By: Dave Hodges, The Liberty Beacon
Any parent that lets their child darken the door of a public school needs to seriously reconsider their options. No, it is not that there aren’t highly qualified and caring professionals in the education profession who truly care about the welfare of children, there are. However, the system of public education is irreparably broken and parents would be wise to take a closer look at the options that are out there.
However, let’s first take a look at increasingly dysfunctional system. Just as we see the governments of Spain and Greece using severe authoritarian methods In an attempt to preserve the status quo through the imposition of austerity, we are witnessing the same abusive leadership style from many school administrators who are increasingly turning to more authoritarian methods in order to preserve an antiquated and dying system.
Discipline With Love?
The premise behind any discipline plan should be to restore the offending child into becoming a fully functional contributing member of the classroom. In order to achieve that goal, discipline should be offered in the spirit of love and positive rehabilitation. Yet, all too often, this is not what our children are receiving. Increasingly, our children are being conditioned to accept totalitarianism complete with illogical and abusive consequences which are applied, all too often, to innocent behaviors.
Take the case of Wilson Reyes, a seven-year-old elementary school student from the Bronx who got into a tussle with a classmate over a $5 bill. Subsequently, the school officials called police, who arrested Reyes and promptly shuffled him off to jail and allegedly handcuffed the child to a wall which was followed by a 10 hour interrogation.
A North Carolina public school strip-searched a 10-year-old boy (J.C.) in search of a $20 bill reported missing by another student, despite the fact that the boy vehemently denied possessing the money. The assistant principal, a woman, reportedly ordered the fifth grader to strip down to his underwear and she personally subjected him to an aggressive strip-search that included sticking her hands inside his underwear. The missing money was subsequently found in the school cafeteria.
Now it is even a crime to bring a two inch toy gun to school made out of LEGOs to school. Nine-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and subsequently suspended.
An 8-year-old Taunton, MA. boy who was tossed out of school in December 2009 and ordered to undergo psychological testing because his primitive looking stick-figure drawing of a crucified Christ was considered too violent by school administrators. School officials deny that this is a case of religious persecution. I wonder if the favorite symbol of Muslim Brotherhood was depicted instead, if there would have been a suspension of the child.
Brockton, MA. officials were forced to pay out nearly $250,000 in legal fees and settlement costs when the mother of a 6-year-old sued after her son was suspended for sexually harassing another first-grader.
Barbara Best, director of foundation relations and special projects with the Children’s Defense Fund sums up this insanity when she stated “when a child as young as 4 is suspended, something is wrong. The suspensions of grade schoolers should be a wake-up call to school administrators that zero-tolerance discipline policies just don’t work.” These cases are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Read original here: http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/02/12/2420/
Leave a Reply