I’m growing very fond of Jill Tucker, a “journalist” at the San Francisco Chronicle who gives me lots of meat for my blogging. A couple of weeks ago, I looked at her incurious (some might say lazy) reporting about the decision the Oakland Children’s Museum’s made to cancel a controversial art show consisting of pictures that Palestinian children had allegedly drawn. (I say allegedly because people more familiar with fakes than I think it is highly unlikely that real children created the pictures.)
Tucker ignored entirely the far-Left, anti-American, anti-Israel, antisemitic nature of the group sponsoring the show, and managed to make it sound as if these works were equivalent to Jewish children’s drawings and poems from Terezinstadt. With few exceptions, those child artists died in Auschwitz’s gas chambers. They didn’t shop at local malls or swim in Olympic pools. And when doctors attended those Jewish children, their goals were malevolent, not humanitarian.
Tucker is at it again, this time with a report purporting to explain that the teacher who punished students for saying “bless you” in class had no anti-religious motivation whatsoever. To give Tucker credit where credit is due, this story starts with good spin. She announces, loudly and repeatedly, that the kids who received penalties weren’t exercising ordinary good manners when they said “bless you;” they were, instead, acting out solely to irritate their teacher:
It all started when high school health teacher Steve Cuckovich disciplined his freshman students at Will C. Wood High School last week for repeatedly disrupting class by responding to sneezes with a overenthusiastic chorus of “Bless You.”
The sneezer would then thank each giver of the blessing individually.
Cuckovich, as teachers have done since time immemorial, decided to nip that behavior in the bud by docking student grades for the offense.
See? Totally innocent. Naughty students; appropriately strict teacher. Every one of us remembers those days from our own high school years.
How in the world, then, did this story become a world-wide kerfuffle? Tucker knows who was at fault: A busy-body parent and Fox News turned garden-variety classroom discipline into a Christian-outrage cause célèbre:
A parent saw the deduction and made a phone call – not to the teacher or the principal or even an elected official, said district Superintendent John Niederkorn.
And that’s about when Cuckovich found a local Fox TV news reporter in his classroom asking why he was banning “Bless you.”
Our good soldier Tucker describes the way in which religious zealots around the world (i.e., Christians) got their knickers in a twist merely because a teacher clamped down on disruptive behavior. She explains carefully, with myriad quotations yet, that Cuckovich’s only sin was the fact that, in the heat of the moment, he punished the students for saying “bless you,” rather than focusing more generally on the fact that they were disrupting his class.
So far, I am totally with Tucker. she’s right. Absolutely right. Her damage control is pitch-perfect. Tucker starts singing badly out of tune, however, when confronted by Cuckovich’s own conduct immediately after the fact. That was when he got the opportunity to explain in his own words what happened in that classroom (emphasis mine):
Cuckovich, however, inadvertently added to the controversy by explaining to reporters that he used the situation as a teaching moment, educating students on the origins of “bless you.”
It appeared to be an effort to reason with students before punishing them, but it added fuel to the religious fury.
“The blessing doesn’t really make any sense anymore,” he told the Sacramento Fox TV news affiliate. “When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body. So they were saying God bless you for getting rid of the evil spirits. But today, I said, really what you’re doing doesn’t make sense anymore.”
I love that Tucker-ish word “inadvertently.” You see, the problem wasn’t what Cuckovich did. It was that he explained what he did. Tucker seems to find nothing unnerving about a public school teacher who lectures students about the fact that “God bless you” is an archaic throwback to a primitive time when people actually believed in God and evil, and then explicitly censors that term in his classroom.
So there you have it: In Tucker-world, it’s always entirely accidental when a teacher displays religious hostility in a classroom.
I don’t doubt that Cuckovich was legitimately irritated by genuinely bad behavior from his students. Had Cuckovich limited himself to explaining the ancient origins of a commonly used phrase, while reminding students that disruptive behavior is always subject to penalty, there would have been no story. What makes the whole story newsworthy, and Tucker’s spin silly, is the fact that Cuckovich launched into what amounts to a “God is dead” lecture to justify his decision and then took the extra step of explicitly prohibiting the phrase “God bless you.” You begin to get the feeling that this guy is an atheist (which is perfectly okay, as I’m periodically one myself), and that he wants to pass that belief-less system on to his health class students (which is not okay).
