IFI readers with memories like steel traps may remember the names of Stevenson High School English teachers Melissa Mack and Bill Fritz. For those, like me, who have memories like steel sieves, Bill Fritz is the sponsor of Stevenson’s Gay Straight Alliance and one of the sponsors of last year’s first dance for students who identify as homosexual. Melissa Mack is the Stevenson High School teacher who circulated an email to the entire faculty of Stevenson High School in which she denounced IFI for being “an extreme fringe group” and said that my article about the dance constituted a “hate-filled opinion from someone who supports book-banning” and “can only be characterized as ignorant prejudice.” All this because I expressed the view that public schools have no business either implicitly or explicitly affirming particular views of the nature and morality of homosexuality. You can read about last year’s brouhaha here and here.

Well, Mr. Fritz and Ms. Mack show no signs of ceasing their exploitation of public money to advance their personal views on controversial issues. They each co-taught dubious workshops at the November National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) conference held in Philadelphia.

Background
Here is the description of one of the workshops that Stevenson teachers led and Stevenson taxpayers likely subsidized:

CONFRONTING OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL IN THE CLASSROOM (S)

Teachers are often hesitant to teach works with merit that contain controversial material. These presenters will argue that in order to prepare students to become responsible citizens of a world where they are exposed to disturbing, confusing, often frightening realities, it is imperative to teach them how to deal with sensitive issues.

Chair:
Jennifer Arias Sweeney, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois

Presenters:
Jeremy Gertzfield, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois
Melissa Mack, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois

This workshop raises several questions:

• Who decided that in order to prepare students to become responsible citizens of a disturbing, confusing, frightening world, it is imperative for educators/ideologues to teach controversial material?
• How, pray tell, did students during, say, the disturbing, confusing, frightening WWII years manage to become responsible citizens without being taught controversial material?
• Who decided that one of the tasks of English teachers is to teach students how to deal with sensitive issues, and what qualifications do they have for such an undertaking?
• How is Ms. Mack, who widely shared her view that conservatives are fringe extremists, ignorant, and hateful, qualified to teach students how to deal with controversial issues sensitively?
• Why do teachers who hold these beliefs rarely if ever teach controversial material that intelligently articulates conservative views?
• Why do teachers who hold these beliefs not feel compelled by the realities of this frightening world to spend equal time on and present equivalent resources from all sides of controversial issues?

Here is the other workshop presented by Stevenson teachers and paid for by hard-working District 125 taxpayers. This workshop was listed in the NCTE program in the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender” (LGBT) category:

CONFABULATING THE CLASSICS
LGBT

Presenters in this session will offer a hands-on demonstration of tools and techniques for opening up the classics to be more inclusive of students who may not, on the surface, feel included in the teaching of the classics–students of different ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. Using these techniques can empower teachers to help diverse students become reflective and critical participants in their own learning.

Presenters:
William Fritz, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois
David Jacobson, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois
Lisa Lukens, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois
Jennifer Arias Sweeney, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, Illinois

Once again sexual desires that many consider disordered and volitional sexual behavior that many consider immoral are included with other conditions that are utterly devoid of moral implications: race and economic backgrounds.

What special “tools and techniques” are necessary to teach the classics to students who experience same-sex attraction? What possible relevance do their sexual impulses and sexual behavior have on either teaching or understanding Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen? And although Horace and Juvenal, for example, have something specific to say about homosexuality, no special tools or techniques are necessary to teach their texts to students who experience same-sex attraction.

The Stevenson teachers who presented this workshop likely hold a number of unproven, faith-based, controversial, and fallacious assumptions pertaining to homosexuality which they are using public money to promote. It’s safe to assume that they believe that homosexuality is a 100% heritable condition; that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality; that homosexuality constitutes an immutable and morally defensible “identity” analogous to race; that disapproval of volitional homosexual acts is equivalent to racism; that conservatives hate homoesexuals; and that even an intelligent, articulate exposition of conservative views that explicitly renounces hatred and violence will result in hatred and violence toward homosexuals.

What’s also troubling is that while these teachers exploit their access to public funds to promote their unproven, subversive beliefs to teens, no taxpayers demand that they provide justification and evidence for the assumptions that guide their teaching. These “educators” have every right to harbor whatever destructive and erroneous theories they want on the nature and morality of homosexuality or on the nature and morality of conservative views. They have no right, however, to use their publicly subsidized jobs to promote them.

Stevenson English teachers have politicized curricula and pedagogy at taxpayers’ and students’ expense. The unconscionable exploitation of public money by activist ideologues to advance their own controversial, unproven moral and political beliefs through their classroom comments, their curricular selections, and the workshops they attend and lead must stop.

All Illinois public schools receive state funds, which means all of us subsidize the mischief of activists like Mack, Fritz, and their accomplices. Please contact Superintendent Eric Twadell, Principal Janet Gonzalez, and the District 125 School Board to express your opposition to this use of public money.

Taxpayers in every school district should pay close attention to the professional development opportunities offered to staff and faculty on late arrival days, Institute Days, and during summer workshops; and taxpayers should pay close attention to the workshops, conferences, and seminars that faculty members attend and teach–particularly English and social studies teachers.

The public has both a right and an obligation to know about these expenditures since they’re paying for them. If an email request to the administration, asking for the content and costs of professional development activities (including the cost of travel, lodging, food, registration fees, teacher-training, and substitute teachers) does not yield an adequate response, please consider filing a Freedom of Information Act request to access this information.

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