Curmie is one of the teachers Ethics Alarms is fortunate to have ready with commentary. I suppose my post was in his wheelhouse, in more ways than one. His multi-faceted Comment of the Day in response to “How Can It Be Responsible To Trust America’s Teachers When Their Leader Posts This…?” has already sparked some good back and forth, but I don’t want anyone to miss it, so here it is:

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There is a series of ethical questions here, going back decades.

We can start with the publication of the book to begin with. This was a diary, after all, something never intended to be made public. Is it ethical to take the explicitly confidential words and thoughts of someone else and broadcast them to the world? Yes, there’s an upside, even an enormous one, but there’s also a betrayal of trust. And does Anne’s death make it more appropriate to publish, or does it mean simply that she’s not able to exercise literally any control over her own thoughts and words?

And if you’re going to publish the diary, is it legitimate to censor parts of it rather than release the work in its entirety? It would be interesting to understand the rationale for that decision: salability? discretion? embarrassment? prudery?

We now move forward to the graphic version. It’s perfectly reasonable that it contains a translation of the entirety of the original text. I’ve never been a fan of “graphic” versions of anything, although I did enjoy some of the Classics Illustrated comic books when I was a kid. But different strokes for different folks. Assuming everything is/was above-board in terms of copyright, I see no objection to the publication.

So now the question is whether the expanded version is appropriate for classroom use. I’d say that, handled appropriately (there’s that word again), the answer is yes. Those who say no are arguing, in effect, that the private thoughts of a 12-year-old are too “adult” in nature to be shared with students older than herself. I’m willing to bet that some, probably most, of the kids in that classroom have had not dissimilar thoughts and fantasies. Now they’re being told that those normal rites of passage are “inappropriate.” Puberty, social pressure from all sides, and puritanism don’t make for a calm environment inside an adolescent’s brainbox.

But, rightly or wrongly, the book in that form is not on the approved list—it’s unclear whether the default position is positive or negative: that teachers can assign a book unless the powers that be say no, or they can’t unless they have specific approval. Either way, I’m going to argue for what is no doubt a minority opinion here: the concerns of one or two people (in many Texas jurisdictions, they don’t have to be parents or even from the district) should not be granted censorial power just because a school board is too lazy or weak-willed to argue with them.

I note, also, that the book was included on a reading list sent to parents at the beginning of the school year. Does this matter? Sort of. It does provide some cover for the teacher, but it’s pretty unreasonable to expect parents to grok immediately that The Diary of Anne Frank isn’t the same as Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation. The book is translated, after all, and English offers two ways of expressing the genitive case. The “adaptation” in question refers to the picturization process, not to the words, which are, in fact, those of Anne Frank.

The teacher probably but not necessarily knew the book was off limits. The source linked by Weingarten is the Houston Chronicle, whose coverage is a little confusing. Was the problem that the book was assigned (meaning the students were supposed to read it) or that the teacher “read aloud” from it? The latter seems to be the tipping point if not the entirety of the problem. This makes no sense to me, but a lot of things don’t.

The Chronicle story also includes this: an “investigation will determine if the teacher pivoted from the original approved curriculum or if administrators were aware of the book being part of the class.” Is the school just trying to cover its ass? I don’t know, but let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be the case.

Still, in the current environment, especially in a state like Texas, it’s naïve to tempt fate by trying to teach anything the most staunchly conservative parent might dislike. Witness, for example, the case in Florida where a film about Ruby Bridges was removed from the curriculum because one parent thought it showed that white people didn’t like black people. News flash: in that time and place, they didn’t. But according to the reactionary right, teaching the truth is problematic if it makes kids uncomfortable. And here I thought it was the liberals who were supposedly all about emotions instead of reality.

The Anne Frank episode doesn’t strike me as utterly outrageous, but the teacher did in fact cross a line. I don’t think it ought to be a firing offense, especially if the administration de facto signed off on including the book. But I don’t make the rules, and sometimes playing with fire gets oneself burned.

On to Weingarten. Her tweet (or whatever the approved term in Muskistan might be) oversimplifies, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. Did this teacher read words written by Anne Frank in her diary? Yes. So if we lose the capital letter in “Diary,” then it’s an accurate statement (note the lack of quotation marks or other indications of a book title). Misleading? Yes. Intentionally so? Probably, but possibly just a manifestation of laziness. Either way, not a good look, and hardly surprising.

But finally we come to the title of this blog entry: “How Can It Be Responsible To Trust America’s Teachers When Their Leader Posts This…?” Randi Weingarten is not the “leader” of American teachers. She’s the president of the largest, but not only, teachers union, and there are about a million US teachers unaffiliated with the NEA. Nor are teachers responsible for what she says, any more than Americans in general are responsible for the missteps of a President (choose either of the last two, at least) who is mendacious, probably corrupt, not completely in charge of his mental faculties, and credibly accused of sexual improprieties. They were/are “my president,” but neither is, or ever was, my spokesperson.