Moss Le
You’ve always had that one teacher. Yes, that one, the one who tirelessly defends their political opinions. Well, at Berkeley High, a teacher like that caused the entire school district to get sued. This teacher, whose name I won’t reveal, was caught promoting anti-semetic ideas to his students, and pressuring them to go to a walkout protesting the Israeli invasion of Palestine (he had failed to describe the Israelite side of the war). This article isn’t about that, but rather widespread politicizing of classes throughout the US. Recently, a teacher in Florida was also fired for similar reasons; she was hanging Black Lives Matter flags and rewarding activism. Now I’m not saying that they are the same, but both were fired for the same base reason: They were politicizing class. I don’t think that people should be able to drag politics and who’s “right” into class, because it will incentivize the (political) minorities to join the masses. I think that is the biggest problem with both. I’m totally with BLM and many other movements that teachers have been fired for, but I can’t support teachers forcing or incentivising others to share political opinions with them. I don’t think that it should ever be something you do to someone who you’re teaching. Personally, I think that the act of politicizing a class is fine, as long as you don’t participate in the discussion. I think that what happened to my teacher has opened my eyes to see that the real problem is not what they are saying, or their political views, just the fact that they tried to politicize something I am forced to go to by law, and that they used our tax dollars to tell us what to say and think. This is a huge problem. Even if they are preaching the “right”’ political ideas, it doesn’t matter. The lesson at the end is just don’t do it.
YR Raw 