Teachers removed from teaching for "dangerous" scientific experiments

The author of the project "Evolution of the Gauss Gun" and his parents



43-year-old teacher in a Los Angeles school, Greg Schiller (Greg Schiller) was popular and respected students, but this did not save him from punishment, writes the newspaper LA Times. The school administration considered that some of the scientific projects of schoolchildren looked “dangerous” and in essence were weapons. Now, students and parents began a public campaign to get teachers back to school. Under the appeal to the administration, several hundred signatures have already been collected.



The incident that led to the suspension of Schiller, occurred in February of this year. Then the school Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts held an exhibition of research projects.



One of the students made a pneumatic "gun", which pushed out small objects with the help of compressed air. The students emphasize that the device did not function, because it was not connected to the compressed air cylinder. They also say that President Obama himself personally tested the much more powerful pneumatic gun at the White House scientific exhibition in 2012.

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The author of another project (ninth-grader in the photo above) made a prototype Gauss gun , which fired with small “bullets”, using a running magnetic field to disperse the projectile. The coil is connected to one AA battery.



When the student suggested to the teacher the idea of ​​such a project, he advised him to use a more scientific approach, to make several options for the device, test them and conduct additional analysis, say the student’s parents, also teachers.



However, the representative of the school administration considered that the air gun is very similar to a weapon. Schiller himself, although he did not even have time to see the device in reality (only in photographs) was immediately sent home. The administration confiscated both projects as evidence. Schiller was suspended with the official wording "supervision of the design, research and manufacture of weapons imitation."



Not only pupils and parents spoke in defense of the teacher, but also other teachers: “As far as we can judge, he was punished for teaching science,” says Warren Fletcher, president of the United Teachers Los Angeles Association. They emphasize that Schiller was a representative of their trade union at school and repeatedly quarreled with the administration because of changes in the employment contracts of teachers.