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In an escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and associated culture war, we now have one of the first(?) terroristic threat charges brought against someone in the States. A teacher felt that a student’s comment about his flag was disrespectful and responded by threatening to behead her. It is reported that the teacher shouted:
And students report hearing that
The teacher who made this terroristic threat is Benjamin Reese, a Jewish man from Georgia, and the flag he had in his room was an Israeli flag [1] [2]. I find this noteworthy for two reasons. A Jewish man is making threats that I would have guessed came from a Muslim, which tells me about my bias and the level of passion on both sides of the conflict right now. But I’m also surprised that, despite the story first being published 24hrs ago, it’s untouched by mainstream news except RawStory. There’s local affiliates, RawStory, and YahooFinance Canada. But there’s no CNN, Fox, NYTimes, etc. They can’t be waiting for more information, because we already have the police reports. I predict that this story will not gain the traction that it would had the threat been made by a Palestinian man, or Muslim generally. Certainly that would be brought up on prime time Fox.
This instantly reminded me of the Day of Hate news blitz, when the Chabad-affiliated Barry (Baruch) Nockowitz picked up a toddler and threw him against a wall because of “anti-semitism”, telling police he would find another kid to attack [3]. Besides Miami Herald, this had zero news coverage, all the while coinciding with the “day of hate” which received George Floyd levels of news coverage and zero crimes committed. (As proof of how little coverage it got, themotte is on the first page of google results for his name, linking to the last time I mentioned this crime).
Maybe America could do with a general taboo against the display of all flags except the US flag?
I recall the debate over Tlalib's Palestinian flag (and comparisons to a Congressman showing up in his IDF uniform) and it all seems like a - somewhat distasteful - hassle.
Agreed. Why is an American teacher flying a foreign flag?
I could understand a Japanese flag in Japanese language class or something. But just flying a foreign flag in some unrelated class is jivey at best.
As a non-American, I find the idea of flags in a classroom very odd. I presume you need the national flag for the pledge of allegiance (another odd custom) but why permit other flags?
Although from what I see online, American teachers have their own classroom(?) instead of it being the room for a specific year(?) and so they get to decorate it like it's their own personal space(?) - at least that's what I've picked up from online bragging about putting up Pride material and trans flags and all the rest of it.
Again, very odd from my viewpoint - schools over here (to the best of my knowledge) wouldn't permit such things, though I have no idea what they do nowadays when it comes to 'Pride Month' - they probably do have the rainbow stuff in order to "support our LGBT+ students". But that's the school as a whole, not a teacher deciding to bring in their toys and hobbies to plaster all over the walls.
American teachers have their own classroom, yes, and tend to decorate them with things they like about the subject in question- eg English teachers have shelves with books they have enjoyed reading, foreign language teachers have maps of places that speak the language they have visited, etc. When I was in school it was still acceptable to oppose homosexuality, so no comment on how many pride flags are floating around these days.
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Yes to all of these for my American public school experience. But usually the decorations are related to the coursework. Maps, Spanish verb conjugation charts, etc. It wasn't typically their personal stuff unrelated to schooling. There was an occasional Garfield poster or something. But no one was flying foreign flags or anything.
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American teachers generally have their own rooms, but they are assigned each year. Though in practice usually it is the same room every year, unless something changes.
They can decorate it as they wish, unless a rule prohibits certain types of items. Most districts require even-handed treatment of controversial issues, so the Israeli flag probably was not kosher, no pun intended.
What is wrong with that? All else being equal, a teacher who is seen by students as an individual human being, rather than as a bureaucrat, will likely be more effective on many dimensions.
This is a popular narrative that people in education, especially teachers, like to push (at least from my experience as a student), and as a result, plenty of former-students (i.e. almost everyone in the West) also seem to believe it, but I'm skeptical. Have we ever done any studies measuring stuff like "how much does a teacher bringing their hobbies into the classroom affects how much students see them as an individual versus a bureaucrat?" or "how does the students' perception of the teacher as an individual versus a bureaucrat affect the effectiveness of the teacher in [important dimensions], whether it be positive or negative, and how much?" or "if a teacher bringing their hobbies into the classroom and that does increase how much students see them as individuals, then does that particular method of increasing how they see the teachers as individuals cause an increase in effectiveness of the teacher in [important dimensions]?"
Given how convenient this narrative is for the teachers who tend to push it - how nice it is that bringing things I like into my workplace also makes me better at my work! - I think there should be a pretty high bar of evidence for this, to rise above the default presumption that it's a narrative that's just too convenient not to believe.
Why, if it does no harm? If a teacher has a pennant of his favorite sports team, or a picture of his family, etc. etc, what possible harm could that do? Shouldn't the burden of proof be on those who seek to bar such displays?
