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If you haven’t read Kit’s post, scroll down and go there first.
And then, help me answer a couple questions:
Are we smart or ar we stupid? Are we grown ups who do the thinking or aren’t we?
One of the only things I have ever agreed with Bill Maher about is his stance on “zero tolerance” policies, which is, in a nutshell “we are the adults, so we are supposed to do the thinking and zero tolerance basically says “don’t do any thinking when it comes to this policy or situation”
When it comes to adults, I want to put a bounty on the heads of people that think up “zero tolerance” anything. The adults are supposed to do the thinking, but in our schools, school boards, and institutions of learning; decisions are made in the zeal to placate and massage the widdle feewings of these useless helicopter moms who sooth their souls in the knowledge that because they have a policy, then nothing bad will happen and they can get to their Hot Yoga class on time.
But, society and by extention, parents are allowing these grownups who should be making decisions in their school districts to go entirely too far by just adhering to some “policy” and excusing themselves from having to think.
District superintendent Robin Gooldy told The Associated Press on Tuesday the boy was suspended because of a policy against unwanted touching.
“The focus needs to be on his behavior. We usually try to get the student to stop, but if it continues, we need to take action and it sometimes rises to the level of suspension,” he said.
You see, there was this little boy, about 6, who kissed a girl he thought he liked. In class. And the boy was a bit of a trouble maker (I have one, and if you do, you know that “trouble” is wide ranging and vague term to pin down–but can usually be found under “normal”), but now, we have a grown up telling this boy, and his parents, that this pretty normal behavior now amounts to “sexual harrassment.”
First off, I don’t trust any dude who had the first name of my best friends older sister. His decision making ability is already suspect. I want to know Robin, have you ever put 2 or more children in a minivan and driven them more than 16 seconds away from civilization? Do you think there might be some “unwanted touching” going on back there? Do you think any of it amounted to “sexual harassment” or do you think it might just be boys and girls learning to be said same? Did the little boy make receiving this unwanted attention a condition of staying in 1st grade?
So, are we smart or are we stupid? Are we smart enough to know the difference but too stupid to say anything? Are we smart enough to make decisions using our adult judgment or are we just going to make a rule and then declare that the rule in in charge of our thinking? Aren’t we the adults who are supposed to know the difference between what constitutes “sexual harassment” and learning how to relate to the opposite sex? Don’t we make judgments every day on what is better or worse regarding child behavior?
The revolution that takes back our culture, society, and country is going to start small, in the classrooms and school board meetings of this country by holding these miserable excuses for educators accountable and demanding that they start using their brains to make judgments. They are not going to be allowed to make policies and then shrug their shoulders and say “Gee, wish we could help you, but we have this policy” on everything they encounter that is difficult or uncomfortable. Purging people like this, regardless of their political stripe (although, one stripe is dominant in this field) from education should be the first objective.
People who know better should be the educators of our children and we should demand better behavior and decision making from educated adults who should know better. Suspending a boy from school for being a boy is just dumb.
The first step to being free is to think and to demand that other adults think.
ROS says: We as a collective are lazy and irresponsible. Allowing The Machine to make and enforce these policies absolves the individual of independent thought, thus laying the onus of decision making at government’s feet. We must, therefore, trust that government knows what is best for us and disobedience at any level – regardless of its logic – must be punished.
GWB says: Dejah, sweetheart*, it’s not about being smart or stupid – it’s about whether or not you can have responsibility apportioned to you as a result of your decision. ROS has it almost right – but it’s not just “laying the onus of decision making at government’s feet.” It’s about laying the responsibility on an icon – something inanimate, insensate, with no ability to point fingers or pass the buck further. “The law” or “regulations” serves that purpose here. It is the whole point of “zero tolerance” rules: any stupidity that results from its implementation is the result of the icon, not of any human being (who might be fired, or – in a nobler age – tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail).
This is the same reason Congress likes to pass laws that pass the rule-making to the bureaucracy. It prevents anyone from holding them responsible for things like EPA’s war on IC engines or energy from Cuisinarts in the sky. That’s all the rule-makers’ fault, and they are a nameless, faceless cog in the bureaucracy, un-approachable. It’s unlikely it was even a single person making the rule, but was instead a committee.
The fundamental problem is that laws (and rules, really) shouldn’t be something that is enforced at the whim of the administrator. In our post-modern world (especially with the number of litigators that exist out there), however, anything you write can get twisted and stretched out of any recognizable shape, leading to gross injustice. The proper solution to this is to reject post-modernism and return to a more classical view of language and law. The solution that our society has implemented is “zero tolerance”. Until you adjust society’s viewpoint, the issue cannot be resolved.
* I just had to do that in a post about sexual harassment. 😉
GWB says: Let me clarify:
When I say “ROS has it almost right” I do not mean to say that ROS is wrong. I simply mean that her diagnosis is not exactly on target about *this* phenomenon. She is absolutely right that those who see government as “fixing” the world in some fashion don’t want you to be able to question them or to allow you any ‘wiggle room’. But, they don’t require “zero tolerance” rules to effect that – whimsy is many times preferrable. “Zero tolerance” is much more about evading responsibility when the angry parent comes calling.
ROS says: You say it so much more eloquently than I. 🙂
ROS says: “All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
GWB says: HL Mencken, I should have known. Though my guess of RA Heinlein was probably close (given I’m a SF geek, and that I’m currently re-reading Stranger In A Strange Land). 😉
ALman says: I can only wonder what the charge would have been had they been caught playing “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours”????
ROS says: Or *gasp*……..doctor!!
(They’d probably additionally be fined for practicing without lkicenses.)
Merle says: Just another example of PC taking over our lives. It only thrives because too many people are to lazy to stand up and fight it.
Merle
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