Category: ZT & PC

This is True does a good job of highlighting various abuses of “Zero Tolerance” policies at schools. These are policies, usually directed at (a) weapons and (b) drugs, in which any violation, even a hit of a violation, results in major punitive damage — suspensions, expulsions, etc. Which may sound okay, but which, when intersecting with the real world, results in miscarriages of justice (and, as a result, disrespect for the rules themselves, and rules in general).

Take, for example, two recent instances.

Michael Gonzales of Tarzana, age 7 and in the second grade, had a 1″ toy gun (picture here) on his key chain. He wasn’t waving it around, but another kid saw it and narced on him. Zap. Suspension for a day (it could have been expulsion) under the California Education Code, which prohibits the possession of an imitation firearm on campus.

After an appeal from Michael’s mom, worried that a firearm violation on his permanent record might impact his future academic career, an appeals committee retained the suspension, but,

“The committee has decided to change the reason for the suspension . . . from ‘knife/explosive/dangerous object — Michael brought a toy gun to school’ to ‘disruption/willful defiance — Michael brought an inappropriate toy to school.’ “

Yup, inappropriate toys are grounds for suspension, and a blot on your record. Don’t consider doing something like consulting with the parents first. “Smite him, centuwion, vewwy sharpwy!”

And don’t worry about whether Michael actually disrupted anything — or willfully defied anyone. No sign that actually happened, but, hey, we’re givin’ the kid a break here, right? After all, it’s better than saying he was suspended for having a “knife/explosive/dangerous object” (not quite sure which of those three the toy represented here in cloud-cuckoo land), right?

The local PTA backs the policy and the outcome.

“The parents support zero tolerance for weapons because children can start out with toy guns and before you know it, it escalates to real guns. You have to put it in their heads at a young age that guns are bad because if you don’t, you will have a hard time controlling them later.”

Right. Second graders with little key ring fobs are a direct link to gang-banging Trenchcoat Brigades. That makes perfect sense. Teaches kids a valuable lession, too.

The LA Times has two stories on this, quoted above.

The other story is supposedy from the Ottawa Citizen, though I was not able to find a search function on their site.

A student again, Aaron Appel, also 7, brought a wooden souvenir letter opener that his folks had brought from Africa to Manotick Public School. He was suspended for five days. “”It’s an exact replica of an African tribal knife,” the principal noted. “The parents are indicating its use is supposedly as a letter opener. I told [Aaron] that there is zero tolerance for such things in my school and we’re trying to keep our schools as safe as possible.”

Yes, because I’m sure there are no letter openers at school. And Aaron’s father, a teacher, suggests that pens and pencils, also dangerous items, should be on the ban list.

Hmmmm. I have a letter opener, also brought back as a souvenir, on my bookshelf at work. I wonder when I’ll get a call from HR about it.

I’m not saying that regulations about weapons at school are wrong. My biggest bitch here is that ZT policies are the chicken way out. They keep school district personnel from having to make judgment calls that might lead to law suits (and, frankly, our litigious society has to therefore take some of the blame). If they judge too leniently, maybe someone gets hurt. If they judge too harshly, they open themselves up to criticism and scorn. So instead, they choose oversimplified answers, and turn everything into a black-and-white, no-nuances situation.

Guess what. That’s life. We need to get over it, and act accordingly. Reality is not black-and-white. We need to teach kids that making judgments is what being an adult is about.

So, for example, the Gonzales case noted above is obviously silly. On the other hand, if Michael had brought a real gun, serious action would need to be taken (toward the parents, not to a 7-year-old, though). Where should the dividing line be? Well, that might take some real decision-making by school administrators. Can’t have that. Easier just to ban anything that looks like, or is played with, like a gun.

Again, the real crime here is what we’re teaching kids. We’re teaching them that the rules — the regs, the laws — are silly, arbitrary, extreme, and unjust. We’re squandering this part of their education. When they grow up, they’ll expect the law to be similarly silly, arbitrary, extreme and unjust, and how do you think that will affect society?

Feh.

Asian Bastard provides a fine rant about mindless flag-waving — inspired by some doofus in a van, proudly festooned, who showed all-too-common disregard for approaching emergency vehicles, even though everyone else was pulling over.

I could never quite articulate just why all this flag flying bothered me, but now I know: when the display of the American flag becomes a fad, a mindless display, a pompous badge, it turns that act from something noble and purposeful to something as vacuous as wearing a t-shirt with a Nike swoosh. I have more respect for those who burn the flag in protest than guys like Minivan Man; the flag-burners at least recognize the importance of the flag, even if they reject what it stands for.
No one should display the American flag, or any other symbol, unless they mean it; and if they mean it, they should live by it. If we don’t, that flag might as well be a Jack in the Box antenna head.

Amen, brother.

