Teachers: Hired Speech.

Several weeks ago I remember Neil saying something like, ”as a teacher, you are only a political extension of the school board.”  At the time it made me sit up for a moment and think about the implications and about how I might react to the inability to insert important information into the curriculum as it might come up.  In today’s EW, the article Teacher Speech Rights On Curriculum Rejected, said exactly what Neil was saying when they cite the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a teacher’s contract for introducing reading material that was not authorized into the classroom.  The court found that. “only the school board has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in the classroom.”  The court reinforced this division by saying that “when a teacher teaches, the school system does not regulate that speech as much as it hires that speech”. <span>&nbsp;</span>A difficult reality to swallow after so many years of education.  Culture is still the primary driving force in this society, even when all else suffers.