If You Can’t Think As I Do, Then Do As I Think
Written by John Erianne on July 2, 2008 – 3:13 pm -If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN“The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.”
H. L. MENCKEN
Dear Asterius,
I just finished my first full year of teaching Language Arts and I am thinking it might be my last. Last term, the principal decided to start a school blog and made it mandatory for teachers from every department to participate whether we wanted to or not. The department supervisors are the editors and decide what is posted to the blog. First of all, I hate blogging. It’s a stupid waste of time that cuts into an already busy day filled with classes and duty periods with little enough prep time as it is. But I am a good soldier, so I’ve contributed to the blog as best as I can. Mostly, my posts reflect my perspective as a new teacher at the high school. Although my supervisor has often made critical comments of some of my posts, she’s usually posted them without many changes. This last time, however, she really raked me over the coals and practically rewrote the whole thing.
My most recent post was about this tutoring session I did when I was student teaching in another school district a couple of years ago. I basically related how inept I felt with the girl ( a cheerleader practically my own age) and how the girl was illiterate and I couldn’t believe she’d made it to high school without be able to read or knowing the first thing about writing a coherent sentence. Well… my supervisor changed a lot of my own words because she thought my language was inappropriate. Here I am writing for a blog against my own wishes and I can’t even write what I want to write the way I want to write it!
I’m sending you the blog and my original so you can see what she did. I’d like to know what you think about it.
Thanks,
Newbie English Teacher
Well dear,
I don’t appreciate political correctness — especially in writing and anyone who’s read this blog well knows it.
I can’t really advise you on whether or not you should continue in your current position. If you are seriously unhappy in your job, I’d suggest that there is more going on with you than a controversy over a blog. I’m not even clear how it is that the administration can compel you to write a blog against your will either since it’s not part of your job description and there isn’t a legal requirement to do so. What’s the worst thing they can do to you if you don’t participate? My guess is, they can’t do much of anything and the way I hear it, teachers have a pretty good union.
That being said, it shouldn’t surprise you that a school receiving public funds would censor a blog posting. Unfortunately for you, you expressed your thoughts in a manner that bruises the sacred cow of American education. You know the drill: All teachers are saints. All children are precious. And school administrators care. We all know that’s bullshit, but you are never supposed to say that out loud — especially if you happen to work as an educator. And let’s face it, your school blog is nothing but a PR stunt.
What bothers me isn’t that the edits substantially change the context of your blog post (because it really doesn’t, to be fair, and I can see why it might not be okay for you to refer to students as “brats” even if it is funny coming from a teacher.), it’s that your supervisor’s edits were done purely to make your post sound more politically correct. I’ve now read your blog three times and even though I enjoyed your anecdote about tutoring the braindead cheerleader and found it to be very entertaining, I still don’t know for sure what the point of the story is. Seriously, you’ve buried your lead so deep into this thing, I couldn’t find it with a backhoe! A good editor would, first and foremost, help you figure that out and bring it forward before addressing the issue of political correctness and what language is or is not appropriate. Failing in that respect is just bad journalism and blogging is a form of journalism whether it be a news-oriented site, a personal blog, or a school blog. Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that this is a school blog makes this shoddy practice unconscionable because one would think a school would be setting a better standard for the students and for the community at large.
I suppose that would be asking too much.
