Slashdot Mirror
A Post-Columbine Halloween Horror Story
Christopher Beamon, a 13-year-old seventh-grader in Ponder, Texas, was, according to a school administrator, a "disciplinary problem."
He was also, according to a classmate, a little "weird."
Tuesday, Christopher was released after spending nearly a week in the Denton County juvenile correctional facility for writing - at his teacher's request - a fictional Halloween horror story that described the shooting of two classmates and his teacher.
Christopher had become another, particularly dramatic Hellmouth horror story, one more sacrifice to the profoundly ignorant way in which politics, education and the criminal justice system treat complex social issues involving technology, culture and the young.
The teacher gave Beamon a score of 100 on the writing assignment, on which she also wrote "outstanding."
Then, perhaps remembering the ongoing post-Columbine assault in American education on young geeks, nerds, gamers, the weird and the non-normal, she thought better of the grade and his story, and turned Beamon in to the principal.
School officials contacted the local district attorney, Bruce Isaacks. Beamon was taken into custody and brought before Denton County Juvenile Judge Court Darlene Whitten, who ordered the seventh-grader detained for 10 days. Whitten approved Christopher's early release only after the his stunned mother and the family's court-appointed lawyers began contacting Texas reporters.
The district attorney said - regretfully - that he couldn't find any grounds to prosecute Christopher, but managed to brand him on national TV anyway: "It looks like the child was doing what the teacher told him to do, which was to write a scary story" said Isaacks,"but this child does appear to be a persistent discipline problem for this school, and the administrators were legitimately concerned." The DA's subliminal message was obvious. Would Christopher have been hauled off to jail he if was the star quarterback on the high school football team? Not likely.
On his release from jail, Christopher Beamon said "it seems like a year ago, a big ol' long year" since he was first arrested, and asked for a bean burrito from Taco Bell.
Beamon's arrest came just days after the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency (ATF) announced it was joining with a private security firm (see the Slashdot: article) to distribute Mosaic-2000, a software program designed to spot potentially dangerous students in schools.
Beamon's essay, available on the Dallas Morning News website, describes he and a friend fending off an intruder with a .12 gauge shotgun. "this bloody body dropped down in front of us and scared us half to death and about 20 kids started cracking up and pissed me off so I shot Matt, Jake and Ben started laughing so hard that I acssedently [sic} shot Mrs. Henry (his teacher)."
The story is a crude, if classic pre-adolescent fantasy, and is about as menacing as "Daffy Duck." It would seem logical to many adolescent boys that a horror story might include some violence. Check it out for yourself.
Beamon said he read the story aloud in class for extra credit, and the teacher not only gave him a perfect score, but laughed when he read about her accidental shooting. The next day, he was in the local juvenile detention center for suspicion of making "terroristic threats." (Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible).
Last year, in the wake of the Columbine killings, scores of schoolkids, many of them geeks, nerds, gamers, Goths and various assorted oddballs, reported a wave of suspensions, expulsions and forced counseling sessions after they were asked to speak openly about their feelings about school, classmates and cultural values. Many said they regretted speaking frankly about their feelings about school, and wouldn't do it again. They were wise.
A number of kids who said they understand at least some of the rage that might have driven the Columbine killers were sent home or ordered into compulsory counseling and re-education sessions.
What a windfall Columbine has been for timid educational bureaucrats: they don't have to deal with their disaffected students and their problems: they can just ship them off to counseling, private schools or jail.
And what a black mark for journalism, which contributed so mightily to the hysterical atmosphere in which this kind of insanity is possible -- remember the post-Columbine are computer-games-turning-your-kids-into-killers coverage? -- and manages to rarely offer relevent facts or ask any of the right or elemental questions:
Why are schools adopting these increasingly Draconian measures when violence in schools and among the young in general has been dropping sharply for years?
Isn't it better for kids to express their angry, even violent fantasies openly, where parents and educators can see and talk about them? Is it really safer if these feelings are hidden - the real legacy of Columbine and Christopher's nightmare.
Do children have any rights at all to free speech or due process? Do they have any recourse when opinions and stories are solicited by teachers and administrators, then used to punish and silence them?
Free societies have always accepted trade-offs between security and freedom. Urban streets would be a lot safer if nobody was permitted to go outside after 6 p.m., or if thieves and robbers had their hands chopped off. But safety isn't the only value in a democracy.
School killings are horrible, but they are rare. And they aren't as random as media reports would suggest: they invariably involve emotionally-disturbed adolescent white males with access to lethal weapons. Justice department surveys repeatedly have found that schools are the safest places for kids to be.
Awful as they are, these incidents don't justify turning schools into ideological prison camps where informers are encouraged, normalcy is a forced value, and law enforcement authorities are called in to police stories and jokes.
Beamon was asked on the Today Show what he learned from his experience. "Be careful what you say," he said.
Judge Whitten defended her decision to the Dallas Morning News: "I do want people to understand that, just like making a threat at an airport, a threat in a school situation is very serious, even if it was in jest."
Another grisly Columbine legacy: judges ruling on adolescent humor, deciding which jokes are acceptable, and which constitute terroristic threats. In Millenial America, fantasizing about fending off intruders with shotguns or offing your teacher is now a felony.
Judge Whitten reflected contemporary educational as well as law-enforcement thinking about oddball, individualistic thinking and offensive humor: it ought to be a crime, along with anger. Thus Beamon might have suffered the same fate if he quoted from any given character on the geek-loved "South Park." Beamon was lucky he wasn't a gamer playing "Doom:" he'd probably still be in jail.
For geek and nerd kids, this issue has special relevance, since they are prone to disliking school and are often angered by exclusion, harassment, and a widening gap between their often-Net inspired values, and the all-too often-oppressive 19th century educational system many have to endure. They are also nearly addicted to offensive humor.
The alienated and the weird are not only frustrated, but are now all potential killers as well. The price of being different only goes up.
The post-Columbine message was clear enough, even for a seventh-grader like Christopher: watch what you say, or safer yet, don't speak at all.
Katz this has nothing to do with Columbine. Stop exploiting those dead students for your own gain.
The teacher was asking for it... and plus it's literary expression not a actual intention...
Is not that the teacher turned him in (read the essay - this kid needs help), but the fact that she gave him a 100. 100 is supposed to be perfect. Even in 7th grade I wouldn't have turned in a paper so chock-full of grammatical errors, misspellings and run-on sentences.
Leave it to Katz to keep trying to beat the horse even though it has mostly decomposed.
This is fantastic. I love watching a system break down. No ones ever going to trust teachers/counselors again. We're going to be seeing lots more exciting live news from schools of people shooting them up. "If only little bobby had talked to me, we could have helped him, we could have done something, like throwing him in prison and branding him dangerous for life." I'm going to mention this the next time someone says why didnt he/she just get some help.
It's not like anybody in the US has the right to free speech. Little Bush a likely crack addict [once an addict always an addict] gets to be Gov and soon to be Pres. Kids writing stories instead of doing drugs get jail time. You're surprised? This is America home of the "free if you have enough for a good lawyer" guilty if you don't
drop out of school...... hell, i knew more stuff than anyone in the school, and since i dropped out ive learned tons more.... school should only be required for people with a 130 or lower IQ...... as for me, and most of you, we dont need it..... and w/o it, no chance of being judged as one of the "odd ones"
I thought America was supposed to be the land of the free??? I went to school in pre-Apartheid South Africa, and I had more freedom then (even as a geek kid) than American kids appear to have today.
Makes you think...
Isn't it blindingly obvious? Firearms need to be controlled, not kids. Kids that age will always be disaffected with the world as it is; that's in the nature of things. What are those school authority in the US aiming for, to change human nature? Pull the other one, it got bells on it.- These things happen only in the US where there's that silly "right to bear arms". Elsewhere, such incidents are virtually unknown. The death penalty, guns everywhere, and the occasional witchhunt for whatever causes the most media hype just at the moment - it seems the US is not a good place to be. I'm glad that I live in Europe, and I'm sure I wouldn't go America, not even as a tourist, any more than I would go to China. I've known the countries behind the iron curtain before that thing came down, and I've had enough of irrational places where you can't trust the authorities or anyone for one lifetime, thank you very much!! M.L. Pachali
Does this guy have some sort of contract that pays per word and demands that all stories be on the same topic?
According to the National Vital Statistics Report, vol 47, 11863 people between the ages of 5 and 24 died in traffic accidents. If children went to school 365 days a year and a Columbine High incident occurred EVERY DAY, this would be 4380 deaths a year. Your kids are far, far safer sitting in school than they are sitting in the seat next to you on the way to the local supermarket. This type of reaction is beyond excusable. If judges were held accountable for their decisions, this one would be looking for another way to make a living.
That's just dumb. In jr. high we had an assignment to write a paper on "how to do something" I wrote mine on "3 ways to commit suicide" and the benefits and losses of each method. People say I should have gone to see a psychiatrist. Nah.. I just enjoy being different and I like it when people have blatant reactions, regardless of which reaction is instilled in them. Free speech baby.
I may not be a grammar scholar or a writing teacher, but I do know that this piece had a few grammar problems.
What the Austin radio station have not mentioned is that the teacher asked for a scary story. If this was "i get me want bike from store i so went driving the new one under street to light" then, we never would have heard of how bad of a teacher this student had.
Injured worker wins against Mattel!
A 12 year old would carry around an ounce of weed. The typical drug market price of an "OZ" is about 100 dollars - kinda exepensive.
One of a teacher's jobs is to be sensitive to and assist in students' emotional development, not just make sure that math and verbal test scores go up.
Schools are much more hospitable places when teachers and administrators pay attention to and look out for students. Since teachers at this level only have a student for a short time each day they have to coordinate with other teachers, guidance and the administration.
The administration in this case totally blew this out of proportion and seemed more interested in covering their asses than looking out for the students.
An appropriate way to deal with this in the classroom is to use the story as a kickoff for a discussion about violence (this is probably happening in some classrooms right now), instead of hushing things up and sending the kid to lockup.
When a school discourages openness they take ten steps backward in creating a comfortable learning environment and dealing with all the headline (sex, drugs, violence, depression) issues. What a way to shoot yourself in the foot.
BIG BROTHER is HERE, he come alive through the internet BIG BROTHER is SATAN he lives through our fears BIG BROTHER WILL enslave you!!! Christ is the only hope read 1984
This is a troll?? No, this is fair criticism. How much credibility can Katz have, when he condemns Microsoft and yet continues to use MS software? I mean, isn't credibility rather important for a journalist? -- or a "jounalist", to use Katz's curious neologism. Offtopic, then? Maybe. But I think not: after all, Katz is engaged in onthing but self-promotion, so his every article is really about himself. What could be more on-topic that some helpful criticism?
Oh, I don't know--other than the actual grammatical errors, the "stream of consciousness" style is no worse than some stuff I've read in The New Yorker. Don't even get me started on Virginia Woolf...
the teacher was not the one that turned him in if you read the article you would find out that it was the parents of the kids shot in the story were the ones the brought to the attention of school officials.
Hey, i said no message in the subject! get outta here!
Goes to show ya.
The journalists, in all media, have the ability to create an irrational, panic reaction to things that are less desparate than they appear.
The fact is school violence, including homicide, has actually dropped in the last couple of years. But they conveniently 'forget' to report that along side the sensationalism that sells ad space.
'Journalism' feeds journalism (Katz) and people think they're hearing the truth if it's repeated enough. The press is great for breeding riots and witch hunts just because they're to lazy to do futher research. (The AP wire is gospel.)
I can't wait for the stories about the minor y2k glitches after Dec31 that the press will fan into a raging panic that will start a run on the banks.
Jeez, people are just too fscking gullable.
Everything you know is wrong!
(If you havn`t been moderated down yet)...
Don`t go saying that in school...BTW, it amazes me that the US, one of the largest domocracies in the world, only has two politcal parties, both of which have little discernable diference in their policies...even when you can vote, you can't make a diference. Live with it, or move to a proper country.
they have reg'lar public hangins for retards and elected George "Daddy Whiterock" Bush, jr for guvnor...
There are several issues that are being overlooked in the cries over "rights" and "freedom." It's often forgotten that with freedom comes responsibility. I know, it's a big word, and all too often it's not a concept that's readily taught to these children.
Do children have any rights at all to free speech or due process?
As far as I'm concerned (your own opinion may differ), children are not responsible enough to enjoy all of the rights that are granted to adults. But that's the purpose of childhood, isn't it? To learn how to be a responsible adult? Sure, you play and have a good time when you're young, but you (hopefully) learn that you don't push somebody off the swings or call people names, but you treat people as you would want to be treated. How can any society continue when its children are not taught to be contributing members of said society? Let's try to remember that freedom is not the license to do whatever we want, but the ability to do whatever is right.
Other issues also come into my mind. What about this teacher? What kind of an example is this teacher setting for her students when she *laughs* about her own fictional murder? Granted, this was a fictional horror story. But where have we come as a society when we laugh at (even fictional) tragedies? Try taking a trip to the morgue and see how much everybody laughs there.
Also (somewhat unrelated), am I the only one appalled by the absolute lack of coherence and intelligence in this child's essay? Based on the mechanics, grammar, and spelling alone this essay should have gotten no better than a D. Is this the future of our country? Illiterate, violent, irresponsible children who never learn any better? Thanks, but no thanks. You can keep it.
Jim D. (Too lazy to make an account.)
My opinions are my own, and may not reflect those of the company for which I work.
Why would a teacher let a 7th grader write a "scary" story about shooting his classmates and teachers? I mean if you want to write a scary story write one about monsters under your bed or something. Do you know how much time it takes to imagine what you intend to write. This kid probably spent a week thinking about this. I would fire the teacher if I had anything to do about it. Not only that he gave the kid 100%.. that speaks for itself doesn't it?
