What can you say about the President of the United States?

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OK, I've heard the audio, and I'm conflicted. I'll lay out a few thoughts here.

1: I believe it should be a felony to make or incite a threat against the President. I'll use the fictional President Keldin (that's me!) for my examples. Here are the kinds of things that I think should be chargeable:

I'm going to shoot President Keldin if he ever comes to Springfield.
I'd pay for someone to shoot President Keldin.
I'd like to kick President Keldin in the nuts.
Someone should kick President Keldin in the nuts.
These statements indicate that the speaker will engage in violent acts against Keldin, or would actively encourage someone to do such acts.

2: On the other hand, certain other statements should not be felonies, and in the US fall under Constitutional protection. For example:

If President Keldin doesn't stop pandering to the citizens of Shelbyville, someone is going to shoot him. This sentence is a mere prediction, not a threat or an incitement.

I would laugh if someone shot President Keldin. This is merely describing the speaker's reaction to a crime, not threatening to commit it nor encouraging people to do it.

President Keldin needs to be gone. This sentence isn't clearly a threat. it could merely refer to Keldin being impeached or voted out.

President Keldin is a douchebag piece of <fecal matter>. This is merely an opinion, and does not threaten nor advocate violence.

3: Now, this kid seems to be a pain in the butt. I've taught annoying little class disturbers in the past. I feel for the teacher. Given how shrill she is, though, perhaps the kid has a case. It also seems that she is making a point that Republicans have arrested those who spoke against their president, yet feel free to say even worse things about Obama. Certainly everyone despises hypocrisy.

4: Yet there is a time and a place for everything. If the teacher brought it up, she should be willing to listen to other ideas, or she should not bring it up or close the discussion. What is said in a classroom is under the auspices of the teacher in charge, and it is up to that teacher to keep the dialogue in the class appropriate, despite First Amendment rights -- similar to how Tal keeps the material here appropriate for this venue.

Thoughts?

 

Is there a link this is referring to?

 

Oh, frig, oops. Just look up the Fox news item about the student who recorded his teacher "berating" him for insulting Obama. it's a stupid clip in that I couldn't make out exactly what the student himself said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/22/student-defends-criticism-obama/?test=latestnews

 

The point though, is the kid is right in this case. It's not illegal to say something disparaging against the president. Hell, political satire openly insults and makes fun of the president, and you can see that in almost every paper, or every political talk show, every day.

The teacher's reaction is over the top. And she's flat out wrong. Saying there's "no comparison" between a sitting president versus a presidential candidate - during a campaign no less - is wrong. Saying that expressing a negative opinion regarding the president is slander is wrong. And it goes without saying that it's wrong to open a discussion regarding politics if you aren't willing to hear both sides, especially in a state like North Carolina that is split right down the middle in terms of their political beliefs. (Obama won NC in 2008 by 0.2% of the vote.) And issuing a verbal beatdown to a student for expressing an opinion contrary to her own is abuse of authority.

 

Devil's advocate time!

My position isn't so much about the issue of insulting the President as it is about the kid lipping off the teacher. Granted, she shouldn't have opened that kettle of worms, and granted, her views on the topic are moronic. However, I didn't hear much of the conversation. I think we need to hear a lot more to get the full context. I get the feeling this kid is a troublemaker who isn't so much interested in voicing a deeply held personal conviction as he is in disrupting the class and being a douchebag. I believe we owe it to our kids to teach them tact and diplomacy, as well as respect for legitimate authority, as well as personal conviction.

On another note, what was she talking about with people being arrested for insulting Bush? Is she correct? Is she making a bad comparison? Or is she just a shrill, low class moron who somehow managed to get a teaching certificate?

 

I listened to the entire 9 minute conversation of the link you posted. While we're obviously not in the class every day, and we don't know if this is a problem student that always starts something, in this particular instance, it doesn't appear that he did anything to provoke the reaction he got.

The teacher is the one who brought up the subject of Romney bullying a student while he was in high school, and the student said that Obama stated in his book that he pushed a female student while he was in high school. It would have been fair for the teacher to point out that the comparison isn't accurate because Obama wasn't being a bully. He was reacting to taunts and verbal insults about being one of only two black students at his high school. If anything, it was HIM who was being bullied by a group of white students. (Not that he should have pushed her - just saying that you wouldn't read that part of the book and say Obama was a bully.)

And the teacher WENT OFF ON HIM. Possibly he's a trouble maker. Possibly the teacher has been dealing with this since September, and just couldn't take it anymore. Another possibility is she's a big Obama fan, and doesn't want to hear any negative opinions regarding Obama. Especially for an issue as petty as this. NO ONE is going to decide to vote for or against Romney because of this.

Remember - SHE brought up the subject. Not the student. The student offered what he felt was a counterexample. And he didn't do it aggressively - he just asked, "Didn't Obama do the same thing?" He didn't shout it at her. He wasn't being disrespectful to her. We have no video, but from the flow of conversation it certainly appeared it was an open discussion in class, where hand-raising was not required. While her and this student were dominating the conversation, there are other students' voices heard on the tape.

AFAIK, no one was ever arrested for making fun of Bush, insulting Bush or otherwise speaking badly of him. If that were possible people like Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher would be in prison for life.

 

I suspect that's popular myth in some circles.

As far as threats go, I don't speak for the Secret Service obviously, but I believe what they are more interested in is risk and perceived threat level; they don't deal in letter-of-the-law considerations as far as assessing risk goes.

Therefore I think that some of your (LKD) examples for good President Keldin are a bit off, namely:

- would probably be perceived as flippant remarks as opposed to real threats, unless the person making them were already a known risk;

- would moreso be perceived as potentially real, as they reference potentially grave violent acts and could not thus be considered flippant, plus reamrks like those tend to be made moreso by people on the 'edge' (who lack a "this would be really stupid for me to say" filter and may be thus more likely to follow through).

Again this is more of a "is this guy for real?" question than a "you're not allowed to say that - jail for you, little Johnny!" penalty. A good example is Ted Nugent's recent comments. They were worried enough about him to investigate, but they we're satisfied afterwords and no charges were brought. There was no "you're not allowed!" penalty involved, and no one made a case based on a meticulous analysis of his actual words, as far as I know.

As with all things though, there are degrees. I suspect that if Nugent had said "I am going to kill him," he would be in custody whether he really meant it or not.

 

And I also think it matters where you say it. It's a little different to say, "Someone should shoot the President", if he's in his backyard talking with friends while he's grilling burgers. It's a totally different thing to go on a radio show and say it.

 

How are those two paragraphs not mutually exclusive?

That's a good example of the very act of going too far in your statements - leaving no ambiguity and nothing to the imagination and thus no wiggle room. If you want to be cute on Facebook, take LKD's advice and say "someone should kick the pres in the nuts," not "I will put a bullet in his brain." Stupid.

 

Can someone remind me which party teachers and their unions overwhelmingly support?

 

Yep, apart from the far larger audience, there is the matter of 'pull'. It's something else if a caller in a show says something and when, for instance, someone like Rush Limbaugh says something. Or for one Bill O'Reilly saying something along the lines 'Tiller the Baby-Killer has escaped justice again...'.

The obvious classic case on the subject would be the the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket with the line, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

 

I can't decide which is the more disturbing aspect of this issue. Is it that the teacher is clearly trying to indoctrinate the students as to whom they should vote for (when they are eligible) or is it the quality of education. If it is part two then it becomes a question of which is worse, the fact that the teacher either knowingly made up facts which many students would take as gospel or that she had no idea what the facts were and then made some up to fit her agenda.

I know I'm a mean old conservative, but teachers really should be subject to observation and evaluation and should be fired if they are incompentant.

 

Quite - but the teacher in question belongs to another demographic that is a much better indicator of her voting preference than being a teacher - she's African American. The support of the Democratic party by teachers is certainly present, but it's nowhere near the indicator as being African American. Being African American completely swamps out all the other demographic factors. A religiously conservative, retired, wealthy, ex-military man who lives in the rural south was still overwhelmingly likely to vote for Obama in 2008 if he also happened to be African American.

It certainly seemed like the teacher was less informed than the student. In fact, from her comments, it appeared she did not read Obama's book, making a rational conversation with someone who had read the book (as the student certainly appears to have done), problematic, to say the least.

I do not think her actions began with a goal of indoctrination, but rather from her fanatical support for Obama in the first place. Therefore, I'm going with option 2: She had no idea what the facts were. That's clearly true about some of her comments - like speaking ill of the President is slanderous. She pulled that one directly out of her ass. Actually, that was false in two ways. It's not slander if it's true, and given the student was referencing an event from a book Obama wrote, his statement was factual.

