A South Carolina school district has launched an investigation into a high school teacher who allegedly threw an American flag on the floor and stomped on it as a classroom full of students watched.
Mark Bounds, a spokesman for the Lexington –Richland5 School District, confirmed to Fox News that an English teacher at Chapin High School was placed on leave as they investigate the incident.
“There were allegations that at a teacher took a flag down from the post in the classroom and stepped on that flag as part of the lesson,” Bounds said, indicating the act was repeated in several other classes. “It was not a spontaneous act, but one he worked into the lesson.”
He said there was “sufficient evidence that the teacher needed to be put on administrative leave and a full investigation needed to take place.”
Bounds said they could not provide additional information because it was a personnel matter – but he stressed that the school district took the matter extremely seriously.
“We have a very patriotic community with many military veterans,” he said. “Fort Jackson, the largest training base in the world is part of our community and you can see why this is especially important.”
Michael Copeland’s daughter was in the classroom when the incident occurred. He told television stationWIS that the teacher’s actions were disrespectful and unpatriotic.
“He drew a couple of symbols, like one of them was a cross, and he said, ‘What does this represent’ and everybody said ‘Christianity,’” Copeland said. “Then he proceeds to take down the American flag and said, ‘This is a symbol, but it’s only a piece of cloth. It doesn’t mean anything,’ and then he throws it down on the floor and then stomps on it, repeatedly.”
Malcolm Kline, executive director of Accuracy in Academia, told Fox News he was impressed that the school district took action.
“I’m astounded by this,” said Kline, whose organization exposes political bias in public school classrooms. “What you usually hear is students suspended for actually wearing an American flag.”
“I would have expected something like that somewhere in the northeast rather than below the Mason-Dixon line,” he added.
Bounds, who served 20 years in the military, stressed the seriousness of the incident.
“So many of our veterans have made sacrifices for that flag,” he said. “We still have men and women deployed in service to our country and we do take this very seriously.”
“We want to make sure our classrooms are unbiased of teacher’s personal opinions,” he said. “By the same token we want to give the teacher every opportunity to demonstrate what was going on the classroom at that time.”
But the unidentified teacher does have some supporters.
“There are so few teachers in South Carolina willing to show students a broader perspective,” one person wrote on the local Patch website. “When we are lucky enough to have one, they should be supported, not undermined. Obviously the administration and parents need to sit in on the lesson and listen as well.”
Yet when our foreign government and politicians stomp on our flag everyday, it apparently is not a problem. I guess it can’t work both ways. Hypocrites.
Note: I posted this at gopusa where there must have been 30 or more responses to this article, meaning it was getting a whole bunch of attention. Most responses were the typical ME PATRIOT LIBERAL BAD that I see on that site. Here was my comment…
That flag is the very thing that will be used, and successfully I might add, to not only take away your guns, and tax you all into squalor, and disintegrate your family units while demanding a denial of whatever religious freedom you thought you were free to worship, as well as end habeas corpus and due process. These are the threats that Americans face, not some flag stomping education grad that drank too much cheap vodka with his ditch weed the night before. Do you think Obama, the favorite of finger pointing around here, doesn’t love to stand in front of that flag as his backing of full executive power to do whatever the hell he wants?
Whatever that flag stands for in your mind, or whatever glorious images it brings to heart from the past, are not what it is in today’s world.
I’m not justifying what this person did, it’s pretty much a tantrum in my book, and there are a lot of those going around these days. Better to stomp some material than off a human life, what seems to be the more common mental break, and I can see harmful intent on the tips of a lot of tongues in these comments, over what really amounts to nothing.
If this site didn’t bring you this “news”, essentially advertising a localized (and nationally unimportant) event to get a whole bunch of people emotionally charged, that man’s actions would not have meant a thing. Instead, read how many people are putting forth negative emotional energy with the image of the flag in their mind, many in favor of violent action and dire consequence. The media, this site included in it, are using your minds to continue to progress an international takeover of this nation. When that happens, do you think that Old Glory is going to be flying anywhere? When you’re thinking about this flag stomping nonsense, guess what you’re not thinking about?
The time for worrying about cloth and pledges and songs needs to be put on the back burner. If a man wants to hang the flag and sing while pledging then that is his business. That doesn’t mean we now need “flag monitors”, because that is no different than big brother doing any of his bs.
This universal broadcast of an event that none of us have an ounce of control over is ridiculous, and is one more example of media manipulation of mass human psyche. We as Americans need to keep our heads in the game, not waste time pining away and screaming at our computers about how loyal and patriotic we are, while demonizing a total stranger working for some unknown school district in a part of the nation we’ve never lived, if even visited.
There are some very smart people that comment here, but being smart and being wrangled into distraction are not mutually exclusive. If this flag stomping event is so important, than I expect all will be doing something about it other than the notorious two-cents. In the meantime, I think it’s safe to assume that the media has duped a lot of people, again.