So the police officer at the airport says to you "Tell me you have a gun in your pocket" so you say "I have a gun in my pocket" of course he has the right to arrest you. (to make the metaphor complete, he was told to tell a story after all... like it was your example was a bit lacking)
IANAL, but it seems to me that it is against the law to hold anyone for seven days without a charge. The DA said "regretfully - that he couldn't find any grounds to prosecute Christopher", so what kind of justification could the judge have to lock the kid up without an indictment?
I hope the ACLU and/or Johnny Cochran gets behind the kid and win him enough cash to pay for private school and college. This kid could end-up being the next Stephen King, whose first story (written when he was 17) was about a kid who brings a gun to school and takes over a classroom.
That said; I think the story was inappropriate for the school setting. But a quiet conversation with the kid would have done more good than calling in the cops. The child obviously just wanted attention (which he got).
Exactly. You can either whine and cry about how everything is unfair (guess what? LIFE is unfair!), or pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go kick some butt.
Like sheep to the slaughter. Stalin would be creaming his jeans if he saw America in its current state. Not only is a kid thrown in jail for nothing, but the police willingly jail him, the justice system willingly allows him to be jailed, and everyone sits by picking on his grammar and spelling? Jesus Christ, what planet are you people from? I am disgusted at this blatant display of mindlessness. Anyone that played an active role in this lad's persecution should be run out of the country for violating everything that this country is based upon. Yet, most people will sit idly by and pick on his lack of acceptable education. People are too used to being taught what to think, and not how to think.
I hope you are being sarcastic... if not I hope you are at least consistent :) There is no reason to stop at 18, lets burn them horror books.... Stephen King is the anti-christ, burn him!!! (if not for his writing, then at least for all those god awfull movies)
Yep, we should ban those evil guns for making those kids do such horrible things to one another! Geez, if I hear one more European comment on how screwed up America is I'm gonna scream. Got news for you: Lots of killings happen in Europe, too, they just don't get the press that this one did. I don't come on here pretending to know anything and criticize your culture, do I? The problem isn't guns. In the 50's lots of families had guns, and every kid could easily get his hands on mom and pop's gun. And yet there were no school massacres then were there? Studies have shown that an armed society, at least in America, has a much lower crime rate than one in which firearms are outlawed. If anything our current government is a shining example of what can happen if you give somebody a little bit too much power, and why we must have rights and freedoms, like the right to bear arms. No, the problem isn't guns. I suspect it has something to do with irresponsible parents and a school system all too willing to get kids hopped up on some psychotropic drug or another. Luvox was found in one of the Columbine kids' system, after he wasted himself. It's well-known that these ever-more-powerful antidepressant drugs may have side effects which cause psychotic behavior, and we're just gonna pump these kids full of 'em and let 'em back into society?! Come on.
When I read this article I just shivered. About 6 weeks ago the exact same thing happened to me. I wrote an article for the school newspaper about how we needed more school shootings. Call me moronic and such but I wrote it. It was for the homecoming issue at our school and I had to fill in a rather large gap on the "School Disasters" page. It was a mistake. I was nearly kicked completely out of my district. I have to attend 30 hours of psychiatric counseling now. I also cannot participate in any school-sponsored activities. And all because I did my assignment. I'm in my junior year and CANNOT get in trouble whatsoever or I'll be kicked out completely and the article will be attached to my transcripts. I feel lucky though that I wasn't arrested or kicked out for so long. However, my current situation is hell. I'm in constant fear of getting in trouble. It sucks. Well, maybe I'll follow this up with the article. Trust me, this situation seriously sucks.
> What next: have microphones and computers monitor what students say, and look for forbidden > words? I'm sure the administrators would think that was a "double-plus good" idea. Yes, they do. Or isn't that what Mosaic-2000 is all about??? BTW: We've just had a Columbine here in Germany a couple of days ago. And guess what I read just a few hours ago: an are-computer-games-turning-your-kids-into-killers headliner. PS: No, you're not the only one who is outraged...
In Canada a man was arrested and convicted of possessing child pornography. The catch is that it was stories that he had written himself. Thankfully our Supreme Court recognized this and overturned it.
When people start getting arrested for writing stories, we are right near the edge of the decline of civilization. There should really be some very extreme fallout because of this. The teacher, the principal and the DA should all spend some time locked up for basic violation of civil rights.
While free speach doesn't mean shouting 'FIRE' in a crowded theatre surely one should be able to write a story about it without fear.
This is very frightening stuff.
Yep, I noticed this as well. Like I said in a previous post, this kid is disturbed.
The more I have to hear and read about this stuff, the more I can understand why the rest of the world just sees us as a bunch of idiots, and the U.S.A. as a big irony.
How can we go out and preach about apple pie and freedom, if we do this to our youth? Esp. to a youth on which this country will depend in a few years. It's not the football player who brings this country forward, it's the scientist or engineer. Today they may be geeks or nerds, tomorrow they might drive our country forward - or flip burgers, if we don't support them.
I guess the reason most people don't find this funny is because nothing like this has never happened to them. I was once assigned to write a paper about myself in 4th grade and wrote a strange, yet humorous paper about other personalities and crap. Someone in the district who had multiple personalities had just killed themselves, so they called my parents and made me talk to counselors and stuff. Stuff like that happened to me quite frequently, never was sent to jail though. I probably would have been had shootings been going on then. Oh how I love not being in school anymore...
No problem. The kid now sues. Lets see an organized attempt to suppress his first ammendment rights. Whats that worth? Clearly the child will need counselling for many years to deal with the trauma that the teacher caused. I think I'd rather be selling smokes to infants right now then be that school board. You always have a choice. There is NO excuse for what was done here. NONE. You don't put innoncent children. CHILDREN in jail just to cover your butt. The teacher/judge and everybody else should be facing child abuse charges.
The judge should be shot. Plain and simple. Do I really mean that? No. It's an expression to match my feelings for how offensive her behavior has been. JAIL. They sent a 7th-grader to jail for a week for NO FUCKING REASON. So, yes, the judge should be shot.
That's the sound of these people pissing on our First Amendment Rights
I think the teacher/parents/schoolmates/whoever was RIGHT for turning him in. In retrospect calling the DA was a sever overreaction and I think the office should be sued for 10 days, but this kid is screwy! I read the story and this is not coming from someone who is playing with a full deck. I think the teacher would be stupid not to ask the kid what was going on up in his head.
Unfortunately, the problem with my thought is where do we draw the line? It'll just be a start for persecution and 'geek-profiling'.
I think that the Principal and the DA are the real people to blame, this is really blown out of proportion, but I think the teacher did her job in bringing it up through the chain of command.
I am posting this anonymously just because I don't feel like associating this with my name. Thats how I really feel :)
Get over it, Katz
Can we give up on Columbine already!!!!!
No, police are not lawyers. But once they start mindlessly enforcing bullshit, we are all doomed. What's next? American troops enforcing law on American soil? Ew, wait that's already happened. Can anyone point out what's really going on here? A conspiracy by the government? Not hardly. Sheep.
