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Arizona Ponders FCC Decency Standards For the Classroom
einhverfr writes "Eugene Volokh has posted an interesting discussion of a bill that has been introduced in Arizona, which would tie public school educator conduct to the FCC standards for decency for radio and television. The bill is essentially a three strikes system, firing teachers if they violate FCC standards three times. While the goal of the bill may seem reasonable, the details strike me as silly."
There's no need to bring this puritanical nonsense into the classroom.
Any good high school teacher should be able to say "you guys need to get your shit together" in good conscience. If, on the other hand, a genuinely bad teacher is abusive towards students, this is a job for the parents and school administration to handle rationally.
There are already enough rules handed down to schools by politicized bureaucracies to make education a nightmare, why add to the burden with further insanity from the FCC?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Censorship must start early in life, that's the first rule of government running propag... education system.
You can't handle the truth.
... it's hard to know where to even start. But possibly the absolute worst is at the end of Paragraph B:
B. For the purposes of this section, "public school" means a public preschool program, a public elementary school, a public junior high school, a public middle school, a public high school, a public vocational education program, a public community college or a public university in this state.
(emphasis mine)
For K-12 teachers, okay, I can kind of see this, although the penalties seem Draconian and I'm willing to bet that they already have in-school codes of conducts that prohibit swearing in the classroom. But are they actually saying that this is going to apply to professors in a classroom full of people who are legally adults? To discussions of literature containing the word "fuck"? To research faculty in their labs? Seriously?
Apparently the bill's sponsor, Lori Klein, showed off her gun by aiming it at a reporter a while back. That tells you everything you need to know about the mentality of the people behind this. They're completely insane. Um, apeshit, if you will. And they're growing in power all over the country.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's actually very difficult to fire a public school teacher in the US. Take, for example, the case of Freshwater. Not only did he repeatly ignore the curriculum, but he used his position as a teacher to preach his religious views to the class, and then *repeatly burned students*. Yes, he actually branded them. Used the science equipment to physically injure them. You might think that if a teacher does that he'd be fired on the spot, but it actually took months of paperwork and reviews to get him fired - and then he appealed it in a legal battle that cost the school millions of dollars.
I picked him out because he should be well-known to the slashdot crowd, but this isn't a liberal-vs-conservative thing. There are plenty of teachers from both sides who like to use their position to advance their own agenda (It's why some of them become reachers) and a lot who are simply incompetant. They are just very difficult and very expensive to get rid of. Teachers have some very powerful unions, and have used that power to achieve incredible job security.
So think.. what would schools really like to help manage their teachers? How about some rule that is hard to obey, ideally so convoluted that you'd need a lawyer just to work out what it permits, and for which offenders can be promply sacked? The FCC standards are ideal. Hard to even figure out, and it only takes a momentary lapse of thought to violate them. The law appears to have no right of appeal, no board review. It's just written for selective enforcement. If the management wants to continue employing a teacher, they can just turn a blind eye to the occasional bit of mild profanity... but if they want rid of a teacher, all they need to do is wait. When the rules are so difficult to follow, everyone will slip up sooner or later. Indecency becomes the perfect excuse.
Exactly what that results in would just depend on the school. It might be used as a quick-and-sneaky way to fire inept teachers without having to go through years of reviews and appeals, which is good. But equally it might be used for ideological clensing, so management can more easily stock the school with a staff who will indoctrinate the students into their own political agenda.
... then they might end up with a lot of empty classrooms. Great for saving school system costs.
. . . the details strike me as silly . . ."
"Oh, what sad times are these when ruffian teachers are allowed by FCC regulations to say 'Ni!' at will to school children!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How are these goals in any way reasonable?
While the goal of the bill may seem reasonable,
This is the Arizona Republican Party we are talking about here. Of course the goals of this Bill are not reasonable.
Will they get someone in the classrom with a beeper who will beep over those words? That would be awsome!
I'm glad this doesn't apply to college. The first day of the capstone class of my major, our assignment was "I want two pages on the following topic: Why the fuck are you guys here?"
Of course, that was the sixth class I had with that particular professor, so things were a little more laid back.
Freshwater was nutty, even by Pentecostal standards. Even so, he wasn't short on support. The cross burning thing had a somewhat limiting effect on his support. The people coming out strong for Freshman were the fringe wingnuts.
