Re: Fairfax High School student | Nick Stuban
Posted by:
TheProfessor
()
Date: January 22, 2011 01:06PM
The soon to be reinstated U.S. Park Police Chief, Teresa Chambers, is a genuine heroine. She saw a wrong and tried to correct it in a time-honored tradition; she told the press. Her experience informed her that her force was woefully underfunded for its mission, and she sought to bring attention to this fact. For that, for telling the truth, she was fired. Now some seven years later, she has been fully vindicated, and fully paid. Justice was slow and tough in this case, but as Louis Brandeis said a hundred years ago "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants". Would that at least one or two principals in FCPS do the same.
I personally am an infrequent visitor to this forum, but it seems to me that every time I pull it up, some poor kid is being mourned after a senseless suicide, and the school system is part of the picture. Or perhaps posters are flaming each other over some group of student athletes who do something both dumb and commonplace (which does not excuse, but merely explains; though as the French say "Pour comprendre tout est de pardonner à tous" ) and administrators decry "hazing" and "abuse" -- leaving me to wonder, "how much of this is just bread and circuses, a few are fed to the lions so that the masses know everything is under control". I have experienced myself, with one of my kids, who is finally starting to master staying under the radar, how Kafkaesque the FCPS disciplinary process really is.
Most kids mess up in small, stupid ways (like one of mine), or even in much bigger ways. What we call childhood is in some measure an opportunity, deliberately created, to do this without heinous consequences. Before the Victorians invented our concept of childhood, kids were regarded as adults in smaller clothes who were expected to work as soon as they were able; and were hanged at age 9 for stealing bread when they were hungry, or burned at the stake when they were inconvenient. A bit of hyperbole perhaps, but not really so removed from administrators who, acting without a shred of real evidence or due process (we'll leave that for Civics class), effectively say to a student "look we know you don't always show the restraint you'll grow into, or good judgment like the 40-something who cut me off on my way to work today and nearly killed me, and we'll ignore the fact that we ourselves once 'drove my Chevy to the levee...and drank whiskey and rye', and we'll exile you for what at 16 seems permanent for behavior we can't tolerate because in reality we are more fearful of helicopter parents with lawyers in tow who just know you'll corrupt Junior than we are of you". The harsh truth about Zero Tolerance, and by extension its' practitioners, is that it's not about improving behavior, or providing a reasonable, adult perspective on what a kid has done. It's not about safety, and it certainly isn't about "teaching moments". It's about political and legal expediency. Or worse, it's about petty administrators with short memories, shallow lives, and an ax to grind. When the two collide, the results are lethal.
To Mr. Yost's defenders, I don't know the gentleman, and likely (dare I say hopefully, in the sense of getting one of "those" calls) never will beyond the signature I see on photocopied letters from the school. I know nothing of his family, and believe that is entirely off limits in any discussion that pertains to his or any principal's professional conduct -- which is all that should be talked about by persons who are neither family or friend. I will say, however, that a person who accepts a position with a higher public profile can expect more than a little invective, and their families should know this as well. If you say he is a prince among men, kind, caring, and generous, I have no basis to dispute your personal assessment.
What I find fault with is any administrator who adheres to a completely discredited adjudication and disciplinary system. Zero tolerance doesn't work, any fool can see that. It didn't work here. It wasn't the NYPD's ticketing of jaywalkers that lowered the crime rate during Mr. Giuliani's tenure as Mayor; it was a dip in the most crime prone demographic. They don't do Zero Tolerance anymore, they returned to "community policing"; you know, where the Cop on the beat knows the neighborhood and can diffuse the toughest of situations with knowledge of the players. Sort of like the principals I remember from high school, back in the 70s. The popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Anyone who subscribes, willingly and/or as a condition of employment, to a system that utterly fails in any legitimate objective, bares responsibility for its consequences. And the consequences, judging by events, can be horrific.
It's absurd to argue that students and parents sign the SR&R each year, and thus know what they are "getting into". In this county (in this society), I suspect there are just a handful of people who could read this "contract" and suddenly slap themselves on the forehead saying "so it's NOT okay to bring weapons to school, glad that was cleared up for me". Doubtless even the so called "toxic" parents know the rules without this silly little exercise. This is not about knowledge, it's about wisdom. Despite there being posted speed limits, some 40 million speeding tickets a year are written in this country. Somehow, traffic law still seems to function without yanking the driver's license of everyone caught doing 69 in a 55 mph zone the first time. It's called "mens rea", the "thing in mind", and it has been the basis of our legal and moral systems since the Code of Hammurabi. It's not the act, it's the intent that forms the basis of guilt or innocence. Zero Tolerance turns this on its head. In the name of "orderly" schools, FCPS throws out the very system we are teaching our kids to live by.
It may well be that Chief Chambers doesn't get the funding she needs, terrorists target a national monument, and scores are killed and injured, because the Park Police can't respond to calls they can't get on their surplused radios. But at least she's honorable enough to try, and willing to pay the price of that effort.
The School Board members that has been in office for more than one term should take responsibility for the death of this boy, publicly repudiate this insane system (built on the presidential ambitions of a political hack), re-publish the student's "Rights and Responsibilities" (do a search and see how many other school systems use FCPS's phrasing), and then fall on their collective political sword. To borrow from Oliver Cromwell, "Your have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately...Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!".
The current administration happily ensconced in Gatehouse should sell their palatial campus, putting the money where we residents want it, and work out of moldy trailers until the teacher/student ratio is at most 1:24 in every classroom in the county. This is the 21st century. They can run the entire system via a $49 a month account with WebEx. Premier school system in the nation, indeed!