This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes me afraid...

Actually, I'm afraid of many things. Shark attacks. Driving. What all this diet soda is really doing to my digestion system. But nothing makes me more terrified than firing teachers for refusing to comply with oaths.

In California last month a math teacher lost her job for amending an oath all state employees must sign. The Oath of Allegiance, to be exact. (There is a terminator joke here somewhere, but I don't have the strength to find it.) Each state employee must sign a piece of paper that affirms his or her promise to, among other things, "Defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies."

She inserted the word "non-violently" before "defend" and was fired.

Let's put this in perspective. This woman is a veteran math teacher. She teaches remedial math to struggling students, has for over a decade. She is a student at a university, studying to get a higher credential for her trade. Her life's work is making accessible the number one most hated subject on earth. She eliminates learning barriers for students having a difficult time in college. She is, in short, a freaking saint.

But, she is also a Quaker. She doesn't believe in violence. My god what a monster! The state of California is in danger!

Where are our priorities? We have students mashed into classrooms at twice the capacity. We have students taking classes in trailers two hundred yards away from the actual school building. We have students sustaining injuries when decrepit buildings fall apart literally over their heads. In Boston, we have over a thousand students leaving every year without graduating. We have students so hopeless and so angry that they meet the pervasive violence in their lives with an inured shrug. Urban school teachers leave the profession at increasingly alarming rates.

We do NOT have the luxury, California, of making sure every damn teacher signs your oath to the letter. In fact, California, the very idea of making a state employee sign an oath is kinda scary. This exact sort of myopic boneheaded idiocy plagues the entire country. If we continue to run a broken educational system, we will have a nation that cannot even read the constitution, never mind understand and defend the principals of democracy. So while teachers are fired for refusing to sign a piece of paper, a generation is being pushed through school and will face the world unprepared. Yet, the powers that be focus on the oath and not the schools. Perhaps they want an undereducated populace to control and exploit...

Oh, and California, if you're really looking to go after someone who is disparaging our constitution, pay a visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.