I just got this e-mail describing how different situations might be handled in 1967 versus 2007. If you've had similar experience, post them in the comments.
School 1967 vs. School 2007
Scenario: Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1967 - Vice principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his own shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lockdown, the FBI is called, Jack is hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun a gain. Counselors are called in to assist traumatized students and teachers.
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1967 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police are called, SWAT team arrives and arrests Johnny and Mark. They are charged with assault and both are expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario: Jeffrey won't sit still in class, disrupts other students.
1967 - Jeffrey is sent to the principal's office and given a good paddling. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra state funding because Jeffrey has a disability.
Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1967 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.
Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some Aspirin to school.
1967 - Mark shares Aspirin with the school principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police are called and Mark is expelled from School for drug violations. His car is searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario: Pedro fails high-school English.
1967 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by local human rights gr oup. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that making English a requirement for graduation is racist. US Civil Liberties Association files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.
Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover Independence Day firecrackers, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up an anthill.
1967 - Ants die.
2007 - Homeland Security and the FBI are call ed and Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism Teams investigate parents, siblings are removed from the home, computers are confiscated, and Johnny's dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario: Johnny falls during recess and scrapes his knee. His teacher, Mary, finds him crying, and gives him a hug to comfort him.
1967 - Johnny soon feels better and goes back to playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces three years in federal prison. Johnny undergoes five years of therapy
The saddest part of this story is that Harvard's bookstore is so desperate to prevent students from shopping online that they kicked out a student who was writing down the prices to compare them online later. They claimed that the pricing is copyrighted, which, of course, it's not.
Face it: if you charge more for a book in your store than I can get it online, there's a really good chance I'll get it there. If these stores are so desperate for the business, they should have a terminal in their store and referral programs set up with all the major online retailers. That's about the only way it would work for them.
One plaintiff in the case was a white woman in Louisville whose son was denied a transfer to attend kindergarten in a school that needed more black pupils to keep its minority population at the district-required minimum of 15 percent.
Excuse me, but isn't still discrimination even if the kid is white?
We only hope those schools will continue to value racial diversity and will make the effort to identify and use other methods to integrate classrooms.
How about accepting whoever lives in the area? If you're in a primarily white town, the students will reflect that. If you're in a highly hispanic or black neighborhoods, you'll probably end up with hispanic and black children. Discriminiation will never end if we have all these laws that focus only on skin color (no matter what the reason).
Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.
…
"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.
……………………hmm…………….. well,……………… What do you say to this?
These teachers are damned lucky they didn't do it in my kid's school.
Most of the students stood up and said, "That was a good one." "Yeah, you got me." High fives were exchanged.
Either the school is totally downplaying this or CNN has got some serious problems with their accuracy. Either way, if even one child was crying and taking this too seriously, the "prank" should have ended. I still think it shouldn't have happened in the first place and I'll just go back to what I said before: it's a lucky thing for them it didn't happen at my kid's school. I would have been in the princicpal's office the same day.
But something about this press release bothers me and apparently I'm not the only one:
"The children went to sleep and did not discuss it the following morning."
The absurdity of that statement is staggering. They are trying to convince people that in a class of over 60 students, after teachers pulled a 'prank', that not one of these ~60 students said anything about it the next day? Not one of them teased another one about falling for the 'joke'? Really? Not one?
The person who posted this comment on the Slashdot forums is right on.
From the "WOO-HOO!" and "Heck Yeah!" departments comes the story of the University of Nebraska. Wisconsin may have refused to help the RIAA, but the U of N actually took it all the way:
If there were any doubt that the university is really irritated by the RIAA's requests, it has requested that the RIAA pay the university to reimburse its expenses from dealing with this
Hackers have gained access to databases at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), making off with the personal information of 800,000 current and former students, employees, and faculty.
The data breach is thought to be the largest of its kind at an American college or university.
I've always said it's less about the security of the system than it is the value of the data stolen. If it weren't so easy to use and abuse people's personal data, then ID Theft wouldn't be such a problem.
With Credit Seucrity Freezes, a crook could have all your data and still do nothing with it.
In a recent newsletter, the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes:
Despite complaints from privacy advocates and parents, schools in states across the country are considering using fingerprint scans to track students. Kids at Sandlapper Elementary in Columbia, South Carolina, have their fingerprints scanned to pay for their breakfast and check out library books, while officials at the Hope Elementary School District in Santa Barbara, California, have just announced similar plans to use finger scans to charge students for their lunches.
Let's be clear about this: People need anonymity. It is up to the individual to decide whether to disclose that they were at a particular place, associate with particular people, or are involved in particular events. That's what it means to be innocent until proven guilty.
This is really simple folks: Criminals lose all their rights, law abiding citizens retains them all. For the necessity of investigation, people who can be reasonably suspected of being involved in wrong-doing can be looked at more closely (with a warrant), but other than that, no government body should be tracking, monitoring, or data mining information about anyone.
We have to be especially careful in the schools lest our children grow up never knowing that they aren't free.
You will be amazed by how much you can learn about a person if you only pay attention to the signals they give off. Read this book to learn the language.
