Cigarettes and Learning

The papers in London, where I'm now wrapping up a week's reporting, contain a treasure trove of nanny-related gems. Take this one:

A science teacher who passed a lit cigarette around a classroom and allowed two of his pupils to try it has been allowed to keep his job [he was instead disciplined by the school, RvB]. Jim McIntee, a teacher at the independent Steiner School in Canterbury, Kent, passed the cigarette to pupils aged 12 during a lesson in February about the effects of nicotine on the lungs. Three parents have now taken their children out of the school.

A generation ago, if your parents caught you trying a cigarette at that age, it wasn't unheard of that they made you smoke a dozen or so in a row, until you were green of pallor and empty of stomach, and you never wanted to even see a cigarette again. I guess mom and dad could be picked up on child-endangerment charges if they pulled that today.

From the looks of it, Mr. McIntee wasn't exactly attempting to get kids hooked on tobacco. Quite the opposite: he made his offer during a lesson on what nicotine does to human lungs. Even if he had allowed his pupils a couple of drags in an open-minded, non-judgmental, "you decide" sort of way, it beggars belief that parents would be so horrified as to (a) permanently pull their children out of school and (b) create a media hubbub that's not so very different from a witch hunt. (I wrote about that tiresome if widespread impulse here.)

Such a response isn't about resolving an issue — in that case, the parents could have had a private chat with Mr. McIntee, who might have been receptive to their concerns. Instead, the indignant victims-by-proxy were hellbent on demonstrating their holy outrage to the world, with the goal of publicly establishing just how blessedly pure of heart — and of lung — they themselves are.

Meanwhile, it ought to be clear that kids' respiratory systems are under more serious assault from the parents (assuming that these mums and dads drive petrol-powered cars) than they ever were from a teacher who goes beyond book learning to make his point. One puff of a cigarette versus the 400 to 600 gallons of gasoline that the average car burns in a year, producing well over 8,000 annual pounds of carbon dioxide — well, which do you reckon is more harmful? I'm not knocking cars; I'm just arguing for a little proportionality.

By the way, 'Steiner School" in the newspaper quote above refers to the legacy of Rudolf Steiner, the famed German educator and founder of the Waldorf schools. It might be worth remembering that Waldorf schools were named after the Stuttgart-based Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company of a hundred years ago, and that the schools, including the teachers' salaries, were financed by progressive-minded tobacco tycoon Emil Molt, a friend and admirer of Steiner's. Without tobacco money, it's unlikely that there'd be Steiner/Waldorf schools anywhere today.

I'm just sayin'.

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BONUS LINK: Think you may post photos of kids smoking to Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing site? Think again, you child-corrupting perv. Flickr staff will remove the offending material, explaining itself thusly:

"Minors drinking and smoking are prohibited as they are a no no, have been I think since forever. If it's brought to our attention via Report Abuse, etc., we will review and take action."

"Take action." Fearless Flickr Superheroes swoop in to save the day kids' lungs, heroically expunging those foul images so we can all pretend that no child ever dangles a cigarette from his or her lips! Problem solved! Hosanna!

Anyway, one participant in the discussion thread asks, not unreasonably:

Are pictures of kids playing with explosives prohibited? Kids with firearms? Kids with simulated firearms? Candy cigarettes? Licorice pipes? Licorice cigars?

And that's pretty much when the Flickr moderator permanently shuts down the discussion, because the customers she purports to serve "are making my head hurt."

Lovely.

Comments

[Phil Nelson]

I do like Flickr, but they are pretty (in)famous for that kind of thing. Basically, they'll just shut down a conversation if they don't want to think about it on a given day. Oh well.

[Jeff Hunter]

That's a very striking photo, any idea of the back story?

[Rogier]

Jeff:

All I know is, it's a photo by Joseph Szabo that was published in "Almost Grown," now out of print. More here: http://www.photosofteenagers.com/16A.html
I found the photo on this flickr stream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/1418859983/