With Iraq Play, Students Act on Beliefs
WILTON, Conn. - She could not look at her principal. The words coming out of his mouth infuriated her.
There would be no play about the war in Iraq, he told the drama class at Wilton High School: The topic was too controversial, too complicated.
Sitting in the front row of the campus theater on a March morning, Erin Clancy squeezed another drama student’s hand and tried to hold back tears. They had been preparing for the production of “Voices in Conflict” for two months. One student sitting onstage began to yell and curse. The performing arts department head ordered her to address the principal with respect.
Erin didn’t want to offend him either. In her four years at Wilton High, she had grown to like the principal. But this play meant more to her than others she had acted in, like “West Side Story” and “Grease.” She had to say something.
Her voice trembled. She was 18 - old enough to fight in the war, Erin told him, and old enough to vote for leaders who send people to war. So why couldn’t she perform in a play about it?
It was not open for debate. Principal Timothy Canty told the students his mind was made up.
He left, and the students swarmed their drama teacher. It had been Bonnie Dickinson’s idea for them to research the war and come up with monologues based on the words of U.S. soldiers culled from documentaries, books and articles. Dickinson had stayed quiet during the principal’s talk. The students asked her: What do we do now?
Dickinson told them she didn’t think there was anything they could do: He was the principal, and he made the rules.
The students talked of writing letters to the local newspaper or protesting the principal’s decision. There had to be something they could do to change his mind.
It didn’t seem fair, Erin recalled telling her father in their family room later that evening. There was a war going on, and she wanted her classmates to care about it.
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IT started as an end-of-the-year project.
Dickinson, 53, a drama teacher at Wilton High School for 13 years, wanted her students to perform something with substance. She thought of a former Wilton High student, Nicholas Madaras, who had joined the Army after graduating in 2005. He was killed in September by a roadside bomb. Dickinson had not followed news about the war closely but figured she could learn about it, along with her students, by creating a play.
She began collecting sources in which soldiers had talked about their experiences. The goal, she told the class, was to present different viewpoints. They would piece together a series of vignettes from real-life characters.
One of several documentaries students watched for their research was called “The Ground Truth,” in which veterans condemned the war and their treatment by the military after returning home from Iraq. Many supporters of the war consider it a biased film. To balance the students’ references, Dickinson found books and articles in which soldiers talked proudly of their job, and the importance of fighting for freedom.
The veterans in “The Ground Truth” touched some of her students. James Presson, 16, could not get Navy veteran Charlie Anderson out of his mind. In the film, Petty Officer 2nd Class Anderson, 30, talked about suffering from post-traumatic stress, and how his life fell apart after fighting in Iraq.
James was named after his uncle, who died fighting in the Vietnam War. He watched the news daily, and couldn’t understand why his teachers did not discuss the war in his social studies classes. He often noticed yellow ribbons, American flags, and “Support Our Troops” banners in Wilton, an affluent community of 18,000 about 50 miles northeast of New York City. But he seldom heard anyone talk about why the troops were fighting and dying.
Watching the film, James wondered how Anderson must have felt to come home to a daughter who didn’t remember him and a marriage that fell apart. He thought about what it would be like to go from being a proud U.S. soldier to a lonely veteran who could not find a job.
James wanted to act Anderson’s story.
Erin, who loves wearing high heels and anything pink, was surprised she identified with soldiers who had shot people and lost limbs. She empathized with the young woman who joined the military to pay for college and ended up agonizing over starving children in Iraq.
Something Anderson said in the documentary stuck with Erin too. He talked about coming home from the war and trying to relate to his friends:
“It’s just that our priorities were different,” he said. “It was hard finding friends. People were boring to me, not that I was that interesting of a person. I just always thought they talked about stupid stuff.”
Before working on this play, Erin used to listen to reports about Paris Hilton. Now she pays attention to news about soldiers killed in Iraq. Her friends outside of drama class didn’t understand her preoccupation.
After her research, Erin concluded that she supported the war. She believed the government should finish what it started. She wanted other students to learn enough to form their own opinions too.
The class had not finished putting together a script when the principal called the drama teacher into his office. Canty told Dickinson that parents were concerned about the play’s content, she later recalled. A student, whose brother was serving in Iraq, had expressed interest in performing in the play. But once the student got involved, she disagreed with its direction because she felt it was antiwar. Her mother complained to the school.
