Arizona Law Would Make It Illegal to Teach Law, History, or Literature

Just when you thought the Arizona legislature was out of bad ideas.

SB 1467, newly introduced in the Arizona State Senate, would force schools and universities to suspend, fine, and ultimately fire any teacher or professor who “engage[d] in speech or conduct that would violate the standards adopted by the federal communications commission concerning obscenity, indecency and profanity if that speech or conduct were broadcast on television or radio.”

For the first offense, you’d get a one-week suspension without pay. For the second offense, two weeks. For the third, a pink slip.

As Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education notes, this law would not only block the teaching of such classics as Ulysses, The Canterbury Tales, and Catcher in the Rye, it’d prohibit historians and law professors from competently discussing campus free speech regulations, since the most important Supreme Court case in that field hinged on a jacket with the slogan “**** The Draft” written on it.

It’s also worth noting, as Lukianoff does, that the bill would regulate professors’ actions outside the classroom, which means that merely writing the paragraph above — in a blogpost, a scholarly article, even a private email — would get you suspended.

But it’s even worse than that.

Note the language of the bill: You’re violating the law if you engage “in speech or conduct” that would violate FCC standards if “broadcast on television or radio.” Not public speech or conduct. Speech or conduct, full stop.

If this law passes, it will be illegal for any “person who provides classroom instruction” in the state of Arizona to have sex.

Or pee.

Ever.

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If a person who provides classroom instruction in a public school engages in speech or conduct that would violate the standards adopted by the federal communications commission concerning obscenity, indecency and profanity if that speech or conduct were broadcast on television or radio:

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Nanfeishen said:

Misleading title :

SB 1467


http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/text/557056

Every TV or Radio station has standards for language used in a broadcast, all the bill says is that teachers must use the same standard of language when teaching.
Sounds fair , not draconian.

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WilD_CaT said:

Kim Phuc (born 1963) was the subject of a famous photo from the Vietnam war. The picture shows her at about age nine running naked after being severely burned on her back by a napalm attack.

http://pinguy.infogami.com/blog/vwm6

See image at the above link. The law would make it illegal to show the picture and say things like the "n" word or "k" word even from a historical and educational perspective.

Besides, profanity is bs anyways. Fornication under consent of the king (F U * * ) should hardly be a banned abbreviation. It's a bunch of ancient conservative/religious (not sure which is technically correct) twaddle that we don't need in a modern era.

Come on, its one of the most widely used, understood and versatile words in the English language and we can't say it, not even on this forum because of some ancient societal convention and nothing more.

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