Other articles by Richard Choquette:

Education leaders must end social promotion

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Perhaps we should shelve all the political posturing around the Olympics and admit to China that freedom of speech isn't all it's cracked up to be.

My mother was teaching American culture at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing during the buildup to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. She helped tie on armbands as her students prepared to march in demonstrations.

Before the ambassador recommended that Americans leave, she exposed her diplomats-in-training to a variety of slices of our culture, including sitcoms, hymns and even Robert's Rules of Order.

My mom was an expert at running meetings. But when her students discovered that they could "appeal from the decision of the chairman" during a mock meeting, they got a bit carried away. Every decision was met with an immediate appeal from some student who wanted to get in on this novelty.

Even during Tiananmen, all Chinese were aware of the political sacrilege of speaking out against their chairman. Since that time, China has entered an era of escalating prosperity, but freedom of speech has not been part of its formula.

Is it really different in America? Our high-sounding constitutional protections often fail to deliver.

The Achilles' heel of American democracy is the workplace. If an employee's expression annoys or embarrasses the employer, either during or outside of work, he or she risks being fired.

Two examples of our tortured freedom appeared in the Aug. 6 edition of the Arizona Daily Star. Pima County Legal Defender Isabel Garcia's participation in a protest is under review ("Defender's role in protest probed"). I was fined for trespassing at a school council meeting where I served as the elected chairman ("TUSD librarian fined for trespassing at school").

Garcia's case might be weakened by a 2006 Supreme Court decision against a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who disagreed with his superiors.

In Arizona, we have a school council law that states, "The purpose of this section is to ensure that individuals who are affected by the outcome of a decision at the school site share in the decision making process."

This law would presumably protect my efforts to implement a student-discipline policy that would enable teachers to get back to teaching at our school. Well, my idealism was certainly dealt a blow in the Pima County Justice Court.

Administrators in the Tucson Unified School District won't admit that their mistakes have perpetuated the conditions in our underperforming schools. Our instructional efforts don't stand a chance when teaching positions aren't filled with qualified personnel, social promotion is condoned, and students are not held accountable for their disruptive behavior.

As teachers' appeals are crushed with retaliation, I can't escape the impression that our system of public education has embraced Chinese management techniques.