Arizona Ponders FCC Decency Standards For the Classroom 122
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."
Our repressed media is bad enough (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Censorship must start early in life, that's the first rule of government running propag... education system.
Re:Our repressed media is bad enough (Score:5, Insightful)
You can already say "Shit" on TV if I recall, this sounds more like a back door attempt to stop proper sex education in favor of abstinence only propaganda.
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?
There are so many things wrong with this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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 [huffingtonpost.com] 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.
This will be put into effect. (Score:0, Insightful)
You can already say "Shit" on TV if I recall, ....
Not in the States.
Anyway, I can assure everyone that this will pass?
Why?
Think of the children! mentality.
All you need is one uptight parent who doesn't want their little snowflake exposed to those horrible words and they'll have the school administrators shaking in their boots.
Re:Our repressed media is bad enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Teachers are often children's only source of professional adults they come across. The teacher really need to be sure that they are professional in their jobs.
Re:There are so many things wrong with this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is still push back for declaring "Make Love, Not War".
"Reasonable"? (Score:5, Insightful)
How are these goals in any way reasonable?
Re:An excuse! (Score:4, Insightful)
That is an idiotic example. Hurting students or otherwise inappropriately taking advantage of them leads to a fine or prison.
This is a level where the school need not and _should_ not be involved, criminal prosecution is none of their business.
And I really doubt it is hard to fire someone who is in prison and can't come to work.
Also that the court process cost "millions of dollars" has nothing to do with teachers but only with a completely and thoroughly dysfunctional US court system, which basically tried to find anything that could be done wrong and then implemented it.
Reasonable ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Our repressed media is bad enough (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very important to raise generations of people incapable of distilling the real message out of the myriad pieces of nonsense that are bombarding an average person from all the MSM outlets.
There is a very important reason to do this - running a totalitarian war machine is made much easier with a complacent population, it's much easier when the population believes everything it is told.
For example: Iraq was not a threat to USA at any time, nor were they linked to 9/11, but majority of people (70% in that poll) were brainwashed by the politicians and the MSM enough to believe it. [usatoday.com]
Right now every MSM channel in US is pushing Iran war, it's not even a question that the political mind is made up, the MSM system is in all gears to push that nonsense (and of-course US has a 'standing army', so there is nothing really that Congress or POTUS need to do to run that war, there is no need to search for more money, it's all already 'budgeted in'.)
But how do you start, how do you create this insane mind control over the population? Well, you start young. You start with small type of censorship and then you go from there. Thus my previous comment [slashdot.org] (that was moded 'funny' but also a 'troll' as well) stands.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
And those words they can't say really help the students how?
- :) it doesn't. It helps the authorities with an early start of conditioning people into believing that what government authority (and any kind of authority) tells them is the truth.
It's not about 'fuck' and all the other Carlin's favourites, it's about "Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda", "Hussein tied to 9/11", "Iran has nuclear weapons", "Iran is a threat to USA". It's about "Income taxes on the rich improve the economy". It's about "Income equality is government's mandate". It's about "Paper currency is money". It's about "Bailouts are necessary to save the economy".
That's what it really is all about.
Re:This will be put into effect. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Only two unions left in AZ with balls... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Our repressed media is bad enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
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.