70's? bah, try the 60's. probably even the 50's, especially the "glory, glory halleluja" one. Maybe even 40's cause back then hitting kids across the knuckles with a metal-edge wooden ruler was quite commonplace. When I was in first grade (back in the mid 1960's, yep I'm an olde pharte), a substitute teacher cracked my knuckles so hard with one of these rulers (for singing that song in class) that it drew blood. I ran out of the classroom screaming bloody murder and straight into the principal's office to show him what she'd done to me. I bled all over his desk and paperwork and demanded that he call my father to come and take me home. That substitute teacher was never ever seen around the school again, and I'm not sure what really happened to her since it was a very long time ago. The last memory of the event I still have was getting bandaged up by the school nurse when my father showed up to take me home. If this would've happened in a different era (later), then I'm sure my family and I would still be living large off the lawsuit-awarded damages, but alas, it happened just before the dawn of the lawsuit-happy era.
the fact that the school took it as a threat because he referenced two students by name. The DA said that it would have been a different story had he not mentioned people by name. Lets think about this for a minute, what is the central frame of reference for a 13 year olds world, his/her school. Of course the story was going to take place there and of course he would name names. Just my thoughts
Oh, I don't know--other than the actual grammatical errors, the "stream of consciousness" style is no worse than some stuff I've read in The New Yorker . Don't even get me started on Virginia Woolf...
I thought it was pretty good. It flowed quite well, it had some good action. What more could anyone want?
I'm not a literary critic, I don't plan to be one anytime soon, but I think he shows a natural talent for language.
Yep. It's called parenting. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, it's currently considered terribly unfashionable. Better to pass some more laws and have the schools crack down harder on kids for anything the adults in their lives don't like.
One thing that puzzles me, though. What the hell do people think these kids are going to be like when they turn 18 and suddenly the chains they've been bound in for all those years are gone? Any psychologist can tell you; it won't be pretty.
Why on earth would a police officer phrase a question like that?
"Tell me you have a gun in your pocket"
Unless, er, you walked up with a hard to explain bulge and he says, "Please tell me that's a gun in your pocket..."
Wow! *looks up his JonKatz dictionary entry for 'geek'* He's a geek! I bet he plays a killer Quake game!
It's all part of this pablum of telling kids that no matter how they spell or how poorly they solve math problems they are still the most important people in the world. Give me a break! I see nothing wrong in helping kids build self esteem as long as it's real and grounded in common sense. Why should children be rewarded just because they try to spell right? It sets up a society that thinks as long s they "try" they should always get the brass ring. Why bother to better yourself or improve on others ideas when ANYTHING you do is just dandy? Then follows the inherent contradiction that stories like this show in the clear light of day - IT'S OKAY TO BE YOURSELF, THAT IS AS LONG AS YOURSELF FITS IN THIS NICE ROUND HOLE THAT WE CALL NORMAL. Does anyone else see the problem with this?
Because they edited out the part about the dealer "W.", coming over with an ounce and an eight ball of coke, after he did a few speeches and a rubber chicken fund raising dinner.
It never ceases to amaze me how people miss the point.
First: To those who think Katz is beating a dead horse, stop jabbering to yourselves and think for a second. Laws invariably spring from civic action. Although children will never be treated like adults (you can't drink alcohol until 21, but you can die for your country at 18), this is a scary precedent, because someone has been thrown in prison for what they said. This is a clear violation of first-amendment rights, and is a basic violation of the constitution. If this had happened to an adult or a college student, this might be national news, because this situation could set a precedent.
Second, spelling and grammar isn't the issue. The fact that people are focusing on that simply proves how easily distracted they are. You dont know anything about the seventh grader, you don't know what he was taught, you don't know what kind of grading the teacher uses, you don't know how much time was given for the assignment. But even then, the fact that you can be distracted from the fact that constitutional law has been broken by a seventh grader's grammar shows that you yourselves need to go back to junior high school.
Last: Hellmouth is about ranting. And that ranting is important. A lot of people have unresolved issues from youth and education. And Education is a science of humanity, and it's study is woefully ignored. While sciences like sociology and psychology have advanced by leaps and bounds over the past several hundred years, the only thing education has realized is that 'physical and psychological abuse of children is bad' and 'computers are good'. Although most educators are still debating those points. Because of Katz's articles, I bet that somewhere, at least one teacher is reevaluating their beliefs of peer pressure and 'weird' behavior. And even one teacher, or one discussion among teachers, makes all the text worthwhile.
People like you, are the reason why I droped out of high school. How does this magical age limit of 18 really have any truth? When you turn 18 do you sudenly become smart and relize.. ohh man,.. I was sooo stupid until about 5 mins ago, I can not believe I was ever a child. I think not. I think this is what is wrong with america today. EVERYBODY should have rights, there should be ZERO exception to that. America has had a problem with exceptions in its past (read: slaves, or even womens rights).. And America still has problems.
Needless to say, after dropping out of highschool and obtaining my GED, I found it rather easy to find a job, and my life changed in a rather big way. Finally I was in a situation where I was treated like a HUMAN. People around me started accepting me for who *I* am, rather than just another teenager.
BTW, Im now and adult, but I will always feel this way. People under 18 are just like people over 18. Each and every one of them has feelings, emotions, needs, wants, and thoughts.
You might argue, gee well... People under 18 usually have a harder time judging right from wrong, etc etc.. crap like that. And people over 18 can judge any better? Its not an age thing.. It depends on the person. I know many adults who really should be treated the way we treat people under 18 right now. I also know many people under 18 who should be treated more as adults.
When will america drop all this prejustice bullshit and finally just start judging people for WHO THEY ARE, not because of there age, sex, race, or whatever.
(small disclamer: Yes Im an american,.. but when I referance to america,.. I actually mean anywhere where people are treated like this. Many other countrys treat people the same, if not worse... And Yes, I will do whatever it takes to change the way things are now. Show me what to sign, or what to vote for and I will.)
I suppose I had assumed hers was an isolated problem, but somehow I'm not that surprised to find that it isn't. Maybe if we made high school a place to educate kids instead of a place to indoctrinate them...
Integral signs? In an American public school? Don't make me laugh.
Freon won't make you high in any dose. It's not even toxic.
This kid is really headed for trouble. If he hasnt responded to the American Consumer Socialization Program yet its probably too late. We might as well lock him up before he becomes a danger to others, and our way of life.
What went wrong? Records indicate that he spent plenty of time in front of the Autosocialization box. His Ad exposure ratio was well over the required 300 per day. Something failed though. A quick search of his closet didnt find any Abercrombie, Hilfinger or Nike! There was one lousy Gap pocket tee. Oh the humanity!
The problem probably lies in the Consumer Education Program. You would think that after someone has completed seven grades in the finest engine of consumerism they would start to conform. Hell, we even stripped out all of the education to make more time to instill easily manupulated feelings. Maybe we need more advertising in the schools.
