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Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment
langelgjm writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to review a case involving the strip-searching of a 13 year-old girl who was accused of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen on school grounds, in violation of the school's zero-tolerance drug policy. The case has gained national attention because of the defining role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of school administrators to restrict students' free speech at school-sponsored events that take place off school property. The school described the strip-search as 'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.' The Supreme Court's last decision about searches on school property dealt only with searching a student's purse. Incidentally, the girl was found not to be in possession of any drugs, illegal or otherwise."
I'm really hoping to see a large bitch-slap style ruling against the school district. This whole thing is just shameful.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
This case reminds me of the time a good friend's daughter got suspended from high school for a week. She had a chain on her wallet, which was deemed a weapon. They were actually trying to expel her for a violation of their "zero tolerance" policies, but failed. Unbelievable.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Is a teenager having a fucking ibuprofen such a monstrous and immediate security threat that we need to strip search her? Or was somebody just a little too eager to strip search a 13 year old? Hmm?
I wonder if the court would have upheld the 13-year old's right to strenously kick school officials in the balls for forcibly removing her clothing?
It seems to me that, since she *wasn't* found to be in possession of any drugs at all, she's in a good position to make somebody's life really, really uncomfortable for a while.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Home schooling fucks up your social skills. We need good public schools.
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why some families homeschool and believe their kids get a better education.
In Canada, as an adult, these things are completely illegal. I could presume these arbitrary strip searches would be illegal for adults in the USA as well. But when it comes to think-of-the-children conservativism, then hypocrisy is more important than reality. It's not just the fight against drugs and sex for these conservatives, it's a fight against freedom, and it is a fight for an authoritarian society. And don't let the people that are most likely to deny this convince you otherwise. They do get found out every once in a while, and sometimes they even go to jail. In the mean time we shouldn't be letting these people hurt children.
Don't forget, it wasn't just that it was prescription strength OTC medication (she could have taken a handful of "regular" pills for the same effect)
The entire thing was based on the accusations of another student. No one actually saw her with any pills of any kind. A strip search for what amounts to over the counter medication based on the accusations of another student.
If a student had accused the vice principal of the same thing, would they be expected to submit to a strip search?
Zero tolerance policies are the same as "I just don't want to make hard decisions" so instead you make f'ing stupid ones.
Well I mean you might get off tripping on the reduction to a swelling, or maybe you want to OD and give yourself indigestion..
What the hell was going through these peoples' minds when they deemed a strip-search was necessary to determine if the student had ibuprofen? Did nobody involve think "hey, now, this isn't this somewhat excessive"? She said she didn't have the ibuprofen - since ibuprofen isn't really a threat to the safety of anybody (unless she deliberately overdoses), why are they searching her possessions solely based on the accusation of another student They're treating this as a Fourth Amendment issue, which it is. However, strip-searching a student is wrong and should be considered illegal, regardless of the Fourth Amendment. Doing it because you think she has ibuprofen is just ludicrous.
... so that when they're older, they'll accept this and even more serious breaches of privacy from the government. Because it's to protect the children!
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
That doesn't make sense.
Do school officials get to cherry pick which parts of the Constitution they can violate?
They get to violate a student's free exercise of religion on the grounds that one cannot distinguish between congress making laws and school officials "permitting" references to Christian dieties.
A 13 year old girl taking analgesics to school for menstrual pain is a catagory of crime identical to a drug pusher vending dope and requires "zero tolerance"? Only to those who refuse to think or use common sense, so are brain dead. The more this PC crap takes hold the more it is indistinguishable from Fascism.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
A "strip-search" performed by anyone other than a police officer acting with probable cause is a sexual assault.
People, including teens and children, have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary against such an attack, and should be trained to do so.
After some pervert principal gets his testicles crushed and his eyes gouged by a student he's trying to attack, perhaps we might see an end to this bullshit.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is a joke, right?
Right? Please?
So what could excessively intrusive have been in this case? Surgically cutting her open and checking all internal organs?
We might as well just go ahead and do away with it now, so people will stop thinking it still applies or protects them in some way. All it does is cause confusion among those who have the audacity to believe that the bill of rights still matters.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
Maybe you should have used one of those to find the right thread to reply to. :p
wrong thread.
the monkey you want isn't working at a school.
ok, that's not exactly true, now, is it. maybe you DID intend to post in this thread.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Home schooling fucks up your social skills. We need good public schools.
No. Socializing children fucks up their social skills. Have you ever been a child before? You should remember what it was like. Children are not good at teaching each other morals or good social skills. What they do learn from each other is Human Nature, which isn't a very good thing to learn if you are being taught by human children. Go to a football game in England to see what socialization does.
Maybe our legislators who are always so worried about sexual exploitation of children as an excuse to censor the internet and everything else, might want to look into whether prohibiting the government from forcibly stripping children naked shouldn't be a higher priority.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
no, its not that. that can't be helped.
what is surprising to me is that we, as humans, KNOW we can't trust each other with power. power corrupts and all that.
so why is there no one 'checking the checkers' ?
unchecked power is a license to abuse it. its a given. nothing surprising here.
politicians have very little oversight so they do as they please! baggage checkers at airports have NO oversight and so they steal as they please.
and adults in charge of kids, with 'unquestioned authority' WILL abuse their power.
what I wonder is - do any of those parents have BALLS? did they just drop off or what? (sorry for the batman quote).
I would not have my kids attend a 'zero tolerance' school. no way! why do people put up with this insanity?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
What I think is of importance here is how our culture treats children.
When does a child become a citizen if not at birth?
And, if children are citizens, what is the excuse of running schools with a level of oppression more appropriate of POW camps? Or making a child do something they are not ready or willing to?
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Our culture promotes treating children as property, making it "OK" for adults to abuse children verbally and psychologically and physically, just recently (in the last 100 or so years) addressing sexual abuse. Physical abuse is still widely accepted and even recommended. The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Strip searching a 13-year old girl is just a symptom of tour collective habitual disrespect for children's core dignity.
I suggest you check out this http://is.gd/oMQM and this http://is.gd/lQwS
Incorrect: "I was spanked as a kid and I turned OK."
Correct: "I was spanked as a kid and I grew up to believe that spanking is OK."
Wait. Not excessively intrusive in light of her age and sex? What the hell does THAT mean? Since when does a person's gender or age mean that a strip search is less intrusive? You're making somebody who's dramatically underage, BUT old enough to know what's going on, strip naked. If anything, the fact that she's young and female makes it MORE intrusive (I think the average boy would shrug it off better than a girl would; I might be wrong in that assumption, though). It sounds like whoever said that thinks young girls are worth less than other people, but I hope they're not actually saying that.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
then the offending school officials would probably have suffered a broken limb or two, immediately before being charged with sexual assault of a minor.
It just goes to show how far these idiot bureaucratic authoritarians will go in the name of their precious "zero tolerance" policies, which have ended up doing a lot more harm than good. They carried it too far with guns (searching and expelling students over squirtguns, for Christ's sake), and they have carried too far with "drugs".
Prescription-strength Ibuprofen, my ass. That would warrant maybe asking the student if it were in her possession, and asking her to flush it if it were. BFD.
I can tell you, honestly, if this had been my child I would have been seeing red. I would have damaged those people.
Paying well is no insurance against *this* kind of garbage. People who do this need to be vulnerable to impressive penalties when they so unreasonably exceed reasonable bounds. And slightly less when they are less unreasonable.
For this I'm not quite sure what would be appropriate. Firing without recommendation or severance pay, definitely. Probably also massive fines. I'm not sure about jail time.
Also "prescription strength ibuprofen"!!! Incredible! The supervisors of whoever ordered this should also be fired immediately. And probably their supervisors, too.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Until these people start getting held accountable for their actions, truly held accountable with full criminal system consequences, they're just going to keep on plowing ahead full speed.
From TFA: "Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
^^^ They forced a 13 year old girl to strip to her underwear and then expose herself to them with nothing but their own suspicions and the word of a few random people to back them up and now claim that they were perfectly justified in doing so and that on top of that a spotless record means she's just as guilty as if they HAD caught her doing anything, just that they don't have anything on paper.
Everyone involved in making this decision, allowing it to go ahead, and participating in the search should be arrested and tried for as many sex crimes as they can fit into the trial. This is rape, there's no excusing or justifying it.
And people wonder why kids have such a hatred for authority figures and absolute lack of trust in them.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Not to defend the school district (total assholes), but they're not the problem The problem is the "zero tolerance" mentality. It says that there are no gray areas, no innocent people who are only technically breaking the rules.
In this case, "zero tolerance" means that the mere suspicion the student was hiding prescription strength ibuprofen (I guess OTC ibuprofen is OK!) is enough to justify the total humiliation of a student.
And the school district bozos are only following society in general. Lately, we've been sneering at Dubya for saying "I don't do nuance." But he's only following a path we've been running down for a couple of decades now. Zero Tolerance for Drugs! Zero Tolerance for Terrorism! Zero tolerance for Opponents of the Permanent Majority!
That last one has finally convinced most people that we've gone too far. (Though Rush Limbaugh doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.) None too soon, either.
that "Zero Tolerance" policies are absurd. There is a reason why we have judge and juries. Laws do not apply evenly. Regardless of the policy, any reasonable person would see how stupid it was to trust another student's accusations and then harass a student with a good record over one pill of OTC pain relief.
Just say no to zero tolerance.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Home schooling fucks up your social skills
Are you a product of the public school system? If so, the irony of your statement is very amusing.
Looking back at my high school years, between the bullying, peer pressure, and artificial environment, I'd say the system contributed to a distinct LACK of social skills.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Dude. Shut the fuck up. Just completely shut the fuck up. There's exactly nothing rational or reasonable about this.
The school may be acting in loco parentis while the kids are there, but that just doesn't even begin to permit this kind of thing. The only thing that is unfortunate is that the school district will wind up paying for this, as opposed to the people who conducted the search or ordered that it be done.
Fucking prescription strength Advil - a pill as powerful as TWO regular Advil. The school officials responsible are a fucking menace to everyone in society if they're that stupid and/or removed from the realm of common sense.
Before you condemn the living shit out of the school district, try to remember that they have an affirmative responsibility to prevent students from harming themselves while in school.
Sorry, you're 100% full of shit. They failed in their responsibility to protect the children in their care, in case you didn't RTFA one of them got strip searched, for christ's sake.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If I was the girls father I would now be facing my own charges of assault and battery for beating the shit out of the school assistance principle and the two staffers who strip searched my daughter for suspicion of having a fucking aspirin.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Fucking forced logins..... here's the whole article:
March 24, 2009
Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
By ADAM LIPTAK
SAFFORD, Ariz. - Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on - black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt - the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, "they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side," she said. "They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear."
Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.
The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.
In Ms. Redding's case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, "It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights."
"More than that," Judge Wardlaw added, "it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity."
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways "a close call," given the "humiliation and degradation" involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, "I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students."
Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
The Supreme Court's last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion - as opposed to systematic drug testing programs - was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student's purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.
In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding's case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was "carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal."
The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.
Sitting in her aunt's house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. "There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types," she said. "I was in between nerdy and preppy."
One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. "She started acting weird and wearing black," Ms. Redding said. "She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy."
When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court p
âoeDo we really want to encourage cases,â Professor Arum asked, âoewhere students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?â
Reasonable people don't search other people, regardless of age, over Ibuprofen. Reasonable people don't search KIDS because of the accusations of liars. If a public school administrator moron thinks a kid is doing illegal drugs, you call their parents and maybe the cops.
Fucking moron.
Courts have interpreted that to mean that they must take whatever steps are within their power as soon as they (meaning any employee of the school) becomes aware of a potential threat.
If I were a parent of a student at this school, I would be infinitely more concerned about children getting strip searched (for any reason) by school personnel than I would be worried about drugs. Forcing a child to remove their clothes in front of an adult based solely on the accusation of another student is absolutely, undeniably unacceptable. If nothing else it sets up the idea in that child's mind that they must unconditionally follow improper orders from school employees. If the principal was that convinced there was a problem, they should have called the police and let them deal with it, not forced a strip search on an innocent student.
And I thought bad enough that there's no public school in catalunya, spain, where a kid learns in spanish... They give you classes in catalan and "foreigner language spanish".
But hey, strip search?
For ibuprofen?
"Irony" == slashbot commenting about poor socialization.
That said, yes, we need good public schools, but avoiding bad public schools is a viable and realistic response.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Any school official, who strip searches a child, for any reason, is a pedophile.
Why are they not being treated as such?
Why?
Strip searching is completely different from, say, sending a child to bed without dinner.
The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. Would not at all be interested in helping "open source software." Haven't you seen 12 year olds act like two year olds? And 22 year olds act like 12 year olds? If they don't get their way, they whine and cry and throw tantrums because they expect to get their way, because that's how it's happened all their life.
The world doesn't work that way. It is not incorrect to say I was spanked as a kid and I turned out [sic] OK. On the other hand, many people seem to think that if children's desires were just gratified more as a child, they wouldn't be so problematic. We are having more and more kids have everything the want, and it's been that way increasingly for a while now. Seen any improvements in "bad things" such as greed, poverty, violence, sexual assault, etc.?
I would venture to guess that school officials such as these two female ones that strip-searched a 13 year old girl based on an accusation from a kid (who, by the way, when faced with real consequences of his actions, thought he would just get out of it by lying - something some kids are spanked for and learn is not good. Hm...) are not accustomed to not getting what they want, and likely would have gotten quite mad if the girl had refused to do what they told her to. Authority "complexes" don't come from not having every desire fulfilled as a child. "Spoiled brats" are usually quite bossy and get quite angry when they don't get their way. Seems like that behavior continues into adulthood.
Curbing that behavior in a child is pretty important. It has nothing to do with dignity, it has to do with wanting the child to behave well and not simply float around, expecting (WRONGLY) everything to be his for the ordering. That is letting the child grow up in a lie. Very respectful of his dignity, I'm sure.
I have almost routinely gotten modded down as "troll" when I posted anything other than the "popular" point of view, even when it was polite and non-antagonistic.
Plain and simple, some of the modders here on Slashdot might as well be children with cans of spraypaint. Anything they don't like gets a moustache drawn on it.
To enforce a policy of minimal tolerance, you are implicitly required to use minimal thought.
There is no imminent threat here and no reason that that the school couldn't get LEO involved unless they knew what they were doing was wrong.
It doesn't apply if you're student -- courts have ruled that schools are acting as guardian ad litem for all students under its care and therefore have most of the rights generally reserved for parents, allowing them to take actions generally prohibited by agents of the state.
I'm not saying that's the way things should be, but it's most certainly the way they are.
When i have kids i'm raising them to fight back against crap like this. I'd be wanting to press sexual assult charges against the school employee's that conducted this search. all they had was some other students word, which is NOT enough.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
As the parent of 3 homeschooled children, I can tell you that such a generic statement is complete rubbish.
Yes, if the kids a locked away and never socialize, they probably won't have good social skills.
That situation does not represent the experience of many homeschooled kids. In any area where there are significant groups of homeschooled children, there will be organizations through which these children can socialize, and there will be many, many other venues that can be found to meet other kids and socialize.
On the other hand, I expect that being strip-searched probably messes up social and other skills. While this is an unusual case, for far too many kids, being the recipient of bullying also messes up their social skills.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Okay, being 13 is perhaps not the same as being 18 or 21. But, at 13, you know damn good and well not to let some teacher or other adult force you into a situation where you feel violated or dirty.
I have a little girl who is turning five tomorrow. My wife and I have made the decision to not subject my child to the whims and such of any school officials. If my kid is ever put into a situation where these types of events are about to occur, then she is to immediately leave the school, call us, and damn what the fucking school board or local law enforcement says.
I have this child, and she is my prime responsibility in life. I don't care what some misguided school moron says is their right and the correct procedure. If nothing else, my kid can change school districts, and I'll go get my gun.
I feel sorry that this happened to this girl. However, I don't understand why she let it happened. Do any of us really think that the two female officials were going to hold her down and strip her naked in order to look for some crappy $4.00 pills?
Here's a simple maxim:
My kid. Not yours. Treat well and with respect. You hurt her, you commit a crime towards her, I get my gun. You die. I am bigger, and smarter, and I win, especially when I have the gun.
While I also think it is irrelevant, that just sounds really bad coming from a school official. You stay class Safford, AZ school district.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Anyone want to place bets the supreme court will agree with the state, and restrict a students rights?