Dickinson offered to revise the script, but Canty was not satisfied. When he visited the class, students asked whether they could perform the play for their parents. Canty said no. They could not perform the play at Wilton High, or anywhere else.
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A few days later, someone tipped off the media.
The drama students suspected it was a parent, angry that the play was canceled. Local and national television programs and newspapers did stories. Strangers from across the world encouraged the students, and soldiers stationed in Iraq sent words of support, including Anderson from “The Ground Truth.”
Then came the backlash. Someone had started a Facebook Web page criticizing the drama class. One posting said the students should be “hanged for treason.” Others called them “worthless” and “unpatriotic” kids with “liberal pig parents.”
At first, the drama students were scared and nervous to return to school. In hallways, kids tried to pick fights with them. Others talked behind their backs or shouted: “You take that play somewhere else!”
The girl with a brother in Iraq had been friends with many on the cast, but she stopped speaking to them.
“Our student body has very much rejected our play,” Erin said, “and everything we stand for.”
James learned to shrug off the name-calling and glares. He tried instead to explain to people why he felt so strongly about the play.
“Getting away from the body counts and images is OK,” he said. “You need to escape and watch ‘American Idol’ or ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ But there are times when the real facts must be faced. We’ve got something huge going on.”
Supt. Gary Richards issued a statement calling the script’s language “graphic and violent,” and said allowing students to act as soldiers “turns powerful material into a dramatic format that borders on being sensational and inappropriate.”
Outraged by the censorship, professional theater directors contacted Dickinson. A Connecticut playhouse invited the students to perform there, and two New York venues asked to feature “Voices in Conflict” off-Broadway in June.
A 1st Amendment attorney who had heard about the play contacted Dickinson. He offered to represent her pro bono. With the lawyer’s backing, the class made a decision that the school administration did not fight.
The students were headed to New York.
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GRADUATION and the play were a month away. Erin stayed busy preparing for the ceremony, taking final exams and practicing her lines at night. The days grew more hectic. For most of the students, their biggest audiences had been made up of friends and family. Now it would be theater-lovers and reporters. In June, they had three hourlong performances scheduled in Connecticut and three in New York.
Dickinson coached the actors late into the night. They rewrote the script at the last minute, incorporating letters from soldiers and the students’ experiences after the principal banned the play.
The teacher smiled and teased the students during rehearsal, but she had her own worries - the school had placed her under administrative review. Her attorney, Martin Garbus, said Dickinson had been accused of trying to present a biased play that violated copyrights, mobilizing the students to follow her political agenda and lying about what was in the script.
It would be weeks before the administration concluded Dickinson’s job was safe. Until then, she tried not to let it discourage her.
“This is high school with kids who could, at any minute, enlist,” she said. “We have recruiters in the cafeteria all the time. They wanted to learn about the war. Can’t they learn about it for God’s sake?”
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IN 20 minutes, the final show in New York would begin. Inside the Public Theater, the cast gathered in a basement dressing room, littered with their McDonald’s bags and Starbucks cups. It was the same building where “Hair,” a play about hippies opposed to the Vietnam War, had premiered in 1967. Forty years later, the drama students from Wilton High were about to have their most important night in the spotlight.
“I’m kind of freaking out a little bit,” said James, pacing in a corner.
In less than two hours he would meet Anderson, the war veteran whose character he was playing. The students and their families had paid to fly Anderson from his home in Virginia to see the show.
Erin applied foundation around her eyes in front of a mirror. She would graduate tomorrow, but she was more anxious about tonight. Erin could not believe she was going to act in front of such an imposing audience - most notably Anderson, and another character in the play, National Guard Lt. Paul Rieckhoff.
Dickinson whisked through the dressing room: “Kids, listen up, put on your strongest voices!”
“I’m nervous!” a student yelled.
“Bonnie, do we have a full house?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “There’s many people out there lined up. It’s totally booked.”
As the lights dimmed, more than 225 people waited for the show to begin.
The 16 teenagers stood onstage, forming two parallel lines. They wore jeans, cargo pants, T-shirts, canvas sneakers, black flats. One wore a camouflage bandana. Together they said: “We choose to hear the voices of those who serve.”
