SA teacher's joke costs him US job

A SOUTH African expatriate teacher has caused a race furore in the US after being fired by a private school where he made "provocative jokes" such as saying he would struggle to tell black pupils apart.

But more than 360 pupils have signed a petition to demand the reinstatement of Barry Sirmon, 58, who is now considering moving back to South Africa.

Sirmon was fired from the elite Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Central Park, New York City, last month after allegedly telling two black children: "I hope I'll be able to tell you two apart."

The liberal school charges fees of more than R300000 a year and former students include TV star Barbara Walters, author Darcy Frey and physicist Robert Oppenheimer, known as "the father of the atomic bomb".

Sirmon's dismissal from his job has sparked fierce online debate in the US. Americans have complained the firing was "political correctness run amok", but some black parents welcomed the tough stand.

Others said he was "a product of a racist society" and "just a South African jerk [with] race on the brain".

But in a telephone interview this week Sirmon said his "joke" had been misreported by a parent and that he was merely mocking the stereotype - not the children.

He said he had made the comment when he learnt that his history class had a second African American pupil, who had a very light complexion. He made a sarcastic joke about "mixing him up" with the class's one dark-skinned pupil.

"I found in America, being a white South African, I'm automatically stigmatised as being a racist," he said.

Sirmon said the racism charge "particularly rankled" because he had received political asylum in the US in the 1980s after refusing to carry out orders targeting black liberation fighters while a conscript in the South African Defence Force.

He said he had also testified against apartheid at the United Nations and considered a Zulu woman to have been his "second mother".

Sirmon, a father of one, said his Afrikaans family came from the conservative town of Ventersdorp and that he visited his brother and sister regularly. He and his French-born second wife are now considering moving back to South Africa.

Sirmon taught history at Fieldston for 11 years, having obtained master's degrees in the US in education and history. The teachers' union representing him will oppose his dismissal at an arbitration hearing next month.

About 360 of the 592 seniors at the school have signed a petition demanding that his dismissal be reversed.

Pupil Emily Kling, 18, who organised the petition, told the Sunday Times that Sirmon was "beloved" for ridiculing prejudice and that "his humour is a powerful tool for inspiring students".

"At the beginning of each semester Mr Sirmon would go around the classroom and ask each student his or her name and origin," she said.

"He would then present a commonly held stereotype about each student's origin and name, attack the stereotype [and] disprove its worth. Many students consider Mr Sirmon the best teacher they have ever had."

School head Damian Fernandez said in a letter to parents that Sirmon was fired after a "careful review" and that the incident "saddens me".

Sirmon said a parent had overheard children discussing his remarks in her car and reported them to Fernandez.

"The quotes he told me were outright racist quotes I'd never say in a month of Sundays, but there was no investigation."

Regarding the comment he had made about mixing up the children, he said: "My sense of humour is very South African. You say something so outrageous it's just ridiculously funny, but ... Americans don't often understand that."

Among 280 comments in the New York Times, Johnny Araujo, a former pupil of Sirmon's, wrote that the teacher "would make many insensitive remarks to anyone ... you pick a race and he had a joke for it." But, said Araujo: "He does so in good spirit for the sake of confronting how sheltering the Fieldston experience can be."