Education

As Dean Wormer* Would Say To Bryan Craig: “Sex-Obsessed, Promiscuous and Stupid Is No Way To Be A High School Guidance Counselor, Son…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The Rich Central High principal suspected something was amiss with the girls’ basketball coach when the team members began to act strangely…

A provocative variation on the “naked teacher” scenario has surfaced in Chicago suburb Olympia Fields. Bryan Craig was a guidance counselor and girls’ basketball coach at Rich Central High School until his self-published book “It’s Her Fault” came to the attention of parents and school administrators. Then he was placed on administrative leave, and finally, fired.  The book is for mature audiences only, and based on reports (I haven’t read it and have no intention of doing so) includes pick-up advice, analysis of female body types (including a discussion of the varying colors and temperature levels of the vaginas of various races, apparently the book’s highlight) and Craig’s insight into how women think, a perspective that appears to be muddled at best and sexist at worst. Here is a passage from the book (in an Amazon reader’s review—a favorable one, and from a teenage stripper):

“In some cases, strippers and dancers show the overall dominance a woman can have over a man. Not to say that stripping is what has to be done to truly establish dominance, but these women’s mind-set is in the right place in order to meet the true potential of the point of this book.” Continue reading →

Policies Don’t Fix Unethical Professors

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

“Here is your assignment, class: Vote for who I tell you to.”

I saw this story and decided it was too obvious to write about. A community college math professor distributes to her class a pledge to vote for Obama and the Democratic slate, and demands that the students sign it—come on! Is anyone going to defend that as ethical? Then a reader sent me several links to the item (thanks, Michael), and after reading them, I was moved to reconsider.

The professor, Sharon Sweet, was put on unpaid leave pending an investigation; I can’t fault Brevard Community College (in Florida) for not firing her yet. What troubles me is the college’s statements that her conduct is just a breach of policy. BCC Spokesman John Glisch told the press that “The college takes this policy [prohibiting employees from soliciting support for a political candidate during working hours or on college property] extremely seriously. It is very important that all of our faculty and staff act in that manner at work and while they’re on campus.” So college provosts are reminding employees about the policy.

Let’s be clear. Associate Professor Sweet’s conduct was an abuse of power and position, an insult to the autonomy of the students and an attempt to take away their rights as citizens, disrespectful to them and the values of the nation, and an attempt to circumvent election laws and to subvert democracy. It was also, quite possibly, illegal. If a college needs to have a policy to stop teachers from behaving like that, it is hiring the wrong kinds of teachers—individuals whose ethics are those of totalitarian states, and whose respect for individual rights are nil. This was an ethical breach of major proportions, not a policy misunderstanding. No teacher should require a policy to tell her that this conduct is indefensible and wrong. Continue reading →

The Breast-Feeding Professor

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments

“Uh, Captain? Captain? We really need you up in the plane, now—we’re under attack…”

This story reads as if it were invented just to cause arguments on Ethics Alarms.

Adrienne Pine, a professor at American University, was faced with a choice: stay home and care for her baby, who had a fever, or take the child to class. She chose to take the infant to the first meeting of her “Sex, Gender and Culture” course, where the child spent her lecture alternately on her mother’s back or crawling around the room, or, at one point, being breast-fed by the professor. Pine’s Full Mommy breast-feeding act was commented upon by the school newspaper, and Prof. Pine responded to inquiries by a student reporter with a dismissive, “…the baby got hungry, so I had to feed it during the lecture. End of story,” and a defensive and defiant  blog entry. She sees nothing wrong with her conduct, and regards the controversy as proof that ” a feminist anthropology course is necessary at AU.”

That’s playing the ol’ Mommy Card with gusto, Professor Pine.

She is dead wrong, as a matter of professional ethics. As a college professor,Pine has limited demands on her time, and the one thing that she is required to do is to devote full attention to her students in class. With an infant, an ill infant at that, in her care, she could not do that. She had a pure and unresolvable conflict of interest, and it was a breach of her duty to her child (at one point a student had to tell her that the baby had a paper clip in her mouth) and a breach of duty to her students (if they were watching the baby, and later that breast-feeding exhibition, they were not able to give full attention to her lecture). She had a choice to make: do one job or the other, because it is impossible to do them both at the same time. Continue reading →

Emmett Burns Emulates Rahn Emanuel, or, What Does It Tell Us That Yvette Clarke Is NOT This Month’s Most Incompetent Elected Official?

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Brooklyn, NY, circa. 1898. If you look closely, you can see the slaves working in the windmills…

In case you missed it, Rep. Clarke, the Congresswoman from Brooklyn, NY, had thousands of American banging their heads against the wall (and, tragically, many more, like those who voted this dolt into office nodding their empty heads and saying, “She speaks the truth!”) when she told Comedy Central’s wag Stephen Colbert that Brooklyn still had slavery in 1898, a full 33 years after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment. When Colbert, in mock surprise, said, “It sounds like a horrible part of the United States kept slavery going until 1898! Who would be enslaving you in 1898 in New York?”, Rep. Clarke, eager to fill the gaps in Colbert’s knowledge of New York history,  informed him that it was “the Dutch”…who lost control of New York when “New Netherland” was conquered by the British in 1664, 200 years before the end of the Civil War. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Calvin Coolidge

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

—-Calvin Coolidge, then Governor of Massachusetts, soon to be Vice-President and later President upon the death of Warren G. Harding, in a September 14, 1919 telegram to labor leader Samuel Gompers on the occasion of the Boston police department strike.

