Isn’t there a minimum age for juvenile delinquency?

Jim | New Mexico | Tuesday, August 31st, 2004

Third-grader arrested for disorderly conduct

Espanola school councilors have an effective tool to use when browbeating 8 year-old children into submission - the cops.

The boy’s mother, Angelica Esquibel, said he was sent to the school office Thursday when he raised his voice to a teacher after hitting another child with the basketball.

The counselor told him officers would handcuff him and put him in a cell “until he changes his attitude,” Esquibel said.

Two officers tried to tell Jerry to go back to class and told him he had a choice � class or jail, Esquibel said. When the boy got upset and loud, they handcuffed him, she said.

The police report says Jerry was arrested, taken to jail, booked and released to his parents.

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Hometown or homegrown?

Jim | Georgia | Friday, August 27th, 2004

Hometown T-Shirt Causes Problems for Gwinnett Student

This one hits close to home. Literally. Grayson High School, the location of this incident, is a dozen miles from my house.

Terrell Jones is a student at Grayson. He and his family are damned Yankees*, just like me and mine. They are transplanted from Hempstead, NY and that is the source of Terrell’s problems.

A student at Grayson High School, in Gwinnett County, was stopped by a school administrator when he was spotted wearing the shirt that read “Hempstead, NY 516), a reference to the Long Island town, and its area code. But, the administrator only saw the first four letters of the town’s name, and believed it to be a drug reference.

After being questioned by school officials, Terrell finally convinced them to do a search on the internet and see that there really is, in fact, a Hempstead. After determining the existence of the town, the boy was allowed to return to class. The boy’s father is still furious.

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It’s a short trip from a casual hug to “you know what”

Jim | North Carolina | Wednesday, August 25th, 2004

Hug lands student in detention

Central Cabarrus High School forbids bodily contact between students beyond the holding of hands. 15 year-old Ashley Mignosa ran afoul of the rule on her second day of school this year.

“Like the second day of school, I hugged my boyfriend and I got a warning saying I wasn’t allowed to hug or I would be sent to the control room.� Mignosa said Tuesday.

Mignosa did hug someone again, though — a friend in front of the school. She was later punished for it.

Ashley received three days of detention for the illicit touching. The article doesn’t note if the huggee was punished as well.
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The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.

Jim | .General Topics | Tuesday, August 24th, 2004

Harshness of red marks has students seeing purple

It seems that red is losing favor as the ink to use when correcting papers. It’s too authoritarian and bold. It intimidates kids and could even harm their self esteem. Purple is soft and comforting and it is much better for their little psyches.

“If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening,” said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. “Purple stands out, but it doesn’t look as scary as red.”

A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.

“I do not use red,” said Robin Slipakoff, who teaches second and third grades at Mirror Lake Elementary School in Plantation, Fla. “Red has a negative connotation, and we want to promote self-confidence. I like purple. I use purple a lot.”

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Dodgeball is dead. What can we kill next?

Jim | California | Tuesday, August 24th, 2004

Recess gets regulated

Schools are tightening the screws and getting rid of dangerous activities like free play time. Dodgeball is out and so are games like tag where interpersonal contact are required. Did you and your friends make up your own game? Better write the rules down, otherwise it might get banned.

Eight rules for Switched, a game Briauna and her friends made up, were scrawled on a piece of notebook paper: Rule No. 2: “You must say ’switch, switch’ two times to begin the game.” Rule No. 6: “Make right choices no yelling.”

Briauna and her friends drew up the regulations so the game wouldn’t end up in shouting matches and hurt feelings - which could get Switched tossed off the playground in the Rio Linda Union School District.

Concerned about safety and injuries and worried about bullying, violence, self-esteem and lawsuits, school officials have clamped down on the traditional games from years past.

Gone from many blacktops are tag, dodgeball and any game involving bodily contact. In are organized relay races and adult-supervised activities.

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Lynchings are alive and well in South Carolina

Jim | South Carolina | Friday, August 20th, 2004

Pupils charged with lynching in fight with teacher

It’s both not as bad as it sounds while also being even worse. Two students from Brentwood Middle School have been charged with lynching their teacher. The confusion you are feeling right now is because progressive lawmakers in South Carolina have defined lynching as “any act of violence by two or more people against another”.

A middle school student is in juvenile detention after she and her sister were charged with hitting a teacher.

North Charleston police arrested the 13- and 14-year-old Brentwood Middle School students last week and charged them with lynching.

The teacher was slapped in the face and the girls repeatedly hit her when the teacher attempted to break up a fight between the sisters, according to a police report.

The teacher was struck after she put one of the girls in a headlock. Hmmm. Two sisters are fighting, a teacher tries to break them up. They won’t listen. She physically restrains one. They don’t stop fighting and she is hit. Yup, sounds like a lynching to me.

Should the girls be in trouble? Of course they should. They shouldn’t have been fighting. They should have stopped when the teacher told them. They should not under any circumstances have hit her. But arresting them for lynching? That is just completely ridiculous.

(Tip credit to Precinct 333.)

The new Official School Board Dictionary defines lists “distracting” as a synonym to “harrassing”

Jim | Alabama | Thursday, August 19th, 2004

Elmore County bars Confederate flag, Malcolm X emblems

What do the Confederate flag, Malcolm X, Star of David, Palestinian Flag and a purple ribbon all have in common?

The Elmore County Board of Education voted to change its dress code to adhere to its harassment policy, said James Myers, assistant superintendent. The policy defines harassment as anything that distracts and prevents students, teachers or faculty from completing work.

Anything that distracts is considered harrassment. That’s a dangerous policy, and I’m not only talking about those certain young ladies who are distracting no matter what they wear.

A Dixie Outfitters t-shirt is harrassing, a t-shirt with Martin Luther King on it is not. So says the county’s “diversity committee”. This committee must include at least one minority member from each community in Elmore County. No requirement for non-minority members is noted.

I understand the need to keep a viable and productive learning environment but this is quite simply pre-emptive overkill. A simple policy giving general guidelines is more than sufficient. If a student makes an actual disruption with their clothing then that particular student may be repremanded. There is no need in the world to create an Orwellian oligarchy to parse out which particular images are “plusgood” and which are “ungood”.

I also have a huge problem with the body nominally in charge of educating kids actively participating in the destruction of the English language by equivocating “distracting” and “harassing”.

Zero Tolerance for…well, pretty much everything.

Jim | California | Wednesday, August 18th, 2004

Kids expelled for ‘rejecting’ each other?
Lawyer challenges MVUSD’s proposed harassment policy
Harassment policy to be reworked

The Murrieta Valley Unified School District is enacting the singularly most restrictive and ridiculous ‘hate crime’ style policy I’ve ever encountered. In an effort to prevent bullying and in response to a possibly racially motivated fight last year they are prepared to implement school policies to forbid students from being mean or making others feel excluded.

The [Pro-Family Law Center] says national race-based organizations came to the district to propose language for the policy, which prevents students from forming or openly participating in groups that tend to exclude, or create the impression of the exclusion of, other students.

“Based on a plain reading of the proposed regulation, a student could be expelled for simply claiming to be a member of La Raza (’The Race’), a Latino organization, or for playing rap music near white students,” said the law group’s statement.

Under the policy, [vice president of legal affairs for the center and MVUSD parent Richard D.] Ackerman says, no group would be allowed to engage in any behavior that makes others “feel left out.”

The jocks can’t get together to talk about sports because that would make the geeks feel left out. The geeks couldn’t discuss something from programming class because that is almost sure to intimidate a less technology savvy student. Drama club? No way. Any club is by its nature exclusive as it is a gathering of people with similar tastes or objectives. Say goodbye to Band as well as the A/V club. These all exclude people who do not follow the groups’ basic objectives.
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Just when did ‘progressive’ become a synonym for ‘perverted’?

Jim | New Mexico | Monday, August 16th, 2004

Teacher has kids tasting flavored condoms

About the last thing I would expect a teacher to tell girls in the 9th grade is to put his condoms in their mouths. The New Mexico Health Department disagrees; they think it’s wonderfully appropriate.

According to a report in the Santa Fe New Mexican, parent Lisa Gallegos said that when her 15-year-old daughter balked at putting a condom in her mouth, instructor Tony Escudero told her, “Come on, sweetie, have a little fun.”

“I agree with sex ed 100 percent,” Gallegos, whose daughter attends Santa Fe High School, told the paper. “I also teach it here at my home. But I think that was inappropriate and wrong 100 percent.”

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There’s no place like home

Jim | California | Monday, August 16th, 2004

Driver Orders Crying Girl, 5, Off Bus 5 Miles From Home

What should a bus driver do when a student tells them that the very last stop on the bus route is not theirs? A common sense answer would be to bring the child back to school. Unfortunately bus drivers in Rialto, California are not being selected for their common sense, or even their humanity.

A 5-year-old girl ended her first-ever ride on a school bus stranded and in tears because a Rialto school bus driver ordered her off five miles away from home.

First-grader Sarah Macias told the bus driver the stop at Mango and Walnut avenues in Fontana. Calif., wasn’t hers, but the driver told her to get off along an open field where there were few homes and no stores. It was her first bus ride.

A passer-by found the crying girl and brought her to the local police department where they were able to contact her parents.

(Tip credit to Richard Emerson)

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