As it is, even thought I’m an intermittent atheist and periodic agnostic myself, I’m willing to take all the blessings I can get. We live in a tough world, and there’s a lot to be said for a little good feeling coming from both those around us and, assuming he’s not dead, from God himself.
God bless you!
Cross-posted at Bookworm Room
“Unexpectedly!” It’s not just for bad economic news anymore.
But of course, if a teacher had “inadvertently” said “bless you” to a sneezing student, the SF Chronicle would undoubtedly discover a reason to bring back the death penalty.
I don’t think God is dead, but journalism certainly is.
“I don’t think God is dead, but journalism certainly is.”
There are no news articles, only narrative editorials. This particular editorial is written by a mind reader who knows when someone “inadvertently” brings about a result and when someone’s objection is an expression of “religious fury.”
When I taught, a few students in any given class would respond to a sneeze with “bless you” and “God bless you,” and at times I suspected that some of them just wanted an excuse to say something in class. But I wasn’t about to punish them specifically for an expression of politeness (whether genuine or not) when there were plenty of other ways in which they interrupted class. And given how openly crude young people can be, even pretended politeness is fresh air.
Moreover, I think that the new rule’s explanation (“the blessing doesn’t really make any sense anymore”) is rather weak. First, the explanation of the saying’s origin is questionable. Second, general disregard for the rationale of the original intent behind the phrase does not entail rejection of the phrase altogether, which can (and does) still persist as polite well-wishing, an expression of concern, a grudging adherence to custom, or whatever. Third, the suggested lesson behind the explanation, i.e. that we should dismiss customs whose roots seem strange to us, is something for parents to decide whether to teach to their children. (This last point applies to the present case only if the teacher had said to students what he later said to reporters, or something close to it.)
Well said!
I’d say his explanation is more that “rather weak”. God breathed into Adam to give him life. When you sneeze, when you explosively lose that breath that God gave you, you are losing God’s protection. So people said “God bless you” to restore God’s protection to you.
Silly superstition? Yes, I think so. But if that’s the worst thing his students are doing, the teacher needs to get down on his knees and thank that God he doesn’t believe in for giving him such well behaved students.
He’s a bully, a thug, a jerk. I’m glad the parents called Fox on him, and I’m glad Fox went after him.
And if I were a student in his class, I would loudly say “God bless you” to anyone who sneezed. And then make sure to ace all his tests, so I could shove it down his throat if he tried to give me anything other than the A I’d earned.
Here’s my bet: both stories are accurate. The teacher chose to lecture some kid who said “bless you” — the other kids figure out that this is something he really hates — they don’t like the teacher to begin with (because I know I would have disliked a lecturing pompous ass) — they start making an issue of “bless you” by using it to disrupt class. At this point, the weak-kneed teacher, who has already overreacted to the issue, overreacts again. What could have been a neat little teaching moment turns into a fiasco.
Funny how “teaching moments,” in the hands of liberals, never seem to teach anyone much of anything, except who the liberal is.
Had I been teaching that class, I’d have explained the origin and laughed about it with the kids – not lectured them. Then, had kids begun to act out about it for some reason, it would have been pop quiz time, every time. “What, is everyone here allergic to tests? Sorry about that. Bless you.” Nipped inna bud, first time, and in a fair way.
Common sense is something they do not teach in schools of education.
I’m pretty sure you’re right, because I’ve never once heard of anyone thanking, by name, each person who said, “Bless you!” after you sneezed.
And if kids in a San Francisco public school (!) are ever that polite, it must be to irritate a teacher.
I work in San Francisco, and every kid I meet seems to assume he is immune to any consequence of bad manners, so my cynicism is based upon experience and observation.
My time as a teacher was comparatively brief but–and there may be dynamics in his classroom that the story didn’t mention–it seems to me a much better way to deal with it would be to explain briefly this particular hypothesis as to the origins of the custom, add, “But it’s nice to see people being courteous to each other,” and then ignore the thing. They’d stop in a few days. He might even try “bless you” himself on occasion when a student sneezed, or pretended to.
I speculate–can do no more than that–that he isn’t that type of personality. It’s important to him to end the superstition and ignorance that he thinks his students display by religious or faux religious behavior. And the kids respond predictably.