Of course, valor in the face of defending the homeland doesn’t necessarily imply intelligence, or even politeness. But it does, on a higher level, imply a moral virtue — which is, in turn, squandered when you act like a frickin’ doofus.

This is certainly not the first rant I’ve read on this general topic — how there seems to be an inverse relationship between driving consideration/quality and the likelihood of the vehicle being decorated with a flag, a Jesus-fish, a “Baby On Board” placard, or something similarly implying special status. I don’t know if it’s true, or if it’s simply that such folks are more visible targets of ire. But in either case, it’s certainly rant-worthy.

If you’re going to make a point of declaring your civic, moral, or paternal virtue — then follow up your “words” with deeds. Otherwise, you not only deny your beliefs, but you do so in a very public (and therefore damaging to those beliefs) fashion.

Hmmm. Sort of a mini-rant from me, too.

(Via Xkot)

Is it a bad sign when I find myself agreeing with our current Supreme Court?

In arguments this past week about the case I mentioned (involving peer grading in classrooms and whether this violated a Federal law regarding educational record confidentiality), the Supremes certainly seemed less than welcoming to the outrages clamed by the plaintiff.

Mr. Wright said schools should seek prior parental consent as they now do for sex education, special examinations and field trips.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that sounded like allowing one parent veto power over the class.
Mr. Wright said the law sponsors sought to shield the entire grading system and block schools from the “unfettered, unshackled right to disclose a record to anyone they choose,” even to publish exam scores in the newspaper.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist chided Mr. Wright, saying the attorney was arguing that an adverse ruling “would allow a teacher to do something that no teacher has ever done.”

(Via Overlawyered)

Our Tribute to Western Civ

A letter from Cynthia Peters, Associate Director of Public Affairs at Pomona College:

Thank you for making us aware of the Wall Street Journal articles. I had not yet seen them.
The article is correct in stating the Pomona College does not have a specific American History or Western Civilization course requirement for graduation. Among Pomona’s general education requirements however is one to “explore and understand an historical culture. Through immersion in a non-contemporary culture and its historical context, students develop an understanding of the historically embedded, evolving nature of human cultures and societies. The complexity of the task faced by historians in establishing historical causality is highlighted by involvement in the reconstruction of historical change.” You will be happy to know that countless Pomona students do take courses in American and European history, government and related areas. We offer an American Studies major as well.
The 2001-02 catalog provides a very nice description of Pomona’s focus on teaching intellectual skills versus specific required content. “The purpose of the General Education Program at Pomona is to nurture the intellectual skills in perception, analysis and communication that prepare a student for life-long learning. As change accelerates in knowledge, cultural values, and the professions, a liberal arts education must provide a broad base of content and skills that foster openness and rigor in on-going scrutiny of old and new ideas.” To do this, one certainly needs a historical context but specific content is only one means to the end of creating intellectual resilience.
You may be interested to know that 40% of freshman who entered this fall (49 of 394 students) received graduation credit for an AP exam in history (U.S., European or both), with a score of 4 or 5 on one or both exams. So it seems, that most of Pomona’s students have a good base in history.

I remain curmudgeon enough to think that a semester or two of Western Civ wouldn’t be a bad idea as part of the GE requirements — while “specific content is only one means to the end of creating intellectual resilience,” it’s also helpful for there to be common context upon which to build the interchanges between people that make for “on-going scrutiny of old and new ideas.”

While not wanting to disparage the achievements, nor the contributions, of non-European societies in making up modern American culture (and while also realizing that not everyone at Pomona was an American), modern American culture is primarily European in its basis, and understanding what that really means would seem to be of great importance.

I’m also pleased that so many Pomona Frosh are coming in with AP credits in history. I certainly hope that reflects a deeper understanding of American and/or European history than my AP English credit did in my understanding of literature. What I do know is that I took the full array of history courses in my high school, and any given semester of history in college blew the whole lot of them away in terms of what I learned. There was a quantum leap in sophistication — and expectations — between the experiences.

That all having been said, my biggest quibble at this point, though, is … who the hell wrote those passages from the GE requirements and catalog which Ms. Peters cites? They really sound like something Dilbert would be poking fun at. I’m all for complex sentences with lots of multisyllabic words (no kidding, Dave), but, really, when you start to sound like you’re crafting a mission statement that reflects the consensus of everyone on the faculty, noise begins to drown out signal.

I learned that from my liberal arts education, too. Or at least, I should have.

Does the reading aloud of a student’s grade in class constitute an invasion of privacy under Federal law? The Supreme Court will get to rule on the matter.

