Student Tears Pages from Bible in Class
A public classroom incident involving the tearing of pages from the Bible is taking on the First Amendment.
Channel 3K in Janesville, Wisconsin, reports that school officials are assessing a situation in which a student at Parker High School felt “threatened” after a fellow classmate stood up in front of the class and began tearing pages from the Bible:
As many Parker High School students get ready for Christmas break, junior Elle Jacobson is at home and will not be returning like her friends.
“I have never felt threatened like that in a classroom before,” said Jacobson.
The 17-year-old is talking about an incident in her English class two weeks ago during a class presentation.
“This boy got up and his visual aid was a Bible and a book. And he got up and started his speech by saying ‘Now, this piece of crap’ and pointed to the Bible.”
Jacobson said that she quickly felt threatened.
“He took the Bible and he said, ‘I’m going to do this because I can. I’m going to do something that your stupid, little minds aren’t going to be able to comprehend and he took the Bible and started ripping out pages.”
Her father isn’t too pleased about it, either:
“The school worries about his right to privacy and to free speech that to teachers’ rights or the students’ right to safety,” said Paul Jacobson, Elle’s father.
He said that he’s pulling his two high school daughters out of Parker High.
“It’s not about free speech. It’s not about necessarily about the Bible although that was disgusting, too. This is about the vicious, vile manner in the way this kid went about this and tried to make some kind of point,” he said.
What does safety have to do with it? I can understand if the student said, “I’m going to kill anyone who believes in the Bible.” But the father doesn’t want to admit that the real “safety” concern is the imagined attack on his Christianity. Merely tearing Bible pages does not constitute a threat. Offensive, certainly. But not a threat. If the student tore pages out of any other ordinary book, I doubt he’d be so concerned.
Though I feel that tearing pages of the Bible is in poor taste and does show disrespect (heck, I’d feel offended if someone tore my favorite book, John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, in front of me), this student’s actions are protected by the Constitution. What better way to showcase the importance of freedom by using an extreme example? Tearing up a Bible, burning an American flag, criticizing military leadership … all of these elicit extreme emotions and certainly offend a lot of people. But doing these things without fear of punishment–that’s the beauty of freedom in the United States.
Do we need to explain what might happen to you if you tore up the Quran in Saudi Arabia?
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Turns out her stupid, little mind couldn’t comprehend it.
Why was it being taught in an English class? I hope it was in the fiction section.
The boy’s words (if her account is accurate) may have been as inflammatory and offensive as his actions, but I doubt that they were threatening. If the father thinks this boy’s actions were “vicious” and “vile”, then he has lived a charmed and sheltered life. I envy him.
Bottom line: these people weren’t intimated - they were deeply offended and they want to strike back at the guy who dared to ridicule their beliefs and their holy book. They would have been just as deeply offended if he had spoken softly and left his Bible unmolested, but they’ll never admit it.
Correction to previous comment: these people weren’t intimidated (although they probably weren’t too intimate with the guy either:)).
My judgment on a deliberately incendiary gesture like that depends on the school community. Was he the lone non-christian in a totally christian school? Then he’s still an immature jerk but the girl’s father is way oversensitive and overreacting. However if the community is religiously diverse, I sympathize with the girl.
If someone had publicly desecrated a Torah back at my super christian high school I would have felt isolated, ostracized, and frightened.
Anyway I think I remember that free speech isn’t actually protected in public high schools? Just reaching back into my distant memory of 8th grade government class…
Putting aside the issues of dramatic shock and poor taste, the lad has a right to say and to rip the pages. Free speech, even expressions with which I would strongly disagree is a fundamental right in this country.
I would hope that school officials would use the incident as an opportunity to engage the students in dialogue about free speech, gracious civil discourse and the ability to agree to disagree agreeably.
For the father to have concerns about “safety” does not mean that the safety if his daughters is threatened. Perceiving a threat does not make is so.
I hope that the school officials are not going to react any differently than they would if a Christian was tearing up a cherished book of another religion in the same classroom.
Both sides are stupid in this case, but the whole “feeling threatened” thing is bollocks, at least in the U.S. I agree that if it had been a minority religion’s holy book, there might be some grounds for concern. I know that makes me a dirty evil Jesus-hating hippie, but effective intimidation is much more likely to come from a religious majority than a minority.
What the incident actually points out is the obvious level of frustration the bible-ripping student was experiencing, if he felt the need to act out in such a dramatic way. It’s probably one of those schools where they pray before football games and every member of the student council is a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Went to one of those schools myself, but I wasn’t properly de-Christianized yet to make much stink.
It was a speech prepared from a Ralph Waldo Emerson aphorism, “So long as a man thinks, he is free” and I can promise that he NEVER said the word “stupid” nor did he target anyone.
Were you a student in the classroom?
I did some more research into this and here is what I found:
1) The father’s concern was that the boy was unstable and violent. The father was concerned that there might be another school shooting.
2) The school did not suspend the boy because of his presentation. The school says there were other behaviors that caused them concern.
3) The boy was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before he could come back to school.
These facts, which are in a MSNBC article, lead me to believe that the boy did something more than rip pages in a bible. It sounds to me as if his actions were disturbing to many in class. I’d be interested in hearing from any of the students who were in the class.
William — Can you provide a link to the MSNBC article you’re referring to? I’m having trouble locating it.
Also, I’m actually planning to write an article for The Humanist magazine on this incident, and have connected with students at Parker High. So be on the lookout for that for anyone who is still interested in this story.
It is barbarism to willfully destroy objecys just because they have what you consider offensive religious significance to others.
Taliban fanatics destroyed an ancient Buddha at Bam, in Afghanistan. Barbarism.
Muslims and Christians destroyed the world’s greatest library, at Alexandria. The Vatican honors the bishop who oversaw the destruction of the secular library by his monks, and their murder of the librarian, Hypatia. He is Cyril - and the Vatican honors him as “Saint” Cyril, now the patron saint of the European Union. Barbarism.
On the West Bank, illegal aliens euphemistically called “settlers” want to expand their squatter settlements, so last week they burned down the Al-Hamidiyya mosque and destroyed other property, to drive out the people who live there so they can steal their land. They claim Genesis 17 as justification. Barbarism.
Ripping up a Bible, burning a library or a mosque, demolishing a Buddha - all of them disgusting shameful barbarisms unworthy of civilized human beings.
They tried to diagnose the poor kid with paranoid schizophrenia over this. I want his adress so I can write him a letter of support in this harrowing time; we HUMANists have to stick together in times of crisis. The ‘other’ behaviour is most likely an excuse to condemn him. What specific claims about his OTHER behaviour have you heard?