Tag: schools

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The Grass Grows Under My Feet

They said the psychiatrist told them he didn’t believe their son had a substance abuse problem. But by then, the boy had other problems. After the disciplinary hearing, “he just broke down and said his life was over. He would never be able to get into college; he would never be able to get a job,” Linda Bays said.   Roanoke Times, 2015-03-15

On March 14th, the Roanoke Times posted a story–a true story– about a school district which suspended an 11-year-old boy for possession of marijuana.

The “marijuana” was not marijuana, but here’s what happened– and it’s a profound story that authorities far and wide should study carefully, because it’s the story of the most wicked and stupid actions of authorities everywhere.

A snitch told the principal at Bedford Middle School that a boy– known as R. M. B.– had some marijuana in his possession that he was showing around, on the bus, or maybe it was in the bathroom, or, wait a minute, I think it was in the classroom.

The boy was apprehended and searched and a leaf of something was found. The expert pedagogue consulted google and concluded that it was a marijuana leaf and summoned the police and suspended the boy from the school for 364 days.

First detail of note: it was a leaf, not a bud. It does not appear to have occurred to the authorities that this detail mattered in the least.

Second detail of note: the boy was 11 and both of his parents were, or had been, teachers in the public schools in this area. No matter: zero tolerance. Authority must be respected.

The leaf was sent away to be tested.  Take note: the authorities did not wait to see if it really was marijuana– they acted before any real evidence existed.   They acted based on disinformation.  Do I need to say something like “lord help us if authorities can punish us for something someone said that might or might not be true before doing the due diligence to determine if it is or is not true”?

Months went by. The suspension had a profound effect on the boy’s self-esteem, feeling of community, trust in authority figures, and happiness. The leaf was tested: it was not marijuana. But authorities must be respected and respected authorities do not make mistakes that have unpleasant, destructive consequences on innocent people. Test again! Still not marijuana. Test again!!

I’ll bet that the authorities were “disappointed”.

Think about that.

Do you think they were elated to discover that the young lad was not a hardened criminal drug addict?  I have no doubt that they were disappointed. At this stage, the story is about authority that refuses to admit that it makes consequential mistakes. No: that refuses to admit that it is stupid.

That is what they know, and we know, they must admit to, if they are to honor the truth: we were stupid. We were not worthy of your trust and respect. We are more concerned with our personal status and comfort and authority than we are with the welfare of a young, innocent if slightly mischievous 11-year-old boy. Screw the boy: authority must be respected.

The parents rightly– well, too late, for my taste, but eventually– launched a lawsuit. Here we see how far the authorities will go: they announced that it wouldn’t have mattered if it was real marijuana or not because the school system’s policy states that possession of anything that is an “imitation” of a prohibited substance can have the same consequences as possession of the real thing.

Are there any criminal laws that state that a person can be convicted for doing something that looks illegal to an idiot regardless of whether or not they actually did something illegal? Maybe there is– but it still seems stupid. It is stupid.  I refuse to sound moderate and temperate and diplomatic about this:  the school board, and their lawyer Jim Guynn, are stupid: they didn’t care if he really had marijuana; they wanted to punish him for having something that  morons in the administration of a school might mistake for marijuana.

What they are obviously, manifestly angry about is having been made fools of.  And only a genuine fool would be this spiteful about that.

The truly moronic thing about it, though, is that anyone ever thought it was a good idea to have a one-year suspension for possession of real marijuana. This is a policy that only a psychotic person could believe in. But we are, unfortunately, a psychotic society. We approve. We elected the fools that appointed the fools who implemented this idiotic policy.

What happened is that the authorities become vested in their own actions and judgments. They have to continue the charade because the moment they drop it, it they confess that they are inadequate human beings without common sense or decency.

The drug war is the most obvious misguided policy of the United States government, but listen and learn: there are a host of other candidates. Homeland Security, the War in Iraq, the War in Viet Nam, oil subsidies, sports stadium subsidies, non-negotiable pharmaceutical rates, and countless others that are clung to because the authorities have become invested in them and can’t bear to admit they were stupid to implement them.

What could President Johnson do in 1968? Admit that he made a mistake that cost thousands of American lives or continue the war until something could be tarted up to look like victory “with honor” and then walk away and hope it all doesn’t collapse until the helicopters have been dumped into the ocean?

What could Bush do once he — perhaps– realized what an egregious error the war on Iraq was?

