A banner day for the Marshalls: I just put our Christmas tree out to the curb, the latest ever. I was still green, unlike the one above, but so dry that when the EMTs visited our house on other matters, one of them said, eyebrow raised, “You don’t still light that, do you?” There were extenuating circumstances for the delay. I’ll just leave it at that...
1. This is what qualifies as cogent analysis in the world of entertainment…I heard a stand-up comic named Greg Proops (you may remember him as a regular on “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” get laughs and applause by saying, “When I hear they’ve banned guns along with banning abortion, I’ll believe that there’s some equity in this country!” Asking a high school class to deconstruct that statement and explain its logical, legal and ethical flaws would make a good exercise—if only most high school teachers wouldn’t react by saying, “Sounds good to me!”
2. This is sad, but…
….except that anyone who agrees to self-mutilation without investigating and carefully considering these matters get limited sympathy from me. Yes, my father taught me to be extremely resistant to fads and peer pressure: its why I managed never to take a single recreational drug while attending college in the Sixties, and was learning Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs when all of my friends were buying Beatles records. My son is the same way (I wonder why?) This particular fad is a lot more destructive and permanent, however, than sucking on joints. Shouldn’t that be obvious, even to teens?
3. Add this to the carnage from the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck: The House this month passed a bill from Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the Oversight and Accountability Committee, that would require federal agencies to return to their pre-pandemic operating policies within 30 days.D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) used her inaugural address in January (her third, depressingly) to call for federal workers to return to their offices to help revitalize downtown D.C. But the largest federal union is resisting, citing climate change hysteria cant. Telework is better for the planet, they say, even if it is rotten for life in general.
The American Federation of Government Employees is arguing to keep on goldbricking, making citizens endure infuriatingly bad service and inefficient performance of duties, to save the planet by curtailing auto use. “We all know that personal automobiles are responsible for a tremendous amount of pollution through the burning of fossil fuels,”AFGE public policy director Jacque Simon told the Washington Post. “So every car trip not taken has an environmental benefit.”
It is not their policy decision to make, even if I believed that the environment was the real reason these workers want to stay home.
4. Black History Month Ethics #1! Ethan Hooper, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Howard Middle School in Orlando, Florida, has been suspended after he posted a video to his personal TikTok account that showed his white students fanning, feeding, and bowing down to black classmates in what he thought was an appropriate way to commemorate Black History Month. Hooper also posted videos involving his students in satirical skits criticizing Gov, DeSantis’ anti-CRT measures. Orange County Public Schools superintendent Maria Vazquez responded to the video saying, “I am appalled at the behavior and judgment of the teacher who posted the inappropriate videos using his students as political props. This is not free speech — it is the exploitation of our students for political purposes and it will not be tolerated in our school district. Hooper is trying to apologize his way out of this, claiming it was “all in good fun.” He will probably be fired. Good.
5. Black History Month Ethics #2! The staff at Studio Kids Little River pre-school painted white children’s faces black and posted photos on the school’s website. For some reason, parents were not happy with this.The photos were posted by a teacher on the school’s messaging app on February 3 along with a message that read “Black History Month.” After the predictable uproar, Patricia Vitale, the preschool’s owner and director, sent a message to all school parents, saying, “We have not intended to offend anyone, and we’re very sorry about any inconvenience.”
Inconvenience?
Three days later, Vitale issued another message to parents:
“We wanted to let all the parents know that we met on Friday afternoon with all the teachers and staff. We went over several ethical and multicultural education points. I will teach the team a class covering all the necessary topics regarding US history and multicultural education … you may rest assured this will never happen again.”
She’s going to teach them? Good luck with that. This obviously an untrustworthy school with incompetent leadership that no responsible parents should allow to care for their children.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack wrote:
The House this month passed a bill from Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the Oversight and Accountability Committee, that would require federal agencies to return to their pre-pandemic operating policies within 30 days.
Comer’s bill has zero chance of becoming law, it is literally virtue-signalling by the Republicans. No way the Senate allows it to go anywhere, never mind that as brain-damaged as Biden is, he still has people to tell him not to sign it.
Waste. Of. Time. If politics is the “art of the possible,” this is not how it is done.
This is not free speech — it is the exploitation of our students for political purposes and it will not be tolerated in our school district. Hooper is trying to apologize his way out of this, claiming it was “all in good fun.” He will probably be fired. Good.
Indeed, good. A baby step in the right direction, but there are so many more waiting to step into his shoes it literally beggars belief.
The brazen fearlessness of Leftists these days is truly breathtaking.