By the way, why is the supposed origin of the phrase a reason not to use it today? One idea as to why we raise our hands in greeting is that in ancient times it was used to show strangers that we weren’t carrying weapons. But if I see a friend down the street and raise my hand, I don’t expect him to say, “That wasn’t necessary, Alex. I didn’t think you were armed.”
instead of “bless you,” would the teacher rather the students respond “efff you”
This would be a non-story if the idiot hadn’t implemented the grade penalty. I’m sure he thought it was a good way to get his point across. For some students and parents in today’s hyper-competitive educational environment, it would be like threatening to ruin the kid’s entire future over something trivial. Little Johnny didn’t make the cut for Harvard Law because he said “Bless you” in science class? Not if his parents can help it. And I think they’d be right in a way: grades should be tied to academic performance, not classroom behavior.
He should have kept his yap shut about the origins of “bless you” as well. Had nothing to do with the discipline issue and made him sound like a pretentious gasbag. Perhaps he’d like to ban the word “goodbye” as well since it’s supposedly an abbreviated form of “God be with you.” In his defense, however, he probably doesn’t deal with the media very often, if at all. He had no idea how one innocent (to him) statement can be seized upon by the media and media consumers, turning a story about one issue into something completely unexpected. At least he can claim inexperience, unlike a lot of our politicians these days.
and if course, Hallowe’en is short for “All Hallows Eve”, the night before the Catholic “Feast of All Saints”, when we honor everyone in heaven, especially those who haven’t been canonized. I bet he just hates it when people talk about Halloween.
I agree that the bless yous were probably an attempt to irritate the teacher. I did similar things in school.
I heard the origins of the “bless you” associated with sneezing in a slightly different but far more meaningful way. When a person sneezed, they were vulnerable physically to evil or bad spirits entering into their bodies. In fact, physcioBy saying “Bless you”, this was a way to pray for the other in a desire to protect and strengthen in a weak moment. In the way Cuckovich tells the story, the default position is that people are evil or possessed by evil, and on their own, able to expel those spirits.
You might consider classroom dynamics, such as students trying repeated means of harassing a teacher until they find something which sets the teacher off, and that the repeated attempts at other things (i.e., the teacher finally cracked down) are material. I.e., this was a process, not an event.
Plus that students are known to fib about teachers.
I wonder whether the teacher would have been equally upset if the kids had been saying “gesundheit”. I’d give 8-5 he wouldn’t have been.
The kids found his hot button, and they pushed it. He took it personally. He then decided to use force to retaliate. Force. It is what liberals default to. Weak minds.
If he had been used to a bit of mental effort in order to deal with folks, he could have come up with any number of ways to successfully defuse this situation, but he didn’t. He chose force. He chose the most force he could. He used their grades. By doing so, he could heavily impact their future chances in life. These were kids being kids, and he was not being the adult in their lives.
I remember the first time anyone had said “God bless you” to me. I was 18. My Army classmate, Arlene, said it to me. I was shocked at the tingling good feeling that washed completely over me. I think that was also the last time that anyone said that phrase to me.
The original belief was that you were expelling evil spirits from your body when you sneezed. Someone saying “God bless you” prevented those evil spirits from re-entering you. For all we know, it may be true. Yes, we know we are expelling dust and such, but we may also be expelling evil spirits. Who knows? The scientific explanation does not necessarily also preclude a supernatural one. They could both be true.
It is one of the fallacies of those who embrace science. They believe science precludes the existence of the supernatural, but there is so much of the nature of the universe that we really do not know. Are there other dimensions? Yes. Does life exist there, too? Likely so. Do we seem to them the way 2D stick figures on a page seem to us? Maybe so.
We are not the be-all end-all. We are really very small creatures. It certainly cannot hurt to say “God bless you”, and it may truly be beneficial in some way we do not understand. It sure felt really good the one time anyone ever said it to me.
“Lord, my boat is so small, and your ocean is so vast.”
God bless us all. We could certainly use it.
OK, what would be more context appropriate for responding to a sneeze? Happy hard on? May the Kwanza be with you? Feel better? Cover your mouth? Wash your hands? Had your shots? Only the nose knows? Sinus challenged? Nose drooler? Damn, third grade was fun when you could play kick ball and get the bully in the snot locker.
I think something is still missing from the story.
Why did the FIRST Sneeze – Bless You – Thank You occur?
Yes they toned it up after he admonished them for the uselessness of the activity, but there had to be a reason this started in the first place. I think the students knew his position before he “Explained” it all to them.
Maybe the students were trying to teach HIM a lesson.
Y’know, Books, I’m not quite sure I’m buying the step from not believing in evil spirits possessing the body of someone who sneezes, and not believing in good and evil.