A new court case reminds us that having an opinion can be hazardous to your career.
David Flynn had been a winning football coach at Dedham High School in Massachusetts. His two children attended Dedham schools. Last fall he learned that his daughter’s seventh-grade history class, “World Geography and Ancient History I,” had been re-routed from discussing the classics and instead turned into a series of indoctrination sessions in the new woke ideology.
Without consulting or notifying parents, Dedham Public Schools loaded down the seventh-grade history class with contemporary topics on politics, race, gender, stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination and diversity. Naturally, these topics were presented from a progressive perspective and embedded with the usual biases and tropes that are accepted as gospel by left-wing educators.
For example, class materials labeled police officers and white people as “risk factors” to all black people and suggested that white people inherently see all black males as threats. A teacher used a cartoon character of herself wearing a BLM t-shirt, just in case some kids did not get the point.
Flynn did what any concerned parent might do when learning about his child being indoctrinated. He and his wife expressed their concerns to the history teacher and principal of the school – then later to Superintendent Michael J. Welch and three members of the Dedham School Committee. However, the school system had no interest in engaging in constructive dialogue. In October the Flynns removed their children from the school.
The issue came back to haunt Flynn in January when he was called into a meeting with Superintendent Welch, DHS principal Jim Forrest and athletic director Steve Traister. Welch confronted Flynn with one of the emails he had sent to the Dedham School Committee and asked him, “What are we going to do about this?” By the end of the meeting Flynn was informed that DHS was “going in a different direction” with their football program, and moments later a statement was released stating that Flynn was removed as head coach because of “significant, repeatedly expressed philosophical differences with the direction, goals and values of the school district.”
Hellbound and Down 