As a parent and a teacher, I object to taking time out of the academic schedule to mandate such presentations as that of Mr. Berry, especially to a captive audience of young people. What are we selling our students? Respect for law? No. Fear. There should be higher motives for our students to practice good behavior with respect to alcohol, drugs, and dating than fear of punishment by a flawed, harsh, and merciless system of law and order. Those motives should be provided by parents, church, and moral ideals. We have more than enough fear-mongering in our society. Frightening students with examples of excessive penalties meted out by local law enforcement is counter-productive. Students should be in class focusing on academics during school hours. Does our new curriculum director approve of this kind of assembly as part of our students' required "studies"? I believe Mr. Berry's fees are significantly more than the reported $175 per hour and certainly far more than CCPS teachers earn. Are his words worth so much more than ours? _______ Accusations were made by anonymous people accusing me of indoctrinating students with history, the bible, support for Mr. Bush, of being without common sense, and of being unappreciative of why schools should not "supplement a students real life lessons by having knowledgable professionals donate their time to share their knowledge and experience with students as Mr. Berry did." ________ My responses: Be careful not to end your argument _ad hominum_. Wikipedia: An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic of or belief about the person or persons making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. One very obvious fallacy is name calling such as "idiots." I'm not the person you think. Neither is Mr Berry. ________ Mr. Berry's time? He's taking away my time with my kids. And I very much doubt he's helping them understand anything other than how utterly outrageous our judicial system has become. A mandatory school assembly (that removes students from my classroom instruction) is not an appropriate forum for talking about drugs, sex, and drunk driving. My words about the literature that my students and I study are worth at least as much as Mr. Berry's. I do not use fear to control my classroom. Although I have been issued detention slips and discipline referrals, I haven't been issued a Taser, nor do I use detentions or referrals much. I have yet to call a lethally-armed deputy to my classroom. Poll my students past and present. See what they say about why they "behave" in my room. Ask whether they are prepared for the real world after my class. Anyone with a modicum of memory should know where I stand and have stood in relation to the "goose-stepping" Mr. Bush. Besides all these ad hominum issues, the real topic to be addressed is not me or Mr. Berry. It is the issue of having mandatory all-school meetings during which speakers who are not educators are enabled/entitled to present personal views to captive audiences during the school day that elected officials have determined ought to be devoted to legitimate, credit-earning coursework taught by licensed educators. However appropriate certain interest groups might think a series of these assemblies is, the fact remains they are wrong to devote such substantial portions of a student's day to involuntarily listening to fear-provoking harangues. Neither should my duties include policing the crowd during these presentations. Professionals who wish to donate their time to teaching our students about real life (or anything else) should do it on an after-school voluntary basis. Pep rallies and early release days are bad enough! ___________ Then I got: dwyerj1 - Do you think that maybe you have an overinflated view of your own importance to these kids? I think you might have watched one of these Golden Apple awards shows and actually taken all that crap too seriously. Lighten up, these young men and women will learn more in the first 2 weeks of life once they get out in the real world than they will the entire semester in your class. from Shadowdancer. ___________ I answered: No. Neapolitans who think they have a handle on the "real world" ought to consider how much of what they see and hear and think is an artificial construct. Consider our community's patriotism, its valorization of soldiers as heroes, its sanitized-by-censorship news. Damariscotta Hardware is selling a rat trap manufactured by the D-CON people. Its trademark-protected name is the NO VIEW, NO TOUCH trap. And so we would have all our death, I think. No view, no touch. Have somebody I don’t know kill somebody I’ve been instructed not to like by whatever means possible, somewhere I don’t go. Make it happen, tell me I’m safer and the world is a better place because we do it. But don’t show me the pictures. Don’t let it touch me. The real world? Justice from police, lawyers, the courts, the jail guards? Yeah. For sure. There's no separation between "the real world" and what goes on inside a school building. It's just that some people don't see it or won't see it by willfully not looking. Let's keep the private agendas out of the schoolday and protect the sanctity of the classroom. No more involuntary attendance at community members' "professional" harangues during what should be class time. No more involuntary police duty for teachers at assemblies to force students to hear professionally-constructed presentations advocating particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.