Dear Dr. Robbins and the MSAD 34 School Board; 

This spring my teaching certification will expire. Ordinarily this is nothing
 to write to you about. Ordinarily one takes a course and/or does curriculum 
work and is routinely recertified. I have done that for nineteen years in 
MSAD 34, but this is not an ordinary year. This year, in order to be 
recertified, I must cooperate with Governor King's witch-hunt, the 
fingerprinting of teachers. 


I cannot and will not cooperate with Governor King's witch-hunt. 
This misguided law contains implications that range from dubious to just
 plain wrong. These include:



Maine students are not in significant danger at school, nor do Maine teachers 
pose a significant threat to their students. In fact, quite the opposite is 
the case; too many Maine students are safe only at school and are in great 
danger at home. The fact sheet prepared by the Maine Educators Against 
Fingerprinting cites the 1999 US Dept. of Health and Human Services figures 
showing 75% of abusers to be parents and 10% other relatives. Teachers are 
not listed as a category because they are statistically insignificant. The 
fact sheet further calculates that "in-school abuse constitutes about 
2/10ths of 1% of the total abuse occurring in Maine" 
(MEAF's web site: http://www.slipperyslope.org). Sadly, educators, who have 
a legal obligation to report suspected child abuse, have sometimes noted 
that DHS is too understaffed to deal with legitimate suspicions. Instead of 
funding DHS adequately, the Governor has made teachers scapegoats.


Of course, as the Governor points out, there are some teachers who have made 
school a dangerous place for students. As with any crime, when there is a 
reasonable suspicion of a teacher abusing students, there should be an 
investigation by law enforcement personnel and, if the evidence warrants, 
that teacher should be fully charged and punished as the law directs. That 
is to say, teachers should be treated as any other citizen: no better, no 
worse.


Many have made the claim that, although teachers are responsible for only a 
small number of abuse cases, "If we only save one child it will be worth it."
 This is an emotionally effective, but immature argument. We could eliminate 
nearly all traffic deaths by reducing the speed limit to thirty miles an hour
 and rigidly enforcing it, but no one is making the argument that if we only 
save one life it will be worth it. Thus we find ourselves in the position of 
prizing the convenience of driving fifty miles an hour more than we prize 
teachers' civil rights, surely not a position that we seriously want to be 
in.


The Governor's law asserts that because some teacher may have abused children
 at some time in the past all teachers have become suspect. This flies in the
 face of the tradition of individual rights. We would not treat members of 
other groups this way. For example, a law to treat every young Afro-American 
male as a suspect would be unthinkable, even though national statistics show 
that young Afro-American males have a disproportionate crime rate. Under this
 law I am treated as guilty until I prove my innocence by cooperating with 
the investigation by being fingerprinted. The penalty for not cooperating,
the loss of my job, is exactly the same as the penalty for being discovered 
to have abused children in the past. As an aside, if such were the case, 
that is, if I had abused children in the past, paid the legal penalty and 
had never abused a child in Belfast, I assume that I would still lose my job.
 This seems to be double jeopardy, and in the circumstance described would
 be punishment without a crime.


The law implies that through some technological magic the FBI is more able 
than local law enforcement officials and the local community to know whether 
I am abusing children. This makes no sense. Again, the FBI is not 
investigating whether I am abusing students now, but only whether I have 
abused students in the past.


This major flaw in this legislation, that it purports to protect children 
by checking past acts rather than present acts, means that teachers without 
such a record who are currently abusing children will be able to continue 
that abuse, for the law contains no provision for detecting them. Although 
the Governor claims to be haunted by the thought that without this law some 
child may be abused, the law could allow a teacher to continue abusing 
children until the teacher's certificate is up for renewal, a period of up 
to five years. It's hard to see there's a crisis when the law waits five 
years to take effect in twenty percent of the cases.

 
The motive behind the law, protecting students, is laudable. Discussion of 
this issue inevitably leads to someone recounting a horror story in which 
some teacher abused trust as well as students. The sickening details haunt 
one's memory. It is difficult to understand such perversion. However, it is 
almost equally inevitable that when one asks, "Did that person have a record 
of child abuse?" the answer is no. As despicable as the act was, this law 
would have done nothing to prevent it.


Sadly, the legal profession has no problem with this law. Apparently it 
meets constitutional tests. This made me doubt my position until I 
remembered that slavery was legal in the United States for nearly a century 
and that segregation was the law of the land for another half century. 
Like those mistakes, this law appears to be a lapse in judgment. I hope to 
live long enough to see us recover our sense of individual rights. In the 
meantime this is not a law that I can respect.


Like many other teachers this conclusion leaves me with the dilemma of 
losing my job or cooperating with a law which takes away my civil rights, 
denigrates all Maine teachers, and will provide little, if any, protection 
for students. Needless to say, the prospect of being dismissed from a 
profession I have come to love made me think long and hard about not 
cooperating with the witch-hunt. Eventually I realized that even if I 
cooperated with the law I would be finished as a teacher for I would lose 
my self-respect. 


I hadn't understood how much I prized individual conscience until I began to 
consider things I teach in the light of my dilemma. For example, in Advanced 
World Affairs last year I designed four simulated trials: Socrates, Martin 
Luther, Albert Dreyfus, and the Nuremberg trials following World War Two. 
When one thinks about it, the four trials have a single issue: the 
individual's conscience set against powerful institutions. In discussing 
those trials, students inevitably sided with the individual conscience. 
While facilitating discussions on these simulations I silently found myself 
in agreement with my students' instincts. They understand, as part of their 
civil rights heritage, the importance of individual conscience and 
individual responsibility. In another instance, the World and I course 
shows Gandhi, a movie that reaches some students in a profound way. One of 
Gandhi's earliest campaigns of nonviolent non-cooperation was against the 
fingerprinting of Indians by the South African authorities, an episode I now
 see in a new light. Each year around Martin Luther King Jr. day I lead 
discussions on the civil rights movement. In the past I have taught 
Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience and Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. 
Were I to cooperate with the Governor's witch-hunt I could never again teach 
those lessons without feeling hypocritical. 


So in either case I am finished as the type of teacher I aspire to be. But 
if I don't cooperate I will at least keep my self-respect, albeit at the 
cost of my job and career. That's my choice. 


This is not a letter of resignation or retirement. I am not resigned to my 
fate. I had planned on teaching another eight or ten years before retiring. 
Financially I certainly need to work and I love teaching more as time goes 
by. (Plus I believe I'm getting better with experience.) But the Governor's 
law makes continuing impossible. This saddens me. I have gone through many 
of the grieving steps: denial, anger, and depression. I haven't reached 
acceptance yet, perhaps because I retain some quixotic hope that the current
 legislature will override the Governor's insistence upon this law. 


Until then, I can only play my part by refusing to cooperate and making 
you carry out the role of enforcing the Governor's witch-hunt by firing me. 
Legally, you have that right. You can even disclaim all responsibility for 
the end of my career by noting that by my refusal to be fingerprinted I have 
disqualified myself as a teacher. But sometimes beyond the law and legality 
there is another realm, the higher realm of ethics and justice, that 
supersedes the legal realm. It is here that I choose to take my stand.

 
Sincerely,

Steven Smith 


Copies: Mr. Gleason, Mr. Halliday, Mr. Greenleaf, Governor King, 
Senator Longley, Representatives Brooks, Ash, and Berry, T
he Republican Journal, The Waldo Independent, The Maine Times, 
and B. Huber (Maine Educators Against Fingerprinting).