Our target for this age is uncontrollable consumption of videogames, expensive sneakers, and designer clothing. We missed him with the Pokemon money machine, and hoped to make up for it in the awkward teen years. Now it looks like we have another damned non-conformist. He didnt even follow one of the Hollywood approved seven standard plots in his story. Jail is only the beginning boy! Now sit down, shut up and start paying us to look like your friends, listen to what we say is cool, and act like those kids on TV. You dont want to be an outcast, do you?
A friend of mine attended a technical college in Cincinnati and something simular happened to him. He was told, for English Comp I, to write a "slice of life vinette." That was the only discription given.
My friend wrote a 3-4 page essay describing a day in the life of a psycho killer, who is driving around in a van trying to figure out what to do with the body of his latest victim, did in-class revision (none of the students in his group thought anything of it) and turned it in.
The next week, he arives at school, and there are police officers waiting for him. They cuff him, arrest him, and threaten him when he starts asking why he's being arrested, etc.
At the station he is booked, then questioned for about 3 hours about the story, certain women who have disappeared and been murdered, and the van. (The van was the ironic part, because not only does my friend have no access to a van, he doesn't even know how to drive. At all.)
Finally word came down from above that they can't hold someone for writing a very convincing story, and they released him to his father's custody.
My friend, while weird looking, is a very quiet, nice guy, and a very good student who never got into any trouble in his history of school, including high and grade school.
This all happened about 2 years ago.
For the record, he got an F, and had to transfer to another class because the prof would no longer teach with him in the room. Funny, I took the same class and got an A on my story about a heroin adict.
Agreed, and unfortunately some kids aren't going to take it anymore and shoot up their classmates instead.
I was also pissed on in high school. Fortunately, I had a few (very few) good teachers that were able to keep me alive (literaly, as you either think about killing yourself or killing someone else). I also got interested in computers around that time, which gave me an outlet to be creative and feel good about myself. That is what is really needed in school, a safe place for everyone to express themselves (individually and academically).
High school is merely a little universe of its own with very little basis in reality. Once I made it out of there and experienced the "real world", I suddenly realized that those who were "popular" in high school were now forgotten. Good looks and athleticism may get you somewhere in high school, but is much harder to make a living off of them in the "real world", except for the lucky few. Stop spending all this money on football and start investing it in education.
P.S. I'm not against physical education in any way, as I really do think you need a healthy body to have a strong mind. By the way, I was a 5'10" 150 lbs. weakling in high school. In college, I got involved in weight lifting/body building. 10 years later, I weigh just under 230 lbs. I just went to my high school reunion last summer, and I was not pissed on this time ;-)
with a crush on Buffy (not that I blame him).
When we are in adolescence, the autonomous imaginative dreamworld of childhood is still a truly formidable and unpredictable god moving our limbs and suddenly usurping our thoughts: the kid who is to all appearances a little adult 6 days out of seven, may say or do anything, anything at all, on that seventh day. Lots of exposure to ultraviolence, aggression without the slimmest veil of sublimation with blood and guts and heads bouncing down stairs, will unquestionably have an negative impact on the personality dev of anybody. Gameplay like Art is profoundly meaningful, valuative, and exemplary. Better the kids spend their time learning C, taking piano, playing tennis, going to raves, having sex and staring at Botticelli paintings than doing this stuff. Sadly our society makes a lot of these more difficult to attain than it should and almost completely forbids them to some of its members, which gives so much financial incentive for pushing the bloodsport fantasy games.
He once advised all adults to take geeks to the movies and pretend to be their parents. Now that's wierd.
from the bike-shop episode of Diff'rent Strokes.
A high school in Cleveland was closed last Friday after discovering a school shooting plot. Several other schools this has happened to here in California and around the country without all the national media attention the Cleveland school got. The US is currently full of copycat shootings in school and the work place, probably because of all the media attention these stories are receiving.
One of the Columbine shooter's families is suing the school and the Sherrif for not taking enough action to let them know their kid was messed up.
So are you all really suprised that a teacher or school might get a little worried after reading a violent death filled story that apparently uses the real names of people in it?
It will work as well as most other inhalants. It will indeed get you high.
Like most legal mind-altering drugs, it's probably pretty dangerous. Stay with the illegal ones.
Ohh Please... so, the kid wrote a story. Then, all of the dreadful fools with the "Kids are acting out" alarm and the "kids can't do this and kids can't do that" mentality. stop kids from killing kids and keep them from hating/hurting/destroying. You all forget something. Kids are people too!!! they experience all of the emotions of an adult human, yet they only have a fraction of the rights. When you see this story, you think "OH dear, another child contemplating a murder spree at his school" which may very well be the case. Yet, you don't seem to realize that acting on the extremes of your imagination is very different than expressing them on paper. Jeez People!!!! The kid got thrown in Juvy for doing his homework!!!!! I'm glad I'm not a kid anymore. I'd kill every opressive adult I see.
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school... We have tortured every teacher we have broken every rule... We are marching on the principal we're going to kill him now... Our troops are marching on! Glory, Glory halleluya, teacher hit me with a ruler, so I met her at the door with a loaded 44, now the teacher don't hit me no more!"
Strange, what the mind retains...
Funny, nobody considered this a real threat at the time. My father's unlocked and fully-loaded gun rack was immediately adjacent to my bed; I guess I should have been locked up!
This is ridiculous. Let's look at one portion of this. The part which says the child received a hundred for this story. He has no ability to spell and no sense of grammar. Let's not even mention the fact that the story is something that Quentin Tarantino probably wrote whilst in utero. I weep for the future, the english language is dying. This teacher should be fired. In addition, social services should be called on the parents. Why does this kid know about scoring an ounce of weed. How is it that he knows how to inhale freeon.
I find it odd that though all the posted comments there is not a single one about mixed messages: The teacher praised this student for his work (ignoring the content/grammar), gave him a 100%, asked him to read it aloud to the class (further putting it on a pedistal as the 'ideal' the entire class should strive to achieve), then promptly threw him in jail. So was it a good paper or not? Man, am I glad I've done my time and am free from public school... -Johan
Bottom line: I was REWARDED for my creativity. Had the school climate been then what it is today, I'd've probably been jailed too.
The PH33R we all live in is growing.
Someone had to say it.
One of the things that really bothers me is that when columbine happened, I was one of the few who looked at the other side of the story. During one of our classes we got into a big discussion on what was happening. I mentioned that people don't just go around shooting others for no reason and they had to have been put through enourmous emotional strain (by peers or drugs) in order to go on a rampage. Well, one of the students got freaked because he thought I was also in that position (which is true, although I stay far away from drugs of ANY kind) and reported me to the principle of the school. Two days of talk later, the police finally released me and I got to go home. However, not before I had my privacy and life invaded and examined by frightened police officers and school officials. Its ironic that I told people about what I thought to be the cause of columbine, and then they went and repeated it (kind of). BTW, they also tried dropping anti-deppresents on me, but my friends and teachers begged me to stop taking them after I could no longer sit still during class.
