Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
We hear so much about ‘militant’ atheists and yet it is theists who like to bully people. A science teacher in North Carolina has been suspended for saying caustic’ things about her students at Facebook. The students have been bullying her.
Parents said the situation escalated after a student put a postcard of Jesus on Hussain’s desk that the teacher threw in the trash. Parents also said Hussain sent to the office students who, during a lesson about evolution, asked about the role of God in creation. On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing “Jesus Loves Me.” She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work…The flash point for the comments came after the Bible was left on Hussain’s desk in December. The Bible was accompanied by an anonymous card, which, according to Hussain, said “Merry Christmas” with Christ underlined and bolded.
Twelve-year-old sadists.
I’m wondering how the parents read the teacher’s Facebook page and her caustic comments to her friends. . . unless they had friended her themselves.
Or unless she set herself up on a fan page. But why would she do that unless she set up her class as a fan page? (Some teachers do).
And if she set up her class as a fan page and then talked trash about the kids. . . she is as stupid as the bullying kids and their whiny victimized bullying cristianista parents.
Also anyone who thinks that teachers never say or think anything negative about their students has never caught me in an off moment. . . These people seem to have overlooked that fact that they are all living on the front page of the NY Times.
Long ago and far away, I taught high school biology in rural Kansas. I had students bringing Bibles to class and a local church offering creationist Sunday school classes when I taught evolution. One student did apologize at the end of the school year. The school board was rampantly antievolution as well. My favorite anecdote was from the social studies teacher who said when he announced a lesson on the evolution of governmental systems a student responded, “I don’t believe in evolution, so I am not going to take notes.”
Michael, you could have offered them a course on the evolution of religion. Not even the Bible denies that Baal, Amun Re et al came before Jehovah.
I wonder how much of this harassment was prompted by her last name. “Hussain”.
Maybe the parents did friend her. Sneaky bastards. First set their Jeezisy kids on her and then friend her in order to rat her out – all because she has the nerve to teach science. Bleah. So stay out of Nebraska, Kansas, North Carolina…
An acquaintance of mine told me today about a science teacher friend of his that’s getting the same treatment–creationist books left on her desk while teaching the unit on evolution, etc. I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll see more copycats coming out of the woodwork.
So stay out of Nebraska, Kansas, North Carolina…>/i>
Nebraska native here delurking to defend Nebraska’s science education. 80-something percent of Nebraska’s students test as proficient in science every year and they’re always in the top dozen or so nationally in achievement testing. Research scientists from the state universities helped write the state science standards. Also, Nebraska Christians are overwhelmingly the Catholic/Lutheran/United Methodist variety so there isn’t any real controversy over teaching evolution in the state.
It’s a state chock full of right-wing yahoos, but they have an excellent school system. Rubes from the sticks rather than rednecks. It’s one of those regional-border states so they somehow manage to simultaneously be like Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma politically and more like Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin educationally and culturally.
Whoops. Sorry ’bout the bad tag there.
Actually, the situation is worse than you make it out to be. Ms. Hussain does not appear to have made any derogatory comments about the students herself: The most extreme language she used was to term one of their many instances of harassment a “hate crime,” and she said that she shamed some of the students. Those are not derogatory comments, they are simply reporting the situation. In response to her posts about these events, some of her facebook friends made somewhat nasty comments about her abusive students and their retrograde religious upbringing/culture/parents – but I have yet to see any evidence that she made such comments herself. Ultimately, then, Ms. Hussain is being fired because other people (her supportive friends) said nasty things about her students and their parents.
Every adult involved EXCEPT this teacher deserves universal ridicule and contempt: the students’ parents, the wider community, the school administrators, etc. I hope she sues the pants off the school district and uses the proceeds to move somewhere a bit less mired in the 19th century.
What she could have done:
Called the parents in and shown them a copy of the end of a sample matric exam, explained that she doesn’t get to set the exam (If America is like South Africa at least)and she won’t be one of the people marking it.
Her job as a teacher is to give students the building blocks to get to the point where they can deal with that exam and hopefully do well enough to go to a decent university. Even failing that, the students should be getting prepared for the job market.
Where reading your Bible instead of actually doing the work you are paid to do will get you fired. Interrupting your boss with hymns isn’t exactly going to endear you to that boss either.
These parents are systematically undermining their children’s discipline, which is undermining their education, which is leading to the risk that their children will be the bums and stiffs the conservative movement moans about.
“These parents are systematically undermining their children’s discipline, which is undermining their education, which is leading to the risk that their children will be the bums and stiffs the conservative movement moans about.”
Yes, but they’ll be *godly* bums and stiffs.
Which I think we all agree is better than being part of the liberal elites.
Sorry about gratuitous Nebraska reference! That was actually a tiny joke about a friend’s experience there rather than the school system, so most unfair.
In one of the articles I read there was a comment there might be a conflict between Islam and Christianity because of her surname. It was determined after talking to the parents that she was more probably a “secular humanist”. Horror of horrors – a “secular humanist”!
This case reminds me of the marvellous song by Merle Haggard that began: “We all think alike here in Muskogee…”
Or something like that.