Flag-Burning Teacher: A Lesson In Free Speech
 

Stuart Middle School Teacher Burns U.S. Flags In Class, Lesson Causes Uproar

"A Stuart Middle School teacher has been removed from the classroom after he burned two American flags in class during a lesson on freedom of speech, Jefferson County Public Schools officials said. Dan Holden, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, burned small flags in two different classes Friday and asked students to write an opinion paper about it, district spokeswoman Lauren Roberts said. A teacher in the school district since 1979, Holden has been temporarily reassigned to non-instructional duties pending a district investigation."

Note: credit for this topic goes to phoeniks (a former AGer) who posted this 283-reply thread on Soundchain.

I know with today's ADD/short attention span/impulse control problem kids you have to do things to grab their attention and invest them in the educational process, but a simple discussion would have been more appropriate. I liked to be blowing stuff up in Chemistry class, but Social Studies should be more sedate. Don't they have film strips anymore?

Admittedly, I don't like flag burning, except as a means of destroying a damaged flag, but it's considered protected speech. Now, is there a "just because" exception to this? The teacher wasn't protesting anything, rather he was wantonly destroying the flags ...

...to stimulate thought on the subject. To do his job as a teacher.

You should only be burning stuff in a chemistry classroom, which has presumably been designed for that kind of stuff with the thick bench tops, and a possibly more robust sprinkler system. The guy probably broke some rules by having an open fire in the classroom.

But I've got no real problem with him burning a flag for an assignment. It's a stunt for getting the attention of the students. However, if lots of teachers start doing it, it loses its impact. So it's probably not such a good idea to be doing this.

Check with some of the other teachers here, but you don't have to smoke crack in front of your class to stimulate a discussion on drug use ...

No, you don't have to... (It isn't mandatory)

It sure would be educational though, wouldn't it? In my classes they just held up a board with "example" drugs tacked to it, so we could see that some drugs were powders and some were pills and some were dried leaves. After that we were "educated" I suppose since we could then identify different drugs by name.

Nobody asked why it was legal to have drugs tacked to a board and not in your pocket. Everybody wondered what the hell they really were and how they could get some to find out more. Well done, C. D. East Junior High School.

I think it is a fine example and have no issue with it.

One of the best "speeches" I've seen in any movie.

I guess the thing is: can you even understand exactly what the objections to this constisted of?
And if so, do the objections appear to make sense to you, do they appear to be based on solid reasoning?

Edit: As phoeniks posted, "The question is "why is an issue" - and on several forums, so far, not one American has told me why. It's been up repeatedly as a constitutional amendment, yet you all blush and pretend it isn't there...it's the emotion, the reason, the wtf, that I am asking about. Something you take absolutely for granted but I don't understand at all. The elephant in the room. Flag burning... what's the fuss about?"

Free speech or freedom of expression is no excuse for abusing accepted social norms.

Freedom of expression is crucial for a democracy however it does not relieve oneself of the responsibility of self-governance.

As Bart Simpson said: "But that's what we learned about! I sure as hell can't tell you we learned about hell unless I say hell can I? "

Sigh. Where are the filmstrips of yesteryear?

Ok, well you don't have to actually burn the flag to teach students any more than you need to burn books to make the same point. You can, but any added effectiveness of the lesson isn't enough to justify the destruction of a flag. Basically, a flag that is destroyed for a purpose supporting that which it stands for is a flag honored, but that isn't the case here.

Why isn't it "justified"? What tangible harm was done in the course of teaching the lesson this way?
Why isn't that the case here? Teaching our kids what the flag stands for seems like a good cause...

FYI, those small novelty "flags" are not actually US Flags. They are not subject to the same rules and one is not required to treat them with the same respect as a true flag.
Now, that is not to say that one should not treat one that is being used as a flag with respect, and as Scouts, when we had small flags, once they were placed on a tent or other property as a flag, we treated them as such. But, while in a box or just lying around as a toy... not a flag.

And when the "flag" is printed on a paper plate, for instance, that you will eat greasey pork n' beans off of at a 4th of July picnic, maybe snuff a few cigarette butts on, and then throw in a rotting garbage heap with bits of half-chewed hotdogs... that "flag" is treated with "respect" ??? Oh, but wait, the 4th of July is patriotic, so that's different. Whereas a teacher teaching our children about what the flag actually stands for (aside from the right to eat pork n' beans) is un-patriotic ??? ::: confused ::: Do we even remember what the flag means? The irony is mind-boggling...

Flagging Interest
 

I think he did a good thing, but I agree that the whole fire issue probably ruined it for him. They can use safety issues as an excuse to punish him for what they REALLY want to punish him for.

Oh, today I came up with a bad joke; really, I did. I saw one of those "My Child Was Student of The Month at" bumper stickers and I came up with this one:

My Child With ADD Was Student of
The Minute at Lakeview Elementary

Firstly, I would NEVER not eat an entire hot dog, and secondly, one should always chew their food very well, not "half-chew" it.

