I'm glad I'm not an educator. Trying to teach kids while at the same time nanny them in accordance with the bigotries of the parent population — as interpreted by administrators — would wear too heavily on me. Take this story:

At issue is whether Chase's opinion column advocating tolerance of homosexuals was suitable for a student newspaper distributed to students in grades 7 through 12 and whether newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell followed protocol in allowing the column to be printed.

A kid writes a column advocating tolerance, and her supervisor gets fired. Oh, that's almost funny.

Of course, this kind of nannying is precisely what you have to expect in schools, especially public schools. Which makes this point seem risible:

"This is a real threat to quality student journalism if an adviser can be removed for not having censored a perfectly legitimate story that there was no legal reason why it shouldn't have been published," said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Virginia.

What is quality student journalism? I'm not sure I've seen it.

I'm not suggesting that public schools shouldn't censor student journalism. Why not? Institutional self-censorship happens to journalists all the time. Might as well prepare the little blighters for the real world of blight.

Still, that doesn't mean we can't protest every instance. Why? Because these instances all originate in other people's protests. So, the public (especially the government-run) sphere must be and always will be a contentious one.

But in this case, the whole thing appears more idiotic than usual: Tolerance can't be tolerated. That seems to be the upshot.

Of course, little children, no matter how hairy their crotches, must be protected from mere mention of homosexuality. They may see it on the tube and hear about it (and see it) in the halls . . . and experiment beneath the bleachers. But let's not let the school paper address it!

When I was in school, I knew I would some day work as a writer. But I avoided student journalism for the same reason a sane man avoids a madhouse. Yes, it has something to do with the matter at hand, but it undoubtedly teaches more bad habits than good.

My friend Don H. is now a teacher, but in high school he worked on The Comet. This student newspaper was as forgettable as any, but the one issue that had some hope of being lively was confiscated by the principal. I never saw it. Why? Because Don interviewed my friend Naki, who was heavily into hard rock. In the interview, Don asked about the prevalence of drugs in rock 'n' roll. Naki responded by saying that he thought it was too often overdone, but in moderation . . .

Oh, that opinion (and a mere opinion, at that), was too much for me to read. The fact that I already knew Naki's opinion (after all, anyone in the small school could do the same as I: just talk to the lad) didn't matter. I was not alloweed to read it. And thus it was not allowed to be debated.

That's how administrators and teachers make of student journalism a cesspool of inanity and pabulum. Nothing else is allowed. A real debate? On a controversial matter? Where young people are encouraged to think? Not allowed. Not in our schools!

The principal in question was much admired in the community. In that same year he came into my World History class and gave a little speech. It was about how the job of the school wasn't to teach, but to help us learn how to learn, as he put it.

I almost chortled aloud.

I had been in school over eleven years at that point, and I had indeed learned how to learn. But did I learn this at school? Well, in the first grade, perhaps, when I started reading encyclopedias, and when my teacher had me lecture on solar astronomy. More important, though, was Sunday School, provided not by the taxpayers but by tithing Christians, where we read good literature (the Bible) and discussed (if not debated) interesting concepts, and where I was encouraged to read church history and apologetics. And on my own, as I read perhaps hundreds if not thousands of books by the time I listened to the principal lie to me and my classmates.

Few of my fellow students could learn a damn thing without help. They had not learned how to learn. And their best chance, that year, was suppressed by that very same educator. A real debate of interest to them? Nope. They had to be protected from that!

I often think about the suppression of our school paper. As bad as teachers often are, I remind myself that they are ruled by administrators doing an often impossible task: trying to corral students and teachers in a system most useful for purposes other than education.

What purposes? You know, such high-minded purposes as babysitting and indocrtrination into the sports culture.