Teacher punishes Students for saying "Bless You" after snezzing..

The progressives discussing this are clearly wrong. The teacher is making a point about how ridiculous and useless saying it is, and it's clearly HIS problem. He didn't stress how it can be hijacked by kids to intentionally be disruptive, he said how ridiculous the usage is in the first place.

Clearly a little tin pot dictator that's letting his personal business cause issues in the class.

And of course, far more disruptive in the long run - he had to battle parents over the issue already, he's going to have more issues as the story is in the media now, and his little bout of authoritarianism is going to likely start influencing the school itself.

Hell, look at the case of Bananan Man - the kid that ran across the field during halftime at a football game and was suspended. It became such a shit storm that the principle of the school was forced to resign.

Indeed, not saying it is worse: everyone is waiting for the next shoe to drop, so they are not mentally focused.

Uh, no. In the article his actions are justified using the word "disruptive" twice before it gets to the paragraph that mentions the uselessness of the disruption. He's certainly not focusing on any religious angle; it says so directly that it has nothing to do with religion.

Also,

Yeah, you guys are really overreacting here, making a bigger deal out of it than this teacher has.

What if your kid was that "one student?"
Grades should be grades, period. You want to discipline them, fine, plenty of ways that don't affect their grades.

It's called handling things at the lowest level.

Yes, he did. He didn't discuss how it was disruptive however, and in standard context it of course isn't. The discussion here was that student might 'hijack' said courtesy in an attempt to intentionally disrupt class. Wouldn't surprise me at all if some kid did it just because this guy is such a douchebag.

Regardless, what is shown in both the article and the news clip is him going on about how it's a useless phrase. Perhaps that's the emphasis the reporter placed, but clearly the message that is portrayed by this is it's disruptive because it's useless - and part of that appears to be this guys emotional problem with it.

Its not disruptive in the vast majority of classes in America.

Why does something like this make it to the news?

^
Because it provides the opportunity for anyone to complain - Christians with persecution complexes who search for the slightest affront to God anywhere, parents convinced their precious little angels could never be disrespectful and teachers are just mean hateful monsters, even ep-level claiming that it's somehow necessary to acknowledge someone's minor bodily functions to maintain everyone's emotional comfort.

QFT.

You mean Quoted Because You Agree.

Because his statement couldn't be further from the truth. I'm not a Christian with a persecution complex, nor am I convince my precious little angel could never be disrespect to a teacher.

The guy in the OP is being an asshole.

Without knowing the conditions in the classroom or which of those kids are chronic ballbusters, that's probably true. Nevertheless, it's the sort of thing that used to be handled in-house, not in the national news media.

While Yahoo News readers are shitting themselves in OUTRAGE!!!! over this, somewhere in the shadows there are teachers patently abusing kids, teachers gaming the system by saving up all their sick days and taking an entire month off at the end of the semester, teachers with tenure holding "study periods" (Read: "Sit down and shut up for the entire period.") and sitting at their desks reading the sports page in every period instead of teaching.

Perspective and a sense of proportion are needed here.

I don't know about all that. I just know the guy presented in the OP is being an asshole.

Blessing people has no place in classrooms. It's an insidious form of religious indoctrination and the students who persist in violating this tenet should be taken to another type of school where they can be re-educated to proper standards.

I want to go to this teacher's school, strut right into his classroom and snezz all over the place.

from the windows, to the walls!

You can thank the Internet and, before that, the proliferation of satellite news coverage and 24-hour news channels (nowadays, all three go hand in hand). Back in the day, this wouldn't have been a story at all or, if it was, it might've gotten some play in the local paper or local teevee news. These days, though, this kind of thing is the perfect grist for the 24-hour news mill.

It's ridiculous.

I'm not saying that I want to go back to the days of no internet at all because, as a whole, it's been a very good thing. As you say, though, some serious perspective is needed. Not just by the readers/viewers of today's media, but by the editorial decision makers who decide the content for today's media.



I'm not going to hold my breath on either one.

Without particularly caring about religious sentiment, and having had a disproportionate experience with large numbers of teachers, I can say as a teenager I used to LOVE teachers like this guy. Mainly because school was boring, I knew no one well, and I also knew I'd be long gone by the end of the year. So my version of entertainment involved coordinated chaos and deliberate subversion of any teacher foolish enough to bring his or her prejudices into the classroom, or who felt the need to humiliate students as part of the curriculum.

I'm sure there are some who still pale visibly when my name is mentioned...

Yep. If the guy hadn't let the students know something irritated him, they wouldn't have made it an issue.

Kids can smell that kind of stuff and exploit it for their own entertainment.

But, this guy ... He's going to show them.

Going to make it a point next time someone sneezes to yell "Demon Begone".

But don't you have to NAME the demon before you can cast him out?

No, that's only to cause it pain. Sluggy Freelance taught me that.