Education

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Michele Bachmann

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Ah! Historical New Hampshire...

Rep. Michele Bachmann (D-Minn), Tea Party leader and potential presidential candidate, recently told a Manchester, New Hampshire crowd that she was in the state of “the shot heard ’round the world.” Ethics Foul. Minnesota disgrace. Congressional Disgrace. Tea Party disgrace. National disgrace.

U.S. educational system disgrace!

As most grade school children know (Some grade school children? Grade school children in New England, maybe? Please?), the source of that loud shot, the Battle of Concord (the Battle of Lexington was fought on the same day) was fought in Concord, Massachusetts, which, like Lexington, is a next door neighbor of my home town, Arlington, Massachusetts, known as Menotomy on April 18, 1775 —which, as Rep. Bachmann can tell you, was also the date of Phil Sheridan’s ride. Oops! I mean Paul Revere’s ride! Continue reading →

So Let me Get This Straight: Tera Myers Has To Quit, But This Jerk KEEPS His Job?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

"You gave your students WHAT????!!!"

I write this not only aware that the story might be a hoax, but hoping against hope that it is.

Teacher Frank Rozanski gave the students in his advanced placement psychology class at Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens what he called “The Sexual Tension Quiz.”

The test, which was given to the class for a grade, is a sophomoric gag quiz in which sexually suggestive questions have innocent answers. Har. Har. As humor, it is something that one might expect to see in a college magazine (for a not-so-great college), or maybe Playboy in a weak month. Continue reading →

The Naked Teacher Principle Strikes Again!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Once the class sees Teacher like this, it's over...

The Naked Teacher Principle holds, in essence, that once a teacher is seen by his or her students cavorting in the nude, school administrators and parents are not being unreasonable or unfair if they decide that the teacher can no longer teach effectively. From the classic example involving internet photos, to exceptions like the male teacher appearing in a community theater production of “The Full Monte”, to strange corollaries like “the Naked Butt-Painting Teacher with a Paper Bag Over His Head Variation,” naked teachers create headaches for their schools, giggles (at least) for their students, and anxiety for the teachers involved.

Now we have another variation. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Facebook Wars II”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Though not strictly an ethics comment, Mary’s theory about why school administrators are engaging in so much ethically dubious conduct is provocative and has the ring of truth. Here is her Comment of the Day, on the post “Facebook Wars II: More School Abuse of Power and Privacy“:

“A number of years ago, while extracting myself from a bad relationship, a therapist friend told me that the more healed and “normal” I became, the more outrageous and pathological my ex-partner’s behavior would be, in a psychological attempt to pull me back into the relationship.

“I sometimes think the same thing applies to social relationships and organizations. As they lose their relevancy and people withdraw and move on to new social structures, those invested in the old organizations thrash wildly to maintain an ever crumbling status quo. Continue reading →

Facebook Wars II: More School Abuse of Power and Privacy

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

"Hello? ACLU? Anybody there?"

In January, Ethics Alarms weighed in on reports from Illinois and New York about students being disciplined by their high schools for postings on Facebook about the sexual proclivities of female students in the community. The ethics verdict: the schools were abusing their power and the students’ privacy:

“When did schools suddenly acquire disciplinary control over what students do when they aren’t at school? There is no question that the websites involved were inappropriate, disrespectful, cruel and hurtful, just as the rumors and insults included in high school graffiti were, in those glorious days before the internet. Students so abused need to complain to parents, and parents need to talk to the parents of the offending students, and if they can’t or won’t address the problem, then the courts or law enforcement may need to become involved.”

The rationale offered by the schools at the time was that the students had violated rules against cyber-bullying, that ever-vague plague, although there is no more legitimate authority for a school to decree what a student can say about another student on a personal website than there is for a school to restrict what a kid can say at the dinner table.

