"I Honk for Peace"

My eleventh grade physics teacher was, apparently, an okay teacher. But not the year I took physics. I should note that I was not a great physics student--all the physics I remember I learned in biology. But the year I took physics was 1969-70, and my physics teacher was horrified by the breakdown of society, and was easily nudged off topic into current events. This may explain why I have a tendency to conflate footpounds and The John Birch Society. His beliefs bled way over into his classes, and not in a good way. On the other hand, I had several great teachers whose feelings about current events (pro and con) informed really excellent conversations in class.

Flash forward a little. Like, to now, when a teacher who was talking about civil disobedience and anti-war protests mentioned to her kids that she honked for peace, and was fired for incendiary speech.

I may be misreading things (I read the article twice) but...one of the ways you encourage activism is by showing your students that you're not afraid of opinions, pro or con your own. This is not a case of Deborah Mayer wearing a Fuck Bush t-shirt, or trying to recruit for a Children's Crusade of some sort. One of her students asked her if she would ever take part in an anti-war protest. "I honk for peace," she said. If she'd said "I don't eat veal" or "I bicycle to work to spare the air" would those have been unacceptably political statements? This is not a teacher coming in to school to preach the Gospel or promote tooth decay; this was a woman who was asked a question by a student and gave a pretty mild answer. What was she supposed to say? "I'm sorry but I can't discuss that with you--your politics might be confounded and your head might explode?" Puh-leeze.