I’m going to add emphasis the article below and boil off most of the rest of the story:

Pa. student humiliated over Broncos jersey

BEAVER FALLS, Pa. (AP) – A 17-year-old high school student said he was humiliated when a teacher made him sit on the floor during a midterm exam in his ethnicity class - for wearing a Denver Broncos jersey.

The teacher, John Kelly, forced Joshua Vannoy to sit on the floor and take the test Friday – two days before the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Broncos 34-17 in the AFC championship game. Kelly also made other students throw crumpled up paper at Vannoy, whom he called a “stinking Denver fan,” Vannoy told The Associated Press on Monday. . . .

“If he felt uncomfortable, then that’s a lesson; that’s what (the class) is designed to do,” Kelly told The Denver Post. “It was silly fun. I can’t believe he was upset.”

Vannoy was wearing a No. 7 Broncos jersey on Friday, because he is a fan of John Elway, the Broncos’ retired Hall of Fame quarterback.

Vannoy said he was so unnerved he left at least 20 questions blank on the 60-question test, and just wants out of Kelly’s class because he’s afraid the teacher won’t treat him fairly now that the story reached the media.

The media is not liberal, the media is not conservative, the media is stupid.

What’s the point of the lesson in this class? That people who can be singled out as being different have to put up with excess pressures which make it hard to perform. The lesson is supposed to teach the kids that those in majority find it easy to gang up on a minority, and that for the minority it’s difficult to function when you’re being constantly discriminated against. It’s an exercise to prove a point. Yet why do I get the sneaking suspicion that this minor (okay, major) point is going to sail right over the heads of most folks who read the article. After all, it’s written in a way that makes you believe this happened is because of sports when, in fact, had the kid not been wearing a Broncos jersey he would have chosen a student with red hair, or a Hugo Boss sweatshirt, or something, anything that set the student apart from the rest of the class.

In eighth grade we had a teacher who was explaining (in middle school terms) communism. He spoke for thirty minutes on the topic and then gave a pop quiz. He quickly totalled up the grades and then took points away from the students who did well to help pad the scores of the students who did poorly, thus squashing the curve. The point? To show how communism doesn’t give people incentive to excel and that you’re more rewarded by being lazy. Or something. The good students were outraged, even after the teacher said that the quiz wasn’t for a grade but to prove a point.

Stop the country, I want to get off.

Do they have these problems in Spain, do you think?

Current Mood – Idiots! |