Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Last night was the first Andover School Committee meeting since last week's fiasco with Wheels of Justice, and it was a packed house. I'd guess there were about sixty people in that room with every seat taken and standing space only. The School Committee president quipped that they usually only fill about a row and a half of seats.
Things ran in an orderly fashion, and following the Pledge of Allegiance (too bad Ron Francis wasn't there, he hates that), Principal Anderson was brought up to explain the time line of events. He was looking pretty sheepish.
Kids, today in Tort Law, we're going to learn another offense with which to annoy the planet...that offense is something called "viewpoint discrimination."
I kid you not, that is the tortious offense with which the principal explained the school was threatened, and would, according to multiple legal opinions, been found guilty of, if they refused to allow WoJ in. Now don't blame the messenger. Whatever you think of the way Principal Anderson handled things, one thing I feel pretty confident of is that he, like all of us, had never heard of such an offense before he was being accused of committing it.
Imagine how low we've sunk into the post-modernist mindset where there is no truth and everything is simply a matter of opinion that even educators must not be discriminating when it comes to differing viewpoints. The astounding implications of this point itself could fill an essay. Let's move on.
After Principal Anderson, Superintendent Claudia Bach read a statement that could only be described as an "abject apology" to the community. She said that she found it "absolutely amazing" that they were bringing in a group like this, that she had concerns with their academic qualities and credentials. Bach had been one of the classroom observers the day the WoJ came in, and got the impression that the "group was not qualified," that she recognized that there were factual issues with them and that they were "not worthy of our students' time." She stated that she fully supports a policy change to prevent controversial groups of highly dubious value (my words) from coming in (such a policy change was on the committee's agenda last night).
She also stated that they never bring in a speaker they have not heard before (oops), and that she "truly regrets this whole thing has occurred" and all the genuine pain it has caused -- there is no victor, only deep sorrow in a community that needs healing.
It was all quite a statement and I'm going to work on getting a copy of the statement to post on the record here for other communities to see what kind of poison and trouble this group brings.
Community comment followed and Tony James was very respectful of the special circumstances and allowed time for everyone who wanted to to approach the mic and go over the three minute time allotment.
Several parents and residents spoke and made great points concerning the appropriateness of the group, the hostile environment created by them, the factual basis of their presentation potential safety and privacy issues and a number of other well-formulated points. Most impressive. I'm also going to work on getting some of these statements for the record.
One man, a Sociologist who works at a couple of local colleges, did speak in favor of the Wheels of Justice presentation.
A school teacher, "one of the six" Social Studies teachers who had WoJ in her class rose to explain the situation. Mary Robb explained that she only allowed her Junior and Senior students in her Democracy and Media Literacy class attend the WoJ session, not her younger history students. Those older students were tasked with deconstructing the WoJ message and she felt they did a great job with it. WoJ did not emerge well in the students' minds once they had gone through with the exercise. She (or was it her students?) felt the group represented "media messages at their worst."
When she was originally approached by a colleague about having the group in, she went out and did research on them and found that indeed, "they have a huge bias," and were therefore perfect for discussion in her class. Robb also wanted to make it clear that NOT all the teachers supported a law suit (and presumably, she was one of them).
It sounds like Robb is a responsible teacher who took the lemons presented and made lemonade. On a deeper level, however, by going along with the invitation, she gave ammunition to the aggressive and less responsible teachers like Tom Meyers who then could purport to speak in her name. Further, a group like this takes any tiny "in" to legitimize themselves. What Mary Robb's students discern will be of no concern when WoJ moves on to the next town trumpeting their success in Andover and using their appearance there to make themselves look legitimate to the next school administration who will have that much more difficulty in making the case that they are inappropriate and unqualified to speak in front of a High School audience. That's why getting the aftermath of this incident out here on the record is so important. Ron Francis is already out doing the spin. More on that in a moment.
A few quick notes on the other speakers: One man identified himself as one of the "independent observers" brought in by the League of Women Voters to be present during the day and he said he didn't see anything happening worth all the excitement. He said that the kids didn't seem to have the grounding to be able to ask truly probing questions, but they did probe.
One woman stood to defend Principal Anderson and the job he does. A mother stood to say her daughter was in a class similar to Mary Robb's and her daughter had a similar experience of deconstructing the message and finding nothing much of value (my words, but that's what I took from it).
Another man approached to say he thought the WoJ appearance was a good thing that aroused his kids' curiosity in a part of the world they had no interest in previously. He also said he and his wife were threatened by WoJ opponents. Unfortunately, this points up one of the negatives of last Friday. While I'm agnostic on what behavior was appropriate on the part of Andover parents and residents last Friday, for reasons I stated previously (to restate quickly: the way this group used legal threats to force its way in, then came to be known as a group with dangerous ties collecting information on the kids...when it comes down to parents protecting their children, ACLU and proper decorum be damned, you've created a VERY volatile situation which should easily have been foreseen by all but the most narcissistic asses who saw the forced entry of this group as some sort of sick "victory"), the bad behavior of outsiders is far more difficult to justify. A little noise...OK, but threats should never be occurring. Not everyone who wants to hear WoJ is evil, some are just curious, some may just be naive.
Anyway...a girl who works at the local temple remarked that whatever happens from here should happen behind closed doors amongst adults...leave the kids out of it...
After all this stuff, the committee moved on to the next agenda item, and a lot of people, including me, left.
Between a packed house and some very good presentations by parents, I think it's clear that the powers-that-be in Andover have gotten the message, and, whoever you blame for some of the raucous behavior on Friday night, Wheels of Justice is a group who's presence has left a wave of destruction in its wake.
Ron Francis provides a little insight into his thinking on the Green-Rainbow Party email list. Seems he's trying to follow through on his plans to force Town Meetings in other communities, and get the GRP to be interested in sponsoring ballot questions. Here's Ron:
What I was doing is showing how the characteristics of a Palestine ballot question allow the GRP to distinguish itself clearly ... and that's because it strikes straight to the core of the Democrats complicity with elites.
But since you mentioned it !,... I will say that doing a foriegn policy issue next to the poverty related issue that I proposed could be acceptable and Palestine would be a good candidate...
...I disagree that Palestine is a divisive issue [Yeah, right.]. It's the Democrats in Somerville and elsewhere who kept saying "Palestine is divisive". What they really meant is that they wanted to shield zionists inside of progressive circles from stinging criticism from the "left" (social justice workers)...
You said "But it is politically divisive and could be a waste of time for a state political party at best, or a disaster at worst. What's the goal here? To show the public that we can stick our finger in the eye of zionism"
The answer to your question is yes. The goal is to show that the GRP is a party that is anti-racist (anti-zionists) and draw support from that as was done in Somerville...
Is that what Ron was doing this past week? Sticking his finger in the eye of Zionism? He seems to spend a lot of time on doing that. I hope it was worth it, not.
Here's Ron on last Friday. Big success for him (and btw, even the messages among his peers are pure manipulation):
Aaaanyway...today is the "response" event or whatever you like to call it, both in the high school and then again at 7PM this evening. I've no doubt it will be higher quality than what came before.
Update, April 18, 2007:
Here is video and a transcript of Superintendent Bach's apology (in two parts as it goes slightly over VideoEgg's 5 minute limit):
I inserted myself at the point when Mr. Anderson first was debating about this group coming and I urged him to postpone the event, which he initially did. I had...was part of those discussions with the lawyers and what it seems to me we were hearing pretty unambiguously that if we denied them coming back, we would probably be losing the case, and so we would be having the group back later, like it or not, and we'd be having them back at great cost to the community. I mention cost as a secondary factor because basically what it seemed to me what the lawyers were saying is you can have them now or you can have them later, and if you have them later it will be more money but you WILL have them back.
