Monday, October 3, 2011

Right-Wingers Threaten to Beat Health Teacher over "Bless You!" Ban

A health teacher wants his kids to stop saying "Bless you!" after someone sneezes. He reminds the kids that we actually learned about germs and stuff a century or two ago. A sneeze, it turns out, isn't your body's attempt to expel demons! To drive the point home, teacher Steve Cuckovich is deducting points from a student's score when the student says "Bless you!" in response to a sneeze.

Cuckovich sounds like a great teacher to me, one with a sense of humor and a way to drive a point home to the students. Maybe a bit idealistic, but his heart is in the right place. But the reader comments at the end article ... well ... I'm speechless. This has to go into the "quoted without comment" category. It speaks for itself.
redwhiteandblueuniverse: "Steve Cuckovich, Mind your own business and stop acting as though you have any authority ... Try pushing your personal beliefs on my child and I will beat your ass. Period, end of story."

rogers1756: "Amen. This teacher needs to be slapped off his mock pedestal of intellectual superiority. This is what the progressives would have if they had their way ... Typical Hillary fascist mind control ..."

genepagliari: "... who does this teacher think he is? We hire these people (teachers) to provide a service, nothing more."

jb.kibs: "'When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body.' Prove that. Prove it doesn’t make sense anymore. how the heck do you know that demons don’t exist? seriously, what is the proof, i have more proof they DO exist..."

texashunter: "Only in California.. That state needs to really fall off the map."

jsciw: "... If you send your kids to the state school you will get a state education — think Nazi youth movement."

morris: "This teacher must be one of Dictator Barack Hussein Obamas our Muslim. ... Their agenda is to take “OUR GOD” out of our America,and turn our America into a Communist,Socialist country with Islam Sharia-Law and the Muslim Brotherhood!! The complete Administration of Dictator Barack Hussein Obama is to destroy our Christian America ..."

olieman: "I think the phrase “School Teacher” is obsolete and is disrespectful. They should be called 'School Indoctrinators'."

jhrusky: "This is exactly why I homeschool, I DO NOT want anyone forcing their opinion, beliefs, morals, etc. on my child."

polwatcher: "The teacher is pushing his philosophy on the kids. That is what should be outlawed."

dnc taliban: "hey Cucko stop trying to impose your piverted socialist ideas on the kids just teach the curriculum. this teacher need to be fired."

impeach-bo: "These Islamic tyrants are trying to take over America."

cosette: "This is a sad commentary on Gods’ place in Obomanation. ..."

avengerk: "...this militant SOB wants to undermine the parents’ teaching, by imposing his own ideology on the students. It‘s truly Orwellian in it’s overtones…he’s essentially invoking “thoughtcrime” in order to cleanse even passing references to religion and so remove them from the public psyche. ..."

robert: "It is social engineering this dork desires not educating students."

intransigentmind: "Anybody who leaves their kids in public schools these days really ought to rethink that approach. It’s as good as subjecting their mind to LSD."

chazman: "… I’ve got an applicable punishment for this creep, and it isn’t 25 points off of anything … it just involves an extreme level of pain … it’s the only way to deal with Liberal Marxism …"

britlynz: "RE: 'Ass beating', That’s pretty much my initial reaction. I shamefully admit to have a weird fantasy about going to the hospital with one of these bullies. Specifically, to have my foot removed from their hindquarters."
... and on and on and on.

And what's really scary is that I didn't filter this list much.

Is it any wonder we humanists, atheists, agnostics and even moderate Christians find these people scary? This is why we need public education – these people shouldn't be allowed to homeschool their children. They're scary ignorant.

Gezundheit!

3 comments:

  1. Hi Craig,

    It's been a while since we've spoken, so I hope all is well. I have been involved in a somewhat heated and lengthy debate on Amazon and would love to get your thoughts. If interested, please take a look at the following link:

    http://www.amazon.com/review/R1GQ6QSP1Q77O7/ref=cm_cr_rev_detup_redir?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx38HTWQB3URYJO&cdPage=4&asin=1593376197&store=books&cdThread=Tx6QTYY8GXMTOT&newContentID=Mx1BN2T9QYW0K35#Mx1BN2T9QYW0K35

    ReplyDelete
  2. A hypothetical person has an X that they believe tells him/her to do things, and a part of their belief in X is an afterlife where everything is so much better than this. To get there they have to do everything that X tells them to which includes incredibly violent acts of evil.

    Replace X with Barney The Purple Dinosaur.

    Now replace X with (insert deity’s name here).

    Do you really want people like this in our society driving our buses, taking care of our children, making decisions about national defense, roaming our streets armed with guns, etc.

    X is an invention of the human mind with no basis in fact/science/reality beyond what any particular person prefers to believe. What if a person’s preference changes to something evil?

    Do you see how this could be a problem?

    Religious people have no moral responsibility whatsoever.

    That's why they can say they value life one moment, and then call for the death of people who don't accept their imaginary friend the next.

    Religions are fundamentally death cults that portray life as a miserable thing to be endured, and after you die you will get sky pie in the sky pie kingdom, and sit next to the pie god.

    It does not surprise me at all that religious people don't care about conservation, saving endangered species, preserving the natural world, or really doing anything constructive/positive. In their eyes all is filth and evil if it doesn't come from a book that a bunch of uneducated sand jockeys who thought the world was flat wrote over 2000 years ago.

    ReplyDelete
  3. While the reaction is despicable, taking points off a grade based on anything other than the student's understanding of the material at hand and their behavior - doubly so for social norms that are openly considered to be polite (and have clearly lost their 'anti-demonic' origins) is well over the line of what an educator should be doing.

    Would he mark points off Shakespeare's "King Henry IV" for the phrase 'damnable' given its origin? Is that a step in the right direction still?

    I'm against perpetuating theistic mythos, but punishing children for social norms isn't anything admirable.

    ReplyDelete

Dear readers -- I am no longer blogging and after leaving these blogs open for two years have finally stopped accepting comments due to spammers. Thanks for your interest. If you'd like to write to me, click on the "Contact" link at the top. Thanks! -- CJ.

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