You just might get it.
(this post is a reply to the almost 200 comments received on the previous blog post on Google+. And the fact that it has almost 200 comments and my blog post here has 6 comments is a great example of why I am talking more on Google+ than on this blog, FYI)
People are often eager to snatch power for themselves or their ideology or their political wing, without carefully considering the consequences when that power is handed to their rivals. Back when George W. Bush was violating international law abroad and using signing statements at home to essentially invalidate law in an unconstitutional way, I told my Republican friends that there is going to come a day when they regret establishing that precedent for the next Democratic president.
This myopia is rampant and easy to fall into. It has been around a long time. It is not going to go away.
David Hill, A. Miles Davis, Rafael Chandler, Aaron Steele, Robyn Hines, Craig Velenski, and others who disagreed with my previous post on Teachers don't see that they are falling into this trap.
David even put up a counter post where he riffed on the old meme of "when they came for X, I didn't speak up". Ironically, that is precisely the problem with his beliefs. When they came for the bigots, he didn't speak up because he wasn't a bigot. The problem isn't when they come for bigots. The problem is after the bigots, they might come after you. The problem with freedom of speech issues is that they always have to come down on some asshole that nobody wants to defend. But you have to defend that asshole to hold the line. You have to oppose the wiretapping of suspicious swarthy types without a warrant so that nobody with an axe to grind against YOU put a wiretap on YOUR phone.
The argument appears to be that it is OK to fire teachers based on reasons other than their effectiveness in the classroom. It is OK to fire them for their personal views, expressed outside of school. And while that might work out in your favor on THIS issue, you can't be sure it will on the next issue. How many beliefs do you have that are frowned on by the mainstream? Ruminate on that a bit. How are you going to feel if the sword is turned around and used to stab YOU?
As Stuart Robinson pointed out, we are moving into a society where private and public lives are blurred. Seems like hardly a day goes by without someone getting fired for saying the wrong thing in public. And that is just the cases that make it to the media level of attention. It is surely far more prevalent than reported.
Once you establish a precedent that it is OK to remove someone from their job for what they say in their free time and not how they behave on the job, you steal their free time from them. The stories told in the comments on my previous post about how teachers have to basically hide all their personal beliefs from people makes me sick. What a travesty that simply because they are teachers, these people cannot even talk about how they feel about something without an overwhelming fear that it will be used against them.
What this guy said is hideous, but whether you like it or not, it is a religious belief. So if this guy gets fired, it will be for being public about their religious belief. People asked me if I would be OK with this guy if he was saying bad things about blacks, jews, etc. I ask you back, would you be OK if they were firing a Muslim teacher because he talked about his support for Islam online? or an Atheist because his atheism makes fundamentalist parents nervous?
We already have a hard enough time recruiting good teachers. Maybe the fact that we are functionally denying them a personal life is part of the equation.
Furthermore, there has been a refrain in the comments about how the school is legally able to remove him. I agree. But just because something is legal doesn't make it right. Just because the situation exists a certain way, doesn't mean it should.
Society doesn't exactly have a great track record of treating beliefs fairly. Just take a look at the Red Scare for some clear data on that. Or the Salem Witch Trials. Or the Alien and Sedition Acts. Or the suppression of homosexual sentiments for... oh.... since before there was an America. The Founding Fathers knew this, that's why they developed a model for government that intentionally removed itself from issues of speech, religion, and so on. Rather than risk someone in government we don't like imposing their beliefs on others, we removed the ability of all people in government to impose their beliefs on others.
The law is not protection from abuse. Protection from law is. Hence, constitutional guarantees against law.
But the problem we have today is not the government. It is us. Big Brother is US. We are watching each other like hawks, waiting to jump on ourselves at the drop of a hat.
Oh, this guy has an opinion I don't like, lets get him fired, blacklisted, and personally destroyed.
And while that sounds great when it is someone that you disagree with, just wait a bit for the roulette wheel to come around and you can be outraged when it is going the other way. You might think that guy who doesn't like gay marriage is a bad influence on gay children. And you might be right. I don't know. However, when someone wants to fire a gay teacher because of the danger he poses to straight children, how are you going to stop that school district now? You gave them the power to fire people based on their beliefs. And you did so on the flimsy evidence that because he thinks a certain way, he is destined to act a certain way. And if that logic doesn't sound familiar to you, it should. It is the same logic constantly used to frame gays as dangerous, cast them as pedophiles, etc.
Human institutions are flawed because people are flawed. That's why I prefer to take their power away. So that regardless of who is in power, I won't end up on the chopping block. That also means that people I don't like won't end up on the chopping block either. And it means that I have to hear views I don't like. I have to be occassionally defend the rights of some asshole to be an asshole. That part sucks.
But it is a small price to pay so that our country doesn't look like a game of Shadowrun.
Sounds like you have an axe to grind.
ReplyDeleteBottom line is the person signed on, knowing the rules, and then he broke them. Full stop.
Re-frame this all you want. It doesn't change that essential truth.
Ultimately Greg doesn't accept the idea that having an opinion on a topic is not substantively different than engaging in hate speech, and that is where 90% of the problem lies.
ReplyDeleteThere is a structural difference between someone saying "I'm gay and I love it!" and someone else saying "Heterosexuality is an abomination!" One is an affirmation of positive value, and the other is denigration or denial of another set of values.
It's the symbolic equivalent of the old free-speech adage: "My right to swing my fist ends where the other guy's nose begins."
edit: I mean he doesn't accept that it IS substantively different.
