Is that High School Teacher Strict? Then Fire Him!

Larry Neace has spent 23 of the past 26 years teaching physics -- not an easy subject -- to high school students in the formerly small town of Dacula, Georgia. In the wee hours of this morning, the Gwinnett County School Board voted to fire him in spite of his stellar record and the support of scores of students, whose impassioned pleas that he be retained were ignored by the Board, and a principal aptly named Donnie Nutt.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Neace, who's nickname among students is Doc, was fired precisely because of his stellar performance and emotional following among his students. For it seems that he crossed what amounts to a death line for too many public teachers in America: he marked down the grade of a star athlete and, in doing so, spat in the face of the enforced mediocrity too many in his profession rely on to keep their jobs.

The story, as recorded over the past week in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, goes like this: Neace, 61, has a decade-old policy of academically penalizing students who "waste time" in class. Among the actions, or inactions, that qualify for this move is sleeping in class, which is what the football playing son of Barry Cheek did in April. Cheek slept through the class in which an assignment, to be turned in the next morning, was made. As he has done for the past ten years, and as he stated clearly to the class on the first day of the term that he would do, Neace halved the student's grade.

If you wonder what's wrong with public education in America, here's one thing: the School Board has a policy of not allowing teachers to use grades to penalize students for such behavior. That is, what I could do as a college professor (via a demand for class participation or attendance), or what will most certainly occur in any job, cannot happen in Gwinnett County classrooms.

Remember: this is high school. High school students are kids, not adults, and (think back) no small number of them will gladly disrupt class in myriad ways. Assignments in high school come fast and furious, too -- don't let your college days throw you on this. Remember all the tests, assignments, and projects you did during those halcyon days? Without the means to gain and maintain control over a class, and to instill some discipline into young minds, teaching in public schools can become even more difficult and thankless than it already is.

When ordered to raise the student athlete's grade, Neace refused. Good for him. The students he touches -- and 114 of them have signed a petition calling for his reinstatement -- will remain grateful to him for the rest of their lives. Students have also made t-shirts lauding him (a most American response to any crisis) and plastered the walls of the school with posters calling for his firing to be rescinded.

Neace is a physics teacher, mind you, not some push-over who shares my humanities background. When was the last time you were eager to take any physics class, even one taught in high school? That he could find so much support speaks volumes of his character, integrity, and talent.

Neace's lawyer puts his finger on what's happening here:

"What we have in this case is a case of a pampered football athlete sleeping in class and being given favored treatment on an academic grade," said Michael Kramer, another of Neace's lawyers. "What we have here is the principal essentially attempting to coerce and intimidate a teacher."

Neace says that, in over a decade of enforcing this policy, no administrator has objected until now.

I come from a family with several generations of public school teachers and administrators; dinner talk always included teachers' tales spanning most of the twentieth century (my grandmother, who began teaching in 1918, lived with us). In my own high school in Georgia, our principal was a former football coach who, along with his oily vice principal, held the best teachers in open contempt. Several of them stayed on in spite of it, and I am eternally indebted to them for their dedication and willingness to put the wellbeing of their students ahead of their own. They were stern and demanding, and, because of that, truly superb. Glenda Simmons, Glenn Jones, and Ann Langston: if you read this, know you're remembered and appreciated.

A final word about Dacula, Georgia, lest this case gain a bit of fame. It sits in the same county as Duluth, home of the infamous runaway bride. Both are in Gwinnett County, which throughout most of the '80s was America's fasting-growing county; today some 700,000 souls call it home -- hardly the outpost of toothless rednecks, pace Andrea Peyser's provincial reporting in the New York Post. I lived in Duluth for a couple of years, and the entire area is as quintessentially suburban as any place on earth. That is, there's plenty for normal, middle and upper middle class folks to love about it, and at least as much for liberal elites to sneer at.

Larry Neace represents, I believe, the good people who make Gwinnett their home. His principal and the members of the Board who fired him, on the other hand, look like nothing more than National Education Association hacks. That's true even though they've turned on a teacher, for the type of teacher they've ousted stands for the antithesis of the dumbed-down, anti-intellectual curricula the NEA has pushed for decades. That agenda long ago became a tool to punish innovation and drive away demanding teachers who showed up their less gifted, or lazy, colleagues. Neace clearly has his students' best interests at heart. His enemies, on the other hand, are simply burdening future generations with their own mediocrity.

Update: Michelle Malkin has linked, thus bringing this important story to a wider audience, for which I thank her. And, results-oriented journalist that she is, she's also linked to the Gwinnett County Board of Education. Good move.

Update II: Should you decide to contact the Gwinnett County Board of Education, please note that one Board member, Carole Boyce, District I, voted in favor of KEEPING Larry Neace at Dacula High, which lies in her district. She deserves our thanks.

Update III: The athletic angle on this story is causing some to charge the blogosphere with being hostile to athletes. I've received some email, and found at least one blogger, who sees a bias against student athletes. For what it's worth, I played tennis on my high school team, and we even won our district one year. I also played soccer for a year, and during my youth spent a great deal of time in the beautiful North Georgia mountains hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing. So while the SEC and Big Ten weren't calling me for scholarships, I didn't spend my youth in the basement doing math problems, either. To boot, nothing in the AJC articles mentions an anti-jock bias on the part of Larry Neace, either. And doesn't the assumption, on the part of those who see an anti-athletic bias here, speak volumes on their own perception of student athletes as academically challenged? The fact that the kid is an athlete is important because bias in favor of athletes is the norm in many American high schools and colleges. The NCAA investigates such matters, and penalizes schools for infractions, all the time. Millions of dollars, as in big-time college sports, needn't be at stake in order for a pro-athlete bias to occur. In the Neace case, would you argue that his decade-old policy of penalizing students for "wasting time" was questioned for the first time in spite of the fact that the offending student was a football player?

Update IV: Betsy Newmark, an experienced and, I'm sure, excellent public school teacher has weighed in on this matter. Read her entire commentary for her insight. She wonders why the Board or the principal didn't try to work out something that wouldn't have resulted in the loss of an experienced physics teacher, who'll no doubt be difficult if not impossible to replace. And she notes that there are few routes for disciplining students these days. Here are just a couple of her best lines:

Good physics teachers are rare and this guy will be difficult to replace. I predict that the rest of his students will suffer for what is left of the year through a bunch of unqualified subs. Is this really in the best interest of the county? This School Board sounds like a bunch of dunderheads.

Well said.

Update V: (May 11) I've posted an email from a recent Dacula High graduate whose description of academics there backs up the charges made by those who support Larry Neace. Also, I posted an update on Larry Neace on May 7.