Students Allowed To Send Hate Mail To Soldiers
Sigh…
February 21, 2005 — An American soldier overseas is fuming over letters he received from Brooklyn middle-school children accusing GIs of destroying mosques and killing civilians in Iraq.
Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.
That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.
“It’s hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don’t need to be getting letters like this,” Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey.
“If they don’t have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all.”
One Muslim boy wrote: “Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?”
The teacher responsible for the assignment hasn’t been reached for comment but the school’s principal has released this statement:
“While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation.”
They would never censor anything the kids write? That certainly seems to indicate that the teachers knew what the students were sending to the soldiers. And, frankly, I’m more than a little concerned that there are school administrators out there who are unwilling to take an interest in what students are writing.
Tags: General
