>No Wirt, I believe you're missing the point.  Schools are not above the
>law.  Several famous Court decisions have reminded them of that over the
>years.  Why do they continually need reminding?


John Lee



At 12:45 PM 6/4/05 -0400, Wirt Atmar wrote:


>I still believe that you're missing the point.
>
>To let your daughter wear a shirt like that I consider to be a basic
>abrogation of your parental responsibilities, and to defend her actions so
>vigorously
>sends her the completely wrong message.
>
>But even more importantly, beyond the fact what one family considers
>appropriate and another doesn't, there is nothing "democratic" or
>"constitutional"
>about being a student. I taught for ten years in publicly supported state
>university, New Mexico State, with my students' ages ranging from 17, just
>a few
>years older than your daughter's, to "kids" in their early thirties,
>people who
>had just finished their doctorates.
>
>What I said and did in my classroom was law. Although I never kicked a kid
>out of class for what he wore, simply because it was never necessary, I
>did ask
>kids to leave for talking, for reading newspapers in class, for being late and
>for sleeping. Their speech wasn't constitutionally protected; they were to
>sit there and be quiet, as much as a courtesy to their classmates as anything,
>but primarily to engage in a dialog, but one where they were silent
>partners in
>that dialog.
>
>Nor did I grade on the curve. Requiring work of sufficient quality for a
>particular grade made it possible for everyone in class to get an "A," but
>it also
>made it possible for everyone to flunk the class. One of the stories I told
>at the beginning of a great number of my classes was that of Kenneth Clark's
>comment regarding mediocrity. If you exist day-to-day in the midst of
>mediocrity, you not only become so inured to it that it seems normal, you
>begin to see
>graded shades of it, and that was the reason that Clark felt compelled to
>return to the Acropolis every so often, simply to reset his appreciation
>for what
>was truly excellent and what was merely mundane.
>
>I not only believe in the "soft bigotry of low expectations," I very deeply
>believe that people rise to the level of expectations that you put before
>them,
>and I was always impressed with what the kids could accomplish if you
>demanded it of them. And I am sure that it impressed them too.
>
>Wirt Atmar
>
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