Gay Fascism in a High School Economics Class

From the Livingston Daily:

Howell Public Schools Superintendent Ron Wilson on Thursday said high school teacher Jay McDowell was disciplined after it was determined McDowell violated a student’s First Amendment rights and significantly violated a district policy.

“The student was speaking out on being offended by the gay and lesbian lifestyle because it’s against his religion. The teacher said that wasn’t appropriate,” Wilson said.

The student, 16-year-old junior Daniel Glowacki, was then ejected from McDowell’s economics class, Wilson said, along with another student after Glowacki and McDowell argued about another student wearing a belt buckle featuring the Confederate Flag.

Glowacki was asking the teacher why, if the Confederate Flag was considered offensive, he didn’t have an equal right to feel offended at the rainbow shirts gay, lesbian and liberal students were wearing, since his Catholic beliefs hold that homosexuality is sinful.

Glowacki was given a referral for his role in the ordeal. A referral is given to a student for breaking a school rule. The referral, given for minor offenses, goes on the student’s permanent record. Glowacki was given a referral, written up by McDowell, but not suspended from school.

Daniel Glowacki’s mother, Sandy Glowacki, told the Daily Press & Argus on Thursday that Howell High School Principal Aaron Moran delivered a letter to her home saying the referral had been taken off his record because Daniel Glowacki committed no wrongdoing.

The Daily Press & Argus on Tuesday filed a Freedom Of Information Act request seeking documentation from the district investigation. Assistant Superintendent Lynn Parrish on Thursday said the district served notice of the request to McDowell, alerting him the information may be released. McDowell has the option to request the information be held for an extended period of time.

“(McDowell) has options and he has the right to exercise each and every remedy he may have,” Parrish said.

McDowell did not return calls Thursday from the Daily Press & Argus seeking comment. He has declined comment when asked about the issue throughout the week.

The district Oct. 20 was taking part in a national “Spirit Day” — a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation event aimed to raise awareness of anti-gay bullying after the recent suicides of six gay teens across the United States who had been harassed. Students in support of the day wore purple T-shirts that read “Tyler’s Army,” for one of the six who died. Others wore shirts featuring a rainbow, which signifies gay pride.

Daniel Glowacki, who has since been removed from the class and placed in another class at the request of his mother, questioned why it was allowed for students to show their support for the gay community and not allowed for a student to wear her Confederate flag belt buckle.

“I don’t really care what people think, but I don’t want people to think I’m against gays. That’s just not true,” Daniel Glowacki said.

A complaint was filed against McDowell, head of the Howell Education Association teachers’ union, by a parent. Sandy Glowacki said she did not file the complaint. That complaint led to an investigation, which led to McDowell being suspended one day without pay. District officials considered the issue over until it was found out McDowell posted information about his suspension on Facebook. He has since returned to work.

“The day the incident took place, I received several e-mails from parents saying they believe students were being harassed for not wearing the T-shirts,” Wilson said Thursday. “We have a clear, established anti-bullying policy. [emphasis added]

Translation: students who declined to show support for the gay and lesbian cause were victims of bullying.

“All the student was doing was voicing an opinion. The same thing would have been done had the student been on the other side. As superintendent, it’s my responsibility to foster fair, respectful treatment of all staff and students, and the teacher didn’t do that.”

Sandy Glowacki said she wanted her son and McDowell to apologize to each other, but because of comments being made about her son, she may seek legal action, although she acknowledged no one has mentioned her son by name.

Wilson said he is hopeful no legal action comes from the occurrence.

“My son is not a bigot,” Sandy Glowacki said. “He has a very diverse group of friends that includes some gays. If a gay student was being picked on in class, he’d stick up for them.

“But I feel his freedom of expression and freedom of speech have been violated along with his character.”

There is more coverage here and here.

Apparently the teacher verbally assaulted the dissenting students, calling them “racists.”

Daniel Glowacki learned some lessons about political correctness. Politically correct people are allowed to shut down any views they dislike by claiming to be offended, but politically incorrect people are required to tolerate anything thrown at them.

McDowell should not have merely received the one-day suspension, he should have been fired. One qualification to be a teacher is to deal tolerantly with disagreement from students, even when the student is expressing an idea you dislike. Not being a bigot, in other words, should be a qualification to be a teacher. And “bigotry” here is not defined as leftists define it — holding politically incorrect opinions. Bigotry is getting bent out of shape in the face of politically incorrect opinions.

We were about to ask rhetorically “how long before something like this happens at Marquette?” But almost certainly things like this have happened here. We have learned about some, but been unable to blog about them because we could not source them properly.

In one case a student of ours told us about hair-raising things that happened to his roommate. We urged him to urge his roommate to talk to us, but the roommate never did. A lot of students, feeling intimidated and emotionally bruised, want to let the issue drop.

Glowacki is a hero for, at least briefly, sticking to his guns and challenging what the teacher said. That’s a dangerous thing to do in high schools, and in colleges, when the teacher is a politically correct liberal or leftist.

Hatred of the Military: No Peace for Students

From the Los Angeles Times, an account of how leftist teachers in the Los Angeles area are attacking Junior ROTC, sometimes to the point of personal harassment of students enrolled in the program.

