In light of reports in today’s Albany Times Union that a 10th grade teacher at Albany High School asked students to make a persuasive argument blaming Jews for the problems of Nazi Germany as part of a writing assignment, Councilman David G. Greenfield is calling on the school district to immediately terminate the teacher in question.
“The teacher responsible for coming up with and assigning students with this task must be held accountable for attempting to indoctrinate children with anti-Semitic beliefs. Quite obviously, this teacher lacks the judgment and common sense necessary to have a position of such great responsibility and is clearly not fit to return to the classroom. It doesn’t matter if there was malicious intent behind this assignment or not. Common sense dictates that this is incredibly offensive and hurtful to a large segment of the school’s student body and our society as a whole. I am calling on Albany High School to take the only appropriate action in this matter and immediately fire this individual. If the district superintendent is unable to hold her staff accountable and does not understand the seriousness of this incident, perhaps she is unfit for her position of leadership,” said Greenfield.
(YWN Desk – NYC)
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3 Responses
he forgot to mention stripe her of her teaching credentials
councilman greenfeld is 100% right! teacher must be fired! recently a teacher was fired on demand by sen. simcha felder for giving the students slavery racists homework, so why should anti-semitic class-work be different.
see the article here: http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/felder-calls-immediate-removal-teachers-involved-slavery-themed-homeword-assignment-ma
Unless the purpose of the assignment was require the students to write a persuasive essay that they disagreed with and in spite of the fact they felt the argument itself was repugnant. In which case it seems like an excellent assignment. Anyone can write an argument in favor of what they believe, but writing one in favor of something you reject requires skill. Just ask any newspaper editorial writer (whose arguments are determined by the owner, not the journalists), or any lawyer (especially one whose defendant is obviously in the wrong on the matter).
If in fact the purpose was to teach writing skills by choosing a topic that everyone in the class disagreed with, i.e. the teacher is neither an anti-semite nor a traitor, Greenfield and Felder will be looking awfully silly (and nothing in the more detailed account in the Albany paper suggests the teacher is guilty of advoacting nazism).