My goodness, Flint. What kind of 4th of July picnics have you been going to where they don't finish and properly masticate their hot dogs?

Yes it is.

I agree, and furthermore I would be really interested in hearing exactly what it is that "they REALLY want to punish him for." . . .

Actually, they don't. Everything is VHS and DVDs. My kids school just dumped the last of their filmstrip projectors last year.

Come on Flint. You know what they want to punish him for. You just want to hear them say it.

Not exactly... I would like to hear them articulate it, in order to determine if they even know.

The kids arn't learning why flag burning is important or the issues that spark it, they're just being told they're allowed to do it. If anything it kinda dulls the meaning down...

Oh? I didn't know you were there... Kind of speculative, to say the least, on your part, hmmm?

After reading your post. I opened the link and read the article. It doesn't say what the teacher said other than 1.) write an opinion about it, and 2.) ask your parents about it. Did you find another news source that details what the teacher said?

:lol:

Or what was in the chapter they were reading (etc.) IE providing context to the assignment?

I took this in a parking lot a few months ago:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/100_0482.jpg

How proud they must be.

I was refering to what the actual burning acomplished. If the kids are being taught the surrounding issues at another point in the class or reading about them in the textbook then that's everything important right there, no greater message is imparted by the burning. It's really just a gimick, just like lighting fireballs of methane in chem class gets oooo's and ahhh's from the class but teaches nothing they didn't already understand (methane burns, big deal), the burning of flags in history gets the kids excited in a 'you'll never guess what the teacher did today!' sort of way.
My 10th grade teacher hung a mannequin from a tree outside the classroom and had us sit by it during our lesson of what sparked the civil rights movement. Same intent, acomplished nothing in particular.

Bummer. Being the lucky student who was picked to advance the strip when the record went "ding" was a big part of growing up.

Back when there were things like records. And rotary phones.

A lot of people assume kids can't think for themselves. My father said something like "It will just make them want to do it". Makes me sad... I am nothing like him.

You really think that there isn't anything special about the flag-burning? No big deal, then? Doesn't represent anything in particular about free speech in our society, doesn't reference any sort of discussion we are having as a culture. It just so happens, coincedentally I suppose, that #1 this guy was suspended, #2 it became a big ruckus, and #3 we are actually sitting here discussing it, right now. You and me are discussing this 'no big deal' thing, this 'doesn't make any difference one way or the other' thing.

If it's good enough for us to talk about, why shouldn't our children be exposed to these ideas? Aren't they there to learn?

I find it remarkable that you had that experience... This is why: in the debate over this flag-burning business, over at Soundchain, one guy asked "what if he had had a doll of a black person on a cross and burned it? would this still be acceptable? afterall, just freedom of speech, right?" . . . I guess you answered that question! ha ha ha

How many of your other lessons that day do you remember?
That is good in and of itself. It's not enough; you can't end it there, but it is important.

Maybe instead, he should have stood up in front of the class and said, "There ain't enough soldiers in the whole f'ing army to force us to let n*ggers into this school!" (ala Strom Thurmond).

Also protected speech. Also memorable. Also an unpopular expression.

Also totally inappropriate in a classroom.

I think flag-burning is protected speech. I don't want to see a constitutional amendment banning it. I also think it is vulgar speech, expressing a deeply hateful sentiment. To trivialize it by making it a classroom stunt destroys the power of the statement in its appropraite context.

@smoothmoniker: Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me, that in statements like yours, it is implied that the teacher was expressing an opinion or position on the issue, when, more accurately, he was asking the students to give their opinion on it.

The popular "racism comparison" reminds me of Godwin's Law (Reductio ad Hitlerum).

Not at all. I think it's a very apt parallel - his point was that the 1st ammendment protects even unpopular speech, and particularly unpopular political speech. Strom's epic racial tirade was a perfect example of that kind of unpopular, offensive, political, protected speech.

In the same way, flag-burning is unpopular, offensive, political, protected speech. That's not the same thing as saying that it's appropriate.

also, my understanding was that the teacher wasn't burning the flag as a statement, he was burning the flag to demonstrate the kind of speech that was protected.

I'm suggesting he use the racial slurs in the same way - not to express the opinion, but to demonstrate the kind of speech that is protected.

But he wasn't condoning it, he was demonstrating it. Not the same as Strom.

Edit: I didn't see that last post before I posted this. Citing Strom himself is an apple versus this orange.

Who ever said it was appropriate? It *wasn't presented as appropriate or not, as far as we know.

Edit1: *

Edit2: I give up. I can't read or type.

It was my impression that burning the flags was done to elicit an emotional response from the students and they were instructed to write a paper based on their response. This would be followed by classroom discussion about the constitutional protections and the law.

If I'm correct in my take on what was planned, then the teachers mistake was involving himself rather than show a video of someone burning a flag.
I can see the value of getting the students gut reaction on paper first, rather than having them rationalize what the thought they would feel seeing a flag burned. :2cents: