Saw this collection of news snippets and one in particular caught my eye. Excerpt:

A high school science teacher who e-mailed a comic image of a scientist torched in a lab accident was called a racist because the scientist in the cartoon was African-American, reports the White Plains Journal.

The e-mail, sent by science teacher Mark Wolstencroft to the staff at White Plains High School, asked for nominations for outstanding science students. The attached cartoon featured a brown-skinned male with crossed eyes and an open mouth swaying back and forth with his hands in the air as smoke billows from a failed science experiment.

The text reads, "Teacher had a science accident."

An investigation is now underway, and everyone at school will be required to undergo sensitivity training as a result of the fracas.

Some local black leaders said the cartoon was part of the racism endemic in the area. Ernest Prince, president of the Urban League of Westchester, said the drawing was no more acceptable than a joke about the Holocaust.

The hyperbole in that last statement is a little over the top. And does anyone think that there'd be a single complaing if the cartoon had depicted a white scientist having a lab accident? Nah, me neither.

And one student pushes the envelope a little with her t-shirt. I agree that the shirt doesn't contain any actual profanity, but the implication is there. Excerpt:

The T-shirt says, "Somebody went to the Hoover Dam and all I got was this 'Dam' t-shirt."

My point of view? I'm not convinced that the nose-thumbing skirting of the rules by using "dam" instead of "damn" is necessarily appropriate for school.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 03:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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