Religion does indeed complicate this. While Freshwater and his fellow fundies have no regard for the constitutional protections for faith and lack thereof, the state must do things by the book. That will unfortunately lead to delays, and having to entertain spurious legal challenges. I just hope that Freshwater was required to settle the school's legal bills.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
"If a person who provides classroom instruction in a public school engages in speech or conduct that would violate the standards..." The way this is worded makes it sound as if public school teachers risk being fired for violating FCC standards at any time -- even outside of the classroom, away from school or at home. Like, they could fire you for cussing at the bar after work, or stepping out to grab your paper without making sure all your bits were properly covered.
Quite likely. From what I read at the time, there was a lot of quite hostile dispute within the student population between those who believed Freshwater had overstepped the bounds by preaching in class and the devout Christian faction of the student body who believed he he was preaching as the Lord commended. I never read of any incidents of violence, but there were claims of defaced lockers, torn-up workbooks and intimidation. All the common bullying tactics as each side did their best to drive the other into shutting up or leaving the school. I can't say how much of that was actually true though, because trying to seperate truth from rumor in a population of students is almost as hard as doing so on the internet - and all I ever had access to, not being at that school myself, were third-hand accounts on blogs.
I'm guessing Howard Stern won't be a substitute teacher any time soon.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Yet another chunk of government that needs 90% less power than it has.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
America, land of the free and home of the brave
"Decency" is a subjective thing. What's not decent in the US, may be perfectly decent, or even boring, in most EU countries. What's not decent in the US, like showing a nipple, is prime time TV in the Netherlands. I want my kids to have a free mind and a fair amount of knowledge about sex, so they don't get a girl pregnant and they don't catch diseases. Puritanism causes teen pregnancies, so let's not introduce this bs into the class room. It's bad enough as it is.
no, I don't have a sig
Teachers' Unions.
Firing a teacher for anything short of driving their car into the school while drunk and getting a hummer from the head cheerleader is nearly impossible because of them.
Tell that to the 22,000 California teachers laid off last year.
Education is consistently targeted for cuts during this recession, and people keep insisting teachers have it easy.
Wake up. It's our kids that are going to suffer.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I can only guess that teachers in Arizona are not in the habit of ripping off nipple shields... so what is this really guarding against? Bad language? Most teachers have to look up the curse words of kids.
No, this isn't about teachers mis-behaving. This is about art, sexual education and the "wrong" kind of books. There are plenty of parents who want to sanitize all education so that little Timmy doesn't learn anything that might upset his parents and this is the way to do it. Don't bother banning books, art or subjects, simply say that undecent things are not allowed and then watch teachers censor themselves to not loose their jobs.
Real nice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Firing != laid off
The two are synonymous. Look it up, if you don't believe me.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
...the mines and the teachers. This is a swift kick to the latter's. Unions are only as strong as their cash boxes are deep. Force the Arizona teacher's unions to start defending members in court against something as wide open to interpretation as FCC decency standards, and that will drain the cashbox very quickly. A brilliant tactic on the part of the union busters; Arizona has long been a "right-to-work" state (read: anti-union) and this will effectively take the teacher's union out of the game if it gets through the legislature.
Contracts allow for downsizing and layoffs due to budget cuts is entirely different. Even tenured professors can be laid off due to budget cuts. Getting fired from a job means you specifically violated your contract or simply aren't performing well, firing for which is something that is near impossible to get away with in many school districts (Case in point: Until recently, New York City's "rubber room", Reason's flow chart of the process or Google preview, see also, Washington, DC).
Wonder what the public key field is for?
One of the best teachers I ever had called a student a dumbass once, as a joke. I like to think that I came out alright, nobody took it seriously. The country didn't devolve into horrible uncivilized masses, the Earth didn't fall into the sun, the universe didn't implode. It's not like students don't here a lot worse things at lunch anyway. Who are we really protecting, and to what extent? To the extent that it requires legislation? I think not.
And I say that as a Republican. Just recently we had a group of them go after our University funding, claiming that if tuition is higher then the students will benefit because they'll value their educations more. The moron pushing this had a degree from the University of Pheonix.
