When last I left off, we had decided that following the students' self-initiated viewing of his work, G would make himself scarce for a few days.
As it turned out, however, G was dismissed - in an action that was either mutually decided upon by himself and our principal, or unilaterally decided upon by the latter, depending on which of them you decide to believe.
G's presence in our lives was thus discontinued, rather unceremoniously, and his memory buried beneath the fathoms of a tumultuous sea of school days. Until the week before last, that is, when he posted, on his Facebook page, the letter of explanation sent to the parents of our school, enlightening them on his sudden "resignation".
The reason behind this return of our repressed was due, according to G, to his mental awakening to the distress he was feeling - unconscious at first, and then welling up in a bubble that burst into full-blown outrage. And it had to do with the letter.
Those who have read it may not have interpreted it in the same manner as G did, I know I did not read it that way. But as it does state that the children have felt themselves to be harmed by G work and vows to "protect them from now on", I have gradually come around to his side of things. The letter all but says he attacked the kids.
G says he posted the offensive epistle in order to show it to his friends, and perhaps to properly measure, through public opinion, the objective level of said offensiveness. It soon gained serious traction, however, through the hurricane that is the Internet - Facebook shares became a short radio piece filling a blank slot in the middle of the day, and just a few short hours later G's story was plastered on every news site in Israel. On the weekend, it moonlighted as a full-page piece in Haaretz.
The journalistic work done on the matter has mainly centered on the teacher's right to deal in things found rude or unseemly in the public eye (the ynet piece, for example, mentioned a teacher fired for working in an S&M club - from her teaching job, I mean... probably not the club, where her merits as a teacher must have greatly benefited her position).
The debate centered, of course, on freedom of speech, and more importantly, on artistic freedom. Can a teacher be truly free as an artist?
A great number of talk-backers whose comments I have read say yes, but the staff at my school have unanimously said no. They say this while wearing the shiny gilt crowns of academicians, democracy-lovers, and liberals.
I wanted to remind them that censorship of art inevitably leads to corruption and dictatorship, because the position of a censor inevitably affords unequalled power. And power, as I learned from my high school history teacher, corrupts. Most people who view G's art will find it shocking, objectionable, and even gruesome. But what about the objections many would undoubtedly voice regarding an actor who does scenes of a raw sexual nature? Perhaps an actress who removes her shirt would be higher on this morality scale? Or a cartoonist who draws boobs?
The bottom line is, in my opinion, not to try to draw moral lines in the first place. It must be all or nothing - either a teacher can do anything within legal lines (drawn by those chosen by the people) or nothing (meaning no one should teach, I guess). Either all art is allowed or no art is. Anything else implies a Big Brother type censorship that enters into the safe haven - the home, if you will - that is one's personal life. And once it enters, who will tell it to stop opening doors? Because I can guarantee that behind at least one door will be something unapproved by this particular censor - it is only a matter of who he or she is. And just where will the lines be drawn? At political views? Religious views? Traffic violations? Unpaid parking tickets?
I personally feel that teachers should be chosen for their intelligence, their grasp on the necessary disciplinary knowledge, and their ability to teach. And I happen to know that there are definitely not enough intelligent people who also have a talent for the act of teaching itself, even without roaming off into indistinct and immeasurable areas of moral impunity.
I have come to one other conclusion about my own opinion on the matter, but curtailed it due to its dramatic divergence from the opinions of my colleagues (nearly all of whom have slammed G mercilessly in the teachers' lounge for malicious intent and even avarice, predicting he would sue). It especially diverges from that of my principal, with whom the merging of opinions is a rare and often aberrant occurrence. Still, I realize that officially casting blame upon her in an online blog open to any and all who wish to read it - for this is what I plan to do - constitutes an act of airing dirty laundry in public, and is, generally speaking, rather rude.
And this is where my story collides with G's so ironically it almost seems, in retrospect, as though anyone who has ever watched a Hollywood movie should have seen it coming. For, after I wrote about G's work I allowed him to read it, and then to place a link to it on his site. Now, if G hadn't published the infamous letter and caused such a buzz within the faculty and without, my colleague would not have felt the need to look up this website, probing for some greater understanding of the issues at hand. Consequentially, he would not have lit upon my blog, read it, and referred another of my colleagues to it.
As far as I know, only these two aforementioned colleagues have seen my blog. But I would like to stop now, and provide anyone reading these lines with the same warning G should have provided way back at the beginning of this tale, to the children rifling through his work. At our final meeting with him, the faculty justified its decision by ruling that at the very least, G should have placed an "18 and up" warning above the link leading to the art in question. That way, the kids would bear the ethical burden of their violation.
Therefore, I would like now to treat my faculty members to a caution of this nature.
This blog was not meant to be a "school paper", and is purposefully written in a formal English the students do not understand. Accordingly, the following is not intended for your eyes, and may even offend you. I refuse to be responsible if you do, indeed, take offense, and thus if you do read further, do so at your own peril.
To continue, then, the conclusion I have come to regards the responsibility of my principal, and any other employer. It is precisely the employer's responsibility, if one would like to submit one's employees to the one's own moral standards, to ascertain, ahead of time, whether said employee can withstand these standards. Specifically, my principal should have asked to see G's work before she hired him, if, indeed, she planned to pass any moral judgement on it (or on him for making it). Placing aside the issue of whether she can present herself as a member of the democratic school after making a move like this, she cannot accuse G of offending if she did not first divulge the rules of offense. If there is anything worse than passing moral judgement, it is doing so after the fact. I realize a school cannot always be democratic in every sense of the word, but it should at least abide by that rule of democracy that advocates Rule of Law.
I hope I have not offended anyone with this entry, and if I have, well, you can't say you weren't warned.