After reading Morse v. Frederick, only John Paul Stevens understood the right for first amendment rights to protest illegal behavior. (aka Vietnam and medical marijuana as examples)
Chief Justice Roberts went along the normal "war against drugs" lie, that they had to punish the student to "SEND A MESSAGE"...
Justice Clarence Thomas viewed schools have no free speech and "Teachers commanded, and students obeyed."
It's crazy. I think I understand the issue better than then most of the Supreme Court, the most educated, the best of the best? They agreed to strip a fundamental right away for a war on drugs, and to make a teachers job easier. To allow a child to be randomly strip searched without proper cause? To prevent protests in a non-disrupting behavior off school grounds? wow.. just wow...
Why am I always disagreeing with them on most issues. I talk to co-workers, family and friends, and we seem to be in the same beliefs and values. Yet, I read the Supreme Courts views and I disagree, most of the time. I very rarely agree with the court. Few times have I cheered decisions about cases. Take Lawrence v. Texas which effectively legalized being gay. And of course, Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas dissented. My favorite comment roughly (I cant find it) from Texas "We dont discriminate against Gays just Gay Sex", and a justice asked "What is the difference?"
I'll end this lengthy topic that means much to me with a Scala qoute.
"Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best ... But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else." --Scalia.
And homeschooling keeps them away from all those stupid people during their formative years and makes them completely inadequately prepared for having to deal with the rest of the world when they're kicked out of the house. I've known too many homeschooled kids to think that it's socially beneficial for them. They're often taken advantage of, and trodden upon because they don't have the social skills to deal with bullies and assholes.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
My kids understood the concept of a hot stove at about 18 months without nothing but explanation. I still have to watch the 2 year old to keep him out of danger, but there's no need to teach him that violence can be used to solve problems where someone is doing something you don't want them to.
The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child
Obviously these are things that need to come in as a child ages. My son sometimes screams his brains out when I change his diaper. It still needs to be done.
Obviously doing the same thing for a 4 year old would involve different considerations (and so on for an 8 year old or adult). Children do need a measure of protection from themselves, and that may involve managing their eating, sleep, and behavior until they can manage it themselves.
Many parents abuse their authority over their children, but as usual it's a question of balance.
Incorrect: "I was spanked as a kid and I turned OK."
Correct: "I was spanked as a kid and I grew up to believe that spanking is OK."
I've seen light spanking (or "very angry" tones) used responsibly with very young children (in cases where a dangerous behavior could not be curbed in other ways - things like running towards a campfire). I think it can be OK. I myself was never spanked that I remember.
All in all, I don't think this is nearly as clear as you want it to be.
Another separate issue is the belief that pain not remembered doesn't count. On this I'd imagine we'd agree - I find it incredible that, for example, circumcision is done how it is.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
No, overprotective parents do. Theres no reason why reasonably competent parents with a decent education can't successfully educate a child from home. The problem then is when its those parents that go "OMG!!! My child wants to be friends with someone who is different from us!!!!11!11!" and then the kid goes on to college where they either end up almost dying from alcohol/drugs or is a social recluse (more then the average /.er even). There are a few reasons why homeschooling would be a benefit, for example, in high crime areas, it may not honestly be that safe to send your kid to a public school, especially if the family is from a ethnic background that clashes with the normal people. Private schools can be good but some parents don't have the money or lack a good private school that meets their requirements (for example, if there are only Catholic schools around, and you aren't Catholic, I wouldn't send my kid there).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Hey, I didn't know Hillary Clinton posts here!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Couldn't they have just called the parents, informed them of the potential threat, and allow her actual parents to make whatever decision seemed reasonable to them?
And that's assuming you evaluated potential abuse of some amount of ibuprofen small enough to be hidden in your clothing to be a credible threat in the first place.
Several other stories have been had this happen. It's something on Slashdot's side of things.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Even if the Supreme Court rules that the search was illegal, school districts will continue to abuse children. First of all, any court ruling will only apply to public schools, not private preparatory nor parochial schools. Secondly, even in public schools, the local district really isn't accountable to federal law. They can get away with whatever they want. Few students and parents have the time and money necessary to sue the district and bring the case though the court system. Discipline in the school system, be it searches or expulsions, assume guilt until innocence is proven. You need to take the expensive proactive step of suing the government to get your rights back. For students to overcome the common physical, intellectual, and sexual abuse in the school system, we need to have a serious youth movement. In Greece, teenagers aren't afraid to take over schools, battle with cops, and burn whatever gets in their way. Americans are too timid to achieve the rights that we deserve.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Children are pure egoism in action. It's necessary to discipline them in order to train this egoism into compromise. This the foundation of social law and the rules of social engagement.
Given half a chance, all of us would make the entire world submit to our will, as any child desires. However, with the help of discipline, we can put this egoism to sleep. The ego suppresses what it cannot attain, therefore punishing and rewarding a child for certain actions is an effective form of conditioning.
It is a false conditioning, however. Only the most constant brainwashing can condition a child not to take $100 when no one is around. Anything less will not allow us to deny an evolutionary characteristic important to our animate survival.
Until such a time when this human characteristic has been superseded by evolutionary altruism (as present within the rest of nature, which has already evolved), discipline will remain an important part of raising a child, and children will not have identical rights to an adult.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I thought that at first, too. But upon reflection, I think they were referring to the fact that the adults conducting the strip search were of the same sex as the student. It would have been considered excessive if it was a woman strip searching a boy or a man strip searching a girl. At least that's how I interpreted the statement after thinking about it for a bit.
An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.
and
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways "a close call," given the "humiliation and degradation" involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, "I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students."
and
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
1.There is nothing reasonable or doubtful that thinking that two advils would do serious harm, or even minor harm to a 13 year old girl.
2. There is also nothing reasonable about strip searching a 13 year old girl who was minding her own business
3. There is nothing reasonable about strip searching a girl even if she did have a prescription for Ibuprofen
What is happening is that special interest groups are normalizing this aggressive and authoritarian policy and practice towards children (and adults as well, but that's another topic). They are continuing to normalize and escalate these nasty and unwarranted attitudes and behaviours.
From TFA: "Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
And the assertions of the adults involved that they're not pedophiles and child molesters should not be misread to infer that they aren't, only that they were never caught.
Sheesh.
-- Alastair
The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant. "Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules," the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, "only that she was never caught."
I would never want anyone from a school with this attitude to be involved in the education of my children.
>> they should have called the police and let them deal with it, ...and you think having cops come to the school and take the kid away in the back of police car to be fingerprinted/photo'd/strip-searched in a sinister room at a local police station would be less traumatic on the kid how?
I once got an extra search at an airport. Not a strip-search, just completely emptying my bags and lining the contents up and sending the empty bag back through the X-ray machine.
Why the extra scrutiny? I had a spare stylus for my PDA in my bag. I at first protested when they confiscated it, then laughed when I noticed they thought it might be a danger, but thought nothing of the two mechanical pencils, twice the size, sharper, and metal, that were right next to it.
I couldn't explain why I was laughing, hence the extra search.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Citation Needed
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Rather an extension of Stanly Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiments. If an authority figure orders you to assist in molesting a 13 year old girl, how many would molest her? We know of two. How many would refuse? Thats the real question. If people refuse to assist much evil just evaporates: *poof*.
It should be interesting to see which organizations or government bodies dare to file an Amicus Briefs in support of the petitioners in this Supreme Court case. This should be a nice little flag to know who's in support of basic human and constitutional rights as they apply to children and how's towing the government party line of the Zero Tolerance policy for the War on Drugs no matter what the costs are to human rights.
Its Right for the parents to choose how to educated their children between: public schools, private schooling or home schooling. If any Court rules in favor of the school, I'd suggest parents threaten the school board and the administration of that school to withdraw their children from the school and/or that school board as a whole.
As I understand, schools and their boards are funded based on how many students are attending the school. If there's enough pressure from parents, the funding from the school will dry up. Not enough students and the admin staff and teachers responsible for this will be out of a job pretty fast. If there's no criminal charges or punitive damages awarded, getting the employees to lose their jobs (or worry/threat of) can be just as effective.
It is a false conditioning, however. Only the most constant brainwashing can condition a child not to take $100 when no one is around.
Interesting comment. I suppose you would consider any form of religion as brainwashing, as well?
I happen to be a Christian, and thus taking (stealing, you are implying) $100 "when no one is around" is two things. (1) It's wrong, what I would call a "sin." (2) It's not true that "no one" is around/"no one" sees me.
I'm curious if you consider that brainwashing or put it ("morality") in a different category.
Please stop using the Internet.
You're getting your stupid all over everything.
Thank you.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
When the child becomes responsible, of course. How can a baby be a citizen? They are physically, mentally and socially totally incapable of surviving in society. How can you vote when you don't even know language?
What's happening is a result of the growing gap between childhood and adulthood. What used to happen was that physical and social maturity used to occur at roughly the same time, about 14 or 15. At that point you stopped being a child and started being an adult. You left home, got a job, got married, etc.
What's happening now is that with more intensive schooling and better health care and nutrition, physical maturity happens early --- 10 is not uncommon for girls --- and social maturity happens later --- 20 or so. Sometime around World War I there suddenly emerged a new kind of creature called a teenager, which was largely physically mature but not considered competent to be an adult.
And society didn't know how to deal with teenagers, and right now is struggling to cope, with huge swings back and forth between extremes in behaviour. Some day we're going to have to get used to the fact that we've got sexually and physically mature children around, but it hasn't happened yet. Trying to pretend that they don't grow genitalia or working minds until they reach their 21st birthday isn't going to work. Likewise, trying to force responsibility onto children who aren't capable of handling it is equally wrong, and equally not going to work.
But you are right with one thing, of course; everyone considers the society they grew up in to be normal, regardless how damaging it was to them or to society as a whole. It's all too easy to assume your children are going to behave like your idealised memories of your own childhood...
Your using the learn-from-gutter-experience argument. I suspected it would come up eventually. Unfortunately I have only heard anecdotes but have seen no evidence to support this hypothesis. One example I do remember very well, is an academic military journal I read once. There was an article that observed whether people who are born and raised in rough environments make better infantry soldiers. The results are that people who are not exposed to abusive situations handle abusive situations much better when they are adults. In fact the street-wise kids were more likely to get eight balled from the army because of psychological problems.
I have personal anecdotes of this myself, but at least I have seen formal evidence of what I am talking about in a scientific journal.
If I were a parent of a student at this school, I would be infinitely more concerned about children getting strip searched (for any reason) by school personnel than I would be worried about drugs.
Would you give up your right to sue if your kid was hurt in some fashion by drugs while at school?
If so, then fine -- I applaud your consistency. If not, then there are serious issues with how you intend for the school to achieve its mission of protecting students from hurting themselves.
Just because the student was 13 doesnt mean she doesnt have constitutional rights.
I don't disagree with that. But all this focus on legalities (I'm tempted to go into my usual "slashdotters think too highly of their own legal expertise" rant) kind of misses the most important point: these school administrators humiliated a 13-year-old, all in the name of verifying that she wasn't "smuggling" some pills that aren't even for a drug of abuse! Rather than parsing the fine points of case law, we should be asking what kind of mentality makes this acceptable, legal or not.
Rather an extension of Stanly Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiments. If an authority figure orders you to assist in molesting a 13 year old girl, how many would molest her? We know of two. How many would refuse? Thats the real question. If people refuse to assist much evil just evaporates: *poof*.
You may be interested to read about this case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam
No 13 year olds were involved but I think the events are rather telling, regardless.
Here is information for the docket for this case from the US Supreme Court's web site. Feel free to show your support by joining Join the American Civil Liberties Union.
US Supreme Court - Docket - 08-479
... topless at the beach and send it via eMail to her friends, she might go to jail.
If some asshole school teachers strip search her because of false accusation of another student (which in itself would be enough of a scandal), everything is just "fine"?
If that's the current state of the US of A's legislation, you are very much more f*cked than the europeans. And I thought we are bad off with all that internet censorship....
PS: sorry, I forgot. Topless at the beach, 13yo... don't think that would happen on a US beach, would it? Anyway.
If the school had reason to believe that this student was a danger to herself or someone else, they should have called the police. School Administrators are not trained in the legalities of what effectively comes down to an "arrest, search, and seizure" nor do they have some of the legal protections (when the dust settles) that police do. If the student wasn't a danger to herself or someone else enough to call the police, then she wasn't a danger to herself or someone else enough to be strip searched by a school administrator or school security guard. They didn't call the police because 1) They'd be laughed at, and 2) the had no intention of pursuing the matter through the proper legal channels. If they thought she had 10 kilos of columbian snow, they'd acted differently, but they knew it was petty nonsense they didn't want to deal with the proper procedures on to make sure any punishment stuck.
Schools almost never pursue legal action against a student because 9 out of 10 times they'd get smashed by any reasonable lawyer for gross violations of the students rights (e.g. right to representation, rights related to "color of law" arrest issues) and instead discipline students on their own. I can't see how schools are even able to give detentions; restricting the students freedom of movement; without a proper trial where students have the right to representation.
When I was in school, I was repremanded for "pencil fighting." I'd never been spoken to, but most of the other students got warning-after-warning and I got popped on the first time. I was able to argue to the principal that I was not given "equal protection" under the rules and for the teacher to not give me the same disciplinary procedure as other students was illegal, and they I would call the ACLU if they attempted to make me stay in the building longer than Ohio law said I had to attend school.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
The desire to receive everything for oneself is inherent within our nature. No doubt you're familiar with the concept of original sin?
Morality must always be imposed by an environment. It is therefore not an absolute concept, but an abstract one. It is however a very necessary social construct. Without it, a society will fall apart, Sodom and Gomorrah style.
Any time an animate body rejects a form of pleasure, it must account for it. Things like "it's better for society" - in other words, considering the desires of the other - are a way to account for this rejection. Without this consideration of another's desires, the body will refuse to reject the pleasure, and instead partake in it - i.e take that $100 when no-one is around.
Because this concept of considering another's desires runs diametrically opposed to the concept of our personal, animate evolution, it requires the brainwashing of an environment in order to succeed. For this reason I would consider any form of morality or social abstraction a form of brainwashing. It's what separates us from the animals.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
1) Major ammunition and justification for "authority figures" of all kinds to abuse their authority.
2) Kiss your civil rights good bye. "Zero tolerance", "strip searches", the whole litany of jackbooted thuggery.
This case makes me sick, even though as a parent of public school children I am a zealous advocate of school order & discipline. I want an environment my kids can learn in, free from bullying, disruption and criminal behavior.
But I don't want them checking into Pelican Bay's Secure Housing Unit in the guise of getting an education, either.
So your argument is that people need to learn the world is full of gentlemen and that violence solves nothing?
I'm so glad my fists work.
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African or European?
I've got half a mind to barge into that school and demand the staff involved to strip down. After all, they may have drugs hiding too!
It's molestation, plain and simple. If I, joe average, force a minor girl to strip for any reason other than she's literally *on fire*, I'd be put in jail and registered as a sex offender. So just because they're school officials they can get away with it? B.S. Makes me wonder if they would've been willing to do a cavity search too. She could've had drugs hiding really really well!
And that she had NO record of disciplinary actions just makes it all the worse. This is child abuse.
take away their teaching licenses. Sue them civilly, take their houses. Picket any school stupid enough to hire them. A complete public sacrifice. After that, no school official would dare try.
There are plenty of ways to have your kids socialise without going to school. Just because most of those parents are afraid of having their kids meet anyone else at all doesn't mean they must grow up without any meaningful social contact.
This poo is cold.
Since Obama is marching us all to socialism anyway, who's to say that the kids ARENT the property of the State, just like Elian Gonzalez ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Odd. Perhaps you haven't heard of the "dumbing down of America". What's odd is, the public schools are the venue of half the dumbing down. The media is the venue of the other half. As a rule, home schooled and private schooled kids are more likely to excel at the skills that schools are SUPPOSED to teach. To hell with social skills - it is NOT imperative that a child learn how to text in slang.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Children are pure egoism in action. It's necessary to discipline them in order to train this egoism into compromise. This the foundation of social law and the rules of social engagement."
Sorry to disappoint you, but this viewpoint originated in the dark ages when 50-70% of children were being left on the road for the wild animals and slavehunters, incest was the norm and severe physical torture and punishment were daily routine (check out Parenting for a Peaceful World for the dark history on human rearing through the ages).
