The last couple of weeks have been interesting in that I have once again witnessed the idiocy that we have labeled “freedom” at its finest. Somehow I feel our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves with the thought of have we have corrupted their common sense approach to government and societal freedom and turned it into the nonsense we now call American society. And let me qualify by saying that I still shed a tear when the national anthem is played, would love to ship off all those who roast our President on the nightly news, and shiver to know we have two students in our school who refuse to stand for the flag because we failed to educate them with the simple fact that their forefathers died to give them the right to be stupid... all in the name of "political correctness."
Ok so I am a bit fired up this week. It began with news that an expulsion hearing for a young man who pushed a teacher was dismissed because the teacher did not feel comfortable being “roasted” by the kid’s attorney and our schools (especially on the west coast) now run in fear any time the word “lawsuit” is mumbled. This is due to a long history of any knucklehead who wants to challenge the “system” usually wins in the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, schools understand that if they are sued, the scarce monies they are given to educate children would quickly be gobbled up by some nutcase who doesn’t want to follow the rules.
This incident was followed by a young man who “loaned” his property to friend only to “steal” it back and demand retribution. This little matter took a colleague two full days to investigate. When the school told his parents that we actually had film showing the young man walking with the property, the parents quickly attacked the school official demanding their child was not capable of such and act and demanded the see the film. Now… if memory serves me, we have a section in our agenda book of rules dedicated to “Things Not to Bring to School.” This section it CLEARLY reads “Do not Bring Things to School You Can Not Afford to Lose… THE SCHOOL IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST OR STOLEN ITEMS.” So… why did we lose two days that we could have focused on providing a quality education trying to prove that this kid was lying?
Between lunch on Friday and the final bell I dealt with round three of a racial conflict, an potential girl fight over “mad dogging (aka bad looks at each other)” a parent who insisted that we could not hold a truancy hearing because her innocent son wasn’t ditching; only to find that “little Johnny” was ridding the home of any phone message or letter which implicated him in misconduct, and finally explaining to a mother why it was ok for me to question her son as to why he had gang references on his notebook because he had “only ran to a fight” and we were not “picking on him” because he had be warned TWICE about the graffiti.
ARGH!!!! As we sat around at the end of the day discussing the sheer nonsense of our week the thought occurred to me. What if… the Empire actually did strike back? What if… a student was sued by the teacher for putting hands on him? What if… a school official refused an apology from a parent who just cussed them out for something their kid ACTUALLY did. What if… a teacher took little Johnny and Sally to court for inflicting Traumatic Stress Disorder? What if… communities ran kids/gangs out of town for destroying public property? Would the world change? Tell me… what exactly is it that we need to do to get the fella with the white hat back on the horse without threat of some judge who is more interested in his or her own political agenda than serving the spirit of the law?
