Term Task

Introduction

Every day, we are faced with decisions: simple, complex, easy and so on and so forth. Most of us are a aware of the fact that we must take responsibility for every decision we make. As teachers, we have this responsibility towards our students. By analysing how other teachers take respoinsibility for their decisions, we learn more about both teachers and learners.

Description of the scene

As part of my term paper I have chosen to analyse a scene from Boston Public, a tv series broadcast by Fox. In episode 220, there is a transgender student running for prom queen. A group of students who oppose the transgender student demand to speak to the Head of the school so as to complain inasmuch as they believe the abovementioned student should not be allowed to run for prom queen. It should be pointed out that only the first minute of the scene has been taken into account for deep analysis, while some other parts of the same scene will be mentioned to avoid confusion. Below is the link to the whole scene:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=hnyplzTITzk

Analysis

The analysis is divided into two sections:
- whether the decision was a human act or not;
-whether it was a good decision or not.

Section 1

The decision taken by the school Head not to ban the transgender student from the competition was a human act for three reasons:
- There was consciousness on the part of the Head, i.e., he was in full possession of all his mental faculties when making the decision;
- He was aware of the consequences his decision could ensue. Whenever faced with a controversial issue, it is known that there will be people in favour of it and against it. Nevertheless, the Head of the school decides to be true to his beliefs of equality of opportunities for everybody regardless of sexual preferences. To him, it was more important to be coherent with this line of thought than to avoid controversy and trouble;
- There were other choices available such as banning the student from the contest, suspending him for number of days and the like. Nonetheless, the Head makes the most difficult decision: face the problems that could arise from allowing the student to run for prom queen so as to show the school that discriminating against people leads to misunderstanding, hatred and isolation.

Section 2

The Head's decision to let the transgender student run for prom queen was a good decision for three reasons:
* it was good in itself: it would have been much easier for the Head not to let the homosexual student run for prom queen than to let him do it. His decision caused a lot of controversy among teachers, students and some parents.
*it had a good intention/purpose: his decision was not selfish, had no benefits for him. He did not want to discriminate against any student, he believed in the student's right of self-determination, in his right to come to terms with his own identity.
*the circumstances were good: though at the beggining there is strong disapproval on the part of some students and parents, most teachers supported the Head's decision. They talked to the student to see if he was fully aware of what he was going to do and once they checked he was, they simpathised with him.
In the second place, it was a good decision insofar as it did not go against the principle of kinship . As far as kinship goes, it was his duty as a Head to secure that all students have the same rights, no matter what their sex, religion or race is. As for reciprocity, the Head did not expect anything in return for what he had done, but for students to acknowledge other people's right to do the same for them. His decision had an implicit message: this time the one who was being discriminated against was a transgender student; next time it could be a Jew, African, Catholic, female or male student...

Conclusion

All in all, the Head's decision to allow the homosexual student run for prom queen was both a human act and a good decision for all the elements of which these two concepts are made of are present. He could have banned the student from the competition, preventing any kind of problems with classmates and parents. However, this would have been against his beliefs, something he could not stand given his position in the school.