August 29, 2006 6:24 AM

Today's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us

Teacher Placed On Leave For Hanging Foreign Flags: Geography Teacher At Carmody Middle School Refuses To Take Down Flags

MY NEW HERO #45: Eric Hamlin

LAKEWOOD, Colo. — A Jefferson County geography teacher was placed on paid administrative on the second day of school for hanging several flags from other countries in his classroom. Eric Hamlin said the flags were part of a world geography lesson plan at Carmody Middle School and refused to take them down. The school’s principal escorted Hamlin out of class Wednesday morning after he refused to remove the flags of China and Mexico.

It would be easy to ridicule the prinicipal of Carmody Middle School for being a hopeless Right-wing troll. While that may well be the case, the real culprit is the Colorado Legislature, who passed one of the silliest and most indefensible laws imaginable. Next, I imagine they’ll be mandating that each child be issued a Bible and a rifle….

What POSSIBLE purpose is served by preventing a teacher from displaying the flags of foreign countries? The simple simple of display foreign flags does not mean a teacher is advocating one-world government, hatred of America, or any of the other canards that Right-wing knuckle-draggers would have us believe. Perhaps it’s really just about a teacher trying to get his students to understand and develop an interest in the world outside of our borders. Perhaps if more teachers took this approach, we’d actually be graduating kids from high school who know where Saudi Arabia is…and maybe even understand that the rest of the world isn’t populated only by Godless Liberals and Islamofascists.

The school district placed him on administrative leave for insubordination, citing a Colorado law that makes it illegal to display foreign flags permanently in schools.

“Under state law, foreign flags can only be in the classroom because it’s tied to the curriculum. And the principal looked at the curriculum, talked to the teacher, and found that there was really no curriculum coming up in the next few weeks that supported those flags being in the classroom,” said Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer.

But Hamlin said although his curriculum may not speak specifically about those flags, they are used as reference tools for world geography.

“It’s much along the lines of a science teacher who puts up a map of the solar system. They may not spend every day and every lesson talking about Mars, but they want the students to see that and to see the patterns of the planets and the order, and the students will observe that and absorb that learning visually,” Hamlin said.

And isn’t this all really about education? What’s the point of making the hanging of foreign flags in a classroom a crime? What possible agenda is served by denying a Geogrpahy teacher the ability to use the display of foreign flags? Unless it’s part of a grand plan to turn Colorado schools into public funded equivalents of Sunday School.

How do we expect children to learn about the world outside our borders if we don’t allow Geography teachers to teach Geography? Are we really so worried that our children won’t adopt our Amerika uber Alles ethnocentrism? Are we afraid that our children might figure out that America really DOESN’T own and rule the world?

It would appear that the Colorado Legislature has succeeding in turning their public schools into publicly-funded political indoctrination camps.

Your tax dollars at work.

Or not.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 29, 2006 6:24 AM.

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