I read most of the replies and they were summed up as I can't believe the kid got a hundred percent. Look at those grammatical errors... All valid of course but, I was more shocked by the fact that a person (minor or not) could be arrested by the state for expression of thought. This sounds very much to me like 1984! You know that title that reduced society to the ant colony and refused and outlawed any creative thought. This scares me to death. Are we so scared now that we don't understand the price we pay for freedom? Are we willing to give up our rights of free speech and inevitably free thought to insure a safe world? As for me... Hell No!
It does not surprise me the least. But remember to jail every writer that has ever described every killing ever made in human history. The judge behaviour in its twisted way makes terrorism understandable, and legal (hey, you name me e madman and trhreaten to kill me, I jail you in hell.. and for that to happen I must kill you sad as it is (saddam) Face it, the only thing that keeps US /.ers in the US is the possibility of an IPO to bring $$$
On top of old smokey/All covered with blood/I shot my poor teacher/With a .44 slug
I went to her funeral/I went to her grave/Some people threw flowers/I threw a grenade
I looked in her coffin/She wasn't quite dead/So I took a bazooka/And blew off her head
Around boy scout camps in Canada, the song was a little different. The last verse went:
The first verse also mentioned shooting "with a rubber band-aid" as the fourth line. The second line went "all covered with" and then a word that rhymed with "aid"... I can't remember what that word is, though.
If you read Matt Grning's Life In Hell comic strip, look for strips with "Schoolyard Greatest Hits" in the title. They're chock full of cool schoolyard songs...
Just like Hitler protected the rights of the German people from the jews.
I don't see how you can draw parallels with carrying firearms into an airport with a 13 year olds story.
Who said he was killing anybody. He didn't tote a gun into school did he? No, he brought an essay into school. Last time I checked, in the US all people are innocent until proven guilty. Got that?
On a slightly related note, the Supreme Court is going to be taking on the issue that if somebody runs from the police is it responable for the police to suspect the person of wrong doing.
Accord to your line of logic of course it is. Everybody according to you must be guilty because a few people do bad things. You can have your thought police, let them censor your mind and ideas. I'll pass.
Only the police have guns.
Darlene Whitten, Denton county Juvenile court judge.
1110 Avenue K Nw
Childress, TX 79201-2750
940 937 3879
Bruce Isaacks, Disctrict Attourney
Carrollton, TX 75006
972 492 5374
Chance Allen, Ponder school principal
114 Wolfe Street
Ponder, TX 76259
940 479 0012
The point is that spellcheckers etc. can easily fix bad spelling, but not the lack of imagination or lack of ability to express yourself properly.
The latter is a lot more important than details like spelling.
Sure, I hate bad spelling myself (and don't criticise my English, it's my second language ;), but I always prefer someone with bad spelling and good communication skills than someone with perfect spelling and no content.
That's what you're saying, isn't it? That you don't want to do anything about it?
Granted, the authorities were idiots on this one, but (to me) the _really_ scary part of this is that a 13-year old can write intimately about hanging around his house waiting for Ishmael to show up with an "ounce so they can get high".
When ol' Ishmael doesn't show up with the ounce, they take a knife to Mom's air conditioner to suck freon for a high. That's when all the shotgunning starts in the story.
I know I'll get flamed or moderated out of existance for disagreeing with the Holy /. Law of "If you're not tolerant of everything (excluding M$), we'll flame ya'".
But does anyone else find it scary that these experiences are available to this child?
Why did the authorities ignore the obvious signs? Katz would pontificate. It's because they're all ex-jocks who hate geeks, he'd whine.
would not have warranted, genius.
I remember my eighth grade English class in which Mrs. Johnson noticed my interest in Edgar Allen Poe, and assigned me an extra credit assignment.
She asked me to read The Predicament to the class.
Now, we had a split class - half an hour of class, lunch, then another half hour of class. The Predicament describes, in excruciating detail, how a woman looks out through a "window" in the clock tower of a building, and getting her head trapped by the advancing minute hand of the clock. Her eyeballs pop out, her head falls off, and so on, all carefully described by the protagonist.
One poor girl was positively sick, and couldn't finish lunch.
But nobody thought anything of this! Neither the teacher nor I were considered to be social deviants... Oh well.
Mark Edwards
Proof of Sanity Forged Upon Request
Your post disturbs me.
You disturb me.
What would happen if one political party wanted to take over control of the U.S.? Obviously other parties would rise to oppose them, which they wouldn't want. Gee... maybe they could "split" into two supposedly separate parties that would be pretend to be against each other, and take turns being in control. They could distract everyone with petty issues that don't matter all that much, and suck up a lot of political energy in meaningless fake battles over them.
Naaaah... that would never happen. Not *here*....
if your a pornographer or a gun runner,
but not if your a budding Stephen King!
Huh? I thought a major feature of CFCs is that they are very non-reactive... is seems odd that something non-reactive would do make someone high.
:-)
I'll take your word for it, though, and not try it myself
Hmmm. Perhaps if I even get to be rich and powerful, I will stomp all over little people if I find out they were high school football players.
He wouldn't. Thus the guy you replied to made his point: The original analogy wasn't appropriate.
Damn you act like you are under 18
Second, even if the teacher did think it was a treat, throwing the kid in jail is highly unlikely to accomplish anything. If anything the kid now has one more thing to be angry at the world for.
Third, there's a wide spectrum between not doing anything, and throwing someone in jail.
The teacher could have TALKED to the kid first. If still in doubt, he could have TALKED to the parents. If still in doubt, he could have arranged a MEETING with the kid, his parents, and a counsellor.
If the kid STILL seemed like a crackpot ready to bring a gun and kill someone, then MAYBE it would be worth considering asking the parents to bring him to a shrink. Then, at the advice of a professional, if the kid still seems like a menace there MIGHT be grounds for locking the kid up for further treatment.
Does "overreacting" mean anything to you?
Judging from you pansy-ass name, you are an Italian (Mafia, maybe? Wait, that would be Sicilian). I have lived in Europe. I was over there defending you faggots from the Commies. Oh, shit, it didn't work, you all ARE commies! (specially wops!) As stated before, I too am glad you don't want to come here. WE BATHE! Yeah, you euro-shits never have any shootings, with your lovely gun control. Oh, wait, didn't some kraut kid blast a few a couple of days ago? He must have been watching American TV. The next time someone like the Russians start making noises like they want to invade, or you bastards start offing each other, I REALLY HOPE we just stand back and let you! Just in case I haven't made my point (and if, by some chance I missed offending someone), let me reiterate, FUCK OFF YOU COWARDLY EURO-FAGGOT!!! U.S out of NATO, U.S. out of the UN, let the bastards kill and eat each other for all I fucking care!
And more importantly: People must learn not to overreact.
The only thing overracting like this accomplishes is to alienate the kids.
Overreacting can often be what's worst. To continue on the team of child abuse: There's been plenty of cases where children have actually been led to believe they were abused to the point where they actually starts to think they remember the abuse in detail, because of adults overreacting.