The harm is the complexity of creating a policy that allows innocuous things but does not permit obnoxious or offensive things. The bureaucratic burden of having to decide that, say, posting pictures of a ski trip is fine, but posting pictures of a religious retreat is not, pictures of political protesting, or posting pictures of a gay wedding reception - it's all just so tiresome. It's a given that there are people who constantly push the limits of any policy in an obnoxious way, so it's entirely reasonable to set a simple bright-line rule that veers widely on the side of inoffensiveness.
And yet somehow thousands of schools manage to negotiate that ostensible labyrinth with little trouble.
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I'm not talking about policy. Merely believing whether or not that the narrative is true. I agree, it's one of those things, like food that FDA categorizes as Generally Recognized As Safe, that we have enough anecdotal evidence that they're not harmful that we don't have to prove it more rigorously. But the narrative isn't about harm.
But OP was.
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Because your teacher is not your pal or your buddy, and why should you have to pretend to be interested in their skiing trips or collection of Funkopops? They are there to teach you, you are there to learn (we hope) and you don't have to know all about their home and personal life outside of school to do that.
Regarding them as a human being is no harm, but I think it's just as likely students will think that stuff is lame or boring, or that the teacher is trying to impose it on them, as it is to make them go "Wow Mx. Futterperson is a real genuine human just like me, not a robot!"
If the classroom is all decked out like Mx. Futterperson's living room, then the teacher has no right to be surprised when the kids treat it like a living room in their home, and play on their phones/get up and walk around/talk to each other/don't pay attention.
Who said anything about anyone having to pretend to be interested?
Which is of course the default attitude of students towards teachers. which is absolutely fine. It isn't about trying to prove to the students that the teacher is "cool." It is trying to show that he is not a mere functionary.
You think the average 14-15 year old really would be interested in boring old Teacher's holiday on the slopes? Even if they are themselves interested in the topic?
I could, at a stretch, imagine 12 year olds listening to Mx. Futterperson telling them all about their ski trip, or maybe 18 year olds when they're old enough to go on ski trips of their own, but in the interval?
Well, perhaps you know more Cool Teachers or well-behaved kids than I do! 😁
Again, who said anything about students being interested? Or about the teachers telling stories of their ski trip? We are talking only about classrooom decorations.
And, we also are not talking about "cool teachers."
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Growing up in the UK in the 1980's, you normally saw national flags in schools in two situations - classrooms usually used for foreign language lessons, and displays of large numbers of small flags (either because you were in a geography classroom or because some piece of silly internationalism was being celebrated). Schools were technically government buildings, so a school that had a flagpole would fly the Union Flag on the 10-15 days a year when flags were supposed to be flown from government buildings.
As a parent of school-age kids in the Current Year, the two standard use cases are still common. Actual cloth Union Flags still seem rare, but schools in immigrant-heavy areas are expected to teach "British values" which in practice means that there is usually a wall display of kid-coloured paper Union Flags up somewhere in the school. I don't know if this happens in outer-suburban whiteopia. The other thing that changed is that since the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, low-key celebration of royal occasions somehow stopped being cringe. So my son's school was all done up with red, white and blue bunting for the 2022 Platinum Jubilee and the 2023 Coronation.
There was a large Pride flag in the visitors' entrance lobby during Pride Month, but my impression was that Pride was otherwise low-key in the way you would expect at a school where muslims and west African evangelicals together make up almost half of the parents.
Yeah, that's where I usually saw other flags. We didn't even have the national flag in school in my time, or in the school I worked in. But it's been about fifteen years since then, so I don't know if they put up Pride flags or what have you. I'd be surprised, but not shocked to learn they did so.
I think because over here the classrooms are "this is the Fifth Year classroom" and teachers for the different subjects move around between the year rooms, rather than having one room of their own that the classes move around (apart from things like home economics room, science lab, metal and woodwork rooms, art room, gym) then there isn't the same kind of individualisation where a teacher could stick up the Israeli or other flag. And so there isn't the same sense of ownership, of "this is my room and I can customise it whatever way I like". If you are not making your classroom an extension of your personality, I think maybe the same motivation isn't present.
But that's separate from Jewish teacher losing his mind over Muslim student questioning having the Israeli flag in the classroom, which is the hot button topic right now. Although again, if the kids are being taught all up through school about being minorities and being offended and that offensive materials should be taken down and the only response the authorities should make is agreement, is it any surprise a kid piped up about "that offends me"? Threatening to cut her head off is too extreme a response, though, and the guy definitely crossed the line by following them through the hall, yelling and swearing. Any teacher is going to get into trouble for yelling and cursing in the school hallway:
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