Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem
It was the kind of moment teachers covet. An advanced AP English class focusing on poetry, and a student brings in a poem that caught his eye, hoping to discuss in the waning moments of the period how the poet uses language in his work.
The teacher, David Olio, a 19-year veteran of the South Windsor School District and winner of Connecticut’s highest award for teaching excellence, didn’t know the poem in question, but he took a look and walked the students through it in the remaining time.
The poem the student discovered and brought in was “Please Master,” an extremely graphic account of a homosexual encounter published by Allen Ginsberg in 1968 that begins: “Please master can I touch your cheek / please master can I kneel at your feet / please master can I loosen your blue pants.”
Clearly, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” this wasn’t. But the students were 17- and 18-year-olds, some of whom were taking the course in conjunction with the University of Connecticut and receiving college credit.
One day after the class, Olio was placed on indefinite, unpaid leave by the district. Seventy-two hours later, the district began termination proceedings against him. Three weeks after that, he agreed to resign.
Reading the poem in class, the district found, showed “egregiously poor professional judgment,” Olio’s termination letter stated. “By so doing, you violated the trust placed by the Board of Education in you as a teacher, you brought discredit upon the South Windsor Public Schools, you undermined public confidence and parent trust in you as a teacher, and you put the emotional health of some students at risk.”
The unceremonious dismissal of a beloved teacher has thrown the town of South Windsor, population 25,000, halfway between Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., into tumult. The local newspaper denounced him in editorials. Alumni, town residents, and Olio’s current students crammed into Board of Education hearings to testify on his behalf.
One alumna said she was embarrassed to say she was a graduate of the high school. Olio’s church minister testified that “every time David talks about teaching you can see his face brighten, his hands start to move, and the energy emerge…This is my preacher talk now, but I believe this is what God has created David Olio to be and to do.” The student who brought in the poem testified how Olio inspired him to become an English educator. Parents lamented that a single, tragic mistake could end an otherwise sterling career.
But was it a mistake? That has been the line of many of the parents, students, and teachers who have rushed to defend Olio—that he made a single error in judgment, one he should not be forced to pay for for the rest of his life. To many, Olio’s case points to a changing culture around education, one in which teachers are on a hair trigger vulnerable to losing their livelihoods due to declining union protections and the rise of high-stakes testing. According to some members of the school community, the controversy began when one student in the class begged off a test in a different class the next day, claiming he (or she) couldn’t concentrate due the reading of the poem. The story quickly blew up on social media in the town before the local press picked up on it and disciplinary proceedings began.
“I also feel sorry for the remaining teachers who will undoubtedly feel like they need to censor themselves, even at the collegiate class level, in light of the one strike and you’re out policy we appear to have adopted,” wrote one parent of a Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem - The Daily Beast:
