The firing of Brooke Harris: a teaching moment about free speech

Last month, Michigan teacher Brooke Harris was fired for allegedly helping students organize a 'hoodie' fundraiser for the family of Trayvon Martin. By all means, give Harris her job back. But lets also support the free-speech rights of all of our teachers, not just the ones we agree with.

The Trayvon Martin case has claimed a new martyr. The first one was Martin, the Florida teenager gunned down on Feb. 26 by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. Now theres Michigan teacher Brooke Harris, who was fired last month, allegedly for helping her 8th-grade students organize a fundraiser for Martins family.

Ms. Harris quickly became a cause clbre on the Internet, where more than 200,000 people have signed a petition calling for her reinstatement. As the petition correctly noted, dismissals of this type create an atmosphere of fear in American schools. We will not tolerate the silencing of our nations best teachers, the petition declared.

But we do tolerate it, and increasingly so. Harriss firing comes at a historic low point for teacher freedom in the United States. And most of us have stood idly by, because we dont really believe that teachers should have freedom. Instead, we want them to echo our own views.

Consider the case of Jillian Caruso, who was fired from her Massapequa Park, N.Y., elementary school after her principal objected to a picture of George W. Bush that she displayed in her classroom during Bushs 2004 re-election campaign. A member of the Republican National Committee, Ms. Caruso alleged that the principal who was married to a Democratic state assemblyman violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and association.

Carusos dismissal generated a few columns and blog posts from outraged Republicans. But from Democrats? Not a peep. Nor did I hear much protest from any side of the aisle when a federal jury ruled against Caruso in 2007.

In instructing the jury, the presiding judge emphasized that Caruso had freedom of speech in her capacity as a citizen, but not as a teacher. So she was free to support President Bush on her own time and on her own dime but not while she was in school.

Here the judge invoked the Supreme Courts 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, which said that public employees have no First Amendment rights when they are speaking as part of their official duties. The state hires employees to deliver a certain message, the court said, so it can also penalize those who deviate from it.

Since then, federal courts have used Garcetti to uphold the removal of an Indiana teacher who told her students she opposed the war in Iraq, and of an Ohio teacher who asked her class to report on examples from the American Library Associations 100 most frequently challenged books. The right to free speech...does not extend to the in-class curricular speech of teachers in primary and secondary schools, the Ohio ruling flatly declared.

Thats a huge problem for anyone who cares about American democracy. Teachers do not simply work for the government; theyre supposed to help students learn how to function within it. So they also need to model the skills and habits that democracy demands, especially the ability to analyze and evaluate different points of view.

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The firing of Brooke Harris: a teaching moment about free speech