Spokane7
58°
September 10, 2010 in City
Teacher passed out lyrics containing profanity
Shadle educator on leave pending investigation
Off-color language, not an indictment of the educational system contained in a hip-hop song, was the reason a Shadle Park High School teacher was placed on leave after he distributed the song’s lyrics to his class, a school district spokeswoman said on Thursday.
What’s more, the lyrics hadn’t been approved by the school district, which is required for all supplemental materials, Spokane Public Schools spokeswoman Terren Roloff said.
Roloff would not identify the teacher, but at Shadle Park High School, he is widely believed to be Brad Read, a popular English teacher who was president of the Envision Spokane board, which sponsored a Community Bill of Rights ballot initiative that failed at the polls last November.
Reached at home, Read declined to be interviewed.
The song in question is “Commencement Day” by the Seattle duo Blue Scholars.
The lyrics include profane terms for sexual intercourse and defecation.
Literary works such as “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, contain the same profanity, but have been approved by the district because of the context in which they are used, Roloff said.
The school district placed the teacher on paid administrative leave pending an investigation of a complaint against him by its human resources department, Roloff said.
Blue Scholars said on its Twitter account that the group “recently got an e-mail from a student in Spokane.”
“A teacher at Shadle Park HS was suspended for playing our song ‘Commencement Day’ in class,” the group tweeted.
Roloff stressed that the teacher was not suspended, but placed on paid leave.
Prometheus Brown, emcee for Blue Scholars, posted on his personal Twitter account that other students in the class contacted him and that he was going to “find out more info and find a way to support this fine educator.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Rights panel poorly understood 
Truthhurts on September 10 at 7:03 a.m.
We need to just give high school teachers full academic freedom.
All administrators in all education systems everywhere entirely lack scruples and lack moral courage.
Educational administrators pander to the “squeaky wheel,” and one parent complaining a class is too hard will lead to pressure on a teacher to lighten the load, without notice to the other 150 parents that such pressure has been brought to bear.
All students have heard these words, and 30% of them have already had sex.
This censorship is narrow-minded, brutal, and requires a definitive and clear law to protect teacher academic freedom in response.
eagleproducer on September 10 at 9:46 a.m.
Truthhurts: The laws for academic freedom already exist and can’t be bargained away at district curriculum meetings. The rights for academic freedom are contained in our most basic and sacred document, The U.S. Constitution.
If the instructor is Brad, I had that figured all along, going back to my first post on this matter although I didn’t reveal his name. I can’t think of a better example for young adults, which is what seniors in high school are. He is committed to social justice, achieving self-realization through education and experience and then helping others become self-realized as well. People develop emotional maturity by having their worldview challenged and having to defend or reexamine their own. The lesson the students are learning from the district is the only things that matters are completely arbitrary rules that are rarely enforced. The cadre of Buffoons on Bernard simply acquiesced to a windy, whiny parent who broke the normal chain of communication and didn’t talk to the teacher before contacting administrators.