A harmonica played. Erin stepped to the front of the stage as the rest of the cast sat in chairs behind her. She recited a monologue from Army Reserve Sgt. Lisa Haynes: “So I go to Iraq. And on the road we saw a lot of Iraqi kids, poor kids, hungry, pretty kids. Malnourished with big stomachs. We were told not to give them anything. They would come up to your vehicles hungry and we weren’t allowed to give them anything.”
Then it was James’ turn. He rubbed his hands together and brushed his fingers through his hair: “The doctors say I have post-traumatic stress disorder…. My symptoms didn’t show up right away. Then everything just caught up to me and hit me all at once.”
“I have nightmares,” he continued. “Everybody says I didn’t do anything I should be ashamed of. So why can’t I sleep?”
As the play went on, the characters talked of killing insurgents and killing innocent people, missing their families and missing Iraq, loving their country and feeling anger toward it. One spoke of praying for the opportunity to fight. After serving, he talked of witnessing life get better for the Iraqi people. Some of the words came from soldiers who had been killed in the war. The actors recited their names, ages and dates of death.
“Voices in Conflict” ended with a standing ovation. Some audience members wiped tears from their eyes.
Anderson walked up to James and gave him a hug.
In a discussion afterward, Anderson rose from the audience: “The Navy’s core values are honor, courage and commitment,” he told the class, “and I can say beyond any doubt that you all exemplified all of them.”
Anderson asked the students how this experience had changed them.
Erin answered on behalf of her classmates: “We just have come away with the utmost respect for everything that you have done for our country,” she said. “Thank you.”
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times |
God help us if people in the Northeast cannot tolerate a anti-war highschool play. I don’t mean to sound dramatic or overly-religious, but we certainly are doing nothing to help ourselves.
We are so backwards in this country, it wouldn’t be surprising if Hitler himself rose from the grave, took over Texas and took us into Mexico for lebensraum! Why have our hearts and heads evolved so little since Vietnam? That principal …I’m in awe of his cowardice.
There is little new about this. On January 10, 2003, a teacher of fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Clear Creek Elementary School in Bloomington Indiana was leading a class discussion on an issue of Time Magazine’s “Time for Kids.” This was a regular routine and part of the school’s curriculum. Some of the articles related to the imminent Iraq war and one mentioned a peace march
One of the children asked the teacher if she would attend a peace parch. She answered that she usually honked her horn when she went by a local demonstration that said “honk for peace.” She said she felt it was important to seek peaceful solutions before resorting to war and that was why they trained the kids to mediate disputes on the playground, to seek peaceful solutions to their own problems.
Apparently a student mentioned her comment to his parents. The next day, she was brought into the principal’s office and told that she would no longer mention peace in her classroom. She was fired at the end of the school year. The case is working its way up to the Supreme Court, but one Judge’s verdict has a chilling effect upon the educational community.
Judge Barker ruled that “teachers, including Ms. Mayer, do not have a right under the First Amendment to express their opinions with their students during the instructional period.”
The judge ruled that “school officials are free to adopt regulations prohibiting classroom discussion of the war,” and that “the fact that Ms. Mayer’s January 10, 2003, comments were made prior to any prohibitions by school officials does not establish that she had a First Amendment right to make those comments in the first place.” The judge also implied that Mayer, by making her comments, was attempting to “arrogate control of the curricula.”
And the judge gave enormous leeway to school districts to limit teachers’ speech in the classroom.
“Whatever the school board adopts as policy regarding what teachers are permitted to express in terms of their opinions on current events during the instructional period, that policy controls, and there is no First Amendment right permitting teachers to do otherwise,” Judge Barker wrote
So, it is now official. Teachers can teach only the approved party line, with no interpretation, discussion or opinions expressed. Hitler and Stalin would love it.
What is real education–what is merely memory training and indoctrination? As far as I am concerned, Bonnie Dickinson ought to be a serious contender for high school teacher of the year based on her student’s performance and her ability to bring out such artistry in them.
Stilba..already happened, look up James Polk 7 Sam Houston 1846, US Invasion of Mexico
I hear the conservative students will be putting on their own play….
Where they kill most of the Muslim students, occupy their lockers, and torture the survivors until they hand over all their lunch money
“The Navy’s core values are honor, courage and commitment,” he told the [drama] class, “and I can say beyond any doubt that you all exemplified all of them.”
“Erin answered on behalf of her classmates: ‘We just have come away with the utmost respect for everything that you have done for our country,’ she said. “Thank you.”
