Apparently the latest not-so-social social-studies fad is screaming at students during “fact-of-the-day” discussions.
A YouTube video uploaded yesterday afternoon records a teacher from North Carolina’s Rowan-Salisbury school district screaming to a student that disrespecting the president is a criminal offense. The student, apparently a high-school junior, referenced a Washington Post story about Mitt Romney bullying a classmate decades ago and asked:
“Didn’t Obama bully someone though?” The teacher says: “Not to my knowledge.” The student then cites the fact that Obama, in Dreams from My Father, admits to shoving a little girl. “Stop, no, because there is no comparison,” screams the teacher. Romney is “running for president. Obama is the president.”
The exchange continued for several more minutes, with the teacher getting increasingly agitated, as Breitbart News reports:
The student responds that both are “just men.” The teacher yells — literally yells — that Obama is “due the respect that every other president is due … Listen,” she continues, “let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom.” She yells over the student repeatedly, and yells at him that it's disrespect for him to even debate about Romney and Obama. The student says that he can say what he wants. “Not about him, you won’t,” says the teacher. The teacher then tells the student – wrongly – that it is a criminal offense to say bad things about a president. “Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush? Do you realize you are not supposed to slander the president?” The student says that it would violate First Amendment rights to jail someone for such sentiments … [He says] “They cannot take away your right to have your opinion … They can’t take that away unless you threaten the president.” Clearly, the student should be teaching the class, and the teacher should be reading the Constitution more often.
Officials from the Rowan-Salisbury School System called the exchange “a learning experience.” The student’s parents have moved him to another school. According to Breitbart News, “The YouTube video was shot by a friend of the bullied student,” who wanted to “prove to his parents what he has been trying to tell them for some time. The teacher in this video has a long history of pushing a liberal agenda, by shouting down students. She is very intolerant of other points of view that she does not share. The atmosphere at this school is not very conducive to opposing views.”