(And before someone says that "if they remember it, it must have happened", I suggest you read some child psychology, or psychology in general. It's incredibly easy to imprint false memories in a kid by leading questions. And in many cases it can be done with adults too - it just takes more time and more pressure)
"*I am the bully who made gradeschool a living hell for you and all your geek friends... and now I've found you!" I'm the geek you found who's now at 6'2" 225lbs...and now I've knocked you into another timezone!!!...:-)
Next time, write a story where the teacher is the one who goes bezerk and kills people. Then tell the police that the teacher made you do it and that you're scared she might really do it.
Except your brother of course. I'm sure that if he did talk about shooting another kid it would only be in jest and not really a threat.
Call the ACLU. They can tell you if your rights were violated (I strongly suspect that they were).
I urge all of you to write or call the Districe Attorney's office and the Juvenile courts.
No, thank you. I don't want my name listed on any more of the government's "unamerican" lists.
Do you think that's a paranoid thought? Well... can you blame me?
I agree with you: Is good from time to time that you realise thay you're quite priveleged in the world, in a lot of means. I won't elaborate in this, but, yeah, right: gringos are by no means representative in the world.
Being lucky of being born in the USA doesn't mean that you should not:
- Citizise your own country/goverment
- Complain if something goes wrong
A good way to improve your own country is to be a harsh critic of whatever goes wrong... and it's better to do it here, at court or in media before american students are smashed by tanks in Times Square.
Complacency can deliver to tirany. I can think of a parent saying 'It's OK this kid is in jail 'cause my own kids are safer', but reality is that he would be endangering their own sons, since he is giving away his own rights by doing that.
Any one else remember this classic? Joy to the world, The teacher's dead; I shot her in the head! We cut in from her body, And flushed it down the potty, And round and round it goes, And round and round it goes. Uh-oh...I'm still in High school. Maybe I shouldn't be posting our 2nd grade theme song. (Heck, my 3rd grade teacher wrote a second verse for us...wish I could remember that one.) =)
No Man!. This article here, is like racist Man! It's like taking credit from us brothers for wiping out them jocks, and other scum.
It's like yo whities always want all the credit. Like what's with this shit? We here like, err... do like err... Like all the dirty work, Man. We like love to waste them rich football playing bastards... Like borrow their car stereos and shit... They like never wanna pay for the dope on time, Man. No hard feelings though bro. Just to set things straight here bro. But like watch your ass when you're on the street bro.
>>Funny... I've not heard a peep of this in the media here. I think they're keeping a lid on it so popular sentiment in the U.S. will continue to lean toward gun control, because "we allow guns, and we're the only country where this type of thing happens". That is absolutely why they aren't mentioning it. That is also why they haven't mentioned the recent attempted mass shooting in Arizona (a CCW state), the one that was stopped by a legal gun owner.
"But safety isn't the only value in a democracy." Last I checked, it still is a Constitutionally moderated republic. Please Sir get your "facts" right before these stories.
Uhh... if the intent of the assignment isn't wrighting, the kid shouldn't be graded down if he didn't wright well.
You are an idiot.
It's FALSELY yelling fire in a crowded theater and causing a riot that's illegal. If you see a fire in a crowded theater and *don't* warn others, resulting in hundreds of deaths, you *will* be interviewed extensively on the evening news.
As a low-life slime. Just think of the guy who saw a "friend" follow a young girl into a Las Vegas casino restroom and didn't take any action to stop her rape and murder. "Because it wasn't his concern."
More generally, that SC ruling came from the WW-I distribution of pamplets asking why the US was getting involved in a war to protect British royal asses. It was a damn good question. It remains a damn good question. But in WW-I America, simply passing out such flyers near a military base was considered sedition because it was the official position of the US Government that military recruits were so febble-minded that they would mutiny after seeing a single flyer.
Today there is absolutely no doubt that the same circumstances would never reach the SC because few DAs would even bother pressing charges. (Of course, many of us think that many of *our* court cases will be viewed with the same mix of humor and horror in 80 years.)
The "fighting words" arguments are equally ill-informed. "Fighting words" aren't minor insults, they're words chosen specifically to enrage the listener -- and *everyone* has is vulnerable to them - anyone who isn't vulnerable, by definition, just doesn't give a damn about anyone or anything else. They are dangerous precisely because they enrage the listener.
However, not everyone responds to the same fighting words. Many people here will not be enraged at being called a "fag", but they *will* get enraged at being called a "hacker" solely becaue they run Linux. Even I was seriously torqued at a recent headline describing Debian as a "hacker" distro, even knowing that most Linux sites take great pain to distinguish between "hacker" and "cracker".
2. Treason is a specific _act_ against the country - no amount of speech about it or advocating it can be construed as committing it. Sedition, the act of advocating treason, is not a crime unless that speech can be held to be inciting violence, which is not a right under the court's ruling cited above.
3. The notion that people have a right to say whatever they like but must bear the consequences of it is very libertarian, but completely at odds with the US legal system.
4. "Fire!" in a crowded theater example: the crime is shouting the false warning, not causing damage to people or property in consequence. Also an important distinction and also in line with 1.
5. The teacher asked for a scarey story and got one. It was scarey, it was topical, and it was good enough to earn a 100%, despite the bad grammar and spelling. To ask for it, grade it highly, and then recast the story as a threat and turn the writer in is hypocrisy at best, and entrapment at worst. The former is unethical, the latter is illegal, and neither should be acceptable in a teacher. Ever. The wrong person went to jail.
And finally, the kid _went_to_jail_ - without due process, without a trial, without legal representation, and served more time than is done for most convicted misdemeanors, and even even some felonies! Suspended is one thing, but even school children should have rights of habeus corpus!
There are a lot of problems in American society that should be addressed. We are reactionary, close minded and happy to be that way most of the time. This is true. We are even (by most other societies standards) anti-social and rude. Absolutely. "Stay off my land." "What's in it for me?". We think of ourselves first, above the community and even our families (unlike most Asian cultures). We like to distantly participate in society, we come into town for supplies and maybe hit the barn dance a few times a year. This is all true. Not BAD, or EVIL, just true. We are Americans, and we are different from other societies. That's why we came here. To be left alone. So, for all that you can say about that, access to firearms does not make it any better or any worse. I am a very leftist, bleeding heart liberal- except when it comes to my weapons. I am a homo-sapien. I have no claws. My teeth are dull. I cannot run very fast, and I am not relatively a strong mammal by any means. I have a right- and not just a nationally derived legal right, I mean a goddess given fscking HUMAN right to be able to use a weapon (our very first fscking invention, mind you!) to defend myself. I may have to defend against an animal, or another homo-sapien. Maybe a whole bunch of them. Maybe some sort of global disaster is about to ruin society. Who knows? Who cares? Either way, I cannot believe that *YOU* feel that *YOU* have the right to tell *ME* that I cannot be reasonably armed. Who the hell are you? Do you live in my neighborhood? Is your police force a bunch of under-educated, over testosteroned well armed bullies? This is not a cartoon. This is a real, physical, solid, unfair, smelly planet. If someone wants to deprive me of my RIGHT to DEFEND MYSELF against that world, then he better be prepared to do it for me. The idea that we no longer require a human beings most basic tool, a weapon, due to an 'advanced society' is ludicrous. It's neither a society, nor advanced. We live on a small, wet rock with a billion other human beings who currently CHOOSE to behave a certain way. People could change. Were you in the Soviet Union when it became Russia again? I was. I feel that I have a responsibility to myself and my family to insure that we are at least as safe in this 'modern society' as our neanderthal ancestors were in theirs, and in order to do that, I have to have access to a weapon. And that weapon should at least be in the same class as the weapons that would be used against us. EOF We have NOT evolved beyond the use of weapons. We never will.
