New Mexico: Land of the not so free…
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN62051504.htm
Hard lessons from poetry class: Speech is free unless it’s critical
By BILL HILL
Last update: 15 May 2004
Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics.
The “Slam Team” was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school’s closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.
In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school’s closed-circuit television channel.
A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being “un-American” because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s failure to give substance to its “No child left behind” education policy.
The girl’s mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child’s poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.
Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal.
[…continued at URL above]
Source: http://aaf.virtualactivism.net/nevins.htm
About Bill Nevins
Bill Nevins, a published poet, journalist and teacher, was assigned to teach at-risk and other students at Rio Rancho High School and to establish a student writing club and performance-poetry team. Nevins’ efforts were very successful. Hundreds of students packed the RRHS auditorium and joined nationally-famed New Mexico poets onstage for a December, 2002 poetry reading. Dozens of students joined the Write Club, developing literacy and public-expression skills in a multicultural, multilingual context under Nevins’ guidance. A Slam Poetry Team formed, with students joyfully performing their original compositions at school, at local “open mikes” and over the RRHS closed-circuit tv public address system. Nevins and his student poets won high praise from teachers, administrators, parents, and the press. Nevins was asked to extend his poetry work to Rio Rancho’s Independence High, an alternative public school. Nevins’ innovative literacy and critical-thinking- enhancement work in his own classroom also was praised by colleagues and parents.
Then things changed.
In February, 2003, one of Nevins’ Write Club members read her original, iconoclastic poem, “Revolution X” over the RRHS pa system. Immediately, a staff member identified on the school website as the RRHS Military Liaison publicly objected to the reading of the poem, deemed by him to be disrespectful to US government authorities, among other things. The RRHS administration questioned the student poet and “investigated” the poem for “profanity and incitement to violence”, though neither were contained in this clever, inspirational poem.
In March, 2003, Nevins was suddenly suspended from teaching and from coaching the Write Club/Poetry Team, which then disbanded. Public readings of student poetry were banned by the RRHS administration. A multicultural poetry assembly set for April was cancelled. Student protests against Nevins’ removal were silenced by the school administration and at least one student who refused to stop speaking out was encouraged to drop out of RRHS. In May, 2003, still under suspension, Nevins was informed by the RRHS administration that his contract will not be renewed for the coming school year.
A cloud of silence, censorship and fear hangs over the RRHS school district. A once-vibrant student literacy and critical-speaking/critical-thinking initiative has been crushed. In May, 2003, the RRHS Military Liaison and the Principal triumphantly raised a flag on school grounds and read out a poem telling critics of war policy to “shut your faces”. Principal Gary Tripp told local press that this was “a high point” of his principalship.
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The poem in question is republished at the URL below (damn good one, too):
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2003/531/531p22.htm
Note that the URL points to an Australian web site…
An extensive discussion of the issue, with a lot more information (see some of the longer comments towards the end of the item), can be found at:
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/012034.php
