Lately I have been following with some interest (and despair) the story of a student named Matt LeClair in Kearny, New Jersey. At the public school he attended, Matt had a history teacher, Mr. David Paszkiewicz, who liked to devote some time during his classes to things other than actually teaching history: things such as telling his students that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark and that evolution and the Big Bang were bad science; things such as describing how only Christians could go to heaven. He even went so far as to single out a particular Muslim girl and point out that she was going to hell.

Matt tried going to the school board to discuss the problems he had with this use of class time. The administrators sat down with him and the teacher – and the teacher flatly denied using school grounds to proselytize. At that point Matt produced CDs of recordings he had made during Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class, which contained, in what was definitely the teacher’s own voice, all the evangelism that he had claimed not to do.

It would be nice to say that the school and the community came down hard on the side of separation of church and state, and took corrective action against the teacher. It would be nice to say that Matt has gotten thanks from his peers at school. But of course that isn’t the case.
Mr. Paszkiewicz is still teaching history (although hopefully with less poor science and religious education mixed in); the school district has purportedly taken “disciplinary action” against him, but has not said what that action was – a slap on the wrist, a fine, sensitivity training? Matt LeClair, on the other hand, has received threats of death and violence from anonymous people in the district (and probably the country, as the story has hit mass media). People have written letters to the editor in support – of the teacher, that is, not of the student.
The icing on the cake of this story? The school board has banned the use of recording devices in classrooms from now on.

I don’t want to sound like I don’t think teachers should have the support and endorsement of the administration they work under. In fact I think that having such support is crucial to the teacher being able to function as an efficient instructor, especially when dealing with parents who think the material is too hard/too easy/too inappropriate for their children. But I don’t believe that support should be unconditional, and when presented with indisputable evidence of inappropriate instructor behavior, the administration needs to make it clear that they are on the side of the complaining student. To take hazy and undisclosed disciplinary action against the teacher, while professing what an outstanding instructor he is and how he has full administrative backing – while removing the only way a student has to collect evidence (and thus likely the only way his or her word will be believed over that of the teacher, an adult) – is an utterly improper response.