It happens thousands of times each day in classrooms across the United States. Students grade the papers of their fellow pupils and then announce aloud the results to the teacher.
To many instructors, this is a timesaving way of giving a pop quiz or checking homework. But to Kristja Falvo, a mother of three in Tulsa, Okla., such oral recitation of her kids’ grades in front of other students was an embarrassing and degrading violation of her children’s privacy.
[…] “There is a mentality in the schools over the last 10 years in which educators act more like a parent and make parental-type decisions with no consultation with parents,” says John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, Va., which is underwriting Falvo’s case. “What this case can do,” he says, “is send a message that maybe the schools should be a little more responsive to parents.”

No, what it says is that if parents object to anything teachers do, they can probably find a Federal statute to sue them under. Yeah, that should improve the educational system pretty quickly.

As a former teacher, I can certainly understand being sensitive to avoiding embarrassing students. On the other hand, this whole thing strikes me as another example of trying so hard to protect people from unpleasantness that we end up with nothing getting done at all.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, the National School Boards Association and the American Council on Education say peer-grading is a common practice in US classrooms. “The court of appeals’ novel interpretation would profoundly affect how teachers across the country educate students,” the brief says. “It would bar not only peer-grading but also many other commonly utilized, benign, and effective instructional methods that involve student review of others’ work, teacher evaluation of work in a group setting, and the like.”
The brief adds, “The effect of such a doctrine would be to proliferate lawsuits against school districts.”

At issue is a 1973 Federal law regarding confidentiality of student records. The intent is clearly to avoid grades and other transcript information being handed out to inappropriate people. To extend this into this arena … well, heck, does this mean that giving uneven verbal praise (or criticism) of students within a class is also a violation? What about posting (graded) papers up on the bulletin board, either all papers or the “best”?

“The Owasso grading practice is harmful to children,” says Dennis Owens, a Kansas City lawyer, in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs. “Educational practices that degrade and humiliate students undermine the efforts of counselors to build positive attitudes toward learning.”

When education becomes more concerned with making kids feel good, and less with … well, with education, then we’re in trouble. Not that making kids feel good (or not, inappropriately, making them feel bad) isn’t important, but it’s not the goal, but a tool toward that goal.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune does not refer to sports team names which is feels are denegrating to (i.e., derived from) Native Americans. Thus, for example, the Washington Redskins are never called the Redskins, only Washington.

It took a note to the paper’s ombusdman to let them know it was okay to refer to the Cincinnati “Reds” (since that’s actually is short for “Red Stockings,” which was their name when founded in 1869).

Frankly, I’ve never really understood the problem here. While there may have been some cases (and probably still are) where team mascots are more a target of lampooning than inspiration, it seems clear that most sports teams who use such names (such as the Indians and the Redskins) do so as a reference to the strength and bravery of Native Americans. Similarly, the Vikings (the Star-Tribune’s home team) and the Cowboys and the Celtics and the Fighting Irish and the (Trolley) Dodgers and the Trojans and the Yankees and the Angels draw on similiar symbolism (and even where there was once an ethnic tie present to these names, it’s largely long gone). Nobody from the Scandinavian, Western, Irish, Brooklyn or Turkish/Greek or Northeastern or Celestial communities seems to mind the nomenclature. Nor has even PETA been offended (as far as I know) by teams naming themselves after Lions, Bears, Rams, Broncos, etc.

I tend to be rather thick-skinned about these things, I suppose, but the Star-Trib‘s stand just seems silly.

Now, refusing to call the new Mile High Stadium “Invesco Field” — there’s something I can stand behind.

(Via OpinionJournal)

I am … appalled. OpinionJournal has a list of colleges that do not require any history or western civ courses in order to graduate.

One of the ones listed is “Pamona College.” Given the other names on the list, it seems highly likely that this is actually Pomona College, my alma mater (BA, History, Class of 1983). (A quick web check of this misspelling makes it look highly likely.)

I intend to inquire. If so, then … not one more thin dime will be going from me to them. None.

Why is this a bad thing? Read here (requires free registration).

All this goes a long way toward explaining why the college seniors queried by Roper in an earlier Council survey had so much trouble with even the most basic history questions. No more than 22% had any idea that “government of the people, by the people, for the people” came from the Gettysburg Address. More than half could not identify the Constitution as the source of the separation of powers. This being the day after Thanksgiving, we’re too embarrassed to print the percentage who thought the Magna Carta was what the Pilgrims signed on the Mayflower. Remember, these are students from the nation’s top 55 colleges.
Facts about America’s wars were also in short supply. Just four out of 10 seniors could identify the Battle of the Bulge as having taken place in World War II. Only 34% knew George Washington was the general commanding the Americans at Yorktown, the ultimate battle of the Revolutionary War. A higher percentage–37%–thought it might be Ulysses S. Grant.

How appropriate. It’s snowing.

Not. One. Thin. Dime. The ghost of Vincent Learnihan would never let me rest again.

