Wow! Very scary. This sort of thing could well happen in our schools and more. You see the beginnings already. Men are afraid of "sexual" harassment accusations for innocuous comments. "Niggardly" and "denigrate" have been accusees of being racially denigrating terms (joke intended).

The left is working hard to create a totalitarian environment where everyone must act as the left says they should. Yet they call Christian conservatives fascists and Nazis.

Posted by DADvocate at October 14, 2006 03:42 PM

Speaking of PC speech:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061014/D8KOL5H00.html

Fox baseball broadcaster Steve Lyons has been fired for making a racially insensitive comment directed at colleague Lou Piniella's Hispanic heritage on the air during Game 3 of the American League championship series.

In the second inning of Friday's game between Detroit and Oakland, Piniella talked about the success light-hitting A's infielder Marco Scutaro had in the first round of the playoffs. Piniella said that slugger Frank Thomas and Eric Chavez needed to contribute, comparing Scutaro's production to finding a "wallet on Friday" and hoping it happened again the next week.

Later, Piniella said the A's needed Thomas to get "en fuego" - hot in Spanish - because he was currently "frio" - or cold. After Brennaman praised Piniella for being bilingual, Lyons spoke up.

Lyons said that Piniella was "hablaing Espanol" - butchering the conjugation for the word "to speak" - and added, "I still can't find my wallet."

"I don't understand him, and I don't want to sit too close to him now," Lyons continued.

Fox executives told Lyons after the game he had been fired.

Okay, maybe I'm insensitive or just don't see it. What's the big deal? Is it what he meant, how it was interpreted, is it someone being over PC-sensitive, and does it warrant being fired?

I'm so tired of worrying about someone whining if I don't say something just right.

Posted by Woody at October 14, 2006 05:13 PM

I'd be surprised if Pinella was offended. He's a tough nosed guy who's said his share of inappropraite and worse comments.

Posted by DADvocate at October 14, 2006 05:28 PM

That was a stupid move on the teacher's part to put her in a group of largely non-English speaking students. Or there is a natural discord between her and the teacher that caused the teacher to put her in a difficult situation. One of my teachers was unusually mean to me in school for no apparent reason. I had never done anything to cause her to treat me the way she did, but she was the authority figure and I had to endure it for the entire year.

I have to wonder, too - if the students had been Russian or Chinese, rather than "Asian", would the teacher have flipped-out and had her arrested? I doubt it. The political climate as it is in the UK tells me the teacher would have behaved differently.

Posted by Oyster at October 15, 2006 07:38 AM

We live in challenging times ... STUPID people are now the majority making rules which are unjust.

Posted by bee at October 15, 2006 02:54 PM

It's hard to judge what happened in the class without having been there. The words alone (which also are in dispute) do not convey the tone of voice or concurrent non-verbal behaviors.

Having been around teens (and having been one myselft), I've heard too many times defenses along the lines of "I only said..." which conveniently ignored the larger context. My reading of the story provides several hints which suggest that the student may not have been quite as innocent as she claims, that the interactions (on both sides) may have been more toxic than the reporter's reconstruction after the fact.

That is, this may not be the best example of PC run amok.

Nonetheless, absent a threat of violence (which no one appears to have suggested), the school officials clearly engaged in extreme overreaction to have the student arrested on a criminal accusation, interrogated, and held in a police cell. And why was there a week delay preceeding this first resort to the criminal justice system without a school investigation? Surely a school-conducted hearing should have been a prior step if the student was felt to have engaged in misconduct.

Looks more like another case of craven school adminstrators with their proverbial heads up their posteriors...

Posted by civil truth at October 15, 2006 05:43 PM

CT: You're right. There is likely much more to the story. I'd be willing to bet this is not the first situation to occur between this student and this teacher - which ever one is at fault. I'm a little concerned with the fact that the non-english speaking students are referred to as "Asian". Yet the teacher says the girl used the word "black". Someone is not being honest about the actual "race" of the other students. If they were black, then why does the article refer to them as Asian? If they were Asian and not black, why would the girl call them black? Yet, it is said the other students spoke Urdu, which is the language spoken in Pakistan. Is it possible that they were considerably dark skinned Pakistanis? Or East Indians which speak Hindi-Urdu? I don't know.

The girl could be fundamentally racist, but the issue was the fact that they didn't speak english. Did she simply say, "those black kids"? If so, that's not a racist remark in itself. But maybe the teacher took it that way. There are far too many questions. Had this girl had a bad experience in the recent past with these boys? Who knows?

Nevertheless, the reaction by the teacher was totally uncalled for. If she was making a racist remark, suspend her from school, give her detentions, community service or whatever depending on school policy. But arrest? Good lord.

Posted by Oyster at October 16, 2006 10:07 AM

If you read the story closely, you will note that it wasn't the first teacher who initially punished her, but it was the one who found her outside and distraught. I have found in my dealings with educators that they ALWAYS side with each other. The only way to defend the teacher is to make the student look as bad or guilty as possible, which they did with isolation and with jail.

I once had a problem where a teacher, sure that he was Sherlock Holmes, said that my daughter had plagarized an essay because the paper it was printed on was smeared like a copier can do and he surmised that she copied someone else's paper. Well, at the time, the blade on the laser printer drum needed changing, and it gives the same smeared appearance, as its all just toner. What an idiot.

My daughter was Nat'l Honor Society ,etc. and was crying, which made me livid with the teacher with whom I demanded a meeting. We set it up and it did turn out to be a set-up. My wife and I were outnumbered by six teachers and administrators, who ran guard for him and one of them did most of the talking for him. I should have walked out before it started.

In the end, we were vidicated and the teacher was told to apologize to my daughter, but he never did and they never followed up. Oh, near the end of the meeting, when my wife explained how he must not know our daughter very well to accuse her and that she (my wife) personally saw her write the paper (which was in my daughter's style of writing), the same teacher said something which in essence was calling my wife a liar! At that moment I did stand up, pointed out his latest blunder, and we walked out to a stunned table of "edukators."

Oh, before this started, my daughter had a solid A average in the class, but it dwindled through some creative and harsh grading to an 89 average and a B. What a jerk. A no-class classroom teacher--and, he's a lot like many others--and he's still there, probably not qualified for anything else. Government schools could use better teachers, and I would put them on an incentive basis rather than everyone getting the same compensation.

I wish I could say that I feel better, but I don't.

Posted by Woody at October 16, 2006 11:23 AM

Linked up to this one..hope u receive the TB!..:)

Posted by Angel at October 16, 2006 08:52 PM