So, in the end, the students learened to not question authority, and ended up making a largely pro-war play, with all the usual complete rubbish about how these thugs are “fighting for freedom”.
I’m sick and just might vomit…
As Howard Zinn and many other alternative historians have shown us, the United States has a long history of authoritarianism combined with repression of people holding views contrary to those promoted by the establishment here. That establishment has been and continues to be authoritanrian (though parading as the opposite) and constantly threatens repression against those who dare speak out. Now most of the populace has been conditioned to go along just as the “good Germans” did during the Third Reich. People like Cindy Sheehan are more heroic than most of us appreciate.
Canuckchuck: “Stilba..already happened, look up James Polk 7 Sam Houston 1846, US Invasion of Mexico”
Thanks for reminding those out of the know (which I’m happily not). Just lamenting our national backwardness/regressivism/repeating-of-the-past.
The United States of America produces more weapons and instruments of warfare than any other country. The United States of America sells and exports more weapons and instruments of warfare than any other country. The United States of America spends more of its national budget on warfare and instruments of war than any other country. War, weapons and other killing infrastucture are big business in the United States of America, probably the biggest. America’s children, just like iron or steel, are raw materials for the war machine. Vulgarities like nuclear bombs are profit centers. Injured and maimed soldiers are nonperforming assets.
War is a good busines. Invest a child today.
America should thank these students. They are doing what we all should be doing. Going to the source to get information about a the Iraq War. It’s obvious that our government isn’t telling us the truth. The media has a vested interest in us not knowing the truth. So, the students went to the veteran for the truth. The play isn’t pro-war or anti-war. It’s an oral history that can’t be ignored if you want to learn about peace.
hoa binh
The bankrupt, illogical, subversive and downright UN-AMERICAN position taken by Mr. Canty and the high school administration is infuriating and depressing. It’s stupefying and outrageous that the school apparently prefers to churn out automatons (loyal “Bushies,” perhaps?) who unquestioningly accept the actions of their leaders, instead of individuals with sound analytical abilities who exercise free, independent thinking and question authority when it’s deserved.
Then again, what else should we expect from a state that returned Schmoe Lieberman to the U.S. Senate?
For those of you who still haven’t consulted Chalmers Johnson on the US military-industrial complex, the near-impossibility of ever dismantling it, and the possible consequences of failing to do so, here’s the website:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16260.htm
Don’t be surprised by small mindedness in CT, A third of our jobs are military contractors and another third are insurance companies that have morphed into “financial Institutions” many of which invest in War.
Hat’s off to the kids of Wilton. They’ve produced a representative slice of the voices of the troops. If they had chosen only antiwar selections, it and they would not have been as real.
Principal should be fired.
When this first hit the news, I emailed my cousin who grew up in Danbury, just a few miles away from Wilton. She wasn’t at all surprised because even 40 years ago the town of Wilton was populated by jerks.
This principal should never have gotten his job, but he is representative of a lot of school administrators in this country. The fact that craven ninnyhammers like him are so common in the educational profession bodes ill for the education of our kids. Remember, parents, your kids are being taught by people like him. You need to take an active interest in your kids’ education if you want them to turn out decently.
I want to take my grandson and his parents and run away to some other country.
You have to remember PJD, these students are graduating from a public school system. It doesn’t matter whether those students got to do the play or not, now does it? The school system accomplished exactly what they are paid by tax payers to do.
It also makes me sick.
PJD June 22nd, 2007 4:21 pm
You have really seen through the veil of propoganda that even this story attempts to conceal. The final words of Erin prove the effectiveness of this propoganda. By heroizing (is that a word?)the returning soldiers and talking in grandiose terms of their heroism, especially in loss of life, limb and sanity, the myth of war’s effectiveness to resolve differences lives on. The people of Wilton can feel proud that even when exposed to the graphic realities of armed aggression, these students managed to cling to their false beliefs. I wonder how many young people were moved by this play to enlist to protect our democracy and defeat the enemy: terrorism?
No, Erika Hayasaki, you have, in the end, done more to promote the extension of this and future wars, than you have in revealing the futility of war. In the end, war, as long as it is practiced by US, is acceptable. Our “…core values are honor, courage and commitment,”. Killing and maiming people in the name of these cores values is not only tolerated; it is Heroized. Insanity! We may not be able to change the world, but we may continue to peel the scales of ignorance from our own five senses, and look deeper into our souls for the salvation of our hearts. As difficult as it is, we may still look to our Higher Selves for the answers to the fear and hatred that is reflected back to us from the events and people of the world. None of us is greater than any other; it is our perception that allows separatism to divide us. The new paradigm that must be reached is that of Oneness. Partisan politics is not the answer.
