I remember vividly my eighth grade American history teacher at Odom Middle School, Mrs. Morgan, playing a very blatantly offensive video of a man spouting what I recall as Neo-Nazi/KKK type propaganda. There was a nervous energy in the room when she turned it off, and the anger was palpable. She very quietly asked us how we felt about that man being able to proclaim those ideas and whether we thought it should be illegal. Some kids said yes, and we all loudly agreed that what he had to say was totally unacceptable. Her tone began to calm us down, and we followed her lead as she rationally explained that the very ideas we felt the most emotional about were the ones we had to work most to overcome our desire to legally silence. She told us this was not because his ideas were right, for she personally loathed everything she had just heard, but because we value Freedom more than we value our own comfort in America. So, we loudly disagree with one another sometimes, and we hash it out. We overcome hateful speech with rationality and kindness and love, but we dont pass laws to silence speech. That is a cost of freedom. Thank you, Mrs. Morgan, for teaching me a lesson I will never forget. If you tried that now, the Neo-Nazi guy would probably be videotaped and your face on someones blog by that evening decrying the state of education in our country because context so rarely matters anymore. Nevertheless, I learned that sometimes Freedom is uncomfortable from you. If only the mayor of Houston had been under your tutelage.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:58:26 +0000
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