JISHOU, HUNAN — The lesbian teenager denied a decent high school prom has won her discrimination case against Itawamba Agricultural High School in Mississippi.

The school agreed to revise its prom policy to be non-discriminatory and to pay Constance McMillen $35,000 in damages and her legal fees.

McMillen last fall had asked her school if she could come to her prom wearing a tuxedo and bring her girl friend as her date. The school said no. So, she and her parents approached the American Civil Liberties Union, which agreed to represent her in a civil action against the school.

So, the school canceled prom altogether. A judge subsequently required the school to hold a prom open to everyone, including McMillen and her date. Then, the school sponsored a fake prom, while a “secret” prom was held elsewhere for the rest of McMillen’s graduating class.

McMillen was harassed so much at school that she transferred to a school in Jackson just to graduate with some dignity.

Itawamba becomes the first high school in Mississippi to have a policy barring discrimination or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Talk about irony.

July 20th, 2010 | Tags: ACLU, civil rights, Constance McMillen, discrimination, gay, lesbian | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Schools | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — I may seem to pay too much attention to religion in public high school graduation ceremonies, but for me it’s fascinating to see how the courts resolve two apparently conflicting clauses in the First Amendment.

On the one hand, the Establishment Clause states the government can neither promote a particular religion nor prevent the free exercise of any religion. On the other hand, the Free Speech clause prevents the government from limiting or banning speech or any other kind of expression, no matter how obnoxious it may be.

So, what happens when someone (a public school student, say) wants to talk about God or religion during a graduation ceremony? A public school is, after all, an institution of the government, so one might assume that student would have to rewrite the speech to omit the God stuff. This is exactly what school officials in a Nevada town believed in 2007 when they told Brittany McComb she had to take her witnessing for Jesus out of her valedictory. At first, McComb agreed, but when it came time to deliver her speech, she still referred to Jesus, etc., and school officials literally pulled the plug on her microphone.

Dumb.

If McComb were speaking just for herself, then her comments would have been protected under the Free Speech clause, although she was speaking to a captive audience in a public school. If, however, she were speaking on behalf of the school (or if a school official delivered such an address), it would run afoul of the Establishment Clause. A public school cannot legally teach one particular faith or insist its students, parents, staff, etc., worship in a particular way. Testifying would imply that there was only one “preferred” way to worship.

May 31st, 2010 | Tags: ACLU, brittany mccomb, Constance McMillen, Eric Workman, First Amendment, graduation speech, Greenwood High School, religion | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Schools | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s time to blog about stupid high schools again. The fruit is hanging low this season, so let’s take a look at Itawamba Agricultural High School (IAHS) in the fine “Christian” community of Fulton, Mississippi.

This tiny high school in a tiny town (populated by people with tiny minds) has made international news because it told a lesbian student, Constance McMillen, that she (a) could not bring her female date and (b) could not wear a tux to the senior prom on April 2.

After she asked to bring her girlfriend, IAHS school officials told McMillen there were Rules for Senior Prom, which specifically forbid same-sex couples and stipulate that only boys can wear tuxedos. (For girls to wear tuxes apparently would bring on a plague of frogs, or some other Biblical catastrophe.)

McMillen and her parents approached the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent a letter of demand in February to the principal of IAHS informing her that the rules violated McMillen’s constitutional rights. So, the school did the honorable chickenshit thing — it withdrew its sponsorship and canceled the prom.

Of course, who became the scapegoat? Not the school, which had reneged on its traditional prom sponsorship, oh no! Her classmates and the community blamed poor Constance McMillen (and the commie atheist ACLU) for challenging what most would consider overly restrictive rules.

April 7th, 2010 | Tags: ACLU, Constance McMillen, Fulton, gay/lesbian rights, high school, Itawamba Agricultural High School, Mississippi, prom | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Schools | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — This message to a professor has been circulating on the Internet lately. I have no idea of its provenance — maybe it’s a hoax — but the sentiments contained in it we teachers have all heard before, in some fashion.

The short version is: “Professor, I am a genius. The brilliance of my work is so self-evident that I deserve an A.”

[NOTE: The mechanical errors are supposedly the student's.]

The Greatest Snowflake Student Email Ever Sent

I am going to try my hardest to write you this email in response to the recent grade received on my paper, without reflecting the anger that I feel as a result. I would like to first express my respect for you and every other teacher that has placed their energy into educating me and my peers, as we all know that teachers are often the unappreciated foundation of our future. However, I must express a slight amount of disrespect, as I do not agree with your perception of my paper one bit. I recently read an article about Bill Gates and the steps he took as he dropped out of Harvard. What I found so interesting was that he had the confidence to leave his schooling behind for the other students that really needed it, as he realized that he had more important things to accomplish in life than to argue with teachers about grades on papers, as we all now know what thoughts he had storming in his mind.

March 22nd, 2010 | Tags: grades, student complaints, term papers | Category: Random rants, Schools, Teaching | Leave a comment

Cross-posted from The Daily Kos.

JISHOU, HUNAN, CHINA — Today while I was watching a girl with the English name Jackie teach some vocabulary this morning, I could tell she would be a successful person in the future. The thought just popped into my head unbidden, so I hope it’s a good sign. I don’t know Jackie all that well. She’s a freshman. Since I see my students only two hours a week, that means I have had only about 24 hours of contact time with Jackie and most of her classmates. Furthermore, since I teach her class composition and not spoken English, we rarely even talk to each other in class.

Still, I can get a general idea of Jackie’s character and personality. She works hard, but is not especially gifted at English. She smiles a lot, is friendly, and pays attention in class. I reckon she cares a lot about people. Today, she came to class prepared with three vocabulary words to teach class (a weekly assignment for everyone): dusk, eminent and scenic. And she taught the lesson exactly as I had requested, which not many of her peers have been able to do so far.

Further, she was poised and confident, despite her shaky pronunciation and lack of sufficient eye contact (she avoided looking at my side of the room!). Not a perfect presentation, but acceptable under the circumstances.

March 14th, 2010 | Tags: China, counseling, english, ESL, Teaching | Category: China, Schools, Teaching English | Leave a comment

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — The crackerjack Texas Board of Education has dropped a popular children’s book author from the third grade curriculum because board members confused him with an author of a book on Marxism.

The late Bill Martin Jr. wrote Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, one of the most endearing children’s books of all time. Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago, wrote Ethical Marxism, which oddly has never been popular with schoolchildren.

So, which bright lights on the Texas BoE confused the two authors? For those of us living outside the Lone Star State, their names, Pat Hardy and Terri Leo, are not so important, I suppose. But I will note that they are both Republicans and both dead set on purging the Texas school curriculum of anything that isn’t 100% True Blue Amurrican. Rather than, say, check their facts, these two concluded that (1) Marxism is un-American, (2) political analysts frequently moonlight as children’s book authors (or vice versa) and (3) such authors would undoubtedly conceal their Marxist propaganda in children’s books as part of the worldwide commie conspiracy to overthrow This Great Nation™ through the hearts and minds of its children.

Thanks to the keen minds of Hardy and Leo, Texas schoolkids are now safe from the pernicious influence of Brown Bear, who is probably one of those commie Russky bears anyway.

January 26th, 2010 | Tags: Bill Martin, Republican, Texas Board of Education | Category: Civil liberties, Schools | Leave a comment