She’s going to teach them? Good luck with that. This obviously an untrustworthy school with incompetent leadership that no responsible parents should allow to care for their children.
Lawsuits should issue. This was arguably child abuse. It was certainly a professional ethics violation.
RE #3: I’d bet good bucks that the vast majority of those government drones – er, I mean, employees – whose union is arguing that they should stay home will internalize the argument that going to work causes climate change and actually take very little time to fervently believe it.
RE #s 4 and 5: Years ago, I was involved in a campaign to recruit math and science teachers in Maine. The state had created a program to ‘fast track’ people in the workforce who had STEM backgrounds to teaching certification. A most worthwhile effort! And frankly, it didn’t move the needle much. The simple fact is that precious few of the best and brightest are drawn to teaching. There are some absolutely wonderful people in the field – after all, becoming a great teacher is something of a calling – but frankly, many of the folks who go into teaching do so because they “love kids.” Fine as far as it goes, but many of them just ain’t that smart. And the way our teacher training and educational system is set up, teachers emerge with little practical knowledge of their subjects and sometimes end up assigned classes simply because of state mandates, not because they know any more about the subject than the kids do.
Ironically enough, this is one of the prices we’ve paid for previous discrimination towards women in the workplace. Before women were accepted into male-dominated corporate gigs (other than as secretaries), there were basically two fields in which women could thrive: nursing and teaching. And neither paid particularly well, but they were decent careers. Blessedly, women are now pretty much on an even playing field, and deservedly so. But the caliber of teachers in public schools has declined significantly as women have risen in other areas. Not that I’d go back to the sexism that we’ve only recently shed, but we do ignore the law of unintended consequences at our own peril.
And some women went into full time motherhood which paid even worse ….. but they were good at it!
And now …….more ‘unintended’ but quite predictable consequences (?)
Regarding your comment on #s 4 & 5, few points:
1) I think it’s fair to say that just as many (as those doing it because they love kids) are those doing it because it’s a cushy and secure employment, especially in areas with strong teachers’ unions;
2) and that’s not accounting for the fact that many people who get into education are doing it to push social justice/political agenda;
3) also, interestingly, I read somewhere that students of colleges of education (whatever such schools may be called at different institutions) have on average the lowest IQ among all college students.
Regarding your #1, I had quite an epiphany the other day.
Finally saw the pay stub of a government worker.
I don’t know if it’s standard, but her employer-provided benefits added up to over $40k per year, between retirement, insurance, and employer matches. This was excluding the benefits not listed, like holidays, vacation, etc. I was dumbfounded. The average private company provides probably $10-20k per year in benefits.
I’d guess those with strong unions are probably making better money than their private counterparts, all inclusive. Any complaint I hear about teachers’ pay seems unfounded to me.
Yeah, here in Chicago many teachers, especially older ones make salaries in the six digits, and because pension pay is determined based on the average of last few years, most get their pay jacked up just before retirement (which they can do for full pension at age 55 or so). The result is thousands of people getting retirement pay in the six-digits (with COLA, and also taxpayer-paid (in full) Cadillac health care plan) for life!!
That’s why Illinois’ pension and retirement liabilities are in 100s of billions, and most of it are unfunded
1. Oh, but don’t you know he’s a comedian? He was just joking, after all, right?
2. I feel sorry for a young person who may have been sold a bill of goods. We are finding out now that many of these young people are told that transitioning will fix their mental or emotional problems. If she was a minor when this happened, the adults in her life failed her big time.
3. Agree with Glenn above. This is going nowhere.
4/5. Can’t argue with you. The Great Stupid has made teachers pretty dumb…or, at least, has exposed the profession for what it’s been for a long time.
I read that the teacher at that Middle School in Orlando threatened the White students that refused to participate in their own humiliation. The story didn’t specify the nature of the threat, but I would speculate a promise of a poor grade, or maybe even a threat of physical violence for refusing to participate And he claimed it was all in good fun. I would fire him and revoke his teaching certificate. He can always find work in a school system such as the one in Baltimore where I’m pretty certain he would be welcomed.
Regarding that poor girl that was most likely groomed into accepting mutilative surgery, don’t they realize whatever is done to them in the interest of “transitioning” is purely superficial and debilitating? They can never escape their true gender because it’s DNA is infused into every cell in their bodies. Everything they do is only a facade, and many times not a very convincing one.
#4
Let’s reduce the “inappropriate” 5 syllables down to two, “racist”.
#5
Let’s reduce the “inconvenient” 5 syllables(unless you count 4) down to two, “stupid”.