Use Romney T-shirt tale for teachable moment
The blog of The Philadelphia Inquirer's Editorial Board.
Use Romney T-shirt tale for teachable moment
School is supposed to be where young Americans learn about the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech. It’s not where students should be ridiculed for expressing a preference in the presidential election. Children can’t vote, but they can let the adults who do know which candidate they like and why.
That could create one of those coveted teachable moments in which students, guided by a capable teacher, get to exchange ideas and learn something valuable without resorting to a dull textbook, website entry, or video.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened to Samantha Pawlucy, a 16-year-old sophomore at Charles Carroll High School, who was ridiculed by her geometry teacher on Sept. 28 for wearing a pink T-shirt expressing support for the Romney-Ryan presidential election ticket.
Pawlucy says her geometry teacher, Lynette Gaymon, said wearing the T-shirt in a “Democratic” school was as absurd as it would be for Gaymon, a black woman, to wear a Ku Klux Klan shirt. The child said the teacher went into the hallway to call other students and an aide into the room to laugh at the shirt.
Gaymon told the girl to leave the classroom, Pawlucy said, adding that she was so humiliated that she hid in the bathroom the next time she was supposed to go to geometry class.
In the heat of a tightly contested presidential race, the story was picked up by news media nationally. Gaymon’s aunts later said the teacher, who has made no public statement, had apologized to Pawlucy and that she regretted her actions, which she meant to be a joke. It seems the adult was guilty of acting like a child.
But the story doesn’t end there. As so often is the case when politics and race are involved, people have taken sides. Threats of violence are said to have been made against both Gaymon and Pawlucy. Mayor Nutter over the weekend visited both Gaymon and Pawlucy, but wouldn’t comment on the conversations.
It’s not too late for that teachable moment. Not just at Carroll School in Port Richmond, but at schools all over the city and elsewhere. Use the case of Samantha Pawlucy in civics classes to teach a valuable lesson about the Constitution, and voting, and respect.
Demonstrates how liberal most schools are.After all unions control the school systems and all unions are left wing Democrats.— fcs25- From what was seen shouting obscenities Friday a week ago,shouting at the Pawlucys as they left Charles Carroll High School,from what was not seen of Carroll faculty trying to stop the shouted threats at that time,do you really think those people, in that reinforcing flash-mob role are teachable, inside that building?
2 thoughts:
First,follow Samantha Pawlucy with the Press's "Soft Power" monitoring until she is safely out of the Philadelphia public school system.A monthly phone call to the Pawlucys and brief follow-up column would do. That sends a powerful teachable moment, monthly, to all connected in any way with public or private K-12 education, all over the Delaware Valley and beyond.
Second,the School District should rapidly set up or get a DVD of a short,1-2 hour course on First Amendment Rights, at a close by public school, for all the Carroll kids and the Carroll faculty to attend, individually,not as a group,on a voluntary basis,with the reward of the rest of the day off,over the next 2 years.The press should do some "no names" exit interviews for follow up columns or raise Cain and investigate further if a large per cent of faculty or students don't take the course.That becomes a teachable moment for them,like the citizens of the German villages being told to go through the Concentration Camp next door.— penllynjohn - The "teachable moment" would be to fire the teacher. Send a message to the stepford teachers that politics, personal political bias and democratic party mantra's have no place in the classroom.— jimmymack
- A teachable moment? Absurd! A red herring thrown out by the apologists for the unethical teacher. And after a "no apology...apology" she issued, Gaymon proves she is immoral as well .— joedog
- I would expect a black woman to have a better sense of the insularity of her condition as a primary reason for frowning upon the Ku Klux Klan or expressions of sympathy therewith in a public school. It is the same with being gay (a fact that some deny to justify their hostility). However, sympathy with a political candidate or party is not an insular condition. Hence those who sympathize with Obama or the Democrats do not have the same need of protection from their detractors-- especially if, as the teacher claims, they are in the majority at this school.
I speak as a fervent supporter of Obama myself. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
— Paul Emmons