Good luck with that. If she's tenured, you really can't be fired short of doing something illegal. While her actions and comments are rife with stupidity, they aren't illegal. And I'm not even sure she's incompetent. She might be great at teaching history for all I know (the ability to accurately teach history is not mutually exclusive with being an ideological zealot). But what she definitely isn't is impartial, which - if you're going to start a discussion in school regarding politics - is a must.

 

I very much agree that incompetent teachers should be penalized and preferably tossed out of their jobs. However, no one seems interested in finding out which teachers are bad and the other side of the coin ought to be that good teachers get rewarded. As the system is now, at least in Sweden but I doubt it is much different elsewhere, it is more or less assumed that all teachers are bad teachers but we won't fire them. We just give them low salaries, crappy working conditions and general derision.

The reason for this is of course that there is no good way at the moment to find out which teachers are good and which are bad. I am quite sure that I am a decent teacher, one of my colleagues is a great one and others are ok. One is horrible and shouldn't be allowed near learners. That is my personal opinion though, I stand by it but why should anyone else trust it? We could ask the students but well, are they mature enough to give a fair evaluation? Isn't there a risk that nice and popular teachers get rewarded instead of good ones (often they are the one and the same but not always)? But, how about grades and results? Well, we could do that but then we would have to remove the grading power from the teachers. If my salary was dependent on the grades my students get we would see a marked improvement very quickly. Having all examinations removed from the educating teacher could be an idea but can all knowledge be tested in an exam? Can a one year course be boiled down to a multiple choice test? Teachers have bosses haven't they? We sure do, but barring students actually seeking out the principal or other administrators telling them what an awful/wonderful teacher I am they have no real idea as to how good of a teacher I am. One visit per year in a classroom doesn't say much. Sure they know how active I might be in meetings and work outside the classroom or whether the boss thinks I am a nice guy but that has little to no bearing as to what kind of a teacher I am. Any other ideas would be much welcomed.

I would love to see my horrible colleague fired as she has literally ruined the education of many young and already vulnerable people and I would cheer loudly if my wonderful colleague got the just reward for his brilliant work (I wouldn't mind some recognition myself either) but no one cares enough to do anything practical. People just do what Snook did and say teachers need to be accountable and then nothing more. Those of you with children can start with talking to your children, what do they think about their teachers? What opinion do you yourself have of what they work with in school and how they do it? If it is really bad raise hell but for gods sake if your child adores his or her teacher and you have nothing but a good impression then maybe you should inform someone in charge of that as well.

 

As someone who married an elementary school teacher, I certainly sympathize with your position joacqin. I think this part is definitely true:

But I also think, at least in the US, that there is a reason for this sentiment. Teaching is one of the few professions where there is a very little incentive to do a great job beyond personal satisfaction, and it would also require a good deal of self-motivation to boot. People work harder and do better jobs when they are incentivized to do so - which usually means you get paid better. The salary of a teacher in the US varies from one place to another, but it is nealy completely dictated by years of service. The only other factor in play at all is whether the teacher has a Masters degree or a Bachelors degree. The ones with Masters get paid a few thousand more per year than those without.

But the larger point is that the pay is NOT based on performance. For example, all teachers in a given county with a Masters degree and 15 years of service get the exact same pay. The best one and the worst one get the same amount. All teachers in a given county with a bachelor's degree and 5 years of experience get the same amount. Performance does not factor in one iota - it's simply education and length of service, and pretty much no other industry - especially one in which a college degree is required - works on that principle.

 

Off topic - Aldeth, It's not just teachers that get paid that way. A lot of unions pay by years in service, not job performance.

 

We used to have that system but it was removed to "differentiate" between good and bad teachers. The result is now that no one gets any money at all. With that system you could at least see some development over time, now there is none.

 

That's true Blades, but most unions are in trade industries, and have clear metrics and standards of performance that are expected to be met. To are clear means of identifying who your good and bad employees are. I'll keep the examples to lists of friends I know who have union jobs.

I have a friend who works for UPS, and is unionized. He's a delivery man. He is expected to make this pickups and deliveries on time. If he doesn't, he's not doing his job, and could be fired.

I also have a friend who is elevator/escalator repairman and is in a union. He's expected to log enough billable hours of work each week to cover his salary.

The problem that I'm pointing out with teachers is that there is no objective measure to judge job performance. Unless they're not showing up for work or coming in stoned or drunk, we really have no metrics to assess them.