Free speech in classes shouldn’t be stifled
Nanci McChesney-Henry, an anatomy teacher at Sheldon High School in Eugene, recently focused on the link between the environment and the human body. A student question regarding the environmental effect of oil triggered an open discussion. About half of the 32 students offered comments.
“My class,” said the teacher, “is about a free exchange of ideas.” For thousands of years this has been the classic definition of education in a free society — education that W.B Yeats calls “not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of the fire.”
However, Shawn Haggard, 17, “a self-described conservative who favors war against Iraq,” contacted Lars Larson and appeared on KEZI news to complain about the teacher. According to other students in class, including Kristina Turner, also a Bush supporter, Haggard almost completely misrepresented what happened in class. Principal Bob Bolden has been fielding angry calls and e-mails from around the state and beyond ever since.
Instead of being publicly vilified, McChesney-Henry should be praised and honored. Anyone aware of the extremist assault on public education led by the fundamentalist and evangelical Christian wing of Bush’s Republican Party, however, knows that these know-nothings consider true education dangerous. Subversive. Un-American. They much prefer rote memory, religious monopoly and unquestioning, lock-step state indoctrination posing as patriotism. Through intimidation, they wish to smother the free interchange of ideas.
We cannot allow teachers on any level to be threatened in this way by American Taliban or anyone else.
Jerome Garger
Eugene