They all get elected on a mix of religious social issues and their oppositions refusal to admit that illegal immigration is a problem(even though Arizona is now the kidnapping capital of the country and there are entire sections of the desert near Tucson where you just can't go anymore thanks to the smugglers, including national parks).
I guess that all you can say is most of them aren't corrupt. They're generally too stupid to be corrupt.
Tenure is there largely to protect educators' ability to teach effectively.
While there are downsides to the system, the upshot is we have teachers who are partially shielded from political or cultural sway so they can decide a curriculum based on reason rather than the popular flavor of the season.
You can talk about introducing a merit based system, but all this will do is create a popularity contest where effectiveness is measured by how well an educator can mimic whatever is currently in vogue.
You could say the teaching environment suffers when there's a teacher at a school, and they're not very good at what they do, but what about every single teacher at a school being selected based on an artificial politicized ideal? That would be downright frightening, if you ask me.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Firing != laid off
The two are synonymous. Look it up, if you don't believe me.
It depends on your dictionary, as with all questions of semantics. However, the point being made boils down to this:
"Firing" is referring to what happens when an employee is dismissed for something they have done, e.g. driving a car through the school while drunk.
Being "laid off" is what happens when an employee is dismissed because they are surplus to requirements and is commonly called "being made redundant" where I'm from (compared with "being sacked").
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
This is just stupid.
I'm from Arizona, born there and lived there for over 40 years before I got married and moved away. Personally, I really hope this law passes and you start seeing the quality of the education system (debatable though that is) decline rapidly as teachers move away. I think it's going to take crap like this to actually break the government system before we get rid of the idiots now in charge.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Literature, even classic literature contains profanity, sex, and violence that would make the FCC rules nazis cringe. Does it really make sense to limit a child's education by omitting it? Figures though, schools in America are already among the worst in the world. Why not go just that little extra distance to seal that worst in the world title?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Arizona is the worst of the worst; that being, the worst of the US. They feel no need to respect human rights: they still use forced labor in dangerous conditions, have concentration-camp style prisons, and racially profile anyone who might be "illegal" (effectively giving police probable cause to stop and search anyone not white). The state needs sanctioned by the UN, right after being ejected from the union.
Great Intellect...
Can the Arizona Education System really get any worse? From what I understand, with the possible exception of Southern California, Arizona already has the worst education system in the country.
Having survived many layoffs I will tell you that this is incorrect. Layoffs are a way to release a person, for any reason, without having to follow the usual guidelines for termination. This allows companies to not document wrong doings, and to let people go for personal reasons. It is usually done under the guise of resource reduction, but in many cases those laid off employees are replaced with in a years time.
I really don't know where Arizona rates in terms of public education. I'm thinking more in terms of university teachers who are not tenured, which is a whole issue unto itself, leaving. But it certainly would apply to primary and secondary. I thought the Arizona universities were reasonably good, and U of A has a fairly respected astronomy department, but I'm not really informed in that area.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
The probably don't have a lot of experience with this education thing. Change can be unsettling; they're probably uncertain what goes on in these new-fangled "classrooms". Under the circumstances it's quite understandable that they'd turn to the comfort of something more familiar to them, like broadcast television.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Allow me to make a small correction then:
Being "laid off" is what happens when an employee is dismissed ostensibly because they are surplus to requirements and is commonly called "being made redundant" where I'm from (compared with "being sacked").
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
You can already say "Shit" on TV if I recall, ....
Not in the States.
But you can say "Crap", "Poop" and "Excrement". Talk about brain damage in the system.
and make it impossible for teachers to their jobs, teach.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
For example quit promoting the good teachers out of positions where they can actually help students.
that doesn't happen in my state (NC) .. good teachers just stay where they are with zero reward.. and the bad ones.. well if they have tenure stay too.. OR along with bad principals.. get moved to "central office" where they don't have interaction with students..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
i know commenting on my self is not good, but by they way.. i was trying to point out that my state is still screwed..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
When you have no clue hook on to another with no clue.
I think the cat will do it to the pooch when the courts
force the FCC to scrap it's standards. The only thing
funnier was a company that requires employees to abide
by the Geneva Conventions... I asked for a copy... and
did not get one.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
And your kids are kicked out of school for swearing ?
You have to be remarkably incompetent and oblivious to think that the teachers are making schools unbearable.
It's your kids, people, not the teachers.