And, hell, if alumni can use their financial clout to influence the selection of coaches, certainly I can do the same as to curriculum.

(Via InstaPundit)

A North Carolina pre-school was docked rating points by one state regulator for (gasp!) having nine green plastic army men in the play area.

“If stereotyping or violence is shown with regard to any group, then credit cannot be given,” wrote evaluator Katie Haselden. “It was observed that nine ‘army men’ were present in the block play area. These figures reflect stereotyping and violence, therefore credit cannot be given.”
[…] Anna Carter, supervisor of the N.C. Division of Child Development’s Policy and Program Unit, said authors of the Environmental Rating System consider toy soldiers inappropriate because they represent a violent theme. “They don’t enrich the environment and can be potentially dangerous if children use them to act out violent themes,” she said.
When asked if parental influence could prompt some children to view soldiers as positive, protective role models, Ms. Carter insisted that children couldn’t draw that distinction. “They’d be more likely to use the toy soldiers to hurt the other army men or to shoot the stuffed animals,” she said, adding that if that happened she didn’t believe most early childhood educators could be trusted to redirect the children toward more appropriate play.

Well, duh.

I think it worth noting that I played with army men as a child (in a household where my mother would not tolerate a toy gun), and managed to come out of it without a thrill for inflicting violence, a love of guns, or a hatred of Germans. On the other hand, I did exercise my imagination, had an an interest in learning about things military sparked, and grew up to not abhor plastic army men.

Which, I suppose, proves their point.

(Via Best of the Web Today)

Just in case you were putting it on your List of Things to Go See When Visiting the Greater Denver Metro Area (not that most Boulderites wouldn’t cringe at being lumped together with Denver), the display of ceramic penises at a Boulder library has been stolen and replaced by an American flag.

As amusingly irritating as the initial story was, vandalism doesn’t help, either, folks.

(Via InstaPundit)

UPDATE: “El Dildo Bandito” arrested, art recovered, Boulder senses of humor and proportion still missing, presumed dead.

(Via InstaPundit)

Really. Once you understand that the story takes place in Boulder, it all becomes perfectly, painfully understandable.

I mean, sure, on the face of it, having a library director object to hanging an American flag over the entrance to the library (because it “could compromise our objectivity”), then approving a display of “ceramic penises dangling from knitted cozies on a clothesline” (as part of an art exhibit on domestic violence), would seem to be kind of nutso.

But it’s Boulder. Quintessentially Boulder. Think of Berkeley, but with lots more money. That’s Boulder.

(Via USS Clueless)

Research on the Mayas demonstrates what happened when regimes changed.

These scribes – the rough equivalent of today’s public relations writers – would have their fingers broken and then be executed after their kings were defeated in battle.
“The conquering Mayas were not interested as much in the executions as they were in this seemingly bizarre practice of destroying the scribes’ fingers,” said Kevin Johnston, assistant professor of anthropology at Ohio State University.
“By breaking the fingers of scribes, what they were really doing was muting the ability of scribes to write politically powerful texts for their defeated king.”

Once the folks screaming about how they are being censored can hold up their broken hands, we can talk about the justice of their claims.

Greg Easterbrook in the WSJ comments.

When the Bill of Rights was enacted, the First Amendment was construed mainly to shield speakers from imprisonment for antigovernment views. That expression could have other costs–denunciation, ostracism, loss of employment–was assumed. Many of the original patriots took enormous risks in the exercise of speech, Patrick Henry being an obvious example. William Blackstone, the English legal theorist closely read by the Framers, argued that the essence of free speech was forbidding prior restraint: Anyone should be able to say anything, but then must live with the aftermath. A citizen should possess “an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public,” Blackstone wrote in his “Commentaries”–which James Madison consulted often while working on drafts of the First Amendment wording–but “must take the consequences” for any reaction.
The reaction to free speech, Madison thought, would be part of the mechanism by which society sifted out beliefs. Protected by Madison’s amendment, the Ku Klux Klan can spew whatever repugnant drivel its wishes. Society, in turn, shuns KKK members for the repugnant people their free speech exposes them to be. No one expects the KKK to speak without a price; its price is ostracism. Why should repugnant speech on foreign policy or terrorism be any different?

Free speech means the government can’t stop you from saying things.

Free speech does not mean that folks cannot get angry at what you say, denounce you for what you say, or ask that you get fired if you are in a public position.

Indeed, such reactions are, themselves, part of free speech.

(Via InstaPundit)

AOL will now not let people post the line “My love is bigger than a Honda, yeah it’s bigger than a Subaru,” from Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac.”

In a moderated group.

About Springsteen’s music.

According to the story, it apparently violates the decency provision of the “terms of service.” This comes after some run-ins between members and the moderator on off-topic conversations.

It’s interesting reading.

(Via Boing Boing)