Peace,
st john
St john
Perhaps “idolizing” could be used as another term.
1. to regard with blind adoration, devotion, etc.
I think the term that best describes the entire scenerio is “facade”.
The kids at Wilton High are in good company. I remember during the Vietnam War when our local high school wouldn’t allow Pete Seeger to do a concert in the high school auditorium. Imagine that! Some things never change. But people do - slowly, slowly our local peace group grew, and a couple of years after the war was over a woman came up to me in the supermarket and sort of whispered “You know, I was always with you all in my heart.” Now I wish I had answered her “Strange, I didn’t see you there.” But I didn’t. And I wish I had.
“After her research, Erin concluded that she supported the war. She believed the government should finish what it started.”
Yeah, and I wonder what the sources of her “research” were? Do you think it included say, Chalmers Johnson, or Howard Zinn, or Chomsky, or Scott Ritter, or even Mark Twain?
Or, maybe, Mahatma Gandhi?
Did she research the violent blood-soaked history of the the somewhat similar US invasion and occupation of Vietnam?
Does little teenage Erin know that, in past brutal foreign occupations of other peoples land, that “finish(ing) the job” has been historically been accomplished only through mass slaughter - and, ultimately, the occupier still “loses”?
Is little sweet Erin willing to accept the blood of many thousands of Iraqis on her hand and into her soul in her support of “finishing the job”? Will she accept whatever fully justifiable retaliation on the behalf of the Iraqi people, - perhaps using nuclear weapons, that would come from such an act of “finishing the job”?
America is a very mucky place to be right now. The Anne Coulters of your world have so much sway in what you can and can’t say that I fear for the sanity of a first world nation.
The only thing I can say is well done to these students and their teacher for sourcing primary documentation. That Erin has a point of view that differs from some others who are posting here is what democratic free voice is all about. I may not agree with what you say but I will defend your right to say what you want to say (or words to that effect).
I find it appalling that Americans can be intimidated by various school boards, state legislation and ultimately, the federal administration, to curtail dissenting views. Hello, HomeLand Security (aka, censorship with leg irons).
I could not live under that sort of stricture where dissenting voices are silenced because of some perceived threat to a very distorted democracy.
It is the antithesis of democractic free speech. The founders of your constitution enabled free speech. Currently you have a madman in the Oval Office who wants to stop anything that dissents from his, and his administration’s, edicts and belief systems.
My dears, you are in dire straits indeed. Get rid of those megalomaniacal people in your federal administration.
You have sooooooooooo lost the respect of the international community in that you are allowing your country to be seen as the fundamentalist Xtian counterpoint to the middle east Islamic fanaticism. You even have a video called the ‘Jesus Camps’ that is about to be shown (and it should be to your shame) on the BBC’s Channel 4. You will get stick from this and you should realise that you sit alone on these fundamentalist maniacal views of Xtian extremeism.
In lots of ways, this preceeds the downfall of, yet another, pretender to globalism and supreme control. The Romans fell, so did the British (within our purview). The US is next. It has alienated most of the international community.
I cannot, in all conscience, come to see your beautiful natural landscape (much as I would like to), because I am not prepared to put one $1 of my money into the US coffers. I find that sad. I am careful not to buy anything that emanates from the US. This includes my lovely Vegemite. Sob, I let go of that.
I won’t live for more than the next 25 years so I will not see the utter destruction that our pestilential species wreaks on our habitat. My sorrow is for all the other species with whom we live that we will consign to our own fate.
Go, you kids, say it all and say it out loud. Do not brook any interference from anyone. Be brave, stay brave. And kudos to you, the leg irons and incarceration will hurt.
V
Tears came to eyes when I read the piece about the students.
Yes, a few of them may have come to conclusions which we may not overmuch like to hear, but hey, -at least they aren’t so wholly tuned to ‘Channel Garbage’ now, and their consciousnesses have begun to wake up.
THAT is the important key to social change, -the moment when we arise up out of our comatose state and take to the new skies…
Let’s recall that the journey of a 1,000 miles begins with just a little first, faltering step, (and that we ALL had to start somewhere!)
