A pro-life Christian claims her expressed religious beliefs are being used as grounds for her termination from a private school. What’s more, the revelation of her opinion came only at the prompting of a student and lasted for but a brief exchange before the regular lesson resumed. The firing was understandably received as ‘quite shocking.’
For context, Anita Meston, who formerly instructed secondary students at the United Kingdom’s Biddick Academy as a history and French teacher, says a student interrupted her lesson to ask a non-sequitorial question about her views on abortion. Her Christian-informed view of the practice did not sit well with the student, nor as it turns out, the administration. Of course, as gets pointed out in a subsequent television interview, it seems quite likely she would still have her job if she identified as an atheist who supported abortion rather than a Christian who did not.
“Anita, if I could start with you, see if I’ve got the story right,” the host of a a daytime news broadcast called ‘Talk’ began. “So you’re a teacher at the Biddick Academy State School in Sunderland, and back in March you were fired for telling your pupils where you stood on abortion. You said you were pro-life. You didn’t promote this discussion. A pupil asked you where you stood. You told them. Latterly, you also revealed to your pupils that you support Israel for voicing your opinions to your pupils. You were fired,” he went on.
“They say they were alleged complaints from pupils and parents. I mean, my take on this is this is a. It’s obviously to do with your Christian beliefs, it’s also a free speech issue. I mean, are we to say that if a pupil asks a teacher, I mean, we’re not talking about five-year-old kids, are we? We’re talking about mature pupils. If a pupil asks a teacher for his or her opinion on something, are we to say that they must never tell the pupils. This is not an educational atmosphere, is it? Well, take up the story and tell me how you felt when you were informed that for this you were fired,” he said before turning the show over to the teacher to speak.
“Well, I was very shocked, obviously, because once the lesson was over, I hadn’t really given it much more thought,” Ms. Meston started. “I was very popular with pupils and staff at the school, and I have a lot of experience teaching. I’ve openly shared my views before, and I have never been castigated in any way. I’ve worked in lots of different schools. The fact that the pupil approached me with a question, I felt she deserved an honest answer from me. To build up a relationship with any student, you need to be honest, and in no way was I trying to harm anybody or cause any distress. It was a brief answer, an honest answer, and to the point, based on personal experience,” she added.
Later, Meston clarified remarks on the show about how everything unfolded in the classroom. “No, that’s not quite how the story unfolded. I was a cover teacher. I’m not a history teacher. I’m a French teacher. I was asked to cover this lesson at the last minute, so no preparation except you quickly got a few minutes to read through. It was about Dresden and [inaudible], and the pupils hadn’t had a permanent teacher for a while, so it was quite hard to gain any enthusiasm,” she recalled.
“So I then tried to parallel it with Israel and Palestine, trying to get some conversation going. Right. One boy leapt out of his seat and said, “Mrs. Meston, I’m pro-Israel. Are you?” And I said, ‘Well, yes, I am.’ From the point of view of the hostage taking, I believed it was evil. I said, “I lament the fact that innocent people in Gaza were getting killed, but I said I believe that Hamas are evil, and they are at the the core of the problem here.” And that was basically it, really. And then I carried on with the rest of the videos about Dresden, and then just before the end of the lesson, the question before abortion came in,” she said.
Watch the interview in question below:
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video