Monday, October 12, 2009

Delaware Elementary School Gets Tough on Dangerous Weapons


ALERT TO PARENTS: Your child may not be safe. Here's the latest weapon dangerous thugs have been caught bringing to school. Thankfully, some Delaware students are safe thanks to tough administrators and a "zero tolerance" stance on such harmful devices.
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Here we go again. A child is expelled for carry a weapon to school. Shouldn’t we rejoice? Schools are kicking butt to keep schools safe and thank God they caught some wicked little bastard before something evil might happen. So let’s look at a specific instance, the type of thing which is the most typical application of tough discipline standards and see what the schools use to brag how tough they are on such things as drugs and weapons.

In a Delaware elementary school near Newark, Delaware a six year old boy was expelled for carrying a dangerous weapon, a Cub Scout utensil that can be used as a knife, fork, and spoon. Oh my God, it can be used as a knife!!! IT’S A DANGEROUS WEAPON.

The kid’s evil intention, he was so excited about being in Cub Scouts we wanted to use his little Cub Scout gizmo with his lunch.

Read the following article and be prepared to vomit. The source is the New York Times often inclined to support some of the real insane policies of our modern public schools. Even a quick read of this article, the reader will quickly get to the heart of the matter. If this doesn’t make readers angry, what will?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?_r=1&bl


To say that America’s public schools have lost touch with reality would be one of the ultimate understatements. The sad flip side of this, to the extent that their nonsense is molding the next generation of American citizens, they’re creating what will be reality in the not too distant future.

Public schools will always have to deal with the broader issues of society but they also have many issues that are uniquely their own. Regardless of the problem, their efforts to deal with anything identified as a challenge will almost always be handled horribly.

In no area do schools fail more miserably than dealing with student conduct from disruptive behavior to what the radical ideologues perceive as absolutely unacceptable conduct – students (gulp!) expressing their faith in a higher being.

Zero tolerance translates to total nonsense in the real world. The school systems’ propaganda mouthpieces pound their chests and proclaim “zero tolerance” is living proof no unacceptable behavior is allowed in their schools. Zero tolerance – break the rule and it’s “outta here.” Parents then must scramble between having their kids sent to reform school or some other alternate program where students with behavioral problems (or at least the system has charged them as such) are banded together, hope they can get their kid in private or parochial school if the child would be accepted and the parents have the funds, or opt for home schooling (how many parents are prepared for that especially given the way school systems persecute “home schoolers.”)

The way zero tolerance works is that the school bureaucracy’s experts, consultants, and legal counsel work together to formulate a huge catch all list of all possible infractions which should apply to the policy. Everything must be clearly defined in black and white. There will be no gray areas, maybes, or places where a little bit of professional judgment can come into play. As such every possible item that could be a drug or weapon is clearly defined. Therefore, anything other than food that a kid might stuff down his throat is a drug just wait until the school authorities start to declare zero tolerance on sugary sweet or high fat foods…don’t laugh, suspension for cupcakes is just around the corner!!! If a kid has aspirin, Tylenol, ibuprofen or a cold capsule in his or her possession, the penalty is the same as if the child were caught with heroin, cocaine, or crystal meth. Likewise with weapons, even items like plastic knives and screwdrivers make the list. Certainly any kind of metal knife but also scissors are included. There was a case not too long ago when a kid was expelled because he drove his father’s pickup truck to school. His dad worked construction. There was a pick ax in the bed of the truck. The kid was expelled for possession of a weapon. In Baltimore County, one of the early pioneers in zero tolerance nonsense, with in the span of one semester, two female honors students with very impressive resumes were expelled for having pepper spray dispensers on their key chains. Both had evening jobs and felt they needed protection to walk to their cars after work. It’s no little secret mall parking lots in Baltimore County can be dangerous after dark.

School administrations are politically correct paranoids. No school wants to be the seen of the next Columbine massacre or Virginia Tech shootout. Schools do not want to be accused of showing bias in how discipline is applied. Such accusations are not based on studying the merits of the case but only statistics used to tell a story. The sad reality is African-American male students have long shown a higher rate of suspension and disciplinary action. Rather than learning how to best serve these students and help them become effective responsible students and bring those numbers down the cowardly approach of the school system is to dream up more ways to expel white students and when all is tallied up, a weapon’s a weapon, even if Suzy Prep’s deadly weapon was a pair of eyebrow tweezers.

There are other disciplinary actions that are entirely discretionary such as what constitutes bullying. Generally bullying is a situation brought on when some kid says something about what another kid did that was upsetting. The kid’s parent blows a cork, and then stomps into school demanding to know why precious little darling is being “bullied.” What qualifies as bullying is not what we knew it as a generation or two ago. Today it is failure to act in a politically correct manner and having that behavior noted by another student in some contexts. Assertive disagreement or arguments can be bully episodes. It all depends who’s being charged.

Other aspects of behavior are ignored completely so how do kids get a road map of what’s right and wrong where something as fundamental as the Ten Commandments cannot be discussed even in the most secular sense as the simple exposure to what some religions believe (as in Christianity and Judaism) constitutes an attempt to indoctrinate students and defies the so-called wall between church and state. Students are taught extreme relativism and notions of “who are we to judge” but oops do something on the list and it’s “see you later.”

How anyone can read the tale of this wonderful kid in Delaware getting bounced out of school and not be furious at how schools are run. While many would see this article as being an extreme exception or “it can’t happen here” in their local schools, guess again. Parents must study in detail the behavior handbooks or other documents from which these Gestapo-like policies are spelled out.

Would it be overstatement to suggest that public education has become institutionalized child abuse?

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