Chip Johnson Monday, November 3, 2003
www.sfgate.com
Berkeley is one of the last places on Earth you'd expect to find a fight over the Stars and Stripes -- and whether the city's public schools are flying too far to the political left. But a pair of conservative voices is crying out from the wilderness. Berkeley parents Michael and Vicki Larrick planted their flag last year when they demanded that school officials comply with an arcane state law that requires a U.S. flag be displayed in every public school classroom. After the district complied by ordering hundreds of flags for display in classrooms, the Larricks are preparing for Round 2 -- looking for a way to rein in teachers whose political beliefs and world views too often become part of the daily lesson plan. The Larricks are treading on the thin line that separates teacher ethics and responsibility from the protective umbrella of academic freedom in the classroom. The couple considers the politicization of Berkeley High, where their daughter is a student, an infringement of their parental rights to lay their own right- or wrong-headed world views on their kids without interference from the classroom. "I never thought I'd be fighting with the school board about this, but we want them to enact some guidelines as to what teachers can and cannot do," said Vicki Larrick. And it's not the subject matter, but the interjection of personal viewpoints or passions that can skew its presentation to students. "I don't care whether you're (the teacher) a Muslim or a Christian fundamentalist, the kids don't need to hear about it in the classroom," she added. The Larricks' troubles with the district began a year ago when their daughter Naomi, now a sophomore, came home and told her parents about a petition for a gay students organization handed out in class -- by her teacher. Michael Larrick filed a complaint with the school district after the incident last October, and school officials agreed with him. The teacher was called in and corrective measures were taken, said Berkeley Superintendent Michele Lawrence. But there have been other instances when Berkeley High teachers have acted inappropriately in Naomi's classrooms. Her Spanish teacher spent a week discussing the war in Iraq -- in English. The district views the Larricks' nitpicking as small potatoes, given problems such as the budget shortfall and a state high school exit exam that most Berkeley High students cannot pass. Lawrence said that while the district has a policy on conduct and balanced discussions of controversial issues, it's normal for the personal opinions of teachers and students to emerge in academic discussions. "We take teachers from the human race and they do make errors in judgment on occasion, and that's why they have principals and superintendents," Lawrence said. "In an environment where we expect stimulation for kids, we want them to be global thinkers," she added. "Teachers do whatever possible to keep their own personal views out of the exploration of issues with kids, but it would be silly to think those things would never creep in. There's nothing wrong unless it's taken to extreme, whether right or left." Lawrence and her counterparts in Oakland and elsewhere need to recognize that there are extremists who need to be monitored closely. With prompting and with organized help from teachers, Oakland students have walked out of high school en masse to attend demonstrations at the UC Berkeley campus and outside Oakland City Hall. At a Berkeley rally, unsupervised students left the campus and descended onto Telegraph Avenue, where they proceeded to shoplift and smash storefront windows. And despite Lawrence's most sincere assurances that she has handled the problem, at least one Berkeley High instructor, U.S. history teacher Bill Pratt, has vowed not to comply with the flag-in-the-classroom law. Pratt told Berkeley High's student newspaper, the Yellow Jacket, that he was reluctant to display the flag because students could misinterpret the action as "narrow-minded patriotism." That's the same kind of backward thinking that led Berkeley city officials to order the removal of American flags from city fire trucks after Sept. 11, 2001, fearing that political activists could be provoked by any sort of patriotic display. Red-faced city officials reversed their decision the following day, but the affair was a good illustration of who holds the clout in Berkeley. In the meantime, the Larricks may find their crusade for fairness in the classroom to be an uphill battle. "I'm trying to inject some common sense and practical thinking into this process, but that doesn't seem to work very well," Michael Larrick said. E-mail Chip Johnson at chjohnson at sfchronicle.com.
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