Naturally, when an institution exceeds the natural limit on its authority, there is nothing to keep it from even more egregious abuse. Thus two Georgia students were just suspended and one another was expelled for negative Facebook postings about a teacher. Continue reading →

The War On Gays: “Fair and Equitable” in Corpus Christi

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Some day, one hopes not too far in the future, when U.S. culture has unequivocally abandoned the ancient fear of gay human beings, when understanding, fairness and respect has banished ignorance and hate, when same sex marriages are recognized as manifestations of loyalty, commitment and love rather than perversions of nature, and when no American feels the need to hide his or her sexuality, and thus feels no compulsion to trumpet it either, we will look back on such societal embarrassments as the Flour Bluff Intermediate School District as we do now on past purveyors of child labor, forced sterilization, involuntary human experimentation, mistreatment of women, and racism, and wonder, “What was the matter with those people? How did they get that way?”

Or, come to think of it, we could ask that question right now.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca “Nikki” Peet, a senior at Flour Bluffs High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, high school senior requested the she be permitted to launch a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school. The Equal Access Act, a federal law passed in 1984, requires schools receiving federal funding to offer “fair opportunities for students to form student-led  groups, regardless of their religious, political and philosophical leanings.” If the school district was going to allow any extracurricular groups, it had to allow Nikki’s.

So it shut down all extracurricular clubs at the school. Continue reading →

The Comment of the Day: “The White Male Scholarship”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Tim LeVier defends the controversial white male scholarship, as well as other scholarships determined by race and gender. Here is his Comment of the Day, in response to my post, “The White Male Scholarship”:

“…This is actually a subject that I feel passionate about for exactly the reasons you state. I’ve mentioned on this blog (in the comments) before about how I feel with regards to student groups that support every student except the straight white male. What’s a guy like me to do when everyone’s at their meetings? The names of their groups suggest exclusion of others and create an unwritten rule that you should only attend if you meet the qualifications.

“With regards to student groups, I think your post would be more accurate. I think there’s more opportunity for all individuals to flourish in mixed student groups plus it spreads awareness of your “race-based” goals when you aren’t just ‘preaching to the choir.’

“However, for scholarships, surprisingly, I have to take the opposite approach. I think it’s because I believe that with scholarships, it’s about providing opportunity, whereas with student groups it’s about taking opportunity. Continue reading →

The White Male Scholarship

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Does he really need a scholarship?

Colby Bohannan, president of the Former Majority Association for Equality, has set up a scholarship program for white males. To qualify, you have to be at least a 25 percent Caucasian, have demonstrated a commitment to education, achieved at least a 3.0 grade average, show financial need, and document a positive contribution to the community. Bohannan’s official reasoning is that white males are the only group that doesn’t have a scholarship dedicated to them. He is, he says, righting an injustice. Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: “University of Redwood”—Or Perhaps We’re Doomed

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

 

Oregon's Reed College...and, in Universe Beta, the "University of Redwood"

“University of Redwood” exists only in cyber-space, the mutated virtual clone, or perhaps evil twin, of Oregon’s prestigious Reed College. The imaginary institution consists only of a website, which rips off most of the features of Reed College’s website, with pictures of Reed’s faculty as the imaginary “Redwood” faculty, photos of Reed alumni as “Redwood” graduates and even a parallel universe history of the school. Reed’s history section begins,

 

“Reed College was founded in 1908, and its first classes were held in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Reed. Simeon Reed had been an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River; in his will he suggested that his wife could “devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose…”

Coincidentally, “Redwood” has a very similar background, according to its site: Continue reading →

Mike Haridopolos’s Book: Whatever Was Going On, It Had To be Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Four years and $152,000 for THIS??

What was going on here?

It has been revealed that new Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos was paid  $152,000 in taxpayer money to write a book on politics for Brevard Community College four years ago.
All 175 pages of the resulting tome, “Florida Legislative History and Processes,” were published exactly once. The only copy of the 175-page, double-spaced manuscript can only be found, and read, at the school. The book Haridopolos produced didn’t satisfy the original contract’s requirement for a publishable, textbook-quality look at the development of the Florida Legislature, state constitution, the governor’s office and judiciary from pre-statehood until present. But heck..what do you expect? He was only paid a lousy $152,000! What do you want, “Doctor Zhivago?” Continue reading →