Paging Spiderman

Prohibiting teachers (kindergarten through college) from displaying bumper stickers on their car is going overboard. And certainly the First Amendment isn't terribly specific about whether teachers wearing campaign buttons or other campaign swag falls within its penumbra (much less umbra).

But the one thing that's missing from the whole debate is the concept of responsibility. I could rail for reams against the all-noblesse-and-no-obilige (h/t Gary Trudeau) pack of boorish louts this nation has become. But that's somewhat orthogonal to the point. And the point is that teachers instill either strong emotions or none. You're rarely ambivalent about a teacher, whatever your grade. Heck, I had teachers--even student teachers--I all-but-worshiped. Some teachers--thankfully few--I despise to the marrow of my being. But everyone else, I do well enough to remember their names.

So. You have the polarizing influence of politics and the polarized attitude students have toward their instructors. Combining them can't be a good thing. I don't care how you slice it--there's just no good outcome. You might as well just start playing favorites at that point and have done with it. No teacher worth her/his dry-erase vapor should be doing that.

Moreover, it's flouting the responsibility that goes with the job. This isn't like teaching sex education or evolution where you actually have data and facts with which to brow-beat hysteria and superstition. Politics, like religion, is All About opinion. Adding to the herd mentality already stampeding rampant through society does no good whatsoever.

More to the point, teaching--like it or not--requires a certain amount of gravitas. On any given day, teaching more about mob control than it will ever, EVER be about the proverbial Three Rs. Introducing politics--particularly when it's not even age-appropriate--is counter-productive. And that only when it's not just flat-out stupid. Stupid to the point where I'm have to admit that I'm gob-smacked that morons--educated and non---are actually arguing over this.

Look: I don't have any sort of leadership position. If I had a real business card for work, I'd list my title as "Alpha-Peon." But for all that, I certainly wouldn't presume to politically proselytize on the job. It's just tacky. We already have one person on staff to cover tacky. Sadly, we haven't figured out how to outsource tacky. And it's merely one of the reasons that this person is the office pariah. Bottom line: Don't be that person.