ReplyDeleteHis statements were not obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot, or fighting words. They are protected by the 1st amendment. My position has been that if speech is protected by the 1st amendment, you should not be fired for it either. It is also the position of the ACLU on this case.
ReplyDeletehow did it know it would be Florida... I googled it to get the particulars. What the guy wrote was "meh" on the outrage scale, but then Florida's the same state where a guy got sacked from his substitute teaching gig for "wizardry".
ReplyDeletePeople demanding this guys head and taking away his ability to earn a living at his trade over venting (about a law that got passed in a state he doesn't live in) are no better than the cretin's who try to get teachers fired for reading JK Rowling or CS Lewis to kids in their classes.
the P.C. chickens have come to roost. Whether it's government enforced or will of the mob, It's the soviet/orwellian aspect of it all that's so repugnant, and yes both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of this.
Bogus Gasman, I love you ;)
ReplyDeleteAgreed--they are protected speech under the first amendment, but that does not make them the same.
ReplyDeleteYou are constantly offering up analogs that just don't fly because the type of speech (and its relationship to the both written and unwritten contract of being a teacher) is different.
Ultimately, the question of whether to dismiss him or not should be based on whether his performance as a teacher is compromised in some way rather than on his beliefs or even his statements--however, you have been using a lot of false arguments to try and paint people who don't agree with you as hypocrites or to suggest that we're on a slippery slope for calling this guy out.
I'm calling you out on that aspect of your argument.
And you, and others, continue to focus on what is, while I am focused on what should be.
ReplyDeleteIf I say, this rule should not be
The reply cannot be, well thats what the rules say. That is a tauntological. By that logic, all laws are automatically just, all rules are correct.
The fact is that people are NOT able to make the fine distinctions you may be making. Ultimately that gay teacher will be fired (according to comments on Google+, several already have been) or that atheist teacher will be fired (a simple google search reveals several already have).
My point is that ANY SPEECH that is not immediately dangerous to people should be allowed. I stand for free speech, 100%, all the time.
You don't.
That's not caricaturing you, that is your position. You are saying that this guy doesn't have the right to say whatever he wants. You want to punish him when what he says violates some rule that you lay down.
My counter is that people are going to abuse the rules to go after people that you like. You just don't see that here today. But in a week when gay teacher gets fired, suddenly that is going to be unjust despite what you have argued here.
Because YOU can make the distinction that THIS kind of speech is bad for teachers and THAT is just regular speech, doesn't mean that in REALITY that same distinction will be made.
If you can count on anything, it is humans abusing rules to fuck other humans over. That's why I am very careful about what rules I advocate
I think that teachers are expected to behave in a certain way. It's a written or unwritten rule. You are correct that young people are opting out of teaching, in part, due to these "rules". Their public/private lives are simply incompatible (in the long run) with the constant scrutiny. Thank you for the post.
ReplyDeleteSpot on, Greg.
ReplyDelete@Jim - teachers (I'm one) sign on and have rules governing what is appropriate and inappropriate for them to talk about in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteOutside of the workplace, we've got the same rights as everyone else to express our opinions and our beliefs. As long as we refrain from discussing any inappropriate topics in the classroom (and generally do a good job teaching), we shouldn't get fired.
Please help me for Christ sake
ReplyDeleteAaron E. Steele
ReplyDeleteTaketoshi
Jim
Moral logic EPIC FAIL.
Back to the kiddies table.
This is an adult topic.
Lord Gwydion: why do your constitutional rights end where the workplace begins?
@kharathel: I never said my rights ended at the workplace. I'm talking about the flip side. Everyone is always eager to talk about their rights, and never so eager to talk about their responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteI was hired to teach English. Not to teach religion, or progressive/liberal politics, or weird fringe culture, or math or science or social studies or P.E.
I have a responsibility as a teacher to spend my work time teaching my students English.
However, once my classes are finished, my responsibility ends and I should not be held accountable by my school, or my students' parents, for exercising my right to free speech, unless I explicitly break the bounds of free speech.
Of course, I'm not a teacher in the U.S., so my right to free speech isn't as broad as it would be if I were.
Again, Greg excellent post.
ReplyDeleteGreg said it exactly right as far as I'm concerned. Fun to see a topic like this on a game design blog, keep it coming.
ReplyDeleteCheers.
@Lord Gwydion: as long as you, and those like you, think that upholding rights is not a responsibility - this kind of censorship and tyranny will get worse and worse.
ReplyDeletespot on, Greg. We can see the same thing in other aspects of law: the war on terror, anti-paedophilia laws, anti-pr0n laws ... if you write illiberal laws they will come back to bite you on the arse some time in the future. As the lunar right in the US are going to find out next time one of their number goes postal, and the full might of the illiberal anti-terror laws they demanded comes down on them.
ReplyDeleteThis really boils down to does society have a right to come to a democratic consensus about what a teacher must view as correct?
ReplyDeleteAs Aaron pointed out, this was an issue.
But lets say the teacher had been hired in the 70's.
In that period Homosexuality was both a felony and a mental illness. To not be fired the teacher would have to hold the view that such was the case (that was societies view at the time). If he had advocated for gay rights he would have been fired (and many teachers were).
So, now it becomes as such. If there is a conservative revival in the USA and homosexuality is re-criminalized and listed once more as a mental disorder,
Should all teachers who have a countering view be fired and this teacher (and others like him) re-hired?
That is the crux of the issue, does the will of society have a trump card in who can teach its children? Traditionally this has always been the case, but is that a good thing?
That is my understanding. I don't have children so I can't say as my opinion is going to be very valuable, I might have very different opinions if it was my child being taught by such a person.