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DEL.ICIO.USKids, un-zip your yaps!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Anybody remember Brian Bown?
He’s the former Snellville high school teacher who tried, unsuccessfully, to knock down Georgia’s 1994 Moment of Silence Law.
Bown’s name is popping up in Illinois newspaper stories about that state’s new moment of silence law. Bown is now a middle school teacher in Waukegan, Ill.
“It’s déjà vu,” Bown told the Chicago Tribune last week. “It’s the same things, the same arguments being said 13 years later.”
Bown sued the Gwinnett County school system a decade ago. In the federal suit, Bown, then a South Gwinnett High School teacher, claimed that a church had prodded public school students to take Bibles to class and say the Lord’s Prayer during their classroom’s moment of silence.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bown’s suit.
Bown says he may repeat that court battle in Illinois.
He also told the Tribune that he plans to protest the new law by walking out of class when teachers start telling their students to collectively stop talking for a minute every morning.
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Comments
By FCM
October 31, 2007 8:08 AM | Link to this
While I agree that Mr. Brown has a right to his opinion, and to state it publicly I question his choice of venue. If I were to take issue with a Company policy, I may well lose my job.
Mr. Brown’s job is teach. He can render his opinion to his students within the relm of teaching—meaning if it is germaine to the subject matter…if he teaches Math then Civil Disobediance is pretty much not to be discussed.
Mr. Brown as a teacher is to uphold the rules of the school, he knows this. If he cannot abide them he should change jobs or work within the system to have it changed.
I do not agree with teaching Kwanza in school, nor a whole month dedicated to the Black Leaders (I think that should be taught all 9 months as it pertains to the subject!)…however, I know that unless I get the school policy changed I am stuck with it.