An exemplar could be Phil Ochs, -your exceptional countryman who at one time went through the military academy at Staunton, Virginia.
Brainwashed? -yes, -at first, but then his epiphany and conversion, the road to Damascus yielded light, and he became one of the leading figures in the protest against Nixon and Vietnam (and he was always more radical than Dylan, who he fell out with in later years). He spread a lot of good seeds in his very worthy stint upon the artistic stage.
If you wish, see Phil’s biography go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ochs
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Then too, regarding seminal artists who had maybe inauspicious starts, -there is another US singer / songwriter, -John Prine. He went through military training and was in the army, prior to ’seeing the Light’ and ‘kicking against the pricks’ (-to use that neat biblical phrase!)
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prine )
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These days we have the likes of Bright Eyes / Conor Oberst, carrying on the long tradition of those who have awoken from a deep sleep and now help bring enlightenment to their fellow beings.
**I think enlightenment, -like a good song, is kinda catchy!**
One person wakes, and then nudges and rouses their neighbor, then they in turn nudge their neighbor… and so on.
We each are little molecules jostling along.
One person may be spreading the TB of darkness among their fellow passengers, but hey, - the next person is spreading Light and love, ~ enlightenment and uplift.
Okay, if that’s how it works, let’s put the flame of inspiration under our couches and ‘burn, baby, burn’!
The story was very moving. I read all of it which I rarely ever do! The sad part about all of this our troops are not in Iraq fighting for freedom! It would honestly be acceptable if they were! They are fighting for corporate greed! The kind of people who are determined to steal Iraq’s valuable oil reserves for only a song. And US servicemen are the ones paying the full price for their greed. But, I can understand why they (servicemen) try and delude themselves it’s for Iraqi freedom. It’s has to keep the bitterness and hatred from consuming them. They are stuck in a bad position that makes less sense with each passing day. The greedy b…… who put them there have no desire to bring them home to live. How our leaders could do this to fellow American’s is criminal? Ask our troops to die so they can make more money? How so called ‘Patriotic’ American could ignore the lies, destruction and the death is even more troubling. Then have the nerve to call kids ‘traitors’ because they don’t agree with the insanity of their war on innocent people! There isn’t a one of those folks who is honorable. In fact, they are worse than those who started a totally unnecesary war. What has happened to us as a nation? When we don’t have a gram of compassion left in our souls for the harm we are doing?
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am GWB….
…….and the moral of the story is; sacrifice your soul for financial success!
How backwards is that?
This country is so spiritually challenged. In my mind, it is “the number one” silent epidemic.
Have these Luddites running the school taught the students about THE BILL OF RIGHTS? Well they(the Students)remembered the lesson that day. GOD BLESS THEM.
This article left me in shock due to the fact I AM A STUDENT FROM WILTON HIGH SCHOOL and life-long artist encouraged by teachers since 3rd grade and during High School was asked to do work for 9/11(Nov. NyTimes of that year) and WAS NEVER THWARTED COMPARED TO THE OTHER “patriotic” work that was basically sucking-up material. Principal “Dean” Canty is a great example of ignorance at even the height of principals office in public education can cause the dwindling of a good education from students set in a VERY upscale region. I’m sitting here discussing with a friend his raising in a private Catholic school(Va.) putting on a play based on “Lost Highway”-early 90s film based around the killing of a wife. Now how is that based on education and how is learning about true events in the Iraq War not a feasible subject. My experience at WHS was that they were quite unaware of any real issues and stuck to very simple and non-bias ‘facts’ to simply educate students on style of morals/inspirations. There were however great examples of teachers going beyond their high pay(mind you its Wilton, CT) to teach the students about learning in life, making yourself unique and importance of being part of the world, and how not to agree with the status norm/quo due to its obvious ignorance and gang-like qualities to try to stop kids from learning the truth!!!! It makes me sick just to think that thats what they are teaching kids today, “students asked whether they could perform the play for their parents. Canty said no. They could not perform the play at Wilton High, or anywhere else.”-from article. This would be more prone in McCarthy Era or Hitler’s cleansing of the arts, not at a high school, sounds more mobster than doing his damn job. ASK FOR THE MANS RESIGNATION, HE IS A PUBLIC SERVICE WORKER AND HIS OFFICE OF COURSE CAN BE INFORMED OF HIS OBVIOUS LACKING QUALITIES!