"Children are born bad and must be made good" comes from hearsay, religious writings, righteous parents and pure ignorance.
"Discipline" is conditioning through violence. Rewards are conditioning through manipulation. There are other ways to inspire the qualities you see in a healthy adult, and still respect the core dignity of the child as a human being.
Children are born with only 25% of their brain developed. They are helpless and depend on adults for survival and are wired to survive. When a baby is crying in the middle of the night that's because they need food or comforting or something else, and definitely not because they are "trying to manipulate their parents"
I highly recommend Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting for better understanding of child development and age-appropriate parenting.
The results are that people who are not exposed to abusive situations handle abusive situations much better when they are adults.
"Abusive situation" is a bit different from the original argument. But contrawise, if you grow up in a sheltered environment where you never have to interact with anyone you don't want to, then by what magic will you gain the knowledge of how to deal with the average, everyday jerk you're likely to encounter in the real world? While school may not have been fun, it's certainly where most of us learned that some people are idiots and you can either let them drive you crazy or file them under "jackass" and move on.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
So your argument is that people need to learn the world is full of gentlemen and that violence solves nothing?
I'm so glad my fists work.
It's more like I'll let my kids read your post and learn from it, but I would never let me kids meet up with you with you in person.
I don't care if her training bra was padded out to Dollyhood proportions with bags of cocaine. Teachers should have sat her down, and watched her closely until the police arrived to arrest her (and strip search her -with her parents present- if they could get a warrant from a judge). Drugs are not deadly weapons. The administration had nothing to fear letting her continue to "hide" the (imaginary) drugs as long as they watched to make sure she didn't throw them away or eat them.
Ibuprofen is the gateway drug to liver failure!
You just got troll'd!
Let's just have Zero Tolerance to Zero Tolerance!
Being home-schooled denies you the social skills you might learn in school. Similar skills could be learned elsewhere, in clubs, church, or other organizations, obviously. But, unfortunately, a lot of the time these other opportunities aren't given to home-schooled children. So they grow up different from the rest of us. And when we meet them, we think they are weird, naive, etc. Which isn't to say that there's anything wrong with them or home-schooling per se. They just didn't have the same experiences we did.
Being put in a public situation without your parents around with many people of your own age gives you a chance to learn to adapt to what other people are/can be like. It's not always pretty. You may not encounter some of these things in other places, like church, where the environment is often very different. Or, you may. There's not guarantee one way or the other.
I knew home-schooled people through my church. They were ostracized because they hadn't had experiences that we had had. We couldn't relate to them. They didn't get our jokes, and they didn't seem to understand reality.
As the parent of home-schooled children, I think you are too close to the situation to make a rational assessment. No offense, but your kids may be very poorly adjusted and you just don't know it.
Personally, I hated public school and thought it was a complete waste of time. I still think that. It did, however, give me a chance to see what people are like, and I think that experience, wherever you have to get it, is important. And maybe you have provided this for your children. If so, good job. But it's quite hard, IMO, to substitute for 30+hours per week of interaction with a few clubs.
-Dan
The teachers need to think about the consequences of their actions. No one is asking them to allow it, just not to treat a child in an undignified way because she was accused of violating the rule.
If a teacher found the bottle, that's another story (you're right, confiscate it and punish her), but no reasonable person can claim strip searching her is justified. The school should put her safety first, the risk to her of being strip searched is higher than the risk of her carrying the medication.
When did you choose to become a Christian? What other choices did you consider?
If your family was Christian, did they introduce you to Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, Daoism and ask you which one rings true for you?
If you were told about God as a fact then someone presented their faith to you as reality.
If this happened before you could clearly distinguish reality from fantasy (which starts happening around the age of 4), then this is pretty dark manipulation, don't you think so?
If you were asked to repeat certain words, prayers, rituals, given rewards and approval upon compliance and punishment for noncompliance, then that's conditioning through pain and psychological torture.
Religious organizations have used brainwashing and conditioning for ages.
So, when did *you* choose to be a Christian?
Whether you can use the words "abuse", "negative experiences", whatever; I do know that I have seen zero evidence that exposing children (or adults) to negative experiences somehow leads to a positive.
I don't know why people are arguing that sheltering children is wrong. I'm not going to, for example, beat the shit out of my children just so they will get used to the pain of being beaten up. All the arguments in favour of this have so far not made any sense. If somebody could point to any science validating their points then I would take their arguments more seriously. As it is, people I have found tend to believe what they are taught my their parents, schools, and friends, which usually doesn't have much to do with reality and a lot to do with simple and common folklore.
Brainwashing somewhat implies a non-rational response though. Morality can be taught, you might say, but with a rational response. The term "brainwash" carries along a lot of connotations that imply irrationality and forcing views on someone that he wouldn't come to on his own.
Yes, I'm certainly familiar with the contept of original sin. Now, where I would differ from you is that I believe an actual change of our inherent "moral" nature, if you will, is possible. It's what "evangelical" Christianity's big deal about the Gospel is. True Christianity isn't [supposed to be] a morality/standard that is imposed on people from outside.
Now, I'm curious. It sounds like you believe in evolutionary principles. Why is it you refer to the non-humans as animals and separate from us?
He said 'let the police deal with it.' - they wouldn't necessarily have taken the same action, point being they almost certainly wouldn't have taken the same action. You assume the police would merely act as an extension of the school's own policy.
I mean, serisouly, how stupid are these people?
Just your basic morons. But then it's a representational government. Greedy idiots elected by greedy idiots. That's the way it works.
Sorry to disappoint you, but this viewpoint originated in the dark ages when 50-70% of children were being left on the road for the wild animals and slavehunters, incest was the norm and severe physical torture and punishment were daily routine
Perhaps I should elaborate. I meant discipline according to its dictionary definition.
"Children are born bad and must be made good" comes from hearsay, religious writings, righteous parents and pure ignorance.
Most definitely correct. Therefore, I am at a loss as to why you entertain such superstition.
"Discipline" is conditioning through violence. Rewards are conditioning through manipulation. There are other ways to inspire the qualities you see in a healthy adult, and still respect the core dignity of the child as a human being.
Give me some examples.
Children are born with only 25% of their brain developed. They are helpless and depend on adults for survival and are wired to survive. When a baby is crying in the middle of the night that's because they need food or comforting or something else, and definitely not because they are "trying to manipulate their parents"
Refer above. I hope I made it clear enough that egoism - such as a baby crying at night - is an evolutionary characteristic. I am neither praising nor condemning necessity.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Can I live in your world, where children aren't naturally narcissistic, messy, gluttonous, and willful creatures?
If you're a fan of evolutionary theory, homo sapiens sapiens stems from a hunter-gatherer small-tribe society, and we only recently banded together into unnatural large groups where we have to learn to work with others doing very specialized tasks (instead of everyone hunts/gathers/fights).
If you're a fan of Judeo-Christian creationism, homo sapiens sapiens was created as a hunter-gatherer-farmer small-tribe society, and we semi-recently banded together into unnatural large groups where we have to learn to work with others doing very specialized tasks (instead of everyone hunts/gathers/farms/fights).
Point being, Pippi-Longstocking is a fictional story about childhood freedom. It's not real. Children would die if we let them do whatever the *#$^ they want (although from an evolutionary standpoint, homo sapiens sapiens might develop an instinctual aversion to drinking from plastic bottles with caustic chemicals after 40,000 years. Oh, wait, society would have crumbled due to the I AM generation [being the next logical step after the Me-generation] so there wouldn't be plastic bottles).
"The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. "
Children naturally grow through different phases which make adults uncomfortable in different ways. Habitually, adults try to make children responsible for their comfort and change their natural behaviors. But children are not our emotional caregivers, it's the other way around.
A two year old is not selfish. This is a projection happening because we adults do not properly understand the psychology of the undeveloped human brain. Some skills develop before others, and that's predetermined by nature, not the child's choice. At the age of two the sense of "self" starts emerging. The child starts feeling their own will. Lots of experimentation, discovery of the world. Strong feelings and desires unmanageable for the child. A 2-year old does not have control over these and it will be years before it learns to self-regulate.
Saying that a child is selfish presumes that this is just a small-ish adult who acts selfishly. Incorrect. The social skills develop after the sense of "self" develops.
For instance what parents call temper tantrums are overwhelming floods of feelings which change the child's brain chemistry and often disables their ability to reason and even understand language.
There are many ways to prevent children from harming themselves or others without harming the children. There are ways to maintain boundaries without turning children into prisoners.
Coming down on the side of the girl, thank God. It's nice to see that some people in Washington are still remotely sane.
What is the role of punishment in a child not touching a stove? If punishment is the only tool in your educator's toolbox, then I suggest you look for other tools.
How is punishment not an abuse? If you get 10 leashes for being late to work would that be OK?
Or do you mean "Punishment is not an abuse when on the receiving end we have a child"?
There was. It's hard to sustain outrage for six solid years, however, so we just get re-outraged every time it gets back in the news.
'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.'
This is the most ridiculous part, I think. As a 13 year old girl, I definitely could've used some ibuprofen once a month.
to those who didn't read the article ...
The event in question (and the whole "Zero Tolerance" fad) was six years ago, not yesterday.
The strip search itself is not news..its just now getting to supreme court, is all.
It's not stupid. It's Advanced.
The federal lawyers arguing the government's case should be strip searched every day before entering the Supreme Court. It's only fair, after all, to require the same from adults who are entering what is clearly a more important and sensitive building. I bet half of them are smoking crack anyway, and we need to be absolutely sure that they don't bring it into the court room.
That situation does not represent the experience of many homeschooled kids. In any area where there are significant groups of homeschooled children, there will be organizations through which these children can socialize, and there will be many, many other venues that can be found to meet other kids and socialize.
But pretty much all of that is voluntary, and I'd wager a lof the same culture among those that homeschool. Not that abusive school bullies help, but part of school was learning to deal with other kids that weren't much like me at all. not in a bad way but different backgrounds and different ways of thinking about things and teachers that didn't have the exact same world view as my parents. I think that's why bullshit like creationism is so widespread in the US, it's just more accepted to create your own monoculture bubble and let children live in it. For certain there are those that teach a lot of good sense and critical thinking too, but those would do just fine in the public schools as well. For all the percieved faults of public education, I'm far more likely to believe that people take their kids out of school because they got some wierd problem with parts of the curriculum than a genuine desire to give their children a general education, only better.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Would you give up your right to sue if your kid was hurt in some fashion by drugs while at school?
Sure, if she was hurt by Ibuprofen.
how you intend for the school to achieve its mission of protecting students from hurting themselves
Oh man, that's a toughie. Oh, I know!! How about achieving its mission by protecting students from things that are actually harmful. Sadly, that requires putting actual thought into the situation. For instance, if I suspected that the kid was selling ecstasy tablets disguised as ibuprofen, having obtained such a fake tablet from another kid, this would be grounds for an investigation that might escalate to a strip search. Or if a kid reported that another kid was going to try to kill themselves by ODing on Ibuprofen, this would be grounds for an investigation that would probably escalate to a trip to the counselor.
But a kid who you think might have real ibuprofen, with no other known threat? Yeah, that's totally dangerous.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Brainwashing somewhat implies a non-rational response though.
Totally right. Perhaps "social conditioning" is a better euphemism? Or "rehabilitation" haha
Morality can be taught, you might say, but with a rational response.
I would define "rational response" as "most pleasure for least effort". Morality is taught with these requirements in mind. The child learns that it is easier to get what it wants if it goes about it in a nice way - please, thankyou, yes sir, no sir. This is no way changes the underlying motivation, just suppresses it - puts it to sleep.
Yes, I'm certainly familiar with the contept of original sin. Now, where I would differ from you is that I believe an actual change of our inherent "moral" nature, if you will, is possible. It's what "evangelical" Christianity's big deal about the Gospel is. True Christianity isn't [supposed to be] a morality/standard that is imposed on people from outside.
We're not so different. Although I don't believe a change is possible in our moral nature, I believe it is very possible to clothe it with a greater, purer intention. Bringing these powerful egoistic, moral concerns into alignment with the laws of nature is the ultimate goal of creation. Suppressing them is not, it is only a preparative stage.
Now, I'm curious. It sounds like you believe in evolutionary principles. Why is it you refer to the non-humans as animals and separate from us?
Evolution is a lie. From what I perceive, desire is the motivating force behind creation. There is a lack, it must be filled. A stone desires nothing more than to keep its shape. A plant has a greater vessel of desire than a stone. It now can grow, but must depend on its environment slightly more in return. A greater level of desire results in more abilities, such as movement, speech and so on. The desire of each level, from still, to vegetative, animate, and speaking, is an order of magnitude higher than the previous one. Animals are only as separate from us as a baby from its mother.
Humanity is the order of creation that is most dependent on their environment, a fact that will come to greater light in the future. The suffering caused by incorrectly asserting our independence from the overall Human organism is a cause of great suffering, which will pass as we integrate and unite.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
Being home-schooled denies you the social skills you might learn in school.
Here is another bullshit statement, being atheist denies my children the social skills they could learn in church activities.
I knew home-schooled people through my church. They were ostracized because they hadn't had experiences that we had had. We couldn't relate to them. They didn't get our jokes, and they didn't seem to understand reality.
Wow, that anecdotal evidence is stunning.
As the parent of home-schooled children, I think you are too close to the situation to make a rational assessment. No offense, but your kids may be very poorly adjusted and you just don't know it.
As a parent of non-homeschooled chidlren, I think you are too far away from the situation to make an assessment. No offense, but my kids are well adjusted and you just don't know it.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Whatever school you went to fucked up your reasoning skills, that's for sure. My siblings and I were all home schooled, as were several other people I know... we all turned out perfectly damn normal. Why? Because we had decent parents, for one. Because we weren't cut off from interacting with our peers, for another (there's no rule about home schooling that means you have to sit at home 24/7).
Bad parenting fucks up your social skills (among other things). It has not a damn thing to do with home schooling.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
No, I'm assuming any involvement of the police at all would scare a kid to hell, and because the police got called the other kids would automatically label that kid as a criminal or whatever, regardless of the fact she was actually innocent.
A two year old is not selfish. This is a projection happening because we adults do not properly understand the psychology of the undeveloped human brain. Some skills develop before others, and that's predetermined by nature, not the child's choice. At the age of two the sense of "self" starts emerging. The child starts feeling their own will. Lots of experimentation, discovery of the world. Strong feelings and desires unmanageable for the child. A 2-year old does not have control over these and it will be years before it learns to self-regulate.
What you're saying is: "You weren't hit by the boulder rolling down the hill. It had no choice in the matter, so it didn't 'hit' you."
Just because children have no choice but to act selfishly does not mean they are not selfish; it instead means that their core _is_ selfishness.
My question here is, what does the policy really ban?
Illegal drugs i can see. Underage drinking, smoking, sure. They're all illegal things in the real world.
But even a prescription drug, why would this be banned in a school?
kids have honest to god illnesses that require prescription drugs. Are they all required to get exemptions or have some sort of note? And if so, why?
I knew home-schooled people through my church. They were ostracized because they hadn't had experiences that we had had. We couldn't relate to them. They didn't get our jokes, and they didn't seem to understand reality.
You are giving examples of how poorly socialized those church-going, public school children are. Your church-reared children are obviously anti-social and they are not well socialized. Trying to convince parents to put their children in these anti-social environments so that they can learn to be as anti-social as their peers, and to ostracize and accuse other people who are not members of their clique that "they didn't seem to understand reality" is wrong, immoral, and unethical.
I'll reword what you said (just to show you how incredibly arrogant you make yourself sound. And yes, to attempt to put some reality into your brain as well):
As the parent of public-schooled children, I think you are too close to the situation to make a rational assessment. No offense, but your kids may be very poorly adjusted and you just don't know it.
And you also said;
Personally, I hated public school and thought it was a complete waste of time. I still think that.
You are defeating your own argument. Make a case for either socializing kids through public school or not, but don't do what most people here on Slashdot do and just argue through opinion and folklore. I have been through the public school system, and I personal don't have any strong opinions on either home-schooling or public schooling. What I have been doing here (in this thread) is commenting out the obvious fallacies.
In Soviet Russia you are strip s...
Hang on, something's not right here.
That's because:
1. It's easier and more effective to teach them how to avoid the occasional drunken lout who is trying to pick a fight, or how to fight back when absolutely necessary;
2. Inflicting that kind of pain and injury will actually cause serious problems, whereas being exposed to a playground where a kid calls you a boogerhead won't;
3. And because the odds of any one individual actually getting into anything more than a very occasional, very minor scuffle is ridiculously slim unless they're out looking for trouble.
On the other hand, it's a guarantee that when they step into "the real world" they're going to have to deal with jerks, liars, and blowhards. If you want science, I suggest you read about the psychology of coping mechanisms, social bonding, and at what age one starts to develop them. For a paper relevent to how well children deal with others with or without spending time in school, here's one:
A study involving 17 children (ages 12-15) who had established school refusal found the children's individual protective factors were weakened (particularly around peers)...
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OK, I'll spell this out real simple for you idiot school officials (and judges) who think this is OK. You think my daughter has drugs on her? Fine. Call me or her mother to come pick her up and we'll figure out if she has drugs on her or not.
YOU DO NOT REMOVE HER CLOTHES AND CHECK FOR YOURSELF!!! Your are there to teach, not to act like wannabe DEA agents.
Understand?
This is a great point.
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"My son sometimes screams his brains out when I change his diaper. It still needs to be done."
Of course, and you do it. Punishing your son for it would be excessive.
Sometimes he may not be ready to eat at dinner time. Demanding that he eats at a time convenient by you and not according to his biological cycle would be unhealthy for him and more convenient for you.
Showing your child how you feel while staying connected with them is one type of situation. (Seemingly) attacking your child and causing them pain, is a different situation. If a child experiences fight/flight condition because of something the parent did, then something is wrong.
The child running towards the campfire may be handled without violence. It is possible.
Nonviolent parenting != permissive parenting.
Your kids should be like me. Let them meet up with people who realize most people are weak and easy to take advantage of... until they get tired of having their shit stolen and being set up for scapegoating, and wind up kicking everyone's ass. Some of my life involved idiot schoolkids punching me hard in the gut, or throwing me into walls and doors, just to show off in front of their dumbass friends; eventually I put a stop to that... the first one was a 250 pound overgrown kid in 8th grade, when I weighed the better part of 70 pounds. He went down hard and never came near me again.
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I grew up without social skills. You should probably learn what social skills are. It's a very complex psychological topic. At this point I'm slowly learning to deal with people in some manner other than simple input-output machines that I can manipulate; I didn't actually pay attention to the fact that other people existed around me until I was like 20.
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Seriously?
The fact that teachers got a child to snitch out another child over some ibuprofen is the first thing that should worry us.
The fact that adults thought it was appropriate to strip search a 13 year old over ibuprofen is the second thing that should worry us.
The fact that the child was so used to following authority that she did not say 'fuck you' when told to strip is the third thing that should worry us.
The fact that someone will actually defend this in hindsight is the most worrying thing of all. Would a full cavity search have been OK with you as well?
Finally I'm guessing that the previous 'overdose' was an equally stupid zero tolerance/cover your ass based overreaction.
The responsible people and the school need a severe smack down in civil court. Start by taking the vice principles net worth times four from him (leave him destitute and in debt). Then hit the school for enough money to pay for the girls college after lawyers fees.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1) A strip-search of a 13 year old by legal authorities is not illegal in of itself,,,its not a sex crime.
2) The supreme court has said that the gravity of the accused offense affects whether a search is proper
3) If the child was suspected of carrying a gun or other weapon, a seach could be in order. In this case however it was not a weapon not even an illegal drug but a non-narcotic prescription drug and the only evidence was the accusation of another student.
4) What amazes me is that the assistant principal didnt bother to attempt to call the parents first. A strip-search of a 13 year old is not an every day event.
The supreme court needs to draw some clear lines here.
Examples: Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.
Scientific research referenced for almost every statement he makes.
Here's a description of the book on his website: http://www.alfiekohn.org/up/index.html
Highly recommended for any present/future parent.
Nonvilent parenting != permissive parenting
Maybe I am misunderstanding you.
I think that judging someone as "selfish" implies a choice or at least capacity for them to act differently.
Looking at the definition by Merriam Webster, I think you can mean #1 for a toddler. Meaning #2 would indicate expectations beyond what's developmentally normal for that age.
Given that the word is the same and you may say #1 but be heard as saying #2, I think that "independent" is a better word.
1: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others
Ok, I hereby give up my right to sue the school if my child is hurt by drugs in such a way that the event wouldn't have happened had students been strip based on unfounded accusations by other students.
Satisfied?
I would exempt at least two congressmen from that tally, and there may be others.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Can I live in your world, where children aren't naturally narcissistic, messy, gluttonous, and willful creatures?"
Sure, just take the labels off the behaviors you judge as such.
These are all words with negative connotations.
Narcissistic = interested in themselves. wanting to pursue what feels good to them.
Messy = very interested in exploring, regardless of resulting mess
Gluttonous = loving tasty food that feels good to the taste buds and tummy
Willful = independent, as in independent being, exploring the world, learning to get what it wants from the universe
It's not the children, it's us.
I don't like the ramifications that this suggests if the search is allowed. The main one is that it is making our children second-class citizens. Schools are the first place people learn how to interact with society. Unfortunately students get detentions on little or no evidence, they are categorized for risk by the people they hangout with, and many rules have cruel or unusually sever punishment. No wonder children have trouble adjusting to fit into society and distrust all authority around them. Our schools are giving them a reason to.
Keep in mind that the "originalist" viewpoint espoused by the conservative wing of the court is basically that the way rights were looked at in 1790 is almost always the way we should be looking at them now. We're talking about a mentality that students have no rights whatsoever and that school officials should essentially be given permission to do whatever they want.
Where the fuck does "suspected" equal the issuing of a warrant upon probable cause?
O.K., so New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985), held that searches in public schools do not require warrants but only reasonable grounds for believing that the search will result in the finding of evidence of illegal activity.
What the hell were the reasonable grounds, then?
A zero-tolerance policy does not constitute "reasonable grounds" to me. Heck, this was an honors student, with presumably a clean reputation.
If some perverted teacher did that to my daughter, his or her head might quite possibly be meeting the business end of an ax, to ensure that my daughter would, in the future, be secure in her person and never risk violation of her rights by that individual again.
In Liberty, Rene
Alright, you grew up without developing your social skills. Cool, I can't argue with you, on that score. I most certainly WILL question why you attribute your lack of social skills to home schooling. My own social skills were severely retarded, primarily because my home was dysfunctional, and I withdrew from everyone. This, in spite of the fact that I attended public schools, where teachers and counselors would theoretically notice that I had problems. Take my word for it - few teachers really give a damn, and the social skills you learn in the locker room aren't all that important to success in life.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Is that the assistant principal at the time who ordered the strip searches of both children is still employed as the assistant principal of Safford Middle School. This is the directory of information for him at the bottom of this page:
http://www.saffordusd.k12.az.us/exec/eSiteAddress.asp?set_site_to=sms&division=Site:+Principal&group_is=&group_id=
Wilson, Kerry, Mr.
Assistant Principal
Room: SMS_Office
Phone: 928-348-7040 ext. 4706
E-Mail: KWilson@saffordusd.k12.az.us
Here is what I fail to understand: This monster and idiot did not have enough judgement to realize this was sexual harassment of minor, child abuse, and a violation of unreasonable search and seizure and yet to this day he is still allowed to work with children? At the same job! I mean if I had cost my employer so much money in legal matters alone I would have been immediately sh*tcanned and anyone that called for references would have been told that they would not hire me again given the choice.
Here is the contact info for the principal:
SMS Principal Contact
612 W. 11th Street
Safford, AZ 85546
Phone: 928-348-7040 ext. 4701
Fax: 928-348-7041
cEmery@SaffordUSD.k12.az.us
Here is the contact info for the super intendant:
Dr. Mark R. Tregaskes
734 W. 11th St.
Safford, AZ 85546
Phone: 928-348-7000 ext. 7203
Fax: 928-348-7001
Here are the school board members:
http://www.saffordusd.k12.az.us/exec/eHome.asp?set_site_to=RAC&division=RAC:+Board+News&group_is=
Mr. Mike DeLaO, Governing Board President
Mrs. Julie Cluff, Governing Board Member
Mrs. Diane Junion, Governing Board Member
Dr. Richard Lines, Governing Board Member
Mr. David Player, Governing Board Member
Board News Contact
734 W. 11th St.
Safford, AZ 85546
Phone: 928-348-7000 ext. 7701
Fax: 928-348-7001
gcurtis@SaffordUSD.k12.az.us
City of Safford
http://www.cityofsafford.us/?q=taxonomy/term/2
717 W Main Street
P.O. Box 272
Safford, Az 85548
Phone:(928) 348-3100
info@ci.safford.az.us
I think those of us that are more sensible should write some civil but clear letters to help them see how miserably poor judgement certain employees of theirs have.
I'm going to burn in hell for this, but someone has to do it:
Pics or it didn't happen!
How appropriate, the captcha was "hologram".
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Two responses:
1) He doesn't have to, because I was taught that there are hard boundaries in the world by my parents who spanked me.
2) In truth, what my boss can do when I'm out of line is far worse: He can fire me. He can send me to my room without dinner... and without my room!
I was about 8 or 9 when I figured out that the spankings didn't actually hurt. My parents had a pizza paddle on top of the refrigerator. It was a big, light, flat piece of wood that made a terrific whooshing sound and a slap, but didn't actually hurt at all. But that was not the point. It was the following ritual:
1) Explain what I'd done wrong (spanking was an absolute last resort), and remind me how many times I had been warned against it.
2) One swat to the bum.
3) Go to my room to think about it for awhile (maybe 30 minutes)
4) Mom or Dad coming in to get me, obviously sad about the situation, sitting down on the bed next to me and saying "you can't do that, okay?" and giving me a hug.
At no point was I in any physical danger. At no point was I emotionally abused. There were no angry words spoken. My parents simply presented the image of rational people, which highlighted my own irrationality and the gap between what I was supposed to do and what I had done.
I'm sorry, but these are good lessons. I was only spanked if I did something really dangerous or bad, when I'd been warned repeatedly not to do it. It was a last resort, and I can only remember a couple instances, actually.
The world is not nearly as forgiving or rational as my parents, and consequences for acting out of line are much harsher than a noisy whack on the bottom.
So when I say that I support spanking, this is the kind of spanking I'm talking about. It's not a beating. It doesn't really hurt (maybe a little sting). It most certainly doesn't leave a mark or lingering discomfort. And it isn't "violent," as in it is not Dad, in a fit of rage, beating the tar out of the kid. It is a ritualized disciplinary act to act as an "ultimate" punishment for very small children.
By the end of elementary school, it was over. I was reasoned with like an adult, because I'd learned where the hard boundaries are, and to operate within them.
Children are not adults. They are children. They do not yet understand the social and physical boundaries necessary to live in society. They do, however, understand a stinging bottom while they think about what got them there.
Finally, a lot of this is just cultural. Many of the punishments I see parents use in Japan, I would consider mental/emotional abuse. My (Japanese) wife's father used to slap her across the face. She has a scar on her head from where he threw her into a doorknob when she was three. And she doesn't consider him to have been abusive, just to be outdated (he married very late and is almost old enough to be my parents' parent). As a result, however, if we have children, I will be controlling very strictly his contact with them. Cultural or not, if he ever laid a hand on my child like that, he'd be the one in the emergency room getting stitches.
There is a continuum here that is not well-served by "spanking is good"/"spanking is bad." Without clear delineation between behaviors, it's very hard to have a real discussion. We might be talking about very different things.
1.There is nothing reasonable or doubtful that thinking that two advils would do serious harm, or even minor harm to a 13 year old girl.
Exactly. It's prescription medicine, no mention is made of whether she had a prescription. If the school's "zero tolerance" drug policy forbade prescription drugs, that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard, and I've heard some pretty fucking stupid things.
"I'm sorry, Mrs Splodnatzki, your son died today in detention after we caught him trying to inject himself with Insulin. It was his blood testing kit and the prescription in his bag that tipped us off... They go bad so young these days, you really should consider your parenting. Just be glad he wasn't experimenting with Aspirin or antibiotics!"
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I think that judging someone as "selfish" implies a choice or at least capacity for them to act differently.
I would argue that there are many among us would would not have "developed" out of the egocentricity of their twos and threes had they not been forcefully [1] and repeatedly shown that there is more to the world than their rapidly expanding sense of self.
As a counterpoint to this:
I think that judging someone as "selfish" implies a choice or at least capacity for them to act differently.
How are we to treat the murderous psychopath? She has no choice but to harm and kill. What are we to think of her? What labels shall we apply? :)
[1] force != violence
If you get 10 leashes for being late to work would that be OK?
That depends. Are they leather? (rrrowr!)
It not the culture that has the right to treat the child as they see fit. Or the schools. Its the parents. If the kid is to be striped searched the parents should have been present. They probably did not what to get the parents involved because they knew they could not bully the parents into allowing it like they could the child. I doubt the police would have done it without the parent there. I myself am not a believer in spanking but I am also not a believer in the government telling parents they are not allowed to spank, within reason, if they think its the right thing to do.
This construct of yours an entity that has to act like parents is moronic.
There is only one such entity and that is parents
If the school thinks strip searching is the answer they need to ground the student under supervision and call the parents .
How are we to treat the murderous psychopath? She has no choice but to harm and kill. What are we to think of her? What labels shall we apply? :)
How is this a counterpoint? People who are mentally ill and do bad things are no longer castrated, publicly ridiculed, burned as witches, or anything else. I'm curious how YOU suppose we should treat her and think of her? I'm assuming it's something other than "As a sick person who needs help and needs to be isolated from society?"
Sure, just take the labels off the behaviors you judge as such.
No amount of relabelling will change the horror that is the child-driven society of Middle and Junior High School. Children are naturally brutal, selfish, and quick to anger. As a group, they lack compassion and empathy.
There's a good reason for assigning Lord of The Flies in seventh grade. It's a real shame that that reason sails over the heads of almost every seventh grader. So much heartache and misery could be avoided if the brighter school-age children could be made to understand that this world that they and their peers have created is wholly unlike and vastly inferior to the world that most of us adults inhabit.
Isolate her, have someone watch her, contact the parents or the police immediately (depending on the level of the potential "threat"). Threat removed.
If she makes a move to hurt herself, whomever is watching her can stop her then and there. If she doesn't, then the parents or police will be there to deal with it shortly.
I had some pain-based health problems when I was in school (I was 17 at the time) and I always carried my painkillers with me and a jolly good thing too.
If my back went during class, I'd have struggled to get off my chair, let alone walk across the classroom, open the door, and then walk all the way to the office of whoever my painkillers were with in the hope that they were there.
I can see why people want a verdict about the reaosnablness of such an invasive search on this issue, but for this case the school should be ruled against on the far more fundamental basis that as a public school, they have no business trying to operate a zero tolerance policy to over-the-counter medication or prescription mediation for which the person has a prescription.
Also, teachers\school administrators performing strip-searches? WTF? What concievable reason is there for them to do that? If the student is possibly doing something which is properly illegal (not against school rules 'illegal' - properly against-the-law illegal) then turn them over to the police. Otherwise; this is already way out of hand.
FGD 135
Homeschooling only fucks up kids when the parents are overprotective religious fundamentalists who want to protect their kids from the sinful real world. They're the most common kind of homeschoolers. But among those who are homeschooling for more rational reasons, the kids usually turn out to be at least as well-adjusted as those in public schools, particularly when it comes to dealing with adults as equals.
The above does nothing to reduce the need for good public schooling to be available to everybody.
But, unfortunately, a lot of the time these other opportunities aren't given to home-schooled children.
As the parent of home-schooled children, I think you are too close to the situation to make a rational assessment.
As someone who has nothing to do with homeschooling, I think you're too far from the situation to make a rational assessment.
And that you're an idiot for saying this to a parent who, probably from experience, was just talking about the homeschooling groups and such that exist - for the purpose of socialization.
another person blaming their woes on those dreadful people dressed in black. it's like the German dude who blamed the shootings there on video games. An easy scapegoat.
Not to mention that the social goth movement was an 80s through early/mid 90s happening that has nothing to do with these idiots now who wear trenchcoats and listen to marilyn manson. I'm sick of this shit. As a person who is still goth in his mid-30s, I resent the continual scapegoating of a movement that had serious meaning to a great many people.
