A ninth Grade Merrimack High School “English” teacher (SAU 26) gave students a sheet with some expectations for the class. It included contact information, supplies needed, a course description, and a section titled ‘Class Policies.’
Let’s be clear. Being polite seems innocent enough, and a teacher asking kids to honor the wishes of fellow students on this subject is hardly compelled speech or an excessive request, but no one has a right to be called by the name of their choosing. Try it when asked by a police officer, the TSA, the bank, a Federal agent, or a thousand other likely scenarios (like on your college admissions or a student loan application).
Wanting to be called something else is not a right. It is a privilege, and your expectation may not meet up with reality. Get used to it, life is like that.
But you do have rights. No one can compel you to use a preferred pronoun. It is against the law and school policy to use intimidation or peer pressure (bullying) to make you do it.
When Mrs. Webster-Scribner (a totally awesome name for an English teacher, by the way) writes that “You are expected to use the names and pronouns of your classmates that they indicate,” she is implying that your speech can be compelled. You are expected to do it. Or what?
What does the student do, or the teacher, the class, or the school?
Are you made to feel different, weird, or outcast because you refuse to conform to someone else’s worldview about sex or gender (pronouns)?
Does that sound suspiciously like the argument they use to justify making you use preferred pronouns?
That is not the only problem with this name policy, but the default setting is that it is acceptable to compel the speech of others. It is expected.
That’s not okay. Neither is being a total douchebag about it, in case you were wondering, but students have rights and should exercise them with polite persistence in the face of subtle acts of tyranny. Parents, school boards, and civics teachers (in particular) need to support and encourage it. Dissent against the system, if I recall, is supposed to be a hallmark of youth.
In this case, you are refusing to have your rights stomped on by someone else’s privilege – another mantra I think I’ve heard from people waving signs with fists painted on them.
Mrs. Webster-Scribner should change her class policy, or the district should do it for her. And if this social-injustice ferret has reared its head anywhere else in the classrooms of taxpayer-funded public educators, they should find and correct those as well.
Parents and lawyers are watching, and it is not the district’s money that will get spent if schools get sued. It is the taxpayer’s money.
Note: The last sentence was edited after publication. As written, it was not clear who was paying for what. I think I have corrected that.