What can Obama do now that he has doubled down in Afghanistan?

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Even Enemies Have Real Paranoids

Schools across the United States, in response to the entreaties of Homeland Security Fuehrer Ridge, are implementing emergency procedures to be used in case of… an emergency.

What emergency? In the letters sent home to parents, they don’t often say. They say things like “in light of increased concerns for community safety”.

So what, exactly, do they think is going to happen. The plans include evacuating the students to the gymnasium and ensuring that there is an “adequate” supply of food and water. For what? How can you prepare for an emergency when you are not prepared to seriously discuss exactly what kind of emergency you will be facing?

So it’s up to us sober-minded observers to speculate. Let’s consider some possibilities.

1. Foreign terrorists crash an airplane into the school. Not all that likely, you have to think. Why this particular school and not one of 8,000 others in the vicinity, say, of Chicago or New York? Is it realistic to prepare every school for an airplane crashing into it? How will the terrorists find your school in particular? Schools don’t stand out like World Trade Centers and Pentagons. And do you honestly think that even a terrorist wants to target children? (Well, maybe they do.)  There’s a reason why they chose the World Trade Centre— adults screwing other adults. So let’s leave that one aside for now.

2. Nuclear Bomb: They haven’t found any in Iraq yet. What a disappointment that must be to the Bush Administration. But if they did find one and they found that Iraq, or Al Qaeda, or somebody, had the means of delivering the bomb to New York, the gym would not be adequate protection, and all that duct tape and plastic won’t keep the radiation out. And even if it could, all the parents, in their unprotected workplaces, would be dead. Let’s not talk about that one either.

3. Chemical, Radioactive, or Biological Weapons Attack: according to some very smart people, the only biological weapon that could possibly pose a serious threat to large numbers of people is smallpox. Anthrax just doesn’t travel very well (how come you never hear about it any more) and most other biological agents can’t be delivered over a large area very effectively. Only the U.S. and Russia have any stores of smallpox, and as far as we know, they haven’t been selling them off to tin-pot dictators like they did chemical weapons, so smallpox is probably not a big concern.

There are the nerve agents, chlorine, and other chemical weapons. So I suppose these schools are concerned about somebody attacking the school with chemical agents. How? Dropped from a plane or launched from a mortar or rocket-launcher, you have to suppose. How would these villains get close enough to the school to launch such an attack? They could smuggle the compounds and the delivery technologies into the U.S., maybe through Mexico or Canada, and then drive to your town and position themselves near your school and, bingo! Or they could get into many, many small planes and drop the agents over the school yard during recess.

Then all the students rush into the gymnasium and the teachers duct-tape the doors and cover them with plastic.

Be honest. You can just see that happening, can’t you?

Part of being a rational, sane person is the ability to judge risk accurately and effectively. There are many bad things that could happen to your child at school. He could be bullied. He could be molested. She could fall and hurt herself. The school could be hit by a tornado or hurricane. There could be a fire or an earthquake.

Or some lunatic with easy access to semi-automatic weapons could walk in the front door, shoot the security guard, and kill dozens of students and teachers.  But we are not going to do a fucking thing to prevent that.

This has happened hundreds of times.

In the history of the U.S., not a single a school has ever been attacked by a terrorist.

Do you feel safer now?

The real reason schools are taking these precautions: It’s all Tom Ridge, you know. Yes it is. He is the Bush Administration’s official in charge of “homeland security”. Now, think about this. Who makes a better Republican? Someone who feels safe and prosperous and secure? Or someone who believes that enemies are out there on all sides, just waiting for an opportunity to whack us? Of course! Ridge is out to create an entire new generation of republicans, of fearful paranoids ready to grant their government any powers at all to save us from “evil” people out there who are jealous of tax-free dividends and gas-guzzling SUVs!

Think about this: the last time our society immersed itself into a culture of paranoia and fear was the 1950’s. Remember all the bomb shelters and McCarthyism? Right. Ten years later, we had the greatest uprising of youthful dissidence in the history of this country. Interesting to think about.

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School Portrait Pimps

What is going on here?

Your kid has to go to school. It’s required by law. It doesn’t matter whether your kid goes to a private school or public school, he or she is required by law to be there until he or she is 16.

So, while we’ve got your kid, we’re going to take an assembly-line picture and you have to buy it.

