A White teacher taught White students about White privilege. It cost him his job.
A lifelong resident of Kingsport, Hawn was well aware his liberal views made him an outlier in his overwhelmingly White, mostly conservative community. But that had never mattered before. He had taught in the Sullivan County school system for 16 years without any trouble. And he had taught the class that got him fired, “Contemporary Issues,” for nearly a decade without a single parent complaint.
Then at the start of last school year, he made a pronouncement during a discussion about police shootings that would derail his career. White privilege, he told his nearly all-White class, is “a fact.”
____________________
Not his job to teach his political opinions as "fact."
A lifelong resident of Kingsport, Hawn was well aware his liberal views made him an outlier in his overwhelmingly White, mostly conservative community. But that had never mattered before. He had taught in the Sullivan County school system for 16 years without any trouble. And he had taught the class that got him fired, “Contemporary Issues,” for nearly a decade without a single parent complaint.
Then at the start of last school year, he made a pronouncement during a discussion about police shootings that would derail his career. White privilege, he told his nearly all-White class, is “a fact.”
____________________
Not his job to teach his political opinions as "fact."
