Thursday, February 24, 2005

Public School teacher allows students to send hate mail to soldiers

Mr. Xavier Costello,
Principal, JHS 51
350 - 5th Avenue,
Brooklyn, NY 11215
U.S.A.

Dear Sir,

I experienced disgust today whilst reading in the NY Post about how one of your teachers, Alex Kunhardt, allowed hate mail to be sent by nine of his students to American Soldiers serving in Korea. If it was inadvertent, he owes those young men and women in the service an abject, public apology. At the very least he was negligent in his duties as a citizen, and as a teacher to those misinformed kids.


If it was intentional, then he should be corrected. Corrected, you ask? For allowing the children in his care to think that free speech allows them the moral equivalent of yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre. What the hell kind of value system does your school’s mission statement refer to?

If it was intentional, then he needs to know that civil disobedience doesn’t extend to mental torture of his country’s soldiers who are presently putting their lives on the line in a foreign country. The Korean DMZ isn’t Iraq, but people die there today still. North Koreans don’t have the ability to indulge in civil disobedience and free speech, let alone a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Who’s to blame? Not the American Soldier, Comrade.

If it was intentional, then he also deserves ‘corporal punishment.’ Much as I'd like to suggest a good beating and time on the unemployment line, I won't. But a 12 month deployment to teach English in North Korea, followed by a 12 month teaching job in a school on an American military base somewhere might get through to him. Let him teach the orphaned children of some of your servicemen about free speech. They’ll teach him.

Sincerely,
Andrew (Hamm172) Rondeau

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