Literature

10 Ethics Takeaways From Wapo’s “Students Hated ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’ Their teachers Tried To Dump It”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Subhead: “Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful. The blowback was fierce.”

To begin with, read it all, and to the extent you can stand it, the comments. I included some trenchant quotes below, however.

Now the takeaways:

1. If there is a more vivid and depressing illustration of how far public education, teacher competence and race relations have declined since, oh, let’s say 2008, I don’t know what it could be.

2. The episode was triggered, a black student told the Post, when a white teen read “nigger” while reading “Mockingbird” to the class. The student disobeyed the teacher’s instructions to skip the slur, and “the kid looked at every Black person — there’s three Black people in that class — and smiled.” Well: a) Asking a student to read a passage of any book to the class when she feels part of the text must be skipped is incompetent. b) Of all the passages to have a student read from “Mockingbird,” choosing one that includes “nigger” smacks of deliberate sabotage. c) Presumed facial expression racism? At this rate, we should be back to “separate but equal” in no time.

3. “Freeman-Miller wondered: Did the school really have to teach Harper Lee’s classic but polarizing novel, as was mandatory for all freshmen?” There is no reason for any novel to be regarded as “polarizing,” except to those who regard literature as indoctrination tools. The educational process is to read the novel, discuss its literary merit, its context, its cultural significance, the ideas it communicates, and it why it works (or not) for a particular reader.

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My Favorite Poem: An Ethics Tale, A Romance, And A Ghost Story…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Happy Halloween, from Ethics Alarms!

***

The Highwayman

By Alfred Noyes

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   

And the highwayman came riding—

         Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

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Ethics Quiz, TV Talk Show Dept.: Unethical Or Well-Known Standard Practice? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Ann Althouse posted that video as genuine. Is it possible that Ann has never been on a TV talk show or news show? I sure have, and there is no chance, none, that Graham Norton sprung a surprise request on British theater and movie icon Judy Dench, who is 88, that she deliver a Shakespeare speech or sonnet on the spot.

Guests on talk shows are always prepped; they are told what the interview is going to cover, and no competent host, certainly not a veteran like Norton, would dare risk embarrassing a guest by putting them on the spot without notice and adequate preparation time.

Of course Dench knew she was going to be asked to recite some Shakespeare, and was ready. Being an actress, she also was ready to act as if the request was a surprise. And, of course, knowing little or nothing about how show business works, most of Norton’s viewers were impressed and fell for the stunt. Norton wins. Dench wins.

And someone who styles herself a truth-teller passes along the sham as genuine.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is Norton and Dench’s put-on ethical?

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Eventually, We May Have To Call It “The Great Stupid Day”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It’s Columbus Day, and The New York Times’ way of celebrating it is to publish an op-ed  by a Hispanic anti-Columbus freelance audio journalist who complains about there being a gigantic statue to the explorer in Puerto Rico. After all, she reasons, the island is in “the part of the world that suffered Columbus’s brutality firsthand.”

Columbus’s “brutality,” of course, is not what’s being celebrated or honored by Columbus Day.   In 2019, before the Dawn of The Great Stupid, I re-posted both essays I have authored on Ethics Alarms about Columbus, the first, from 2011, explaining why it was an ethical holiday; the second, from two years later, taking the ethical position that Columbus is a problematical figure to honor. The comments the dual post inspired were diverse and excellent, and none of them endorsed contrarian post #2. 

2019 seems decades away now, with the annus horribilis of 2020 yawning between then and now like, well, the Atlantic Ocean. One bit of the Times op-ed perfectly crystalized why I cannot embrace the anti-Columbus Day movement—-even Massachusetts is considering making it “Indigenous Peoples Day,” meaning the Mayflower is next on the airbrushing list—and it was a CBS story linked to it about all the other Columbus statues that have been toppled lately (while the one on Puerto Rico, where Columbus is mentioned in the national anthem, still stands) “explains”:

After George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, protests flooded the country and forced America to reckon with its past. Many protesters across the country flocked to local statues, demanding their removal and in some cases taking them down themselves. Almost 60 Confederate monuments have been removed, relocated and renamed since Floyd’s death, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Yeah, THAT makes a lot of sense. A non-racial incident in Minnesota involving an over-dosing habitual criminal trying to resist arrest and ending up dying in the midst of negligent restraint by a bad cop makes people want to cancel an iconic 15th Century explorer. Brilliant. Yet it is also fitting, somehow: the same episode was permitted to launch the Great Stupid and its prevailing ethos that only the negative consequences created by something matter, the somethings including free speech, rules, laws, law enforcement, men, romance, white people, the Founders, literature, “Gone With The Wind,” gestating babies, industry, civilization, and the United States of America, among others. The one really bad line of my anti-Columbus (but not anti-Columbus Day) piece was this: “And who is to say that the world would be better today had pre-Columbian civilizations persisted without European interference?”

Ugh. NOBODY can say the world would be better today if those primitive cultures had not been overwhelmed by a superior one. Well, the can say it, but it would be incredibly stupid. A satirical article linked to a comment in 2019 made the point nicely with its facetious list of ways to “not be a bigot on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” The list (with explanations; read the piece):

  1. Perform human sacrifice
  2. Massacre neighboring indigenous peoples
  3. Collect scalps of your enemies
  4. Enslave other humans
  5. Eat people
  6. Steal everything
  7. Torture your enemies
  8. Complain about Europeans doing the same thing you did

The article concludes, “If you don’t do these—at least one of them—you’re a bigot.”

Well played.

Here are the two Columbus articles again. I no longer endorse the second, but it’s worth including for the counterpoint. It’s also worth including this Comment of That Day, though it wasn’t recognized at the time (mea culpa), by Steve-O-in NJ:

I hate to break the news to you, but this isn’t about Christopher Columbus and what he did or didn’t do. This isn’t about the Indians and how they should or shouldn’t have been treated. This is about two things leading to a third thing. First this is about dividing society, not just between the Italian-Americans and the Indians, but between those who choose to celebrate, or even who choose to leave it alone, and those who oppose to appear “woke” or “forward-thinking” or just not to appear racist. Second, it’s about an attack on the West, its history, and its traditions by those who hate it and all it stands for, and can’t wait to try to make this place into the illusory utopia people like Bernie Sanders promise. It’s from both those things that a few folks hope to score political points and generate political capital.

It’s rich to call those who choose to celebrate Italian-American culture and contributions racist. We were treated pretty badly upon arrival, and not really even considered white initially. The biggest lynching ever in the US was of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans. It was also a year before we were allowed to join the fight in WW2 because we “passed the test” according to FDR. We might not boast a heavily decorated UNIT from that conflict like the 442nd, but we do boast several highly decorated INDIVIDUALS, like John Basilone, Vito Bertoldo, and Ralph Cheli.

It’s also rich to call the third most influential person (after Christ and Mohammed tied for first and Guttenberg second) in history a villain for making everything that is America possible. Don’t give me that Leif Erickson was first nonsense, he established no lasting link. But while we’re on the topic, if Leif truly was first, doesn’t the guilt transfer to him? Don’t bother answering, the question was rhetorical. And please don’t throw out that pseudohistory about the Welsh Indians and Chinese villages on the West Coast before Columbus. Here’s one you can answer, though: Do you really think that, once it was known there was a whole untouched hemisphere, the rulers of Europe would have written some kind of treaty banning any European from sailing west out of sight of the Pillars of Hercules? Do you think such a treaty would have lasted more than a generation? Do you really think that the world would be a better place had the United States never come to be? Yes or no, please, no equivocating. If the answer is no, then why the fuss? If the answer is yes, why are you still here?

Viva Italia! Viva America! Viva Colombo!

The two posts….

I. Celebrate Columbus Day, Honor Columbus

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Comment Of The Day: “How Can It Be Responsible To Trust America’s Teachers When Their Leader Posts This…?”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

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:

***

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.

