General Discussion

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
No surprise there

I guess we'll also have to disagree about the need for discipline in schools or in the military.
Actually we are disagreeing about leadership techniques.

When my son's teacher asks him to do something, I expect him to do it. I expect this of all students except in the most extreme cases, like a teacher demanding sexual favors or a teacher instructing a student to hurt someone else. I never said the military wanted automatons, but don't tell me they don't expect soldiers to follow orders except, as I said, in rare cases. When a student defies a teacher or a soldier defies a superior, of course I expect them to receive warnings about the disciplinary consequences of their actions. Even toddlers get warned about time-outs. You think protesting an order while failing to comply is not insubordination? That's exactly what insubordination is.
That depends heavily on context, circumstances, intent, and style. Sometimes the right thing to do is to hear the protest out, other times you acknowledge it and agree to discuss it later. Dictatorial behavior is rarely if ever appropriate and in the long term it is a recipe for failure in teaching and the military. IME, high schools at times seem more interested having automatons than the military. I say that as someone who served in the Army and taught at the high school and university level.

I don't understand your fixation on the fact that the teacher threatened suspension if the kid refused to comply. Every command or order inherently contains the threat of discipline if you fail to comply. That's what an order is. Otherwise it's just a request. You seem to be arguing that it was not so bad for the teacher to ask the kid to turn the shirt inside out, but it was just dreadful and "unnecessarily aggressive" that he insisted on it, even threatening disciplinary action if the kid continued to refuse. By that logic when a student protests an order, teachers are supposed to just say, well ok, and walk away.
No, it was poor technique and poor leadership. That in the end resulted in something trivial hitting national media. No matter what other bad actors there were, it all started due to bad judgement by the teacher.

And we'll have to agree to disagree on the reasonableness of going to the media with this complaint without talking to a single adult at the school - not the teacher, not the principal, not the superintendent, not even someone on the board of education. I call that a jerk move by people with an agenda.
I did not say it was a reasonable behavior, I said it was reasonable to expect it to happen and it happens more and more frequently. I discuss why further on

You seem to think all those people couldn't be trusted to handle the situation without retaliating against the kid or staging a massive coverup and that there would be no way to possibly protect against such an occurrence. I find that ridiculous and paranoid.
Some can, some cannot. I saw some bad acts by teachers and staff, including vengeance, when we returned to the US so our daughters could finish up in US schools. Very few to be sure, but it did happen and there would have been no consequences had the parents not pushed the issue. Watching out for it is reasonable after something gets splashed in the national media, denying it happens is not. I provided just such an example from PINAC (http://www.photographyisnotacrime.com/2013/02/27/california-high-school-principal-orders-student-to-delete-video-of-teacher-stealing/) (I’ll take care of it, now destroy the evidence). Be glad to discuss our experiences in the Calvert Country school system if you like.

You say you have no agenda. I believe otherwise. I think the pro-gun forces were hoping this would be a great example of "anti-gun hysteria" and the superintendent took the wind out of their sails by saying the shirt was fine and the parents would have known that if they had bothered to ask. So now the story is changing to... uh, well, maybe the dress code needs to be designed so that it can't be reasonably interpreted in more than one way. And maybe this school isn't anti-gun, but the teacher certainly is!!
Some of the usual suspects here have tried to make it a gun incident. It clearly is not and pointing that out to them has caused some distraction on this thread. I am not watching what is being said elsewhere.

You are also incorrect about the agenda being about guns. The core issue is anti public school/ anti public school teacher/anti-union sentiment that is running rife through this country. Teachers know all about it too. Taverner in another post in this thread (http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2440601) made an observation “Right now, every single educator is on pins and needles…Don't test them right now, is my advice”. Taverner is a good poster but he got the polarity reversed this time. Teachers are under a microscope. Any actions that can get questioned will in the least convenient manner and forum, AKA the Washington Post test. That is the real world of education today, and it goes on at the university level as well. It’s like gravity, it sucks, but we have to deal with it. This teacher chose poorly. Hopefully he has learned from it and this goes away.

It's all so ridiculous.
I tend to agree with you there. As elleng posted in this thread, (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022440171#post126)
"GREAT way to throw away a teaching moment...Hate to say this, but some teachers don't use their heads OR their discretion." It think that sums it up well.

There was an unnecessary confrontation of some sort. A teacher who chose poorly started it and parents that took it to the media rather than keeping it in the building fanned the flames. Bad choices all round and in the end it just fuels the anti public school/ anti public school teacher/anti-union sentiment.