{"id":41,"date":"2003-03-10T16:05:06","date_gmt":"2003-03-10T16:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:07:57","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:07:57","slug":"more_teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"More Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want people to think \u2013 just because I\u2019m a bit skeptical of the level of fervor around the Maine reports – that I don\u2019t believe that teachers can be strongly antiwar and antimilitary and then act inappropriately on their feelings. Here\u2019s an article<\/a> from last week\u2019s Daily Breeze:<\/p>\n

A week after an ROTC student was removed from a Carson High School classroom for wearing military fatigues, school officials Friday said they would permit cadets to don the camouflage uniforms in the future but with some restrictions. <\/p>\n

It remained unclear, however, what those restrictions would be, as administrators struggled to draw new policies that balanced the concerns of teachers with the requests of ROTC members. <\/p>\n

The problem arose Feb. 28 when some cadets put on the outfit \u2014 which has splotches of green and brown and is known as \u201cMarine utility\u201d dress \u2014 instead of the more formal uniform that the ROTC typically wears once a week during the program\u2019s \u201cinspection\u201d days. <\/p>\n

It was the first time Carson\u2019s ROTC had a chance to dress in the popular fatigues, and a teacher reacted by asking a student in the new uniform to leave the classroom and finish the day\u2019s lesson in another room. Tricia Churchill, the history teacher who dismissed the student, declined to comment. <\/p>\n

Carson Principal Doug Waybright said the teacher found the apparel \u201cinappropriate,\u201d but did not elaborate. He told the teacher that \u201cwe as public educators do not have the right to advocate a position,\u201d though he would not say whether disciplinary action was taken.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\n\u2026<\/b>
\nLt. Col. Ted McDonald, coordinator for the Los Angeles Unified School District\u2019s ROTC program, said he advises ROTC instructors against allowing students to wear the uniforms on campus, except for major events, to avoid the kind of problem Carson experienced. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome teachers object to what appears to them as a war uniform,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t need to cause controversy and we\u2019ve elected not to use that uniform except for camping and hiking.\u201d That policy, McDonald added, has exceptions and was in place when he took over the district\u2019s ROTC program in 1990. <\/p>\n

Cheryl Geurbaoui, a Carson teacher, disapproved of students wearing the uniform, especially at a time when the country is on the precipice of war.
\n\u201cThey encourage people to think about war when they should be learning and it just bothers me because this is a tense time,\u201d said Geurbaoui, who believes that dislike of the outfits is widespread among schools, not isolated to Carson. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s unpatriotic to not want kids in the uniforms on campus.\u201d But many students voiced strong support for the uniform and felt the teacher was out of line. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe uniform doesn\u2019t symbolize war. To me it\u2019s about being proud of your country,\u201d said Brandyn Robinson, a Carson senior. \u201cThey let athletes and cheerleaders wear their uniforms but when it comes to ROTC they don\u2019t. It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d <\/p>\n

Meliza Marshall, a sophomore enrolled in ROTC, said she felt dejected about by what she viewed as \u201cdiscrimination\u201d against the cadets. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked hard for those uniforms and we want to wear them and we\u2019re proud to wear them,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

ROTC students at other schools were similarly upset. Cadet Sgt. Maj. Mike Heitmann, a senior at Redondo Union High School who leads his ROTC unit, said he interpreted the action as an insult to the military in general. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s ridiculous because the military is here to protect its people; we\u2019re not warmongers,\u201d he said.<\/I><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hear the voices of future leaders here.<\/p>\n

And while it\u2019s amusingly predictable that a few teachers would stand in front of their students and object, I\u2019ll also tip my hat to the school administration for stepping up and dealing with this unprompted.<\/p>\n

I have a feeling that had the Maine administrators acted in the same way, we wouldn’t have been debating the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t want people to think \u2013 just because I\u2019m a bit skeptical of the level of fervor around the Maine reports – that I don\u2019t believe that teachers can be strongly antiwar and antimilitary and then act inappropriately on their feelings. Here\u2019s an article from last week\u2019s Daily Breeze: A week after an ROTC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}