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“Curmie’s Conjectures”: Donald Trump Has No Convictions, But He Has No Convictions

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

by Curmie

[Notes from your host: 1) Curmie and I did not coordinate our posts, and 2) as usual, his erudition puts me to shame.]

***

I’m currently in the process of moving into a new office which is far too small to accommodate my collection of books, even after I gave away over 1000 of them.  One of the volumes I still haven’t figured out what to do with is my Penguin paperback copy of Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War,” purchased over 40 years ago for a course I took in grad school.

Coming across that volume triggered a memory of struggling with one of that book’s most famous sections, the Stasis in Corcyra.  It wasn’t that the passages in question were too confusing.  Rather, it was that word “stasis”; no one would describe the civil war on the island of Corcyra in 427 BCE as static. 

A little digging (well, actually more than a little, as these were the days before the internet) revealed that virtually all English translations of those passages of Thucydides had simply adopted a cognate of the Greek word στάσις (stásis), meaning roughly “that which is stood up.”  So something firmly placed and unchanging would be static, or in a state of stasis.  But the word also carried the meaning of “standing up against,” in the sense of resisting authority.  So the insurrection on Corcyra was, in fact, an act of stasis.

These linguistic constructions, known as contranyms, auto-antonyms, or “Janus words” (among other locutions) are not uncommon.  We all understand that a peer might be a member of the English nobility or an equal, or that “it’s all downhill from there” might mean that the system is in decline or that the hard part is over and we can coast to the finish line.

I’m not sure if there’s a word for the variation on the theme that forms the title of this essay: the two meanings of the term are not in direct contradiction, but they lead to pretty close to opposite conclusions.  What I find interesting is that both definitions can apply simultaneously. 

That is, “having no convictions” can mean lacking a system of guiding principles, especially one involving a moral compass or an ethical center. It can also mean that the subject has never been convicted of a crime.  I’d argue that Donald Trump fits both descriptions rather well. 

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Scholastic Was Right To Ask A Children’s Book Author To Edit Her Anti-American Introduction, But Nobody Will Admit It

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Maggie Tokuda-Hall was indignant when Scholastic, a publishing giant that distributes books and resources to 90% of the nation’s schools, offered, to license her book, “Love in the Library,” but only on the condition that she edit her author’s note as indicated above. She went public with her accusations that this was an example of unconscionable capitulation to right-wing efforts to “censor” books in school libraries, and now Scholastic is groveling for forgiveness after ” an outcry among children’s book authors,” while several authors and educators consulted by Scholastic condemned the company’s actions, and demanded an overhaul of the editorial process.

Of course, this is an issue being engaged with by only one side of the political divide, whose analysis is wildly skewed by fealty to political correctness and the anti-American movement in public education, fueled in part by children’s book authors (see above) and industry consultants (see above). The New York Times’ “news report” on the matter is, predictably, completely biased, framing what should be an issue stuffed with legitimate arguments on both sides to one where the rights and wrongs of the episode have already been settled by the demands of Leftist orthodoxy. The headline, as is often the case in the Times, frames the story dishonestly: “Asked to Delete References to Racism From Her Book, an Author Refused.”

The author, a Japanese-America, quickly plays her own race-card, telling the Times, “We all see what’s happening with this rising culture of book bans. If we all know that the largest children’s publisher in the country, the one with the most access to schools, is capitulating behind closed doors and asking authors to change their works to accommodate those kinds of demands, there’s no way you as a marginalized author can find an audience.”

Sure there is. Write children’s books that don’t seek to indoctrinate kids and that don’t try to reduce complex historical events to simplistic and misleading narratives.

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Comment Of The Day: “I THOUGHT This Issue Would Eventually End Up At The Supreme Court, And Here It Is!”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Now that the question of whether Donald Trump was violating the First Amendment when he blocked nasty commenters on his tweets (like every other Twitter-user could do) has some distance from the reflex “That asshole! Serves him right that the courts stopped him” response from the Trump Deranged, the issue has sparked some varied and interesting commentary. Yesterday’s EA post sure did; I even managed to trigger a violent argument between two long-time esteemed commenters here.