My issue with that and a lot of us around the table in those days really did a lot of arguing and debating with the lawyers. Because at this point, whether I had political feelings about the group coming back or not, I would choose tonight to keep those feelings to myself because I think in fact those should not be publicly related. My political views are not to be part of my public life. But I was concerned about quality of the group because I went on the internet and I looked at them and I asked them questions, and in my mind it seemed absolutely amazing that we would be bringing in a group about a topic that could not be more important today by a group we knew very little about when we lived in a world here in New England of some of the finest experts imaginable. So my concern from the beginning in addition to other concerns I had, but my concern was really the academic qualities and credentials to speak about an important issue and to take the time of our students. I will tell you that when I observed this group, I was one of the observers in the classroom, and I knew that in the evening there would be concern, and I heard it expressed that night, that in fact my worst fears came to be true, that the group was not particularly qualified to speak about these issues. Their presentation was poor. They were factually incorrect. They were obviously biased. I think we knew they were going to be but I found them not worthy of our students' time, and I will say that publicly over again.
My actions going forward: There's a policy going before the school committee tonight that I fully support because I think it puts into place some some discussions that I believe were denied to our principal and myself that I think we need to have some authority. When that policy if it's passed is passed, I will work with the principals on procedures to implement that policy so that we can prevent what has happened and brought you here tonight. I will work with the teachers as well because I think that this whole question of what we bring in to our students, the quality, the excellence, the academic excellence which I think is absolutely crucial in the issue. I will work with teachers at the curriculum councils as well as at the high school and other schools to have people really be very very scrutinizing and diligent about what we bring. When we bring speakers, when Marcia O'Neil and I bring speakers before the teachers, we don't bring a speaker in we haven't first heard and that we don't have a lot of information about. And I think we learn from this criteria. I will also work with the educators on internet literacy because I think just looking up on the internet a website and googling somebody is not good enough. We have to do much more than that. I won't hesitate to take any action when people say, "Well, have you done anything?" If complaints are brought forward to me, I will and will continue to do so in this case and all cases to investigate thoroughly. You will not know about those investigations because you can't know. But I will be as I always have and I have a reputation for following through with that. So you need to know I will do it.
Finally, I want to offer my apology, and I truly regret that this whole thing has occurred that has caused so much pain in this room...and it's been genuine pain.
Issues like this deserve serious debate and I hope that in fact what we can do is move forward with serious debate on these issues. I would hate in the future to imagine that the schoolhouse could not be a place for discussions such as was the intention, because the schoolhouse, as somebody said to me the other day, is expected to address these issues, address issues that society hasn't figured out yet and so we always will have the obligation and should bringing those forward. But we have to do it in the right way. For some to see what has happened as a victory in this and not see the pain is incomprehensible to me. If the objective was to enlighten and to bring further understanding to Andover of this enormously important issue - then that failed. So there has been no victory, only deep sorrow in a community that needs healing and I hope you will join with me to do that, because we need to move forward. We need to be healed. And we need to continue to bring educational excellence to our students.
Here are the notes from one of the citizen/parents who addressed the School Committee. Their actual statements may have varied slightly from what their notes say here. There were others who addressed the committee, but this is the talk I have in the most usable form:
- Adopt a Zero Tolerance policy against any form of hate speech or environment that creates a hostile or tense atmosphere in the Andover Schools
- Work directly with the Teachers’ Union to adopt a policy that prevents teachers or administrators from using school property, time or resources for the purpose of extending their religious, political or social ideologies unless it is in direct correlation with their department curriculum and approved by the Office of the Superintendent.
- Full accountability of school administrators, including and especially the Superintendent of Schools and High School Principal who have both shown an inability to exercise good judgment as it relates to protecting our kids
My name is XXXX and I moved to Andover 1 ½ years ago with my wife and two school age children. Our primary reason for moving to the town was to have our children in a top ranked school system. I can assure you that if I had seen the article in yesterday’s Boston Globe “Conflict Besets Andover Highâ€, we would NOT have moved to Andover.
Today I am embarrassed of the decisions made at the high school and deeply disappointed in the school administration for putting our children in danger by allowing Wheels of Justice to speak, virtually unrestrained, last Friday at the High School.
There is no way that Dr. Bach and Mr. Anderson can deny that they created a safety risk by allowing the following:
- Creating a hostile and tense environment for the students of Andover High ( these are the students’ and teachers’ words, not mine )
- “ Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress “ caused by, as an example, the photos and discourse that caused at least one student to leave Friday’s assembly in tears.
- Showing pictures that with their depiction of violence would likely earn at least an “ R “ rating as a parental advisory to children under the age of 17
- Allowing children as young as the age of 14 to be in the library and within earshot of the speakers, with no access to any alternative view
- Petition intimidation by the teachers and fellow students, who by their own admission, did not realize what they were signing and in some cases felt pressured by their peers to sign
- A video created at the Friday night session, that includes the students and can be accessed and viewed with little or no restriction
- One of the most shocking safety risks was created by Dr. Bach and Peter Anderson in allowing WOJ to obtain from the students a list of personal information including eMail addresses. It is important to note that Joe Carr -A/K/A Joe Smith- one of the invited speakers, is directly affiliated with a group called “ ISM “ or International Solidarity Movement. This group is profoundly violent and Pro-PLO, and actively recruits students and puts them in situations where they are killed or injured. It is also important to note that Joe Carr is actively followed by Homeland Security and his visit to your High School was paid for by discretionary funds including his plane ticket- approved by Tom Meyers the president of the teacher’s union and Peter Anderson your principal. No attempt was made to stop this list from being created and a copy was retrieved from the possession of Tom Meyers at his home – why would Tom Meyers have this list and what copies were made ???
It would be easy for the administration to say they did not know they were creating a hostile, tense or unsafe environment, but then we would demand they answer why they realized they needed to have an Andover Police Officer in the school starting at 6 AM on Friday. How many other invited speakers to our High School require an armed police presence ?
This is, above all, a management issue. This is not a situation where the administration and the board can simply put in new rules and say “ problem solved “. Life does not work that way and we all have to be held accountable for our actions – it is a lesson that we owe to our children.
We live in an age where students walk into high schools and kill and maim their fellow students for little recognizable or known reasons and our administrators have seen fit to put a match to gasoline and potentially ignite a flame that would make yesterday’s Globe Headline look like good news.
The Green party is foolish to work to establish "viewpoint discrimination" as a legal precedent. That will only mean that Pro-Zionist speakers--who would normally be hounded off college campuses--will be able to use it to guarantee their own access.
"Viewpoint discrimination" is a valid legal concept which relates to the First Amendment.
To pick an obvious example, if a town issued a permit for a Democratic Party rally on its town common, but refused to allow a Republican rally, the town would be engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
I won't even try to guess how this doctrine relates to the Andover controversy, but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand as some "post-modernist" construct.
It's postmodernist claptrap in this context.
I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but what exactly was there for Mary Robb's students to deconstruct in the WoJ's message, and how the hell did they manage to do it?? (that is assuming the WoJ's class presentations were anywhere near the risible freakshow they put out for us on Friday evening.)
Call me paranoid, but her exquisite self-defense last night struck me as a desperate snow job. Too little too late.
Mary Robb is finding her voice a bit late. Better late than never, but why didn't she comment publicly BEFORE the WoJ came, when Meyers kept insisting publicly that all 6 social studies teachers supported the WoJ visit?
ED
ED,
Don't underestimate the power of peer pressure. If Meyers made a big deal of the fact that all six social studies teachers supported the WoJ visit, then all six social studies teachers must've been under a good deal of pressure from him and Francis. I think that when it comes to bullies and demagogues--whether national leaders or the tin-pot variety like Francis--a lot of what passes for "support" may simply be docility and conformity out of fear of ostracism or abuse.
Perhaps the only way she felt she could handle the situation was to go along ostensibly, but then subtly undermine the original intent when she was alone with her students in the classroom.
I know this sounds like an alibi...I can just see people rolling their eyes and saying "that's a likely story." But it is very possible.
On the other hand, it may indeed be a snow job. She may have followed Francis and Meyers out of conviction or fear, and then tried to placate opponents of the WoJ when she had to face them.
We cannot know. I would've liked to have been the proverbial fly on the wall when she conducted her class.