(February 19, 2015 at 2:43 pm)Chas Wrote:(February 18, 2015 at 5:48 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: If we were talking about a cemetery, I would find that reasoning more compelling. Whether she has a cross on her grave or not is of no concern to me. What we are talking about is a secondary memorial at a school. And if a memorial to her belongs at the school at all, it should be about her qua teacher, not about anything else. It should have a message like, "She was a great teacher," not a message about her religion. Whether it is words or other symbols makes no difference for this.
That's a reasonable argument, but does that mean it can reference nothing but her as a teacher? No mention of her being a wife or mother, a hospital volunteer or musician?
My gut reaction is that it would be better to have nothing that is irrelevant to her as a teacher. (If we were talking about a school that was somehow connected to a hospital to which she volunteered, then it would be relevant to the organization as a whole, but otherwise, it is irrelevant to her connection to the school.) However, I have no strong objections to her school memorial including irrelevancies per se, as long as those irrelevancies are not otherwise objectionable. If, for example, she was a bigot, I would not want any bigoted opinions immortalized in the memorial, nor would I want it to mention if she were a member of the KKK. Nor do I want to know what her favorite sexual position was, if she was into bondage or whatever, or any of many other such things that have no place in a middle school setting. (Please don't misunderstand that; I think that sex education belongs in middle school, as well as grade school, but I don't think particular teacher's preferences about such things should be immortalized in memorials at the school.)
So we can divide everything into three groups:
- Things that are relevant to her as a teacher (the presumed reason for the memorial in the first place),
- Things that are irrelevant but otherwise unobjectionable, and
- Things that are irrelevant but are, for whatever reason, objectionable for the memorial at the school.
I would recommend leaving off everything that fits 2, but I don't have strong feelings about it per se. However, as a practical matter, it would be better to omit everything that fits 2, as people are going to get confused about what is "objectionable" and what isn't. The problem goes away if one simply excludes all irrelevancies.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