I remain very ambivalent on the issue. Here is Rich in CT’s Comment of the Day raising a parallel that is one of the reasons.

***

I serve on a local board, and in Connecticut at least, there is no inherit right for the public to speak in any particular forum (during the conduct of official business). If comments are allowed, it is up to the discretion of the board (pursuant to applicable bylaws), and they can be limited to a specific topic to help the board make a lawful and effective public policy decision. Disruptive comments can be barred. My board has never had to remove a disruptive individual, but we have that right if needed as they speak as our guests.

We’ve had heated exchanges, and have had to frequently warn the public that comments must remain on topic and civil. Allowing uncivil comments, in fact, can create a “hostile forum” that can potentially bias the commission again a particular applicant. Courts can vacate decisions made during such conditions, and made adjudicate the application itself, taking the decision completely out of the commission’s control.

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Weather Lady’s Collapse”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Curmie’s typically erudite and perceptive Comment of the Day below made me happy and sad at the same time. Happy, because it is the kind of superb commentary Ethics Alarms readers excel at producing, making the site unique in the blogosphere whether a significant numbers of people take advantage of the resource. Sad, because I should have authored its equivalent in the first place, and might have come closer if I were not forced daily into squeezing posts into randomly distributed periods during the day that I don’t have to devote to earning enough money to keep the Marshalls from a future living in a cardboard box in the woods.

Curmie’s analysis also alerted me to something I had missed in the video, the mysterious statement “Not again!” from one of the anchors. This reminded me of the just-created whale in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” hurtling to Earth through space (along with a pot of petunias) that similarly thinks, also inexplicably, “Oh no, not again!”

Here is Curmie’s Comment of the Day, a deft examination of humor, ethics and human nature, regarding the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Weather Lady’s Collapse”:

***

I find this one fascinating for a variety of reasons. One of those is that I no doubt had a different reaction to seeing the event under the headline “BREAKING: CBS LA Weather Forecaster collapses live on air.” So I can’t say how I would have responded had I simply been watching that news show.

Part of my response is also based on the initial movement, the slow bend forward toward the desk. That seemed almost choreographed, as if she was going to pound her head on the desk as some sort of statement on the imminent forecast, described by the co-anchor as “the calm before the storm.” It’s the slide out of the chair that changes the dynamic. That’s definitely unstaged.

More importantly, I’d read your statement that she’s recovering at home before I viewed the video. This takes us very close to the notion of aesthetic distance, that unspoken understanding that what we are watching isn’t actually happening. Hence, we don’t run for cover when the bad guy in a play or a movie appears with a gun and looks threatening, and we’re not confused when the actor who played Hamlet is miraculously alive to take a curtain call even though the character is dead. Or, in this case, that she suffered an episode, but is on her way to recovery.

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: Oklahoma Republicans Vote Against Banning Corporal Punishment Of Disabled Students

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

As an ethicist, I see news stories like this and want to hurl myself through the nearest wood-chipper. On the Left, we have racial-grievance fanatics claiming that eliminating discipline for disrupting class is necessary to avoid perpetuating “systemic racism.” On the Right, we have virtual Neanderthals with ethical standards stuck in the 19th century advocating teachers hitting cognitively challenged kids because…the Bible says so.

No wonder it’s so easy for Leftist fascism to get a foothold in our culture, when conservatives undermine their credibility with positions like that.

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains and apparently through one ear and out the other of a lot of elected officials, is one of the 19 laggards that permit child abuse in the public schools. (Watch the Indian School corporal punishment inflicted on students in the “1923” miniseries now streaming on Paramount+, if you dare.) Democrats in the state legislature introduced House Bill 1028, a modest proposal—I would think—to outlaw school district personnel from “using corporal punishment on any student identified with a disability in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.” It didn’t even outlaw teachers beating kids in general, just students with disabilities. But the GOP has a super-majority, and not enough alleged conservatives (why is beating students “conservative” voted against the bill to narrowly kill it, 45-43.

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