Posted on 11/07/2008 1:55:13 PM PST by nickcarraway
A Cumberland County school teacher is defending her comments to a fifth-grade pupil who expressed support for John McCain in her class last spring.
The exchange at Mary McArthur Elementary School was captured by a Swedish television documentary crew, and the video is making the rounds on the Internet including YouTube.
In the video, which reportedly aired in Scandinavia earlier this week, teacher Diatha D. Harris calls the Iraq War “senseless” and tells one student whose father is a soldier that McCain would keep troops there for 100 years.
The classroom discussion begins with Harris asking the class who they support for president. When two students say McCain, she responds with “Oh Lord” and “Oh Jesus.”
She asks them why they are you pulling for McCain or Obama. One student says she supports Obama because “he is making good changes” like “not having a fight between Iraq, and having soldiers killed.”
“So in other words,” Harris says, “Barack is going to end that war in Iraq.”
One girls says she supports McCain. When asked why, she tells her teacher “I think it’s because of my parents are going for him, too.’’
Harris points out that the girl’s father is in the military, then says to the class that Iraq is a “senseless war.”
“And by the way,” Harris tells the girl, “the person that you’re picking for president said that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to. So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years.”
The girl appears to be embarrassed and doesn’t respond.
Harris said three children in the class had parents in the military.
In an interview late Thursday, Harris, 53, said somebody edited the video to make it appear she was an Obama partisan imposing her views on a child. In fact, Harris said, she made gestures after pupils voiced support for Obama.
“It has been doctored,” Harris said. “They didn’t show anything about Obama.”
In another sequence on the video, however, Harris sports an Obama button during a pep rally at the school.
Wanda McPhaul, a spokeswoman for Cumberland schools, said county officials were shocked when they were alerted to the video.
But McPhaul said Superintendent Bill Harrison, who will post his own videotaped statement on the matter on YouTube later today, is prohibited by state law from revealing what might happen to Harris.
Earlier this week, reports about the video on the Internet said Harris was a teacher in Asheville. She used to be a teacher in western North Carolina, but moved to Fayetteville within the past couple years.
Obama has loyal Nazi Brown Shirts
My thoughts exactly.
youtube is going to be a powerful weapon the next few years.
Cultism rule number one : get their children while they are young and brainwash them. I don’t really want to say in this forum what I think should happen to this ‘woman’.
ASAP.
Don’t you Yanks have any laws about public schools being politicized?
She uses the same excuse our new POS president elect uses. I was taken out of context, it was doctored. Eff Obama and his cult members.
Parents need to start bugging their kids (I mean plant a bug on their person) in the coming years. Teachers are completely out of control with this, the classroom is *not* a place for you to impose your ideals on kids..
Anyone have the Youtube link? I’d like to send it to some people.
You tube will make it very difficult for BO to hide his crap. Video of his comment about Nancy Reagan is already circling the globe.
During 1960 - 1965 In my final years of Public School
98% of my teachers were Liberal to far Left.
I clashed with them daily.
Nothing new about the Left Wing Public School teachers.
Always been there only most have not cared to see what is going on.
Most of the people who say they boycott FOX News because a stupid liberal is on inbetween conservatives are the same
who have their kids or grandkids in Public School with Leftwing teachers and leftwing textbooks and either don’t know or don’t care.
My blood pressure peaked when I heard the audio of this poor excuse of a person this morning on Mike Gallagher’s show. That she is allowed to step foot in a school is criminal! I am glad someone posted the thread here.
Gallagher said to hear the audio Google him at mikeonline.com.
The Teacher’s Union run the schools along with school boards in the various cities and towns who are mostly liberal.
Child abuse. There is nothing worse than someone who has the been placed in a position of authority over another who is powerless to refute them, and that person takes advantage to the point of crushing their soul. That was this teacher’s goal, while feigning a desire to teach and help. And of course this is sereptitiously supported by the establishment/STATE.
I’m sure the school superintendents were “Shocked!” Right...
Let’s be honest here. This women isn’t saying something that the establishment considers out of line. We have a long way to go if we want something like this to be considered bad.
Sending your kids to public school is child abuse.
When I was in school we covered some basic civics but we would have had no clue who the teachers supported because they simply didn’t try to indoctrinate us with their political views.
Fascism is very seductive, especially to fascists.
Once there were laws, rules, and conventions. That was before the Marxists seized control of the United States.
Long and short of it:
Teacher did a bad thing in her classroom singling out one of her students.
Teacher tried to cover it up at the end of the video saying she treats everyone fairly.
Teacher is allowed to keep her job.