First Sgt. Otto Harrington — tall, muscular, his head cleanshaven — has soldiered through battles in Bosnia, Kuwait and Somalia. He has patrolled Korea’s DMZ.

None of that prepared him, though, for the attacks he has faced as senior teacher in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, where students and teachers have launched a crusade against military recruiting and JROTC.

Harrington blames their campaign for cutting the number of cadets at Roosevelt by 43% in four years, from 286 to 162. Some teachers urge students not to sign up for JROTC, he said, and have worked to end involuntarily placement in the program.

“They seem to think I’m some evil, horrible soldier down here trying to sacrifice our kids to Iraq,” Harrington said in describing the increasing tensions on the Eastside campus.

The program’s critics see JROTC as a Trojan horse targeting students in low-income minority schools with high dropout rates. “We are a juicy target,” said Roosevelt social studies teacher Jorge Lopez.

At Roosevelt and other schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the anti-JROTC movement has helped drive a 24% drop in enrollment since 2003-04, Harrington and his critics said. The decline runs counter to enrollment nationwide, which grew 8% to 486,594 cadets between 2001 and 2006, fueled by a 57% jump in federal funding, according to the Department of Defense.

This propaganda clearly has had an effect on students.

Roosevelt 11th-grader Jesse Flores said that as recently as his freshman year, students didn’t think less of kids for being in JROTC; some even stopped cadets to admire ribbons and medals pinned to their uniforms. “Now,” Jesse said, “everyone says JROTC is bad.”

Many teachers are openly hostile toward JROTC, Jesse said, and some wear T-shirts that say “A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind.”

Arlene Inouye, a speech therapist formerly at Roosevelt, said she thinks anti-military advocacy by teachers is a counterbalance to a strong military presence on campus. She said she once counted 14 recruiters approaching lunchtime crowds of students in Roosevelt’s quad, handing out “Join the Army” book covers and promising adventure, travel and money for college.

In 2003, concerned that students weren’t hearing the other side, she founded the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools. The group has spread to 50 Los Angeles-area schools, providing member teachers with literature, speakers, films and books.

Nearly two dozen teachers have also shown the films “Arlington West,” put out by Veterans for Peace, and “The Ground Truth,” a documentary in which veterans condemn the war in Iraq and their treatment by the military on their return home.

Lopez, the social studies teacher, keeps a stack of glossy brochures propped on his chalkboard titled “Don’t Die in a Dead-End Job! Information for Young People Considering the Military” that show a soldier saluting flag-draped coffins. Prominent on his wall is a poster called “Ten Points to Consider Before You Sign a Military Enlistment Agreement.”

“I want to see more Latinos go to college,” Lopez said.

Of course, one of the best ways for young people from poor families to go to college is with the financial aid that the military offers. But Lopez, obviously, has a rather different agenda.

The students in the program, unlike the leftist activists, like the program.

“For some students, the biggest reason to come to school is for JROTC,” said Harrington, noting that his students often come in at 6:30 a.m. even when they are on vacation.

Daniel Segura, a soft-spoken 16-year-old with a mop of brown hair and an easy smile, is one of them. He said his grades spiraled after his father died of diabetes two years ago. “I felt there was no point,” he said.

He started ditching class to go to the Santa Monica Pier and failed half his classes. Urged by a counselor to enroll in JROTC, he was at first resistant and defiant during class time. Harrington told him not to attend the program, then agreed to give him another chance if he followed the rules.

Slowly, Harrington gave Daniel more responsibility, putting him on the flag and armed drill teams and on JROTC’s courtesy patrol, which helps translate for parents at teacher conferences.

Hoping to be named to the JROTC staff and earn more responsibility, Daniel said, he plans to pass all his classes this semester and is getting a B in English.

Roosevelt students tell him he is being brainwashed to go into the Army, but he said he thinks they don’t understand what the program really is. It has taught him leadership and discipline, he said, and he has thrived on its boundaries and rules.

In a bewildering school with nearly 5,000 students, JROTC has been a beacon, a place to belong.

“JROTC made me try again,” he said. Several JROTC cadets describe feeling as if they are under hostile fire from anti-military teachers.

Last year, Jesse, the 11th-grader, a master sergeant and JROTC flag detail commander, was the only student wearing a JROTC uniform in Martha Guerrero’s first-period world history class. He said that Guerrero, who often wears a “War is not the answer” T-shirt and has a flag of the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara hanging in her classroom, sometimes asked him pointed questions in the middle of class.

“Jesse, are you going to go to Iraq and die?” she asked. “Why are you wearing a uniform? Aren’t you embarrassed?” Jesse said he felt singled out by the question and told his JROTC instructor about it.

Angered by what he saw as bullying of his student, he confronted Guerrero, who apologized to Jesse. She said she wasn’t harassing the student. “I just tell them things I know are right or wrong. I stand against war, against JROTC.”

But unfortunately, she’s not tolerant of students who disagree with her.

The irony here is huge. These are the leftists who think that teenagers can make their own decisions about having sex, and that teenage girls are quite mature enough to decide whether to have an abortion, but they don’t trust students to make up their own minds about the military.