...has a wikipedia page where, oddly enough, no mention of the lawsuit is made. Doesn't that seem, well, incomplete somehow? Considering how citable the case is.
It doesn't apply if you're student -- courts have ruled that schools are acting as guardian ad litem for all students under its care and therefore have most of the rights generally reserved for parents, allowing them to take actions generally prohibited by agents of the state.
funnily enough, parents dont have the right to sexually assault their children either.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Home schooling fucks up your social skills.
As opposed to the public schools that turn out bullies and miscreants?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Gear down there, big shifter.
If you want to talk with me I suggest you stop the bullshit and ignorant patronizing.
Not so sure I really want to anymore, but you asked for science, and I provided you with an academic article on the very topic you wished to discuss. What exactly is your issue?
And your poorly worded rhetorical arguments about "the real world" expose themselves for what they are.
Then why don't you descend from your tower of knowledge and enlighten us poor squalid troglodytes in the wretched village below? In your previous posts you've admitted that you have no real knowledge of this either -- just that you've never seen any convincing argument. I'm not sure where your disconnect is, but so far, I and others have pointed out something I hope is axiomatic (the world contains jerks), a premise (people need to learn how to deal with jerks at some point in their lives), a postulate (it might be better if they learn this earlier than later, to be better prepared), and finally some research (the article) to help lend credence, since none of us appear to have any children we can subject to testing.
As for rhetoric, what exactly have you offered? That last post of yours was nothing but condenscending nonsense and wild accusations backed up by your assertion that I "obviously" have an agenda, without bothering to explain any of your statements. (And one wonders what agenda that might be -- am I part of some secret pro-school cabal?)
So why don't you dial back the attitude and tell us what your actual points of contention are, or we can go our seperate ways. Sheesh.
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I grew up in a shitty home life too, in a public school but medicated to the point where I could shut the public out. I know home-schooled kids who are taken out of school because of the way other kids treat them, to get them away from "bad social factors," and wind up like this.
When you're at school or work you meet people fast. When you're on your own... you usually don't just walk up to random people and start talking, what the hell? So how do you make friends? It's harder.
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What you're saying is: "You weren't hit by the boulder rolling down the hill. It had no choice in the matter, so it didn't 'hit' you."
The difference is that "hit" is directly observable whereas "act selfish" is something you have to judge indirectly using your own set of assumptions.
Just because children have no choice but to act selfishly does not mean they are not selfish; it instead means that their core _is_ selfishness.
Begging the question -- you assume they have no choice but to act selfishly so _of course_ their core is selfishness.
Apply your logic to the boulder: You were hit by the boulder rolling down the hill. Just because it had no choice but to carry out Satan's bidding does not mean it's not evil. The boulder is evil to the core.
This is an actual, rational, well-thought out response. The rest of the responses I got are crap.
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Public schools don't want you to fight back against bullies, they want you to submit. They facilitate bullies by suppressing the self-policing action.
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What is the role of punishment in a child not touching a stove? If punishment is the only tool in your educator's toolbox, then I suggest you look for other tools.
Most parents who punish in that situation are thinking "Well, a light smack is better than a 3rd degree burn." That's obvious. I agree there are other ways of dealing with it but you are being unfair to parents who did deal with it that way.
I don't think the school had reasonable suspicion just because another student claimed to have gotten the pills from her. Informants frequently lie and children also frequently lie. The risk from an ibuprofen tablet simply is not great enough to justify a strip search of a child.
It depends on the kid. For one kid, it's impossible, for another, it is first nature. Everyone is different. Some kids NEED isolation - my youngest son might have done better with home schooling, but the other two, no way. There is no way in HELL that anyone could ever have PREVENTED my middle son from talking to everyone he met, home schooling, public schooling, or private schooling. All of us are what we are - and trying to blame our environment is one way to ensure we won't grow and develop.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
There have been a couple studies of this. The results? Home schooled students were found to be better socialized than public schooled students ( http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html ). This is not the original source I had for this. I originally found reference to this in a non-homeschooling source. However the link I gave references a University of Florida PhD thesis (Which was published in 1992, that date would explain the paucity of references on the internet).
If you can provide more recent research indicating that this finding was wrong, please link it. I could not find anything.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
On the other hand, it's a guarantee that when they step into "the real world" they're going to have to deal with jerks, liars, and blowhards.
Hmm. First of all, how often does it come up? I'm pretty sure I live in the real world and in my experience it's pretty rare.
Second, why do you think a child is more capable of having good responses to those situations than an adult? Having another child call you a boogerhead isn't that different than most "adult" negative encounters, is it? I mean, I'm not Steven Seagal and I don't go around having knife fights all the time... am I missing something? What kind of activities are you involved in that make the real world seem like such a bad place to you?
Unfortunately this sort of thing is the collateral damage of the rampantly enacted "zero-tolerance" policies. Someone said it above, and it's worth repeating -- "Zero Tolerance" is another way of saying "I don't want to make real decisions." or, more accurately, "I'd rather hide behind Zero Tolerance than take accountability for the decisions I'd otherwise have to make."
Here you see it at its finest, an absolutely abhorrent decision is made, a young girl is violated and humiliated, and the perpetrators are not only hiding behind Zero Tolerance, but actually defending their actions in it's name. They come across as if this sort of situation is actually the *reason* we need Zero-Tolerance in our schools. Despicable.
Several things need to happen -- This needs to be investigated from the girl who reported the alleged possession on up through the final events and fall-out. During this time every adult involved in the decision-making process behind this needs to be suspended immediately, without pay, unions be damned. Parents in the district need to make a hell of a stink, call for *firings* -- none of this resign under mutual confidentiality bullshit that allows these people to be hired in another district. It doesn't matter that these people will loose their jobs, regardless of whether or not they are found to directly responsible (assuming those accused are not completely uninvolved), if they knew this option was on the table, and then either perpetrated it, or allowed it to be perpetrated through inaction, they should be held accountable -- there is no justification in either case. Any criminal or negligent act needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. The parents of this girl should file suit against the district and personally against those responsible.
Call me cold, but the people behind this act should be ruined in every way possible -- They should be thrown in jail if any laws were broken. They should loose substantial financial ground, be it their savings, their homes, or what-have-you. They should be ostracized from their community and their profession for all time. They should never be allowed to work near children in any profession.
Even all that is getting off easy, IMO, if I were anywhere near this place I would personally track them down and commit felony assault on their faces.
I hate the fact that the "Think of the children" plea has allowed schools to become exempt from constitutional control. It is absolutely a travesty.
What kind of activities are you involved in that make the real world seem like such a bad place to you?
I'm assuming he is a Banker.
and I provided you with an academic article on the very topic you wished to discuss.
The topic of the thread is socialization, and specifically with home schooling. The article that you referenced is about an anxiety disorder that relates to going to public school. Interestingly enough it states that home schooling is a possible solution. So the article is not only off-topic, but it said something positive about what you were arguing against.
It's really these type of arguments that depress me and make me feel like I'm wasting my time. I don't mind being told that I'm wrong, but I need to be convinced. I don't want to go through (for example) all your points, however poor they may be, only to have you contradict me with more poor arguments.
Well at least you may see where I am coming from. Maybe not. Perhaps I'm right-the-fuck-out-of-there. At any rate I don't see this conversation going very far.
Best regards,
UTW
I'm just saying this thing reeks to hell of something a lot worse than just poor judgement.
Something like ... exceptionally bad judgment?
paintball
While no blame can be placed at the feet of the girl or her parents, this issue does highlight some important things we must do as adults and as parents.
Firstly, anyone with a child enrolled in any institution need to be aware of that institutions policies, and to be actively involved in reforming those policies where abuse is possible. I believe it is in no way reasonable for any non-state, non-security institution to be able to strip-search anyone, let alone a minor. Does their policy handbook say that measures up-to-and-including a strip-search may be taken by school officials? That handbook should be viewed as a contract between the district and students/their parents, it should state clearly what the potential resolutions/punishments are for a given class of investigation/infraction, if they step out of line with that, they should be held accountable in the absolute.
Second, parents need to educate their children that there is a difference between respecting policy and being taken advantage of. This means teaching your children about what rights they have and which are curtailed in certain situations, and to what extent. It also means teaching them that they can, and should, peaceably resist when asked, told or threatened to go against the rights they do hold in any situation. They need to know the child-hood equivalent of "No officer, I know my rights, and you may not look in my trunk." In these situations, teach your children to request that their parents be involved -- The childhood equivalent of not speaking without an attorney present.
Having been on the wrong end of Zero-Tolerance myself, though to nowhere near the extent as the poor victim in this case, I can say that the second point will almost assuredly be met with resistance. The authority-types in the school system don't take well to the notion that there are limits on the theory of "what I say goes." They may push harder, they may get angry, they may even, in extreme cases, take physical measures to force compliance -- it would be terrible if the issue were taken to that end, but it would also make their culpability absolutely cut and dried.
-Oz
I would destroy, utterly, without shred of remorse, anyone who participated in this facade of 'caring'.
Guns are the first tool only of those too weak and too stupid to apply any other means to solving their problem.
paintball
The fact that something like this takes place in the United States of America is proof that this country is corrupt.
...she could've been a terrorist! You just can't be too careful these days.
"The accusation was that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen, which is not OTC medication."
Do you know how you can get prescription-strength ibuprofen? It's the same medication, just a higher dose. And not a significantly higher dose, either.
Actually, looking in the article, she was accused of having 400mg tablets. Read the back of a bottle... 400mg is a *standard dose* of OTC ibuprofen when you pull a muscle or over-do it at the gym.
Calling it "prescription-strength" is just a way to make it sound like something serious was going on. It wasn't. You can't get high on ibuprofen. I'm sure you could OD on it, but then, you can OD on aspirin. So let's push that out of the way. She had ibuprofen, what I keep in my desk drawer, what you get at the Rite-Aid for $2 for a bottle of 50 and the school's reaction is to strip search her.
Speaking of drugs, the school's administrators must be on crack to think that's an okay reaction.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Correction. The article that you link to is merely a vague abstract. "School Refusal", according to Wikipedia, is a British phenomena, and it is the Wikipedia article that states that home schooling is a possible solution.
Just setting the record straight.
My apologies,
UTW
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The response was a bit egotistical - I was homeschooled for several years by an atheist, but almost all the other homeschoolers I know do it for religious reasons. Sadly, many of them start going to public schools for high school when their parents realize they can't provide that kind of education (particularly with all the younger siblings to worry about). Those first few months in public school are usually pretty rough.
If I ever command authority to clean up...
You won't.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Pretty sure the slavemasters had spears, swords and whips whereas the slaves had none of these. The gun is merely the appropriate "currently effective personal weapon" to sub in. Likewise in 500 years' time, a gun will be useless against personal armour but whatever funky maser-based beam weapon is in use by armed forces then will be the symbol of personal firepower.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
WTF?!?!?
Have any of these clueless idiots tried actually to raise a daughter without Midol(tm), or other forms of ibuprofen?
What 'reality' have they been operating in?
Any teen going through puberty is at risk (irregardless of gender)of this crap.
Again, why are we accepting this shite? To the Shooting Wall(line the pol's up to be shot in the face) with these child molesting pedants!!!!think of the children
Deny a 'going through the change' teenager Motrin(tm)?...WTF????
This can only be enacted by those that have no female children to worry about...think about it.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Indeed, I'm familiar. And thats very appropriate, because what happens when a principal gets a phone call from "Chief of Detectives, Detective Smith", who reports that Mary Sue is known to be dealing drugs today, and in fact the drugs are known to be hidden in her panties.
A third (perhaps somewhat less related) study would be the Stanford Prison Experiment. Obedience to Authority is available, as is the Standford Prison Experiment, and both should be watched by every kid with their parents.
Here's two things that come to mind reading over the situation.
She is not an emancipated adult and therefore HAS NO RIGHTS except those explicitly granted to minors. So she has no X amendment rights to violate. They don't apply. I'm sick of hearing about minors and how their X amendment rights are supposedly being violated. They don't have those rights in the first place.
Zero tolerance is just another way of saying "We don't want to use our own judgment so therefore we say everything is bad." When I was in school we brought OTC medications with us and used them when we needed them. Now just having something they can buy at any corner store is violating some stupid blanket policy.
My biggest gripe is the assumption of rights for minors who don't actually have them, obviously. Zero tolerance is just a complete annoyance at the laziness and lack of accountability in the administration.
I can see the search of her possessions and turning out her pockets. Anything that required her to remove clothing is completely out of line. Send her home if you still think she's hiding something but for Spaghetti's sake have a shred of common sense.
If I ever have kids, I will not permit them to go to public school for exactly this reason!
...because ... private schools are somehow different?
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
If I may quote: "A Knife Always Works". That was Larry Niven, writing about a fight between a sorcerer and an amazingly powerful demon. I suspect similar principles will still apply concerning lower tech weapons for a long, long time.
I suggest you look up what "school refusal" is. Hint: it has nothing to do with homeschooling.
Also, I suggest a little critical thinking with respect to the study -- 17 kids? How representative is that? And perhaps the reason they were refusing school was because they already had poor coping skills?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Sure, just take the labels off the behaviors you judge as such. These are all words with negative connotations.
Because they come with heavily negative consequences, especially when acted upon by a child who doesn't know when (or why) to stop. If these behaviors were good and wholesome, they would be given hallowed status for adults in most societies.
Oh, very true. I counterquote Buffy (after Faith stabs the guy with her stake, then says "...but he's not a vampire"): "It's surprising how many things (a stake through the heart) will kill."
Hell, I find it confusing that countries have such tough laws on the sale of "hunting" knives, but you can buy a box of steak knives from the supermarket and carry it home under your arm.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I find it sad that Americans continue to put up with this crap. Every week it is someone new and people are in the news and on the net saying how wrong it is. However what are you doing about it? You talk about your rights and freedoms however when was the last time you did something about it? Oh I am suing the other party ... blah blah blah. Odd if someone touched my child, I think suing them would be last on the list.
Linux: For those able to think out side of a window
I say sue the bastards into the ground...
1) School Staff are NOT Law Enforcement Officers and do not have the right to search and seizure at the same levels as a cop.
2) On the flip side the 13 year old girl could have reasonably told them to 'fuck off' and left. If they tried to stop her then they would be dealing with harassment and assault charges.
3) Where are the child molestation, sexual interference, etc... charges? What they subjected the girl was tantamount to rape.
Long story short, even Cops need a fairly high bar in order to require a strip search of a suspect that is a legal adult. What these School Staff had was far less, basically relying on hearsay from another student to basically strip search, humiliate and molest a 13 year old girl. Clearly the Supreme Court should bitchslap these school staff and the school and the school board as a result of this outright stupidity.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Uh, hello.
I'm an adult.
Adults are every bit as horrible as children, they're just better at pretending they aren't doing anything wrong.
I agree that our society is prone to hysteria about sex-offenders. However, if you think that's a basis for letting these administrators off the hook then you are entirely missing the point:
Situation 1: A school administrator strip-searches a 13 year old honor student upon the flimsiest pretext. The student is forced to show her vagina and spread her legs.
Outcome: The defiant school district defends its administrators all the way to the Supreme Court. School officials and prosecutors solemnly testify about the incalculable harm created by drugs and the necessity of a zero-tolerance policy.
Situation 2: A 13 year old girl uses her cell phone to take a scandalous photo of herself and sends it to her boyfriend. The school discovers this after confiscating the boy's cellphone when it rings in class.
Outcome: Both kids are criminally prosecuted for trafficking child pornography. School officials and prosecutors solemnly testify about the incalculable harm created by 'sexting' and the necessity of a zero-tolerance policy.
Obviously the real issue is not the sanctity of our children's bodies. The real issue is that some of our school administrators are using every possible pretext to expand and consolidate their power over students. By crassly exploiting the "think of the children" sentiment, schools institute ever more invasive and authoritarian policies. We are turning our schools into a police state. Instead of teaching our kids how to be responsible citizens, we are priming them for a totalitarian society.
Do you have a source for this? (Jeremiah Wright sermons don't count.)
First off I think the school officials should be charged as pedophiles, the girl was 13. Second, If they really needed to know if she had pills you call the police and allow them to find out.
Right. They still would have had no standing to strip search. If it was crack, they could call the cops instead. But then, given what evidence they had, the cops probably couldn't have searched the girl either.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
"Considering the severity..." of having moderately concentrated *ibuprofen*?
