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The recent decision by Ocean Township, New Jersey Schools Superintendent Thomas Pagano to reinstate production of The Laramie Project and other concessions surrounding the high school drama is a welcome development.
I highly commend Pagano and Principal Julia Davidow, who made the initial decision to cancel the play, for their reconsideration.
That said, there are several issues that I feel obliged to address having written an open letter to Julia Davidow on this opinion news site.
Several commentators decried the tone of my letter, saying that it ill-served the cause I was advocating and amounted to abuse. Another attacked my writing. Neither commentator addressed the merit of my arguments. A clever bait-and-switch technique, but I am ultimately vindicated by the actual outcome in this case regardless of whether or not my letter had any impact.
It was the right thing to do even if there are others who may disagree.
Nevertheless, Pagano did complain that he received "hate mail" from all over the country which I hope opened up his eyes to the pedagogical value of the play whose cancellation was at issue. The Laramie Project is about hate speech, but it is also, and even more importantly, about hate crimes and the violence, indeed murder, that, in the case of Mathew Shepperd, resulted from such hatred. That's not a liberal or conservative viewpoint; it's common decency and placing the value of life above and beyond the rights of people to make whatever statements they want.
Still disturbing is the principal's and the superintendent's initial reaction: that is after all what it was in fact. I wonder whether Davidow and Pagano just don't feel uncomfortable discussing, let alone condoning, a play that happens to be about a young gay man.
That is cause for concern because schools, especially, middle and high schools, ought to be the space where lessons about tolerance, intolerance, hate, acceptance, and love ought to be practiced.
If school administrators are too uncomfortable to consider, let alone embrace, issues surrounding human sexuality, than they do their students a disservice.
A disservice not lost on drama teacher Bob Angelini.
Practicing such issues on the streets too often leads to the senseless tragedy that befell Newark, NJ just last week with the murder of three promising young college and college-bound students. Earlier this year, the Newark school district was caught up in a similar controversy, about gay issues, over the depiction of two gay young men kissing in their high school yearbook.
That incident also resulted in an open letter on this website.
I am very confident and certain that Marion Bolden, the Newark schools superintendent, as well as Davidow and Pagano, would much rather see two young men kissing than lying in their coffins.
The analogy may seem disparate, but as a teacher and commentator and citizen, I think it's an analogy we need to rethink more clearly.