Teachers actions are ignored by the MSM.
I heard several talking in the hallway saying they thought I supported Obama.
She should not be defending; she should be apologizing. It was rude and that poor child is probably thinking she/he will never see her father again. That’s cruel.
One of my best teachers...
I attended one of Australia’s top private schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s - Vietnam War era, and we had a teacher - he was actually the school chaplain as well - who we all knew was a die hard leftie. He was anti-Vietnam, and used to march against the war, and we all knew this, but it never came into his classroom. What came out in the class was his love of knowledge, and his love of thinking.
Anyway, final year of school, and I was seriously considering joining the Army or the Navy, and I went around to all my teachers who I trusted to ask their advice. All of them told me to go for it, and I came to this man last because I thought he’d tell me not to - a pacifist who was opposed to the war, a socialist. I thought I knew what he’d say.
He surprised me though - he told me the military was a good career, it was a tradition of service to country and cause, and that he thought I’d do well there, and get a lot out of it. Not what I was expecting at all - and I made that pretty obvious.
And he saw it, and he spoke to me. And he asked me if I thought he would have said something different and I said I did. And though I can’t remember his exact words, what he said next has really stuck with me.
“Lad... I’m your teacher and that means my primary job is to teach you how to decide for yourself what you believe and what you want to do with your life. I don’t hide what I believe from you, but I’m not here to tell you that you should agree with me. Being a good teacher means teaching kids so that they can decide things for themselves. I’d be a very bad teacher if every student I taught came out of my classes believing the same things I believe. That’s not the job.”
As a teacher myself today, I try to live up to that man in everything I teach - and though I come at my teaching from almost exactly the opposite direction he did, I hope that on the important things I learned what is right from him.
I don’t conceal my political beliefs from my students. If they come up in class, I will tell them what I think - but it will always be “This is what I think - now you decide what you think.”
This beeyatch should have a severance check and the phone number to a Chicago McDonalds before sundown.
Yeah, I know she does not live in Chicago ... yet. Think tar, feathers, and a fence rail ...
That’s great.
There are still a few good teachers floating around in the public schools but not nearly enough. I can’t think of one single teacher of mine that I wouldn’t consider to be a good teacher. They were mostly multi generational teachers who taught my parents and taught because they loved teaching.
There is your enemy folks. That is the person you will need to fight and do not mistake that they want to rule the world and will do anything to meet their ends.
JoMa
Got a link?
Link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDEAYgm0Dv8
This woman is a P.O.S.! “Your father will have to stay in Iraq for 100 years”, if McCain got elected.
Got the info below from You Tube:
Diantha Harris used to work in Ashville - now works in Fayetteville at “Mary McArthur Elementary”.
Principles name - Lola B Williams - school phone number is -(910)424-2206
Go to their website you can email Mrs Harris or the Principle.
Email of the principal. Write to her and demand accountability. Take the spaces out:
School Superintendent William C. Harrison 910.678.2300
Yes we do. The laws all but explicitly require that our children be conditioned with this leftist crap every day of the year.
Welcome to Amerika!
Sadly probably nothing more than a reprimand.
Someone should hang this bit-h. This is what will happen to American children under Obama and the Democrats. Hitler turned the children against their parents just like this.American’s have become timid and allow these thugs to intimidate and run wild.
Teacher’s actions also ignored by the Principal, the school board (so far). Will the parents of that 5th grade class condemn the errant woman? No.
Prayers are going up for the poor child, that God will give her the wisdom to blame not herself; that He will give her the strength to make the best of her lot as long as she has to; may He render onto her His wondrous peace to soothe her troubled heart. Amen.
And
If a teacher in ANY public school wore a McCain button to school, he/she would have been severely admonished, if not fired on the spot! But this evil woman sported a big Obama button on her prominent bosom and gets away with it!
There is no way we can change the government schools. Marxism is far too entrenched. Homeschooling, private or parochial schools are the only way to combat the NEA agenda. And even these must be constantly monitored.
Might I suggest homeschooling?
I watched it two days ago when it was still identified as Asheville. It was vile. The teacher should be fired. My first thought was that the little girl should be home-schooled.
Thanks for the link. And thanks, NEA, for being such an unbiased, nonpolitical organization that only serves to make sure teachers like this are treated with the respect they deserve. /sarc
Hot tar and feathers.
That’s what is going to have to happen, but we don’t do that, so it goes on and on and on.
Being 29 years old and having most of my education take place during the PC 90s, I was subjected to a lot of liberal nonsense (and I bought into most of it at the time), but I don’t really recall partisan politics or current issues being discussed at any great length.
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