July 6th 2009

Crazifornia: Zero Intelligence In Concord Schools

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chool days, school days, good old Golden Rule days. Remember that? Oh, how far we have slid down the slope to craziness here in California, the state where the book pictured here is a perpetual best-seller. Today’s lesson comes from the Conta Costa county town of Concord, where the 9th grade math class was just a bit short of Golden Rule behavior:

The ninth-grade students threw things around the room. Shortly after Christmas, students told the Times, someone exploded Play-Doh in the microwave, resulting in a smoke-filled classroom that teacher Michael Huang refused to air out. In other classes Huang taught, they said, students lit trash can fires and smoked cigarettes or even marijuana. (Source)

So, come May, after Huang failed to get his classroom under control – perhaps because the kids just couldn’t understand his thick Taiwanese accent, who knows? – a fifteen-year-old student, referred to in the news articles as Allison Moore’s daughter, videotaped a raging paper ball fight and a friend anonymously sent it to the assistant principle in a plea for discipline so she might, you know, learn something in school.  Seems resonable enough. Except not here.

A friend of Moore’s anonymously sent the video to Dick Nicoll, interim superintendent of the Mt. Diablo school district. The following week, the school suspended Moore’s daughter for two days after she admitted she had taped the class without permission, a violation of the state Education Code.

Confronted with this particular bit of lunacy, the school did not admit an error and provide a lesson in maturity to its students; oh no, anything but that!

Principal Gary Swanson said he could not discuss the suspension. He disputed Moore’s claims, saying students received “appropriate consequences.” Student Services Director Margot Tobias upheld the suspension, and Moore has appealed to the assistant superintendent.

“She may have felt that her purpose was valid,” Tobias wrote about the taping, “but as a result the privacy rights of all involved were violated.”

Privacy rights?! Does the “privacy rights” of disruptive and undisciplined students now supercede any right of a good student to expect having the opportunity to learn?  Apparently not.

Sadly, this story is hardly one limited to California. Across our nation, students are taught by administrations life lessons they will carry with them for a long time: Avoid blame, cover up, avoid making hard decisions, forget morality.

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March 24th 2009

Our Crumbling Civilization: Zero Tolerance

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ighth grade was the grade that almost turned me into a teacher, because I had three great role models.  All were great teachers, but that’s not what drew me to them; it was the certainty with which they approached the molding of our impressionable minds.

Miss (not Ms., not back then) Karvellis could nail a kid in the back row with a perfectly aimed, dusty eraser, putting a quick end to whispering, sleeping, note-passing or whatever other disrespect was going on back there.  Mr. Hill would periodically stroll down an aisle, hands behind his back (hands he’d secretly covered with chalk dust), grab a kids head, tilt it back, reach into his mouth, and extract a wad of gum, leaving a mouth-parching deposit of chalk behind. And the third teacher – who’s name I’ve forgotten – handled boys who cheated or broke the rules quite fairly:  Write an essay or take the paddle.  We all took the paddle, and got out before the girls, whose only option was the essay.

They taught me respect for the rules, and more importantly, respect for the intelligence and guidance of adults.  Every kid smote with an eraser, trying to draw saliva back into his chalk-filled mouth, or walking bandy-legged after a smacking knew the punishment was just, the crime was real … and their behavior would change, at least for a while.

Now, thanks to idiot educators and zero tolerance, we have Savana Redding’s case being argued before the Supreme Court.  “Educators” in her small AZ town thought she might have violated the school’s zero tolerance drug policy, so:

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.” (NYT)

How mind-numblingly stupid, first that something as strong as two Advils is considered a drug, second that any rational thought is cut short by zero tolerance, and finally, that anyone would strip-search an eighth grader – yes, an eighth grader.

How different Redding’s school experience was from mine; how different her opinions of “educators” must be.  What, exactly, did they educate her on that day?  Respect for authority? Rational thought? Acting responsibly?  How much better it would have been for her if she had encountered one adult that day with the rational cognitive power of Ninth Circuit judge Kim McLane Wardlaw who said,

“It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.  More than that, it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

Amazingly, the school officials also have zero tolerance for hand-slapping, in this case, their hands being slapped by the court, which found the school to have violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches.  That sounds like a conclusion any rational person would agree with, but the school has appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which is hearing it this session.

And they’re sooo bold in standing by their decision!

Mr. Wilson (the assistant principal) declined a request for an interview and referred a reporter to the superintendent of schools, Mark R. Tregaskes. Mr. Tregaskes did not respond to a message left with his assistant.

Wilson thought he had grounds for the search because Redding had acted rambunctuosly at a school dance two months earlier, and he thought she had served alcohol at a party before the dance … two months ealier.  She says it was soda and kids that age are goofy.  Who sounds more educated to you?

The ACLU is handling Redding’s case.  In this case, I’m on their side, and hope – counter to their usual performance – they help prevent the further crumbling of our civilization, at the hand of educators who cover their zero ability with zero tolerance, and in so doing, are destroying the minds of the children we entrust to them.

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