Jesus Christ on a crutch... someone needs to whack those people with a clue stick.
cant take any report from a pizza guy - http://freshmeat.net/users/tsarkon
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
Are you still so frenzied that you can't see?
Observer: "The crazy guy heard the little boy flipped him off, and the crazy guy responded by knifing the little boy."
Mob: "YOU MUST DIE FOR SUPPORTING THE CRAZY GUY!"
Bunch of goddamned snarling dogs in here. The lot of you need rolled newspapers.
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
Absolutely cases should be encouraged so that grounds can be established for what is and what isn't proper behaviour for school administrators.
Granted, court cases cost money, but if schools and their administrators were reasonable and justified in their searches and won such cases, then future court cases based on similar circumstances would be thrown out or settled quickly based on prior history.
If the court is afraid of the number of potential court cases being filed, then they have (indirectly) admitted that they have failed in being the balance between government, laws, and the people.
Until this story got out, I didn't even know it was legal for a school to perform a strip search.
Check a locker, check a bag... OK.. I suppose.
Tell my kid to take her clothes off? WTF?
I don't have any kids, but if I did, they'd be home schooled if I couldn't get a sworn written statement by the principle and her teacher for that year that this invasive 'protection' was not condoned by that school.
I do have two very young nieces. I think I'll be having a chat with their teacher and principle once they reach an age that they can attend school.
School teaches you how to deal with assholes which I assert is a necessary life skill.
This is wrong, public school does not teach you how to deal with assholes (unless what I hear and read on the news is completely wrong; people are still getting beaten up, bullied, teased, assaulted, etc at public schools). And no, unless you take basic training you are unlikely to have this type of environment in the typical adult workplace. Don't assume I have anything against public schools. Most times I post, people (and moderators) seem to think I am arguing against their agenda, which is wrong. I'm not arguing against their agenda, I am arguing against their faulty (and often dishonest) arguments. I'm more interested in Truth and Logic than agendas.
Morse v. Frederick does not allow administrators to restrict student's free speech rights in any significant way. Scalia* and Kennedy both ruled that he could only be punished because he did not have anything to say, and by his own admission, was trying to be disruptive.
Had he been punished for a 'legalize weed' sign, the ruling would have been 5 to 4 in his favor.
*I can't believe I just admitted to agreeing with Scalia, I need a shower.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
I think you've got it backwards; it's the 12-year-olds (and younger) acting like the 30-year-old parents, only they aren't as refined so it's easy to see their game. You give adults way too much credit. If you gave children more credit, you wouldn't walk all over their rights all the time, and they would be able to develop into full human beings, not the stunted-growth adults that most become. By snap-judging their behavior and assuming it has nothing to do with how adults treat them, you never understand the real cause.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
What a dim-witted retard. Childhood is the stage humans go through before they become adults. While a person is a child, he is under the care and responsibility of his parents. His parents' job is to raise him to be responsible and mature. Most children need their asses beat every once in a while in order to learn that what they just did was wrong and never to do that again. Yes, corporal punishment works, and it works well. Jesus, nobody is advocating beating a child til his ass is black and blue, or anything close to that. The people that don't get their asses beat as kids generally turn out to be the kind of adults who get their faces smashed into the concrete for being a douchebag/smart ass to the wrong person. The difference is, kids are a lot more likely to learn from their ass whoopin, whereas the douchebag adult is old and set in his ways.
Your logic doesn't even make any sense, anyhow. So since you think children are the same as adults, and should have full adult rights, do you also agree that a 5 year old ought to have a right to leave his parents and live on his own? If you do, then you're stupid. If not, then where do you draw the line? You're just another granola-eating hippy who is scared by the idea of a kid being subjected to corporal punishment. Stop advocating shitty parenting, you fucking idiot. You are directly contributing to the destruction of all that's good and well in our society.
I'm a male high school teacher in Australia, and if it ever got to the point where somebody told me to strip-search a student like that, it'd be "May I have a 'Notice to Quit' Form please?". I'm also very concerned about the fact that other teachers didn't speak up against it when it happened. Aside from the mental anguish this would cause any young child, how could anyone in the modern education system, in America, land of the no-pay-lawsuit no less, not be concerned about the legal ramifications?
And you know what prescriptionstrength means ?
- 600mg vs 400mg per dosis (if you take nonpresc. strength 1 1/2 pills do the same)
And well it is a drug, but we all know that girls during menstruation are likely to have
pain in their belly area and migrane or heavy headache as well.
Is there no right for the girl to attend the school painfree ?
The names of these people are known and should be published at every mentioning of this incident. From this article, we know the school administrator's name is Kerry Wilson. I think that the names of the "female administrative assistant" and the "school nurse" should be published as well, in every mentioning of this incident.
Since it doesn't seem like the courts are going to give any justice to this matter, then perhaps making sure that people know who they're dealing with when they think of sending their kids to schools where these people work might help make things clearer to the so-called school district when the school empties of children because parents want nothing to do with these people.
Would the school officials have used force if the student refused?
What if the student used force against the school officials to avoid the unwarranted search?
What if the school officials had search 300 girls instead of just one? How many would still see this as reasonable?
If carrying ibuprofen is such a dangerous drug that it requires a strip search, shouldn't the police be called in the first place? It scares me mostly that the school can do this kind of investigation without having to call the authorities.
In case a student was suspected of carrying an illegal drug (no matter which drug), the police should have been informed. In this case the drug she was suspected of carrying was not illegal (it required a prescription still but that doesn't make it illegal in itself). She should have been questioned first at the very least.
The scariest part in this matter is for me that school authorities apparently have (or at least think they have) this kind of investigative powers. They may have certain powers, after all they have a bunch of school children to look after, but this is definitely going to far. This are powers of a kind that belong in the hands of the police only. Next thing you know is that teachers are allowed to carry weapons as a way to help them keep/restore order.
The accusation was that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen, which is not OTC medication.
There's just so many things going wrong here.
You should be perfectly well allowed to take legal drugs on school, whether OTC or prescription (assuming you have the prescription). I can see the case for banning alcohol since it makes students less able to be Good Students when consumed in the intended way, but other than that...
But failing a basic sanity check, I assume the school also bans medication for asthma and allergies. That'd be the "logical" (meaning consistent with displayed insanity) thing to do, right?
Did the school ask (1) "Do you have the pills?"; and (2) "Do you lack a prescription for prescription-required medication?" before strip-searching her? The article doesn't say anything about her having or not having a prescription, but the school probably didn't ask:
Ms. Redding said she was never asked if she had pills with her before she was searched. Mr. Wolf, her lawyer, said that was unsurprising.
I'm shocked and appalled. At my boarding school (back then) and my university (now), the personnel would give the students OTC pain-killers if we asked for them; that is, unless you asked ~daily, because they suspected you of developing an unhealthy addiction.
That's a policy I can support.
On the other hand, it's a guarantee that when they step into "the real world" they're going to have to deal with jerks, liars, and blowhards.
Hmm. First of all, how often does it come up? I'm pretty sure I live in the real world and in my experience it's pretty rare.
Okay, I usually stay out of arguments like this, but are you serious? Are you self employed, or only work in a very small business? If you find yourself in a situation where you can pick and choose who you interact with or only superficially interact with people on a short term basis, I can understand how you could come to this conclusion. I work in a midsize business, in a department where I have to deal with every other department. The vast majority of the people I work with are good people, but at least once a day I'm forced to deal with an asshole, a liar, or someone trying to bully me into getting their way. Everybody will inevitably come up against people like this in their lives at some point, and you'd better know how to stand up for yourself and work around them.
On the off chance that you work for a large business where everybody in the entire organization is great and has no personality flaws, let me know so I can come work there and never have to deal with jerks again. I highly doubt such an organization exists, but it's nice to think about.
"Pretty sure the slavemasters had spears, swords and whips whereas the slaves had none of these"
You're right. And the slaves in the American South didn't have those weapons either. The point being that guns had nothing to do with the maintenance of slaves in the old south. If you do some research here http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html you'll see the Bill of Rights adoption was not at all related to the question of slavery.
A much more interesting read can be found here: http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html where you'll see that the 2nd Amendment and the slavery question have no intersection.
Or do some googling and see for yourself.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Every paragraph should have ended with "By the way, this was over *ibuprofen*. What the fuck were these people thinking?" The very premise of the search was beyond moronic.
Property is theft.
...is, that by pursuing this to the supreme court, she has spent her formative teenage years enmeshed in this incident. Would it not have been better for her to have been helped to get over it and get on with her life? Her parents were rightly outraged, but they may have pursued the wrong course of action here. This is yet another argument for keeping schools under the control of local school boards. That would have made it easy to assure that the adults involved lost their jobs. Then everyone else could have quietly gotten on with their lives.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
What is happening is that special interest groups are normalizing this aggressive and authoritarian policy
Are "special interests" the new name for communists and terrorists? What are you talking about?
Property is theft.
in light of the 2006 wave of young teenage girls smuggling prescription-strength OTC pain killers in their panties.
Property is theft.
in light of the 2006 wave of young teenage girls smuggling prescription-strength OTC painkillers in their panties.
Property is theft.
Funny thing is - these people are arguing that the strip search was ok.
Yet if they had taken a picture of it, they would each spend 500 years in the slammer for posession of child porn.
Wierd how that doesn't match, don't you think? Having a picture of a half-naked girl carries a higher sentence than forcing her to strip?
And you call that a legal system?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Do we really want to encourage cases," Professor Arum asked, "where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?"
Y'see, in my opinion this sort of statement, while having some validity, has no place in court. He has a point by saying that creating a precedent for such cases could cause trouble if people start suing for money, but that shouldn't stand in the way of how this case is handled.
I realize this happens a lot, but if your worrying about possible future cases influences how you handle a current one, there's something wrong with how you conceive justice. Perhaps the system should change, but the fear of creating a precedent should not have an influence on the outcome of individual cases.
"You're a thought criminal!"
Send your spendthrift head of state this
That all said, it's obvious that ibuprofen is not harmful and they should know the difference. On the other hand, million-dollar liability can cloud the judgment of even the most rational folks, of which very few are employed as school administrators. That liability makes them err on the side of caution, in this case, erring like crazy.
Is this going to be the new excuse of pedophiles at school? "I had to err on the side of caution because everyone knows that chicks carry aspirin in their vaginas."
Unlike the child, these adults knew better. There is no evidence that they had even a school policy allowing strip searches, yet you're leaping in to defend them on the basis of rules. You've outlined no reason for the benefit of the doubt, other than the mere fact of their authority.
If there was anything clouding their judgment, it seems to me that the simplest explanation is sexual deviancy, not some pure intention to see that the rules got obeyed. Why not call the cops, if a strip search is warranted? Because you want to do it yourself, that's why.
That's also why it made national news, and why it doesn't happen every day. Rational adults know better. Defending this as rationality gone awry is giving to much credit to the power mad perverts.
I likely wouldn't have waited for lawyers. I would have gone straight to the local newspapers and television stations to bring public shame on the school. But if it were males strip searching my daughter, I first would have gone to jail for beating them to a fucking pulp for touching my daughter.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Keep in mind that the search was done by two female employees, a secretary and the school nurse, at the behest of the assistant principle, who was male. I believe what we are looking at here is a clear, real life example of a Milgram experiment.
Two minor employees followed the orders an authority figure, probably against their personal conscience. One, the secretary, was certainly untrained at what she was doing. The other, the nurse, was probably untrained as well.
You are being too harsh. The two women who conducted the search are responsible for their actions, but the fact is they are probably also victims here. If you read the description of the search, they did not ask here to fully remove all her clothing, instead adopting half measures, which goes back to the probable lack of training. This leads me to believe that these women did feel guilty about what they were doing and this emerged through half measures in which their orders were fully followed, but the victim was not subjected to a "complete" strip search.
It's a flimsy excuse, but it does I think show reluctance on the part of the searchers. Whatever about the nurse, what was the secretary doing there? She probably came in that day to type letters and answer phone calls. What was she doing in that room?
This is a clear example of the kind of situation Milgram was trying to understand. How willing are people to obey unconscionable orders? The important lesson here for anyone who finds themselves in such a situation is; When you go to work, do not leave your personal conscience and judgment, and your responsibility at the door.
May the Maths Be with you!
Being selfish means you do not care about other people or their feelings, or the effect of your actions upon them.
But it is not that two year olds do not care about other people. It is that they are unable to care about other people. When Timmy takes Bobby's chocolate, it is not that he did so without regard to Bobby's feelings, only that he did so with regard only to his own feelings. Timmy is not capable of fully grasping the effects of taking the chocolate will have on Bobby (Bobby will cry). He can only grasp the effects that not taking the chocolate will have on Timmy (Timmy will cry). Keep in mind I'm talking about two year olds.
The ability to empathise with others is a skill that two year olds have not yet learned, just as they have not yet learned to speak or coordinate themselves properly. As time goes by, they gain this skill. If Timmy then chooses to take Bobby's chocolate, in spite of the fact that he knows and understands the effect it will have (Bobby will cry), then Timmy is can be said to act selfishly.
Some people never learn to empathise, but these people are very small subset(psychopaths), comparable to those who never learn to talk, or walk. The vast majority of people can empathise, but of course a sizable fraction of them choose to be selfish anyway.
May the Maths Be with you!
So, just to get this straight, if you are a teacher in the US and you have 'reason' to suspect, you can order a 13 year old girl to strip to her underwear?
So that is why there are so many pedophiles in the USA! Probably already in the job queue applying to be teachers after this story came out.
Ever since the Kelso verdict I've come to the conclusion that the Supreme Court is just another tool of the power structure - of course they're going to side with the government, they're signing their paychecks and funding their pensions! Sure, on paper they're on the court for life, but I bet in reality significant pressure can be brought to bear on a justice who makes a number of "incorrect" decisions. What is really needed is a court made up of a combination of government and private members to decide cases where governmental restrictions clash with civil liberties. I don't know what you do in the case of a tie, though. Take a Mulligan?
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
I find it scary that school authorities will take the word of a child caught in th eact breaking the rules and automatically assume that a kid accusing others is necessarily telling the truth. It wasn't me who made all those Tsarkon Rep posts on slashdot sir I swear! Go strip search Anonymous Coward!!!
With zero tolerance policies enforcers throw away their powers of reasoning. A policy cannot be used to deny people their basic rights.
Plus in this case it was really really stupid and it seems to really have harmed the girl significantly. She was off school for months and eventually transfered.
Surprised that with all the outrage on here, exactly none is directly where it ought to be, at the school system itself. If you send your children to a prison society, this is what will happen to them. No surprise there. Not for this reason specifically, but for many many many others, my son has never seen the inside of a school building, and won't until college.
only one everything
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're not a father, are you?
No, you're an Anonymous Coward.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Why the sexism? Why is it reasonable to strip search a boy but not a girl?
I find being offended by me offensive.
It would have been completely reasonable for the girl to beat to death anyone who tried to force her to strip.
I don't care what the circumstances are. If an adult tries to force a girl to strip, that's rape. Rape victims are free to take any measures necessary to protect themselves, as far as I am concerned
Full agreement there. If the school thinks that strongly that the student may have drugs or some other "disallowed" item on them, they need to hand it over to the police. Schools are not the DEA and students aren't hardened criminals.
The school has no business strip searching people period. Regardless of the alleged infraction.
I injected insulin on school grounds daily through high school. Not a damn thing that the school could have done about it. If the school thinks is a problem, hold the student in an administrators office and call their parents.
Instead of trying to always be pinning the tail on the proverbial donkey, they should come up with ways to interact with the kids so the kids might start trusting them more, and try to open up more about stuff instead of taking pills....even if it was ibuprofen.
Secondly what is up with this, Ibuprofen, are u kidding me, that's for headaches, its not crack....so why are they even trying to strip search in the first place???
I would so love to hear the judge slap a big fine for them and set a precedent for this type of behavior. The teacher HAS to be smarter in today's world, we are dealing with problem kids with guns and drugs and sex earlier every year.
Instead, make an effort to improve your curriculum, not try to weed out kids that are bad apples. Those apples are not permanently rotten, just remember that, they deserve a chance to evolve into something better too.
God this makes me mad.....hulk......smash.....
See, in French we have two words:
So if a French school were to have a 'zero drogue' policy, there's no way someone carrying a mere 'medicament' would be in trouble. It's only if that 'medicament' was also a 'drug', like morphine, that they would be in trouble.
