'Racially charged' vagary may cost American teacher a lot
Published: 03 October, 2008, 16:39
AFP Photo / Stan Honda
An American middle-school teacher has been suspended for ten days without pay after claims he wrote a racially charged interpretation of Barack Obama's presidential campaign motto, a local paper reports.
Officials in Jackson County, Missouri, are now gathering evidence before considering Greg Howard's fate. Some activists are insisting Howard be permanently expelled.
Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials say Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a class board at Marianna Middle School.
It read, “C.H.A.N.G.E. – Come Help A (N-word) Get Elected.”
Howard was suspended on Monday. The reprimand was elevated to a 10-day suspension without pay starting Thursday. Howard was also told to write a letter of apology to students.
Some parents are indignant that the teacher used the “N-word” in classroom.
“To me, it's hurtful,” said Audrey Wad, a Marianna resident with nieces and nephews at the school. “The idea that he would impose his political opinion on the children is wrong to me. That's where he crossed the line.”
Meanwhile, area director Elmore Bryant, who has taught in Jackson County for more than 40 years, said Howard's action was “totally inappropriate, out of place, out of character and bad timing.”
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Where I do not agree with what this teacher did I do want to say that it is time for not only white teachers to be charged with racially motivated comments in the classroom but black teachers as well. I have heard black teachers comment about white children and the same teachers have allowed black children to call racially motivated names at white children like white trash, white slut, white whatever these names are racist and they discriminate against white children. I think that there is a clear double standard in this nation. Discrimination and racism comes in all shapes in sizes, it is not just white on black. When I told the principal of the racism on her campus she said it was a societal issue that she could not change. She may not be able to change our society, but it shouldnt be allowed in an ediucational envirnoment. Schools are teaching racism, in my opinion. I think that racism is ignorant and anyone regardless of the color or ethnic back ground that they have should not condone this type of ignorance. How is our nation ever suppose to move forward when people are so stuck on a past that a lot of us never even experienced.