Cal made his words count.

The Boston police were fired for extorting the city, and Coolidge’s words were in the air when President Ronald Reagan responded to an illegal strike by air traffic controllers by firing the strikers and banning the union.

Now Chicago’s teachers are striking, not against the city management that is denying their demands, but against the children of the city and their families.

What would silent Cal say? I think I can guess. Harming children and families for higher wages is as much extortion as leaving a city unprotected against crime, and cannot be defended ethically. The defense will be, inevitably, “Well, management is unfair, and their offer is unjust. What are we supposed to do?”

The answer is: something else.

__________________________________

Facts: Chicago Tribune

Source: Wikipedia

Graphic: Washington, Jefferson and Madison Institute

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

“Is We Getting Dummer?” Oh,Yes. Does We Care?

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Why yes, it DOES remind me of “Idiocracy,” which is only funny if it isn’t true.

Today, just prior to convicting Drew Peterson of killing his wife, his jury sent a message to the judge asking what the word “unanimous” meant.

Think about the implications of this. First of all, it means that one man’s life and the U.S. justice system’s integrity is resting on the judgment of twelve people, not one of whom possesses a fifth grade vocabulary, or, if one of them does, he or she did not possess the skills of persuasion or credibility to convince a majority of his colleagues that yes, “unanimous” means that everybody is in agreement. It means that the voir dire system managed to carefully select the most ignorant and inarticulate jury of adults imaginable for a first degree murder trial.

That’s not all. It means that in Joliet, Illinois, a select group of twelve adults, in addition to possessing only a rudimentary English vocabulary, were completely uninformed about the jury system. To reach adulthood this stunningly ignorant about one of the basic features of our justice system and  democracy, these individuals could not have regularly read newspapers or watched the news, and if they did, could not possibly have understood what they were reading or seeing. Continue reading →

Disturbing Ethics Quote of the Week: Terri Miller

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

“It is very common for the teachers of the year, the championship coaches and the vanguards of education to be perpetrators…They will put on this mask of an exemplary teacher to look the same as a true exemplary teacher.”

—Terri Miller, president of the national organization Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation.

Erica Depalo (right): Teacher of the Year, vanguard, child-molester

Miller’s quote was prompted by the recent arrest of West Orange High School English teacher Erica DePalo, 33,  who is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old male student she taught in her honor’s English class. Prosecutors charged DePalo with first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child. DePalo, who teaches Honors English to ninth and tenth-graders and is also the school’s junior varsity tennis coach, was honored as Essex County’s top teacher for 2011-2012  as part of the state Department of Education’s “New Jersey Teacher of the Year” program. Accepting her award, she said, “I am merely a representative of all the hardworking dedicated teachers, especially those with whom I work at West Orange High School … teachers who are committed to their students, who consistently advocate for their students, and who exceedingly go above and beyond their everyday duties and job descriptions.”

Yes, I’d say having sex with 15-year-old student qualifies as going above and beyond their everyday duties and job descriptions. Or perhaps below and beyond. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Harvard Dean Jay Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“We always stress academic integrity with our students. It’s very hard to explain to someone that this raises ethical concerns and that it’s not OK.”

—-Jay Harris, Dean of Undergraduate Education at Harvard College, where about 125 students in a Government course are under investigation for cheating on a take-home final. Similarities in the tests handed in for Government 1310 ( Introduction to Congress) raised suspicions of copying or collaboration. It is the largest cheating scandal in Harvard history.

Wait…what?

Yeah, right.

Harvard stresses academic integrity, but about half a class cheated as soon as some lazy professor was willing to trust the students with a take-home exam? Well, you’re not doing a very good job stressing integrity,are you, Dean? But why does Harvard have to stress integrity—aren’t these supposed to be the best and the brightest? Doesn’t the nation’s most prestigious college only admit students with integrity, or did they cheat to get into Harvard, too? Isn’t part of “best” being honest, and doesn’t “brightest” mean “doesn’t have to cheat”? I’m so confused!

Please help us understand, Dean Harris! Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: School No-Tolerance Hits Rock Bottom

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

By popular demand, Bill scores a Comment of the Day with 18 well-chosen words, his solution for the school that has demanded that a deaf pre-schooler named “Hunter” find another way to sign his first name because the standard method requires him to make his fingers into the shape of a gun. Here is the new record holder for shortest COTD, on the post School No-Tolerance Hits Rock Bottom. Well done, Bill.

“They should change the sign for his name to a fist pointed up with the middle finger extended.”

School No-Tolerance Hits Rock Bottom

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

I hope.

Hunter Spanjer, preparing to terrorize someone.

This day-ruining story jumped ahead of a Todd Akin-related post, but since they both involve near criminal levels of stupidity, I didn’t have to shift gears very much. I should begin by assuring readers, however, that much as I wish I was, I am not making this up.

In Grand Island, Nebraska, the public school system has informed the parents of a deaf three-year-old pre-schooler that he cannot use sign language to communicate his name. You see:

  • The young boy’s name is Hunter Spanjer…
  • The Signing Exact English gesture for “hunter” is a fist with the forefinger pointing out and the thumb up, like a pistol…
  • The Grand Island school system’s “Weapons in Schools” Board Policy 8470 prohibits “any instrument…that looks like a weapon'”, and
  • The administrators of that school system are so dumb that they make Todd Akin look like Stephen Hawking. Continue reading →