So the proper solution is obvious: fix the English language to distinguish the two meanings ;-).
they are the areas most likely to have people unable to competently apply judgment
Actually, while the above is often true I'd say that they're most often applied in areas where the victims of a "zero tolerance" policy are least likely to resist or fight back.
The current legal situation of right-invasion in US schools seems to support that. It also ingrains a "no matter how dumb, corrupt, or oppressive it seems, don't fight the system" mentality on today's youth.
Seems to me that even a parent/family-member forcing a 13-year-old girl to strip for them - especially down to the point of revealing genitalia - would be looking at possible criminal child-abuse, exploitation, or other such charges. Why not school staff?
One thing I haven't quite figured out yet. This seems to be a civil suit against the school by the parents? Did anyone ever file a criminal suit? I would have called the cops and told them that several staff members forced my 13-yr-old daughter into a back room and forced her to strip for them...
What gets me is this: "the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search" There shouldn't be a lawsuit because the issues involved are similar to a case that was decided ALMOST 20 YEARS PREVIOUSLY??
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Thats a fault of usa...
Im sure other countries do better, tho if there are bullies around, take solace to know that all bullies either eventually turn to corporate criminals like madof, or OD on heroin, or end up in jail for life eventually.
Ha Ha, we all laugh at bullies, because they die young, ha ha.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Never has the Six-Lesson Schoolteacher essay seems more relevant... http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html This is about enforcing and strengthening the part where people learn that they have no rights and no privacy.
TC - My Photos..
No, the practical reason for the 2nd Amendment was the same as the practical reason for the other 9 amendments it accompanied--to gather the popular support needed to get the Constitution ratified by the states. The Federalists reluctantly tacked on these amendments as a necessary assurance that the new, more powerful, federal government would not become as heavy-handed and oppressive as the British government. The 2nd Amendment was one of the most interesting of the bunch--both a promise that gun confiscation would not be permitted (the British had frequently done this) and a subtle (if unwritten) acknowledgment that the people would still have the power and means to resist and overthrow the new government should it become too oppressive. This subtle acknowledgment wouldn't last long beyond ratification, however. Once the Federalists got their new government, one of their first acts was to start imposing British-style taxes. And when the people of western Pennsylvania rebelled against the whiskey tax, the new government quickly suppressed their resistance in what was to become known as the Whiskey Rebellion (ironically the army that suppressed them was led by the father of Robert E. Lee, who would later help lead the most major U.S. rebellion to date).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It wouldn't matter if she had an ounce of coke up her vag, it's illegal for a school official to strip-search a child. If you think she has drugs, you call the cops & let them deal with it.
There is a war going on for your mind.
And what's more, raising kids as if they had no rights results in a future population of adults that is conditioned to authoritarianism and doesn't care about their rights.
Finally, Pedobear's long hours of training to join the DEA has paid off!
I really hope she wins. I hope the two that strip searched her as well as the principal all lose their jobs. If there is any justice at all i also hope they lose any chance of ever working in any school, government office or with children ever again.
I can't think of any reason a strip search could ever be justified by a school, regardless of what the child may be concealing. Let's say it's not just ibuprofen, let's say it's crystal meth. Then you call the police. If you are worried about the child's immediate safety, you supervise her, and don't let them out of your sight. But under no circumstances do you have the right to strip-search her. Even if you see her hide a gun in her underwear as she walks into the school, you have no right to take it out. You restrain her until someone with the authority to perform a strip-search comes.
HOWEVER, in a situation where you see with your own eyes that she has hidden a gun in her underwear, then fair enough, I would be prepared to say "OK, so you were in the wrong, but it's a reasonable mistake to make".
On a slightly different tack now, I can believe easily that a 13 year old girl trying to conceal contraband would put it down her pants. The fact that this wasn't the case is a relatively moot point here, all I'm saying is that if they had reasonable grounds to suspect she had contraband, they had reasonable grounds to suspect it was hidden in her pants. Doesn't mean that they have the right to go and find out. I have reasonable grounds to believe that my neighbour smokes weed (I smell it every now and then). Does that give me the right to break into his house, and go hunting around for his stash? No.
Assistant principal at a school != Policeman. School nurse != Policeman. They don't have the same rights, should know that, and there should be no allowances made for their ignorance (assuming they were not malicious). Custodial sentences, please.
"My son sometimes screams his brains out when I change his diaper. It still needs to be done."
Of course, and you do it. Punishing your son for it would be excessive.
My point wasn't anything about punishing. It was about the fact that I'm forcing him to do something that, to an adult, would be a humiliating, cold, unpleasant deprivation of privacy (and a diaper, which perhaps he wanted). My point was just that, obviously, there has to be some leeway for parents in terms of forcing their children to do things. My son cannot make the decision that he wants his diaper changed, however bad it needs to be done.
There will be many things like this that a child can take responsibility for as they grow up, but that will need to be done gradually.
The child running towards the campfire may be handled without violence. It is possible.
Nonviolent parenting != permissive parenting.
Possible, definitely. It's just sometimes the margin of error is low, and sometimes even good, very well-meaning parents do not have an effective teaching relationship with their children. By this I mean they're not able to communicate the importance of certain things - they say "don't go to the fire" and it becomes a game. The consequences of this failure to communicate can be very dire - outweighing, to my mind, the surely traumatic experience of having your parent seem to attack you (and it is only seem, as spanking should never be actually painful).
My kid isn't old enough to do much - but I worry about this myself. I've tried to teach young children before, and had real problems - kids somehow sense something that makes them think they can walk over me (which they then do). I've tried to take different attitudes and postures and learn to be better at this (including by watching some of my family and friends who are much better at this), but it's not an easy skill to improve.
Anyways, I empathize with parents who are dealing with longstanding teaching problems that they aren't able to manage. That said, I don't have sympathy for someone who spanks often, or to punish harmless behaviors (throwing food, yelling, or fighting with other kids). These are things that you can try again on teaching until you get it right. If you fail to communicate that throwing food is bad, it doesn't matter.
All I'm saying is that I don't think we can say "spanking is never acceptable" or "yelling at your kids is never acceptable". Perhaps the need for these things is symptomatic of earlier mistakes, but people make mistakes.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
In my viewpoint, based on my relatively bad childhood experiences, the majority of teachers and principals become such not because they love teaching or children, but because they either want the easy money and long summer holiday or have a sadomasochistic need to dominate and control others. Children represent one of the easiest groups to dominate.
Think - all your best teachers were the probably the opposite of disciplinarian - they maintained order through other means, perhaps through respect, but most likely by treating you like a dignified human being. The majority of your teachers were probably disciplinarian, they maintained order through fear, threat of harm or violence. To them, treating you with respect and dignity means showing weakness and, well, they don't want you to know they're fundamentally weak.
For these people, children have no rights and are only slightly different than animals (the other group that's easy to dominate). They probably started out by abusing animals.
From the article I don't get the impression the student was being treated with respect and dignity.
Where are the parents of other children at this school on this one ?
a mass protest should surely have these clowns removed from their jobs.
Nullius in verba
There was a situation earlier this year (last last?) where a high school girl was strip searched because she was breaking school rules using a cell phone in class and decided to get away with it by hiding the phone in her poonani.
I don't even want to begin getting into whether that is right or not BUT to relate to this case:
They called in the full set of authorities and *they* performed the search.
Teachers are not our parents and they are not the police. They are there to teach us and I know have to deal with way more crap than they should but that still does not give them the right to violate the children's own.
The idea that people are presenting is that going to public school will teach you to deal with bullies and not going to public school will not teach you to deal with bullies. Not only that, another idea is being promoted; and that is if you don't go to public school then you will some how become mal-adjusted.
The ironic thing is that these arguments are self-defeating, because if people learned to successfully handle bullies in public school, then there would indeed not be a problem with bullies in public school.
And yes there certainly are bullies in the workplace, but by that time the bullies have lost a lot of testosterone and realize that the possibility of getting fired from a job has the tendency of lessening the severity of bullying. I rarely see or here about fist fights breaking out in the workplace, but it sure does happen a lot in primary school (K to 6th grade).
The other assumption that people have is the dealing poorly with bullies is a peer problem that is only solved by peers. People don't seem to realize that a very large part of human behavior is genetically based, so any kind of pro-bully socialization won't have any effect on people incapable of fighting back.
What going to public school does seem to do (based on the arguments I see here and elsewhere) is just reenforce and normalize bullying as natural and an important part of growing up. But really I doubt if not being bullied with make people mal-adjusted. In fact the evidence is clearly the opposite. The Trench Coat Mafia where bullied in public school and most people would say they were mal-adjusted. It's too bad, because if they decided not to seek revenge and be more normal they would probably be suffering right now in the workplace because of what they learned in high school.
Sometimes the folklore we learn from socializing with people isn't true.
"and trodden upon because they don't have the social skills to deal with bullies and assholes."
Going to school doesn't guarantee that they'll get those skills, just get downtrodden at a younger age.
Is it just me that noticed that it took six years for this case to get through the court system. Proper and timely justice it isn't. When will they get around to doing something about it? Maybe when the girl's kids are strip-searched.
This is completely insane. The last similar story we read, where a student was refusing to cooperate with a teacher and wound up arrested, I was sort of on the fence; but in this case, it's clear to me; a crime was committed, and it was committed by the school, not the student. If I were the parent, I don't know how I'd restrain myself from beating the living daylights out of those teachers.
You guys are right - "Zero Tolerance" is a moronic catch-phrase and an even more idiotic policy, as recent history has shown. They're concerned over prescription strength Ibuprofen? How retarded can they get?
If the school is going to take it's "Zero inTelligence" - I mean, "Zero Tolerance" policy so seriously, then nearly every teacher in that school should be arrested for violating it - I'll bet just about everyone of them drink a morning cup of coffee, and that contains the drug caffeine. Those few who also smoke are using nicotine too, a double offense. I'd like to see strip searches of them. Then again, scratch that, my eyes!!
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
What's disturbing is how normal "one size fits all" policies are becoming in this country. Anytime you let a large bureaucracy dictate minute details of a policy, this kind of dislocation is a common result. In a system where the best and brightest are well rewarded for their efforts, government jobs tend to be filled by the leftovers -- people who are not employable based on their merits. Unfortunately, "what's left" are often automatons who need every detail of their jobs scripted for them. Do not deviate from script. Do not make waves. Retire with nice pension.
A sound organization hires executors who have the capability to exercise judgment, and empowers them to do just that. Otherwise you strip-search middle school students on suspicion of carrying Advil.
Even if they did, I don't think they had reasonable suspicion that there were prescription-strength ibuprofen pills under her undergarments. I think that is the key point. Without that suspicion, they might have been allowed to search her locker or asked her to empty her pockets, but certainly not strip search over anything.
Also, I don't think that reasonable people can disagree over this case. We may have different reasons for saying it wasn't ok, but if one is to defend a strip search over ibuprofen where the risk to other kids is minimal even if she did have it AND it is not a controlled substance beyond requiring a prescription, AND there is no financial motive for smuggling (hence no reason to overly conceal having the medication), then you are not thinking through the issues of when a search is reasonable. If she was accused of smuggling meth in her bra, a properly done strip search might be reasonable, or at least reasonable people might be able to disagree. If she was accused of giving a prescription-strength NSAID to a classmate, it is unreasonable. The equivalent would be for police to get a search warrant for your HOUSE because they think incriminating evidence might be in your CAR.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If you get close enough to strip search a 13 year old suicide bomber then kudos to you. Usually they'll just blow themselves up and you along with them before they would let that happen.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Why the sexism? Why is it reasonable to strip search a boy but not a girl?
Unless they specifically want to be strip searched, then it is wrong in both cases. It would appear that boys prefer to be strip searched by female authority figures though. With girls it's just sexual harassment. I suppose it's the way people are socialized.
I know all too many children who simply follow the orders of adults. I also know too many children who never follow the orders of adults. A middle ground must be reached to teach kids that in some situations, you must refuse an adult. Some children are simply so passive that is unhealthy and/or dangerous.
If this victim would have been empowered (from her parents and/or from her education system) with the knowledge and confidence to prevent this, she would have been much better off.
I think THIS is the real issue at hand.
Of course, the events that transpired are indeed a crime and need to be handled by a court, but I'd like to see the outrage directed towards making sure children are taught not too so blindly obey and to fight for their human rights when necessary.
Let's prevent this from happening again with more than just a legal precedent.
I think you missed my point.
You said:
"3. There is nothing reasonable about strip searching a girl even if she did have a prescription for Ibuprofen"
Your statement limits the "nothing reasonable" to girls.
Why do you find it reasonable for boys to be strip searched and not girls?
I find being offended by me offensive.
It was a bit of sarcasm mate. It's bad in either case. I'm not aware that this is viewed differently in practice elsewhere. You certainly haven't given any examples.
Go to a football game in England to see what socialization does.
You know when you see something on the news that you know something about and you recognise it as bullshit and it causes you to think everything else from that newsroom is bullshit?
Nick
It sounds overkill (strip search for a mobile) but if they called in the police, at least the school followed proper procedures.
It makes me also wonder in this case why the student let it come that far instead of just handing over the phone... notwithstanding that stuffing a phone down there is probably not very good for the phone. Crazy teenagers.
We now have a society where parents can't be parents, schools (soon) won't be parents, and all the kids will grow up to be monsters.
That meme is older than Jesus. It seems like every generation has the same un-original thing to say about the decline of the morality of our youth.
Yeah, when did it become illegal to fix a headache in school?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
And that you learn to knuckle-under at an early age
FGD 135
"The school described the strip-search as 'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction."
So what's her sex got to do with it? Are they implying that they would have performed a more invasive search if it had been a male?
Because at least here in the US, precedent in law can be a big thing. If there's been a precedent set, it's often enough to go through with a case, no matter how absurd or how ridiculous. I don't know if it's a "well they did it before, so the decision isn't mine" mentality or what, but precedent is often taken into consideration in unusual situations (or at least I believe that's the case).
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Thank you, a sense of proportion about who is damaged is so often missing in these cases.
"School refusal is a term originally used in Great Britain to describe refusal to attend school, due to emotional distress."
How do you get from "term originally used in Great Britain" to "a British phenomena"?
"School refusal is not a formal psychiatric diagnosis." - http://www.healthyplace.com/parenting/anxiety/understanding-school-refusal/menu-id-61/
Your environment can and does shape you. Your inclinations are inclinations; an F350 diesel will drag a heavy ass boat up an inclination it damn well wants to go down.
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You appear to think that children should be treated the same way as adults, e.g. children should not be spanked because adults are not. However, that is not appropriate at all.
I have a two-year-old son. When he hits someone else, I grab his hand and firmly say "no", and that is generally the end of it. As an adult, you call the police and file for assault. When my son starts howling, swinging his hands at people, or otherwise starts getting out of hand, I bodily pick him up and place him on the time-out couch, and physically prevent him from leaving until he is calm. Many of these actions are not illegal, and responding to them in an adult physically would be assault. Generally, there are many things you can (and should, for that matter) do to a child that you should never do to an adult.
Further, what a child understands as a consequence will not conform with that an adult understands. In the case of missing a project deadline, an adult could then have a monetary consequence, say no bonus, a smaller raise, or perhaps being fired. My two-year-old certainly wouldn't understand any of those. And for a reward, I would just love to see my boss try to grab me, toss me in the air, and then give me a hug and kiss.
The law itself recognizes that children are not adults. They can not sign contracts. They can't own property. They are expected to be restricted in many ways by their guardians, especially since the guardians are often legally responsible for their wards' actions.
Now comes the case of schools. Schools are a parent in absentia in many cases, and so gain a certain amount of privilege that another random institution would not have. For example, they can restrict the movement of children, e.g. not allowing them off campus or out of class, or prevent them from carrying pocketknives. At the same time they do not have every privilege that a parent has. To take your example, spanking is legal for parents, but not for a school official. And one reason they have these rights, sometimes even over the protests of the parents, is that truancy is illegal. Private schools exist, yes, but unless the parent can afford one, the parent is forced to abide by the school rules since attendance by the child is required.
In sum, I am simply saying that the issue has a lot more grey that you seem to know. I am not stating that spanking is good or bad, or whether the search was okay or not. Merely that kids are not adults, and they can, and should, be treated differently than adults. The question then is just where to draw the line.
I wouldn't only file a lawsuit, I would have filed sex crime related charges.
