Conservatives who are open about their political views are a rare breed indeed within the so called educational system in this country and a 19 year veteran high school American history and government teacher, Tim Latham a married father of three, has apparently paid the price for failing to just go with the liberal flow on campus.
The now former Lawrence Kansas high school teacher drew the ire of school administration officials last year because he did not interrupt his normally scheduled classroom activities to show the inauguration of Barack Obama to his students. In addition he was told by the assistant principal of Lawrence High School, Jan Gentry, that his TeacherWeb personal website was “too patriotic” after a student went to Gentry and complained Latham was “picking” on Obama during class. I read that as one snot nosed student didn’t like the fact that Latham didn’t follow the usual Obama slobbering hero worshiping garbage that the rest of the teachers at the school had been displaying. Besides, we certainly can’t have educators who are teaching our kids about American history and government being too patriotic now can we? Gentry also questioned Latham about a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on his personal vehicle saying, “I don’t know how you could support that woman.” Yeah, that clueless walking gaffe machine Joe “Stand up Chuck!” Biden has been a real success story since taking office huh Ms. Gentry?
After his website was deemed too patriotic, and before he was fired, Latham claims the administration forced him to remove many items last month apparently including everything under the “Links” and “Terrorism” tabs which show a last updated date of May 11, 2009. It would be interesting to know if these same school administrators had forced any teachers to remove anything in the past, including any links to liberal resources, from their sites.
As far as Latham not disrupting his class by showing Obama’s inauguration, he had this to say in a Fox News Interview,
“I’ve never shown an inauguration,” he said. “I never showed any of Bush’s; I wouldn’t have shown McCain’s. I was not showing any bias towards Obama … I didn’t intend to interrupt the class.”
Interestingly a black North Carolina elementary school teacher, Diantha Harris, didn’t get fired or discipled last year for brow beating little kids in her classroom when they said they supported John McCain. Here she clearly denigrates McCain supporters and the little girl who’s parents are in the military while praising those who said they wanted to see Obama become president. Personally I get the feeling she is actually holding back a bit with what she really wants to say due to the cameras in the classroom.
In addition she isn’t shy about wearing an Obama ’08 button on her shirt even during school functions. What the hell is up with that? Any teacher wearing a McCain button would have been told to remove it immediately and you can take that to the bank! We can only speculate as to whether school administrators were afraid to confront Harris over the clearly inappropriate display of support for Obama on school grounds simply because she is black.
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