PROTECTION, OR EDUCATION?
Two local high school teachers have been put on administrative leave as punishment for showing their classes the video of Nick Berg's beheading. According to the Dallas Morning News report, they gave students who didn't want to watch the option to leave the room. Protective parents are outraged, and the DMN finds a psychology prof to say the kids will be scarred, and scared, for life. That may even be true, but does protecting teenagers from being upset justify shielding them from the realities of the world--or, to be more precise, does it justify punishing teachers who don't sufficiently shield them? It's not an easy question. The comments posted by DMN readers are definitely worth a read. (One student notes that even kids who didn't leave the room could put their heads down, which probably would have been my approach in those circumstances at that age. I have not, in fact, seen the video. I've tried but had technical problems that I don't entirely regret.)
Last week, the DMN editorial page published an edited still of a terrorist holding up Berg's head and an editorial about why it published the photo. Since the published photo was actually of a blurry masked person with a slightly raised arm and a big black rectangle, I'm not sure it had the effect the editors were at pains to justify.