Don't Vote for Norm Dicks! http://www.nodicks2008.com Another nutless dirtbag that voted for the FISA bill!
Of course they have to forbid Ibuprofen. Ibuprofen is a gateway drug. It starts out like this: you get really bad menstrual cramps or are prone to migraines, so you start taking aspirin. Asprin doesn't work, so you try acetaminophen. That works for a while, but it's not enough and you need something stronger to keep away the pain. So, the next step is ibuprofen.
See, the problem with that is that ibuprofen is a gateway drug. Once you turn to ibuprofen, it's all over. You'll be popping 2-3 pills every time you get a headache or cramp, and the next thing you know, you'll end up addicted to the hard drugs like Midol. Don't get me started about my Midol addiction!
Now for the serious part of my post:
Are they for real? Why throw common sense out of the window? Why are aspirin. ibuprofen, Midol, claritin, and other non-narcotic, legal, over-the-counter medications forbidden from schools? In high school I had aspirin and ibuprofen with me. It was a non-issue. Plus, if I didn't have any with me and I got a migraine, I could get some from the school nurse or a teacher. There was no issue with it. They didn't even call home to get permission from my mommy and daddy. Back in the '80s, even public school teachers and administrators had the common sense to discern the difference between illegal narcotics or stimulants from safe, legal, over-the-counter medications that even a four-year-old can purchase over the counter.
I am so sick of the dumbing down of America and my fellow citizens sacrificing liberties in exchange for security theater and a nanny state. What's next: on the next episode of Homeland Security Theater is bottled water going to be banned from schools? That is EXACTLY what happened in Boston the other day. Because three students were drinking alcohol (it was either rum or vodka, I don't remember which) in a classroom and the idiotic teacher and principal did not do a thing about it, the superintendent decided the smart thing to do was to ban ALL beverages from the campus. The teacher and principal of that school still have their jobs and were not reprimanded. Instead, EVERYONE is punished because two douchebag faculty members let three moronic teenagers drink vodka in class. They couldn't punish the evildoers involved - no, of course not. They punish EVERYONE except the guilty parties.
Soviet Russia is looking better than what "progressives" here in America are trying to create. Sheesh!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I don't know. I am torn by this because I hate to make blanket statements. But it does seem to be that kids who are home-schooled are just very odd. But this is just anecdotal evidence so it is hard to come from any position of authority. It just seems like the kids are only really exposed to their parents views. They typically only socialize with other home-schoolers. They are very social within their family unit, but are socially awkward from anyone outside...so I don't know if a parent really has the ability to judge how social their child is. I am in computer science and they strike me as even more awkward than many of the typical introverted people this field attracts. I am sure your kids are probably fine and that many turn out completely well adjusted. But I really am not sure, in general, if it is really that healthy for kids. It is like people who only listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. They live in a skewed world view and thus can only relate to others with that skewed view. I think being exposed to all types of people and opinions is important. But I guess dangerous at the same time. Tough issue.
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Reminds me a of a case where a religious preacher convinced a female parishioner to become his (voluntary) sex slave for the sake of the church and for God. After about a decade of this abuse and the preacher telling her to start performing for another religious preacher, she finally started to have suspicions that the preachers' motives were suspect.
From the article you referenced:
, the caller identified himself as a policeman, 'Officer Scott', who described a female employee he suspected of stealing a purse. After the caller demanded that the employee be searched at the store, or taken to jail, the employee was brought into an office and ordered to remove her clothes... Nix arrived and took over from Summers, following the caller's directions for the next 2 hours. He removed the apron the employee had covered herself with, ordered her to dance and perform jumping jacks. He also ordered her to sit on his lap and kiss him, and when she refused he slapped her buttocks. The caller also spoke to the employee, demanding that she do as she was told. During this time the employee said that "I was scared for my life". After the employee had been in the office for 2½ hours, she was ordered to perform oral sex on Nix. Summers had returned to the office periodically, and during these visits the employee was instructed to cover herself up by the caller.
- Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam#Mount_Washington.2C_Kentucky_incident
I'm not sure if this is coincidental, but these types of cases always seem to occured in the US southern states.
rape: force (someone) to have sex against their will
And if the attempt is not successful, it is only attempted rape.
That said, an adult trying to force a girl to strip would generally be classed as sexual abuse, and physical abuse victims are free to take any measures necessary to protect themselves.
Most schools are extremely oppressive and violent. You are observing a natural reaction to that environment. Children adapt very well.
It is the adults' responsibility to maintain an emotional connection with the child. This requires time, attention and relatively healthy adults.
We still haven't learned how to efficiently deal with crowds of children, and somehow we are not interested in approaching the crowd part of the issue.
Why on earth do we think that raising a child in a prisoner camp type of environment is a good idea? And how did we conclude that the job is not important enough to give it more resources?
Nonviolent parenting != permissive parenting
Policies replace decision making and personal responsibility with scripted procedure.
Much easier for individuals averse to responsibility.
The Nazi's knew that 70 years ago. Today everybody knows it.
They were just doing their jobs. Who wrote the "zero tolerance" policy and who voted for it?
How do you know this? Perhaps because you know some odd people and they were homeschooled? You probably meet homeschooled people all the time, but because they don't strike you as odd, you never realize that they were homeschooled.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Wilson said he had good reason to suspect Ms. Redding. She and other students had been unusually rowdy at a school dance a couple of months before
So, a couple of thirteen year olds were acting silly at a party? There's a shock, no thirteen year old's ever done that before. And months later, this is "good reason" to assume one of them is in the black-market Advil trade?
But to be fair Wilson claims that he "thought they smelled alcohol" at that dance. I think this is an utter lie, but let's take him at his word:
Mr Wilson, you claim you personally saw inebriated behavior and smelled alcohol on some eighth-graders at an official school function. Your response to your alleged first-hand witnessing of this: nothing.
Months later, this time not based on what you saw, but on someone else's wild accusation, you think someone has Advil. Your response to that is to order her to be strip-searched. By, I might add, your secretary, someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with anything and doesn't even remotely have the job of enforcing school rules.
Kerry Wilson, what the hemorrhaging fuck is wrong with you?
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As the parent of public-schooled children, I think you are too close to the situation to make a rational assessment. No offense, but your kids may be very poorly adjusted and you just don't know it.
I'm not a parent, of public or privately schooled children. I'm just suspicious of parents who are convinced that their method are the best possible methods. Oh, and I'm an atheist. So my children will not be church-reared.
Personally, I hated public school and thought it was a complete waste of time. I still think that.
You are defeating your own argument. Make a case for either socializing kids through public school or not, but don't do what most people here on Slashdot do and just argue through opinion and folklore. I have been through the public school system, and I personal don't have any strong opinions on either home-schooling or public schooling. What I have been doing here (in this thread) is commenting out the obvious fallacies.
I'm not making an argument for one or the other. I'm commenting based on my experiences. It's not important to me to convince people that public school is good. I don't think it is. It may provide some skills, however.
Being home-schooled denies you the social skills you might learn in school.
Here is another bullshit statement, being atheist denies my children the social skills they could learn in church activities.
Actually, this is true as well. I didn't say it was necessarily a bad thing that children don't learn those skills, just that they are denied the chance to learn them. Your children will not have the experience of going to church, because you don't want them to. Fine! The result of my experiences at church is that I am now an atheist. It's not a comment on whether public schools are good, just that you are denying them an experience that others have (good or bad).
I knew home-schooled people through my church. They were ostracized because they hadn't had experiences that we had had. We couldn't relate to them. They didn't get our jokes, and they didn't seem to understand reality.
Wow, that anecdotal evidence is stunning.
It's not evidence, it's my experience. I list it in contrast to the experience you shared of having your well-adjusted kids.
As a parent of non-homeschooled chidlren, I think you are too far away from the situation to make an assessment. No offense, but my kids are well adjusted and you just don't know it.
I am not a parent. I was, however, a child. And I remember what being in public school was like and did to me. I'm certainly not an advocate for public school.
Your kids may be very well adjusted. Unfortunately, I don't think you can be objective about that. And even if you could, your "anecdotal evidence" is as useless as mine.
Once again, I'm not an advocate for one system or the other. I just doubt either system is as good as its proponents think it is.
-Dan
My bad, poorly quoted on the previous copy
Being home-schooled denies you the social skills you might learn in school.
Here is another bullshit statement, being atheist denies my children the social skills they could learn in church activities.
Actually, this is true as well. I didn't say it was necessarily a bad thing that children don't learn those skills, just that they are denied the chance to learn them. Your children will not have the experience of going to church, because you don't want them to. Fine! The result of my experiences at church is that I am now an atheist. It's not a comment on whether public schools are good, just that you are denying them an experience that others have (good or bad).
I knew home-schooled people through my church. They were ostracized because they hadn't had experiences that we had had. We couldn't relate to them. They didn't get our jokes, and they didn't seem to understand reality.
Wow, that anecdotal evidence is stunning.
It's not evidence, it's my experience. I list it in contrast to the experience you shared of having your well-adjusted kids.
As a parent of non-homeschooled children, I think you are too far away from the situation to make an assessment. No offense, but my kids are well adjusted and you just don't know it.
I am not a parent. I was, however, a child. And I remember what being in public school was like and did to me. I'm certainly not an advocate for public school.
Your kids may be very well adjusted. Unfortunately, I don't think you can be objective about that. And even if you could, your "anecdotal evidence" is as useless as mine.
Once again, I'm not an advocate for one system or the other. I just doubt either system is as good as its proponents think it is.
-Dan
I never said it had anything to do with home schooling -- the point was that the children who weren't being exposed to their peers in school were having issues. The progression of the argument was something like:
1. Garbage like this article is why someone thinks home schooling is great.
2. Someone else opined that home schoolers are at a disadvantage when they become adults, having little exposure to their peers.
3. Someone responded that kids aren't teaching each other anything useful anyway, they're teaching each other how to be a bunch of juvenile twits, so that's not a good reason to send the kid to a normal school.
4. A reply was offered, saying that school is also where children learn how to deal with other people, many of whom they might prefer not to deal with.
5. This was criticised as being silly: surely someone can learn these coping mechanisms and social skills as easily at 18 as they can at 5.
6. I suggested this might not be axiomatic; that these social skills are learned at an early age, and here's an academic paper suggesting that kids who do not go to school (of any sort) do indeed develop certain problems interacting with others. The point was that one should not dismiss the importance of school being a place where kids learn how to integrate into a social group, which is arguably more important than whether or not they can memorize a chronological list of the US Presidents. Ergo, simply saying "home school" is not a magic solution, because school teaches more than just the facts in a book.
There's no question that, properly done, home-schooled children can turn out just as well-adjusted as anyone else; maybe more, as they can learn a degree of independence, particularly if there's community support (other home-schooled kids in the area, co-ops, and such). But the socialisation aspect is important, and one cannot simply dismiss it with a blithe "well, kids are just teaching each other jokes about boogers anyway, so who cares."
And perhaps the reason they were refusing school was because they already had poor coping skills?
That's an interesting point and I hadn't considered it. But then, I know a lot more Bart Simpsons than Lisa Simpsons -- people who hated school and would have just refused if it weren't compulsory. (By the time you're sixteen and able to make that decision legally, most people figure "Aw, what the hell, only two more years.") Now, come on, let's get into character.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
What, then, is the difference between a special interest and a political or otherwise ideology?
(also, I have no idea why you were called a troll)
Property is theft.
your "anecdotal evidence" is as useless as mine.
That was my point. Sharp as a tack, I see.
I'm not an advocate for one system or the other.
Yet, you show disdain for homeschooling based on no evidence, just a gut feeling. See ancedotal evidence above.
Your children will not have the experience of going to church, because you don't want them to.
No, they do not go because we live in reality.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Unfortunately, someone who is 13 years old is usually used to submitting to authority figures, especially in our increasingly dictatorial school environment. Like in Tinker v. Des Moines, children do not give up their constitutional rights at the school house gate. But, you need to know your rights in order to exercise them. School officials generally want children to think that they have no rights and use their "authority" to bully them.
Personally, I think these school officials should be put on the sex offenders database. They probably get off on the idea that they can strip search a thirteen year-old. They shouldn't even be allowed near children, let alone allowed to teach them!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Very true. Adult pretension is the grease in the gears of society - without it, there would only be the truth - that we are all selfish, unrepentant egoists. Not a friendly truth, easy to see why it's left untouched.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
I'm not an advocate for one system or the other.
Yet, you show disdain for homeschooling based on no evidence, just a gut feeling. See ancedotal evidence above.
I show disdain for anyone thinking their system is the best. As a user of that system and no other, you aren't in the best position to judge it.
Your children will not have the experience of going to church, because you don't want them to.
No, they do not go because we live in reality.
Um, ok. I'm not in favor of church attendance, but you really have a chip on your shoulder about this one. So you have no opinion on whether your children go to church? They just don't go because you exist "in reality," whatever that means...?
Come on, be honest. You are making decisions for your children (or at least, you have). There's nothing wrong with that (or at a minimum, particularly new or different from other parents). The experiences they don't have at church are being denied them. Again, fine! But don't pretend you aren't imposing your ideas on them, like all parents do. The same goes for home schooling. Your children don't get the experience of public school, for better or worse. But when I suggested as much, you called it "bullshit."
The funny thing is, I am an atheist, as you apparently are, and I am not a fan of public schools, as you apparently are not. Yet, when I dare to suggest that home schooling is not the perfect solution and that public school may actually provide some social skills that home schooling does not, you freak out. So who is being irrational, here?
I do recognize that there are other ways to provide social skills to children than public school. It's an oft-cited recommendation (by "experts" of child rearing) of choosing home schooling that it should be supplemented by other social exercises. It's precisely because they don't get those thing from home-schooling that this is needed. Which is all I'm saying. (Oh, and that parents never really know how or what their kids are doing. Maybe that's what angers you so.)
-Dan
I had to suffer four years of primary school education before my parents realized I can't handle it. Then I went to a small private school, and pretty much found my place, still considering people jackasses by default, but with consideration that some aren't. Thing is, I had no way to handle them. In any moment in my life. In my head, I am a brutal murderer, but when confronted with any violence, I pretty much paralyze with fear, even when I have the upper hand. And then puberty came... Needless to say, I as even more fucked up, feeling constantly lonely, but too afraid from the possible psychological pain of rejection, seen as I never had learned to handle it.
IOW, some of us can't mentally file anyone under "jackass" without being reduced to a paranoid, xenophobic, misanthropic coward in the process. Even less so in puberty.
My solution? Drugs. Lots. Anything you can get your hands on. I'm a thinker, I'm not capable of dealing with my emotions, or anybody else's emotions, nor am I obliged to do so. I'd rather not, so I opt for apathy and happiness, rather than bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders, which put me in this condition in the first place, as I was, although an ass since kindergarten, fair until it hurt, and then some. So, kids, just say "Yes.".
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
I have no problem with public schools except in the U.S. My kids have attended public school in Canada and France. It was a choice of private school or home schooling. Since I work from home and was a SAHD for most of their life up to preschool, it was an easy choice. The kids socialize with their peers all the time. They have many friends. Both children do volunteer work.
I think most people hold the view that homeschooling is used primarily by religous folks that want to isolate their children. According the the U.S. Dept of Education, only 1/3 of parents homeschool their children for religous reasons. Their are children that live in rural areas that are still homeschooled or attend the traditional one room school house with a small set of students. There has has been no data to support the agrument that homeschooling retards social skills.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
I tried it as a parent because I was raised that way. I stopped when I realized that if I kept doing it, I would likely end up being one of those people we read about in the paper who abuse their kids. I'll let you know in about 20 years whether the non-violent approach of counting her "out" we have been using works, but if I had it to do again, I'd never lay a hand on my kid, and I'll never advise anyone to do so. Spanking or using physical pain means the parent has lost control.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
My co-workers were giving me this same crap about homeschooling. After I point out that my wife is a liscensed teacher, they drop the acedemic arguments, and bring out the socialization arguments. After they meet my kids, the whole discussion never comes up again.
Everybody in our homeschooling circle is aware that homeschoolers can be improperly socialized. It's our job to make sure they are properly socialized, and it's a job we accepted when we decided to homeschool.
I will propose a counter argument: When I break down all that "social" time I had in public school, it was about 35 hours of lecture, and 5 hours of real social activity. My kids get way more interactive social time with many more children than I had in public school.