You don’t actually have to buy it. I lied. You can choose to be “different’ and disappoint your child and not buy it or you can buy it. If you’re poor, you might not buy it because it is fairly expensive, especially if you take the “package”. If you take a picture with your own camera, it might cost you fifty cents. But the school photographers charge a lot more than that for a basic print. And, of course, they always offer you packages.  You can’t just pick the one you want: you must buy the package that contains the one you want.  They offer you these little wallet-sized photos that your kids can hand out to all their friends and you can mail to your relatives. Buy it. And you can buy the deluxe glamour photo if you want. That’s really expensive.

The portrait pimps operate extremely efficiently. They are not interested in getting a personalized shot of your kid. They don’t want to waste any time at all following your kid around to see what she does, who her friends are, or which piece of playground equipment is her favorite. No, the kids are marched into a room,– assembly line style– and snapped in about 45 seconds. They are snapped in front of a cookie-cutter non-descript amorphous background. The photos are printed for everyone even if you don’t ask to see the larger prints. They are sent home– the teachers have to get the photos to the kids and force them to take them home. You have to see them. Your kids see them. Your kids friends see them. Buy.

I saw a really remarkable set of school photographs once. They were photos I would have liked to have. It was taken at Calvin Memorial Christian School in the early 1960’s. The photos were taken of each student at their desks or in their classrooms at an activity. Then they were all printed on one 5 X 7, in black and white. It was an amazing photo. You were immediately struck by the diversity of poses and expressions. It was filled with character and revelation and colour, even though it was black and white.

You can just imagine what the Portrait Studio Pimps would think of that. Lord almighty! You’d have to go into each classroom with a camera and think about each of 20 or 25 or 30 shots. You’d have to take time to do it right. You have to compose the shot, set the aperture and shutter speed, focus, aim, and shoot.  It must have also taken more time to print. And then, of course, you lose the rubber-stamp enlargements that are so lucrative to sell to the fond parents.

The company that comes in to take and sell the photos does not have any competition. I questioned the idea once when I was a teacher in Chatham I was told that it would be impractical to have numerous companies compete. The school negotiates with and chooses a vendor and they have exclusive access to the students and teachers for that year.

Does it even matter? Are you happy about the fact that your child is photographed in exactly the same style, with the same background, and the same lighting, as 40 million other children in every town, city, and hicksville on the entire continent?

Of course, it does have the unintended bizarre side effect of collectivizing public memory of school children. The image of our children at school is that frozen, bland, colourless portrait photo of an awkward nervous kid sitting in front of a strange cameraman because the teacher told him or her to. It’s almost like a tattoo or a uniform or, yes, a rubber stamp. Approved. Collectivized. A certified consumer.

Why is it impractical? Because the photo studios don’t want to ask parents first if they want to have a picture taken of their children in front of a colourless, characterless backdrop and if they would be willing to pay $50 for a “package” of prints. If they did that, some parents might reasonably say “no”. By forcing all students to have shots taken and then handing out the pictures at school and forcing the children to take them home, you have to believe, you guarantee much higher sales. Of course it’s practical. It just doesn’t guarantee enough profits to the company selling the photos.

Why do schools allow this?  The yearbook.  Yes, they get the standardized cookie-cutter roster shots of every kid in every class for the yearbook.  Indispensable.

I always feel bullied by this system. I don’t like cookie-cutter photos, and I don’t like them being shoved down my throat by people who care as much about your kid as they do about photography– nil. I think the schools should take the upper hand here and start dictating terms. Stop using the cookie-cutter approach. Get out there into the classrooms on the new “annual photography day” and start taking pictures of students doing what they do at school, studying, listening, interacting, being smart-alecks, getting stumped, whatever. Use digital cameras so film cost is not an issue, and students can pick the best shot to use for their “official” school photo.

October 13, 2002

The technical quality of school portraits is not very bad, usually. The faces are well-lit, and a large format camera is usually used, so the pictures are sharp and accurate. For many families in the 1960’s, it might well be the best technical photos they have.

But with the vastly increased popularity of 35mm cameras, however, that little niche is no longer quite so prominent, and I suspect a lot of families no longer bother with the school portraits. They take their own very good pictures.

The newer digital cameras offer excellent picture quality and would allow school photographers to take as many shots as they need to to get a good one. They can load them all onto a computer and then print out exactly as many as parents request, instead trying to shove “packages” down our throats.