are still young and malleable (skulls full of mush, to borrow from a certain radio personality). They are also under pressure not to anger the omniscient professor who is doling out the all-important grades.
I have to say I’ve never attended a university so i have no first hand knowledge but I have heard of cases where the student is ostracized and penalized for not sharing the same opinions or beliefs of the professor,fellow students and administration.
Hmm… I might make a case for the teacher under specific circumstances, but it should have ended at the principal’s office.
Unfortunately, Tim, numerous administrators feel they have to back a teacher’s call, good or bad, right or wrong, and thus do idiocies sometimes get compounded.
Well, if the child is being disruptive, the teacher’s first response is to send them to the Principal’s office to discuss the situation. The teacher shouldn’t be making a call beyond that. It’s then the Administrator (principal) who evaluates and makes further corrective action.
If the students had said instead, “We’re Christians and we believe Jews and Muslims are going to burn in hell for enternity,” should that have been permitted as free expresion of that person’s religious conscience? In both cases, there could be an audience that is harmed by this expression. At what point does the ethicist say, “Perhaps it would have been better if religious views that might be hurtfull to others be kept to yourself?”
If that or even his statement had been made in a confrontational or general way, there would be the issues of insult and disruption. All accounts report that he made his statement, which was true, to one individual.
The teacher and school is there to say “Perhaps it would have been better if religious views that might be hurtfull to others be kept to yourself.” What they said instead is “Your views are wrong and you will be punished for expressing them.”
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
The school should recognize that such actions, in addition to being unethical, are quite counter-productive. Subjecting a person with bigoted views to disciplinary action will only support the notion that he and his family are being persecuted, and make the person less likely to develop his views through education and natural social interaction. People put up walls, including an abandonment of logic, when they feel they are under attack. All the more so when it is from an institutional authority.
Contrary to what you said in a comment above about how this wouldn’t be as bad at a university, where the subjects of would-be indoctrination are adults, it’s worth remembering that teenagers are known for rebellion and resistance to authority. People can be weak or strong willed at any age, and to say otherwise is a little unfair to teenagers. So I worry less about Ary being indoctrinated than about him being fortified. But the ethics are the same whatever the outcome.
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure the ACLU would agree. Here are a few cases where they have defended the rights of religious groups to engage in anti-gay speech, or the rights of individuals to bigoted speech in general:
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-louisiana-files-lawsuit-protect-free-speech-rights-christian-protestor
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-eastern-missouri-challenges-law-banning-pickets-and-protests-one-hour-or-after-fune
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/hate-speech-campus
http://aclu.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=552
http://acluva.org/7388/on-hate-speech-the-westboro-baptist-church-campuses-and-nazis-in-virginia/
This reminds me of an anecdote from my 8th grade honors English class, wherein the teacher told us — emphatically — that Kennedy should never have been president, that Nixon would have been better, and that the country was worse off because Kennedy won that election. Among her many proofs for this opinion was that Kennedy got Cs in college while Nixon got all As.
Flippant 13-year-old that I was I piped up and said that I thought that college grades were irrelevant, and that besides, Cs from Harvard were probably harder to get than As at Whittier College. My teacher was incensed, and sent me to the principal’s office.
The principal’s response to me was, smilingly, that I should try harder not to embarrass my teacher, or any teacher. Whether said teacher was called on the carpet for using her inherent power to espouse her personal beliefs to a bunch of students was never known to me. But I did know her behavior was WRONG.