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Notes -
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 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.
Presumably those schools have fewer people trying to push the limits of the policy.
You can't assume that teachers are going to follow these policies in good faith, which is why we can't have nice things.
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