Hi Chewybees,
Your an idiot.
Please stay away from keyboards and computers,.. you keep letting your idiocy get out like that.
The US American Flag will NOT,… repeat for the hard-of-thinking,.. WILL NOT be used for any form of debauchary that has occurred or will occur.
That is caused by immoral and dishonest men, and sleaze bag women that have betrayed the requirements of their office, REFUSE to uphold their fiduciary duties, and commit treason against the American people, and against the very Constitution they swore to uphold, and against the very flag you speak of with such disdain.
The US Flag still represents every ounce of the priniciples set forth in the US Constitution,… for the back bone of any nation, the Family-Unit, and Moral-Superiority to the point of complete and utter selflessness, ESPECIALLY when this nation is on the brink of destruction from within!
Failure of loyalty and dedication to ones country is NOT caused by the Flag,.. but by people who rationalize its purveyors treason and wanton avarice,… just as you have done above.
Do NOT blame the US Flag, The US Constitution, or Principles they set forth for this country when the fault is the greed and corruption of those who have failed us all.
You disgust me.
JD – US Marines – How many LOYAL, and HONEST Americans DIED for our flag, the US Constitution, and the principles it embodies??
I cant defer the true intentions of the teacher stomping on the flag from this article, but chances are the teacher is another communist indoctrinating children and if so he should be rightfully ran out of town at the very least.
With that being said I do believe that the first amendment is just as crucial as the second. Through my own reading I have come to the conclusion that the first was codified in such a way as to allow for individuals freely express themselves in a way that could piss off everyone around them.
I will say that freedom is not without responsibility, and while this person may (once again I don’t know the circumstances) be covered under the freedom of expression, he also risks with these gestures getting mollywhopped by those around him for said expression.
I know I will probably catch flack for this and I have nothing but respect for the flag and I hope that the flag was respectfully retired after it had touched the ground. Many individuals greater than myself have died for that same symbol, but stories like these tend to bring out the same blind “patriotism” that 9/11 did.
In regards to the question, “How many LOYAL, and HONEST Americans DIED for our flag, the US Constitution, and the principles it embodies??” the answer is the same amount that died for corporate greed, political expediency, international criminals, and the joy of the psychopathic bureaucrat.
You can separate the two, and make the deaths and suffering glorious because they occurred underneath a flag, and under an oath to constitution. But the outcome was the same. The condition of the nation, wherein the entire political power of control rests in the hands of the filthy rich without a care for those deaths, is this way because they can use things like flags to manipulate the people into supporting their more deviant causes.
It seems I’m making people uncomfortable here by challenging their long standing beliefs that the symbols they hold dear as sanctimonious, are also the very things that are used to put all men on the verge of destruction. You either have the ability to see that or you don’t. The system isn’t broken, it has been built in the exact manner intended to gain the exact results it is at this moment in time, and will continue to do that in the future until the system is challenged to its core. The power of the symbols of flag, nation, constitution, pledge, anthem etc. are the tools used to accomplish all that is being accomplished, to the detriment of the populace.
Perhaps it is time to take my drivel elsewhere. When people that consider themselves intelligent lead in with “you’re an idiot” it is proof positive that everything following that is weak in argument, and must be propped up by the sticks and stones of the mind lacking in self confidence.
I wish you all good luck and God’s speed, and many more months of confined agreement.
And Godspeed to you, ChewyBees. See you on the battlefield. I will be the one holding the flag.
This whole thing began with a chink in our armor and at this crucial time of awakening, we American nationals have stepped forth to correct the errors in reference to the definitions of our Republic, which you have correctly outlined.
The issue here is is that flag everything it has been distorted to represent or is it what we American nationals say it is, a symbol of freedom, liberty, and a desire for peace with all other peoples around the world?
It is you who is showing a lack in understanding in your determination that only one contention can exist, said contention having being constructed through a false and duplicit reality, which we here are vowing to lay down our lives to correct.
ChewyBees, I disagree. Our flag, like our Constitution and Bill of Rights, is a representation of us. You say it has no meaning. This is the same thing the communists are saying about our Bill of Rights. I say we dictate the meaning of that flag, our Bill of Rights, and Constitution and enforce that dictate with our lives.
That flag was bought and paid for by American taxpayers. The building the man was standing in was likewise. I will not allow these communists to spit in my face.
If a private citizen wants to buy an American flag and stomp on it on his own property, well then he is just a low down son of a bitch exercising his 1st Amendment right. But if he thinks he is going to attack the symbol of our Republic while pushing a communist agenda on our youth, then he is a traitor and will be labeled as such.
You categorize this site with the mainstream propaganda one more time and you can take your f#@king dribble somewhere else.
the stars & stripes is not the american peoples flag,
it’s the flag of the federal government.
originally used to identify government buildings, outposts & forces etc.