Dan Holden teaches middle-school socal studies class, and burned a small American flag to get his students to think and write about the flag-burning issue. The story’s here.
As this story takes place in Kentucy, you can imagine what happened. Kentucky has a law against flag desecration, but it’s likely unenforcable due to the Supreme Court ruling that flag desecration is protected speech. So how are the reactionaries going to try to punish Mr. Holden’s brazen attempt to … get students to think about an issue?
The district also alerted city fire officials, who are conducting their own investigation.
“Certainly we’re concerned about the safety aspect,”
Another article says, thankfully, that
… the evidence doesn’t warrant filing a charge of criminal wanton endangerment — causing significant risk of serious injury or death.
So, they were going to try to bust Mr. Holden for “safety” reasons. That’s pretty pathetic, in my book. But there’s a lesson to be learned from this:
If you’re going to burn a small American flag in an effort to get students to think about the flag-burning issue, then make sure to burn said American flag under a properly-functioning fume hood.