Friday, May 04, 2012

Authoritarian High School Superintendent of the Month

North American high schools are not places where free speech and criticism of authority are welcomed. Instead of teaching lessons about free speech, free expression, the Bill of Rights, and the Charter of Rights, principals and superintendents routinely impose arbitrary rules and punishments.

This month's Authoritarian Creep award goes to South Shore Regional School Board Superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake from Nova Scotia, for suspending student William Swinimer for five days for wearing a shirt that said "Life is wasted without Jesus".

Swinimer's t-shirt expresses a moronic and wrong sentiment, and he sounds like the typical evangelical jerk who can't keep quiet about his own "good news". But when he says, "I believe this is worth standing up for — it’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion", he's absolutely right.

Superintendent Pynch-Worthylake could have turned this into a teaching moment. She could explain that in a multicultural society there will be people who assert that their religion is the only valid one, and that's the way life is. She could explain that the Charter guarantees "freedom of thought, opinion, and expression", and even though she disagrees with Swinimer's sentiment, she defends his right to express it in a non-disruptive way. Instead, she took the authoritarian route. Shame on her.

2 comments:

Dr Paul Bennett said...

You have zeroed in on a fascinating subject -- the authoritarian impulses of School Superintendents. Many holding the position exercise almost unlimited freedom of action in a top down, centralized and bureaucratized system where elected trustees have either been neutered by the Education Act or lost credibility with the public.

The South Shore Superintendent is no stranger to controversy. She managed to close historic Lunenburg Academy over citizen objections and survived the Minister of Education's 2011 purge of the entire elected board.

Did you know that the SSRB now has a One Woman appointed School Board? Yes, Nancy Pinch-Worthy Lake is accountable only to a former provincial bureaucrat who lives in Dartmouth, one and a half hours from Bridgewater. Political correctness and educratic rule reign supreme on Nova Scotia's South Shore. It's quite an Oceam Playground.

Paul W. Bennett
@Educhatter

John said...

"Swinimer's t-shirt expresses a moronic and wrong sentiment, and he sounds like the typical evangelical jerk who can't keep quiet about his own "good news". But when he says, "I believe this is worth standing up for — it’s not just standing up for religious rights, it’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion", he's absolutely right."

QFT.

Of course, the fundie brigade will claim this as an example of xian persecution by the atheist, communist, socialist, Nazi, satanist, Islamic, pagan, Illuminati, reptiloid, homosexual liberal agenda.