Wilmington, North Carolina Incident
In late January or early February 2002, a white fourth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina was formally reprimanded for teaching the word and told to attend sensitivity training. The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used "niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. Parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur.
Bell's union, the North Carolina Association of Educators, told her not to speak about the situation, so her son, Tarl Bell, spoke to the newspaper. Tarl Bell said his mother received a letter from the school principal stating that the teacher used poor judgment and instructing her to send an apology to the parents of her students, which was done. The principal's letter also criticized the teacher for lacking sensitivity. The daughter of the complaining parent was moved to another classroom.
Norm Shearin, the deputy superintendent of schools for the district, said the teacher made a bad decision by teaching the word because it was inappropriate for that grade level.
Read more about this topic: Controversies About The Word "niggardly"
Famous quotes containing the words north, carolina and/or incident:
“The pure products of America go crazy—mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)
“In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)