Teacher Bias for Obama Belittles Student

A Cumberland County school teacher is defending her comments to a fifth-grade pupil who expressed support for John McCain in her class last spring.

The exchange at Mary McArthur Elementary School was captured by a Swedish television documentary crew, and the video is making the rounds on the Internet including YouTube. VIDEO HERE

In the video, which reportedly aired in Scandinavia earlier this week, teacher Diatha D. Harris calls the Iraq War “senseless” and tells one student whose father is a soldier that McCain would keep troops there for 100 years.

The classroom discussion begins with Harris asking the class who they support for president. When two students say McCain, she responds with “Oh Lord” and “Oh Jesus.”

She asks them why they are you pulling for McCain or Obama. One student says she supports Obama because “he is making good changes” like “not having a fight between Iraq, and having soldiers killed.”

“So in other words,” Harris says, “Barack is going to end that war in Iraq.”

One girls says she supports McCain. When asked why, she tells her teacher “I think it’s because of my parents are going for him, too.’’

Harris points out that the girl’s father is in the military, then says to the class that Iraq is a “senseless war.”

“And by the way,” Harris tells the girl, “the person that you’re picking for president said that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to. So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years.”

The girl appears to be embarrassed and doesn’t respond.

Harris said three children in the class had parents in the military.

In an interview late Thursday, Harris, 53, said somebody edited the video to make it appear she was an Obama partisan imposing her views on a child. In fact, Harris said, she made gestures after pupils voiced support for Obama.

“It has been doctored,” Harris said. “They didn’t show anything about Obama.”

In another sequence on the video, however, Harris sports an Obama button during a pep rally at the school.

Wanda McPhaul, a spokeswoman for Cumberland schools, said county officials were shocked when they were alerted to the video.

But McPhaul said Superintendent Bill Harrison, who will post his own videotaped statement on the matter on YouTube later today, is prohibited by state law from revealing what might happen to Harris.

Earlier this week, reports about the video on the Internet said Harris was a teacher in Asheville. She used to be a teacher in western North Carolina, but moved to Fayetteville within the past couple years.

Teacher's comments about McCain, war stir anger By Francis X. Gilpin Staff writer

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