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Florida Teen Expelled and Arrested For Science Experiment
First time accepted submitter ruhri writes "A 16 year-old girl in Florida not only has been expelled from her high school but also is being charged as an adult with a felony after replicating the classic toilet-bowl cleaner and aluminum foil experiment. This has quite a number of scientists and science educators up in arms. The fact that she's African American and that the same assistant state attorney has decided not to charge a white teenager who accidentally killed his brother with a BB gun has some thinking whether this is a case of doing science while black."
Lets not attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
And in this case, I hardly believe its about one being black,although it could play a part, it beingthe us,it seems more a thing about one being gun related and the other science related.
We all know what many americans hate most.
When I was in school, it was basically a full time job for many of us boys to figure out ways to make ever larger and more dramatic explosions happen. We used to fill trash bags full of methane from the lab, seal them with tape, then release them with a lit fuse and watch this huge fireball in the sky (I stopped before the principal took notice, so I didn't get caught:). I mean, kids just do stuff like that.
The difference today is the zero-tolerance rules in many public schools where even a little 6-year-old boy making a shape of a gun with his hand and going "bang!" at another kid is grounds for suspension.
As usual, bureaucracy gets it wrong. That girl should be reinstated and an apology should be issued, otherwise she'll be barred for life from many professions (albeit, as a minor theoretically her record is sealed, but in reality she's screwed).
And racism? That was just an extra little tidbit the OP added to spice things up. Ridiculous.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Zero Tolerance means zero intelligence. Circumstances are always different. Thanks to our wonderful school and legal systems, there's less discretion. The bad and good part of discretion is bias. A straight-A good kid will be given the benefit of a doubt over a kid that has a reputation for being a troublemaker. On one hand, it's possibly a good rule of thumb... but it can lead to folks getting railroaded unfairly.
The "solution" then is to treat EVERYONE badly. I'm not that old, and my school had a policy of "both kids in a fight get punished." Didn't matter if you got jumped for being a geek with pacifist philosophy. OTOH, it was a learning experience about bureaucracy, government and pacifism. I dumped the pacifism, and the next kid that jumped me, I earned every ounce of my administrative punishment because I had no incentive NOT to do so. Zero tolerance and "everyone involved is equally guilty" is bunk, and a bad idea.
Actually, I suspect if this had happened 20 to 30 years ago, there would not even have been a reprimand for performing the experiment, rather using said experiment (if it was considered a failure), as a learning experience to figure out where the student went wrong.
At most, I would have been yelled at for not using a fume closet...
Hell, I went to school in South Africa in the late 80's early 90's.... our science labs had green and black marks all over the ceiling from various "failed" but awesome experiments :)
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
How and where can I contribute to the legal costs for the family of this student? I want them to hire the best advocates money can provide, I want to see that judge humiliated for attempting to destroy the future of a curious student who made a mistake leading to an incident where no harm was either done or intended.
As much as I want the post to be funny, I'm slowly thinking it might be truth. You just need to look at the esteemed leaders of the House Committee on Science.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Shoot. When I was in high school (in the very early 1980s), we made nitroglycerin and nitrogen triiodide as part of chemistry class.
The instructions for making nitroglycerin were in the high school chemistry text book, and it even helpfully explained how to improve the rate of the reaction for faster production.
The guys making nitrogen triiodide were doing so in the enclosed vent chamber, and they sternly warned the instructor not to throw open the door. He failed to heed their warnings, and it exploded and burned off his hair and eyebrows. There were no lectures or discipline -- he acknowledged that they had carefully warned him not to be careless.
What they did with the liquid suspension was rather creative. :) It's basically inert while in suspension, but very unstable when dry. So they took eye droppers and wandered the halls of the school, randomly dropping drops of it on the floor. It dried in time for classes to swich. Lots of little firecracker bangs as people walked down the hallway and activated the dried samples on the floor. :)
As a junior high student (and high school student), I used to go around the school demonstrating potassium permanganate and glycerin for various classes. It was a great way to get young minds interested in the sciences and fascinated with chemistry.
Now, all 4 of my children have had high school chemistry (youngest is just now finishing it up). There is NO experimentation or lab work -- they are not allowed to touch any chemicals. The teacher is not even allowed to do the potassium permanganate experiment -- it is deemed too likely to cause students to become terrorists. I'm thoroughly disgusted by what has happened to the educational process in this country.
My oldest is graduating college in 2 days. Over the last 4 years, he has brought home horror stories about the rigid mindset that he has experienced in the classroom. Nearly all the college instructors (and this is at a large public university) absolutely insist that their perspective be parroted back -- there is zero tolerance for discussion and debate. People with differing beliefs and perceptions are publicly ridiculed and humiliated.
When I was in college at Texas A&M, my philosophy prof was the faculty advisor for the Gay and Lesbian student association. Despite the fact that he and I shared very few common positions on the topics discussed and written about in class, we got along well. He commended me at the end of the class, saying that I had presented my positions with clarity and precision, and I achieved a high A in his class. Apparently, that experience would be rare now.
The democrats are a center right party, we have no left party.
Depends on your ideological POV, doesn't it? Consider...
* From the Limbaugh standpoint, the DNC is a frothing group of neo-marxists out to take down the USA by any means possible.
* From the MSNBC fan's standpoint, the DNC is a fair-minded champion of tolerance and diversity whose policy set sits far to the right of that found in the EU.
* From my standpoint, both the DNC and the RNC are a bunch of posturing hypocritical leeches on society who don't give a shit about anything but gaining power, money and control. Their only real difference is in how they each want these things exerted, and on whom, but their goals are the same so long as they are the ones in charge when the dust settles.
Ideology? Pfft! That's simply the truncheon they use to keep their respective troops in line.
A pox on both your frickin' houses.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My immediate response to this item was to wonder whether the student in question was a constant annoyance to the teachers and administrators. The original article makes it clear that she is a model student: "Kiera Wilmot got good grades and had a perfect behavior record. She wasn't the kind of kid you'd expect to find hauled away in handcuffs and expelled from school, but that's exactly what happened after an attempt at a science project went horribly wrong."
That additional information (which really should have been in Slashdot's summary, as it was properly used in the reporter's lede) makes it clear that the student is being wronged. Whether she is being wronged as a result of racism or as a result of the inherent stupidity of zero-tolerance policies (policies from which exceptions are often made for the children of the wealthy and/or powerful) remains to be determined. Perhaps both are involved.
This is a teachable moment for the school. It is an opportunity for students and faculty together to examine the nature of fairness and the nature of bureaucracy. I hope there are some tenured faculty members at the school who are interested in making good use of the opportunity.
My own suspicion is that the administrators should be fired, but I think that way about a great many administrators.
Embezzling their oil wealth? By taking multinationals mostly out of the trough and using what would have been corporate profit on social programs? I think that you are confusing embezzling the native population with removing predatory companies from taking their customary lion's share of the national wealth. The people elected him and loved him dearly right to the very end. For the most part those who disliked Chavez wanted to go back to the status quo of the rich always getting richer at the expense of both the environment and the poor.
There are systems that can work well which are not heavily capitalistic. I'm not a huge fan of Castro but, read about their vermicomposting program. I am jealous of them because it sounds like they are building a quite sustainable economy on their island, and probably eat better than the average USA consumer (that is what we are called now, right?). One of the main reasons they are able (forced) to do this is that they aren't "helped" by the agrichemicals that US corporations would love to be able provide them with.
Only I can judge you.