The Board adopted the above resolution to express its opposition to this Mock Trial.
There are far too many cases of teachers using their classrooms to foster an anti-American agenda and provide enemies of our Country and our troops with ammunition.
If you support the above resolution, call the Morris County Clerk of the Board's Office at 973-285-6024 to express your support for the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders and opposition to this "mock trial" of President Bush for war crimes by this teacher.
Its my understanding that there have numerous calls opposing this resolution from well-organized pacifist groups in the area and the entire issue has been given much coverage locally.
There was a kid who was doing a mock war crimes trial of Bush in a class who called Rush a few weeks ago. Not sure if it was this one.
Signed up to post this? Welcome to FR.
Can we try minors along with their teachers for treason?
Excellent! Thanks for posting it, and welcome to FR.
Political discussion is good but teaching kids to disrespect the President isnt.
I am sure the teacher will be waived his/her NEA or AFT fees for the year. /sarc
I'll bet they find Bush not guilty by reason of insanity.
This Parsippany Trial has been such big news with local newspapers supporting the efforts of the teacher. Only problem is a US President can not be tried for war crimes in an international court. A President can only be impeached. The teacher is teaching the wrong thing to an advanced placement class government class.
I wonder when they'll have their mock trial for FDR and his crimes against the civilian populations of WWII? Or LBJ for his crimes against civilians during the Vietnam war?
So some high school kids had a debate, but to make it more interesting, called it a "mock trial." And everyone is up in arms over this? Aren't there more important moral crusades for the right to fight in, like the Global War on Terror or even the Global War on Reality Television?
That was the good news...here's an article from the main Morris County, NJ newspaper:
Mock Bush trial example of precious freedom
PARSIPPANY -- Students who showed up at Thursday's board of education meeting planned to defend their classroom project and their teacher from what they figured might be some angry people. Some critics called the project -- a mock trial of President Bush for alleged war crimes -- anti-American. The Morris County freeholders passed a resolution saying it was contrary to our national interests.
One of the freeholders even said something about loose lips sinking ships when the subject was a Parsippany High School class project. Some national media pundits suggested that the students somehow were being led astray by their teacher, Joseph Kyle. Some people who never talked to any of the students, who never talked to the teacher or to any school administrators, were talking about loose lips.
So students had been learning lessons beyond the classroom.
"We learned that the media is important for democracy, but that there is a side of it more directed toward entertainment," said one of the students, Catherine Galdun.
They learned that complex issues sometimes get boiled down to sound bites. They learned that the nation has become so polarized that you either are on one side or the other when it comes to some issues. They learned that the term "war crimes" makes some people think about Nazi Germany and genocide or Yugoslavia and ethnic cleansing or Rwanda and mass murder -- even though it's also applied to much less serious crimes, such as the illegal transfer of prisoners of war.
So on Thursday, they were given a chance to talk to the school board and the public. They praised their teacher. They talked about what they had learned.
"Why can something as free, as democratic and American as this have anything but praise for it?" said Kevin Schultz, one of the students, and many of the nearly 200 people in attendance got up to cheer.
For more than a week, some people seemed to be saying that the project was a little too free, that it went too far. Those voices were quiet on Thursday night, perhaps because public comment was held until the end of the meeting.
Frank Calabria, the board member who criticized the project, did not speak when board members were given a turn to say something. So much for debate on this night. One critic who did say something was praising students by the time they finished talking.
"You can run my next campaign," Parsippany Councilman Jamie Barberio said to Schultz. He added that he was impressed by the students but still didn't like the idea of putting Bush on trial during wartime.
That was far different from the tone of the debate for the past week. Some people had been upset by the term "war crimes," and one man called the Daily Record to leave a message saying that Kyle seemed to be comparing Bush with Adolf Hitler.
"Those are signal reactions, people responding emotionally rather than intellectually," Robert Perlett, Parsippany's board of education president, said the other day in support of the project.
"If we are selling our brand of democracy across the world, we better be practicing it."
Kyle, who did not attend Thursday's meeting, earlier said he plans to have his students analyze the media's response to the project. It would make a good First Amendment project. He said his biggest fear is that some other teacher might hesitate to take a chance, might look at what happened to him and decide that no project is worth this kind of national attention, not to mention a condemnation by the county government.
The freeholders might want to think again about the message they sent this week. It's one thing to make personal statements about what had become a national story. Their joint resolution -- only Cecilia Laureys voted against it -- might have a chilling effect on the next teacher who wants to tackle a controversial subject.
"Obviously, there are a lot of strong feelings," Kyle said.
Maybe he should have known that this project, once people found out about it, would get this kind of attention. He should have known that the term war crimes comes with certain images.
Freeholder John Inglesino suggested that a mock congressional hearing might have been a better idea. But it's worth noting that, for the most part, Kyle's students were not asking questions during their mock trial that haven't been asked before by politicians and media pundits. They were supposed to be thinking about moral choices made during wartime. They were examining the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which led to courts-martial, and asking whether high-ranking officials knew about that abuse.
Ravi Upadhyaya, one of the students, played the part of Paul Bremer, the former head of the U.S.-led occupation government in Iraq. He testified during the mock trial that no one told him about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. He repeated what he learned doing research. That was the point of the project, he said, to look at both sides of issues. He said the teacher, whatever his political views, asked his students to think for themselves.
"He encourages questioning different sides," Upadhyaya said.
There is nothing wrong with debating the way we are waging the war on terrorism. Italian prosecutors reportedly are preparing to put CIA agents on trial in absentia for allegedly kidnapping a Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan and shipping him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. A German Lebanese man says he was kidnapped and taken to Afghanistan, where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated about terrorism. It is no secret that some nations' intelligence agencies have been accused of violating other nations' laws. We are a moral nation, but even the most moral nations sometimes face tough choices during wartime.
We should be talking about those choices, not stifling debate.
Some people seemed to forget that this was just a high school class project, an exercise designed to get students thinking about real issues. The students were not holding a genocide trial. They were examining allegations about the treatment of prisoners made even by some of our allies. They were looking at the military's use of depleted uranium. They weren't saying that Bush knew what happened at Abu Ghraib, but were examining whether that was possible. They were thinking.
Then their project became national news, and a lot of adults weighed in about what they thought was going on in the classroom. Local politicians made a statement about what is appropriate for a high school class project. That is the lesson that students might take from all of this -- that even in a nation that treasures free speech, someone might want to take it away, which is what makes it so precious.
You can contact the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders via weblink at http://www.co.morris.nj.us/
to express your support.
The contact link is on the top page of the website. It sends a message to the County Public Information Officer, Joseph Garifo.
The Freeholder who directed adoption of the above resolution was a John Ingelsino of Rockaway Township, New Jersey.