Thanks again, and keep them coming. -- The Anonymous Coward (aren't we all?)
There are a lot of problems in American society that should be addressed. We are reactionary, close minded and happy to be that way most of the time. This is true.
We are even (by most other societies standards) anti-social and rude. Absolutely. "Stay off my land." "What's in it for me?". We think of ourselves first, above the community and even our families (unlike most Asian cultures). We like to distantly participate in society, we come into town for supplies and maybe hit the barn dance a few times a year.
This is all true. Not BAD, or EVIL, just true. We are Americans, and we are different from other societies. That's why we came here. To be left alone.
So, for all that you can say about that, access to firearms does not make it any better or any worse.
I am a very leftist, bleeding heart liberal- except when it comes to my weapons.
I am a homo-sapien. I have no claws. My teeth are dull. I cannot run very fast, and I am not relatively a strong mammal by any means.
I have a right- and not just a nationally derived legal right, I mean a goddess given fscking HUMAN right to be able to use a weapon (our very first fscking invention, mind you!) to defend myself.
I may have to defend against an animal, or another homo-sapien. Maybe a whole bunch of them. Maybe some sort of global disaster is about to ruin society. Who knows? Who cares? Either way, I cannot believe that *YOU* feel that *YOU* have the right to tell *ME* that I cannot be reasonably armed. Who the hell are you? Do you live in my neighborhood? Is your police force a bunch of under-educated, over testosteroned well armed bullies?
This is not a cartoon. This is a real, physical, solid, unfair, smelly planet. If someone wants to deprive me of my RIGHT to DEFEND MYSELF against that world, then he better be prepared to do it for me.
The idea that we no longer require a human beings most basic tool, a weapon, due to an 'advanced society' is ludicrous. It's neither a society, nor advanced. We live on a small, wet rock with a billion other human beings who currently CHOOSE to behave a certain way. People could change.
Were you in the Soviet Union when it became Russia again? I was.
I feel that I have a responsibility to myself and my family to insure that we are at least as safe in this 'modern society' as our neanderthal ancestors were in theirs, and in order to do that, I have to have access to a weapon. And that weapon should at least be in the same class as the weapons that would be used against us.
EOF
We have NOT evolved beyond the use of weapons. We never will.
Much better than that kid's for sure. My handwriting sucked (still does) but at least my sentences made sense and my spelling was accurate for the most part. I'll be the first to admit my math skills were horrible. But at least I never received a high math grade for "good effort" Sheesh. Qualitative over quantitative works in some cases. The three "R"s shouldn't be part of it.
There are a lot of problems in American society that should be addressed. We are reactionary, close minded and happy to be that way most of the time. This is true.
We are even (by most other societies standards) anti-social and rude. Absolutely. "Stay off my land." "What's in it for me?". We think of ourselves first, above the community and even our families (unlike most Asian cultures). We like to distantly participate in society, we come into town for supplies and maybe hit the barn dance a few times a year.
This is all true. Not BAD, or EVIL, just true. We are Americans, and we are different from other societies. That's why we came here. To be left alone.
So, for all that you can say about that, access to firearms does not make it any better or any worse.
I am a very leftist, bleeding heart liberal- except when it comes to my weapons.
I am a homo-sapien. I have no claws. My teeth are dull. I cannot run very fast, and I am not relatively a strong mammal by any means.
I have a right- and not just a nationally derived legal right, I mean a goddess given fscking HUMAN right to be able to use a weapon (our very first fscking invention, mind you!) to defend myself.
I may have to defend against an animal, or another homo-sapien. Maybe a whole bunch of them. Maybe some sort of global disaster is about to ruin society. Who knows? Who cares? Either way, I cannot believe that *YOU* feel that *YOU* have the right to tell *ME* that I cannot be reasonably armed. Who the hell are you? Do you live in my neighborhood? Is your police force a bunch of under-educated, over testosteroned well armed bullies?
This is not a cartoon. This is a real, physical, solid, unfair, smelly planet. If someone wants to deprive me of my RIGHT to DEFEND MYSELF against that world, then he better be prepared to do it for me.
The idea that we no longer require a human beings most basic tool, a weapon, due to an 'advanced society' is ludicrous. It's neither a society, nor advanced. We live on a small, wet rock with a billion other human beings who currently CHOOSE to behave a certain way. People could change.
Were you in the Soviet Union when it became Russia again? I was.
I feel that I have a responsibility to myself and my family to insure that we are at least as safe in this 'modern society' as our neanderthal ancestors were in theirs, and in order to do that, I have to have access to a weapon. And that weapon should at least be in the same class as the weapons that would be used against us.
We have NOT evolved beyond the use of weapons. We never will.
EOF
How else is she to learn that geeks are incredibly rude, vicious people who like bash people for expressing an opinion?
(Hope she's not a looker...)
Parents who tell kids to trust teachers, policemen, PRIESTS etc. are WRONG. A kid should trust his parents implicitly and they should, in turn, be deserving of it. The kid should be taught that that level of trust is reserved for the family unit ONLY...
just my HO
So then stay over in Europe goddamnit!! And stop fucking saying "they" You do realize where the /. server is located don't you? And if you aren't rich enough to live where you want, you know what you do? You work hard to earn the money to be rich enough to do that. And if you can't? You earn enough money to send your kids to a good college so that they can live where ever they want to. America IS the land of the free in that everyone has the oppertunity to do whatever they want, the problem is that not everyone knows or believes this. So shut the fuck up and stay in Europe
I also am very upset about this story. Why did they have to drag the police in. Why not sit the kid down with a counsler. Why not talk to the parents. Heck talk to the kid. I think we are more jail happy then anything these day. :(
Begin Bitter
Yeah, and that makes a fucking great court defense, too.
End Bitter
There is a HUGE difference between not acting on this incident, and overreacting by sending the kid to jail. That's it, short and sweet.
Using the word "parent" as a verb is just a sign of how we succumb to the corruption of language (and society) You don't parent children--you raise them.
I never figured out this thing with Rammstein. I don't know what they're saying but their music just sounds so wimpy... they couldn't have paid me to listen to that back when I was in high school. And I was pretty mainstream listening to Death/Obituary/Morbid Angel.
So what is Rammstein about? Do the lyrics make up for their crappy early 80's Van Halen + Venom sound?
Are you hot?
/me loves this whole 'post anonyomosly thing'
Fights in an all girls catholic school, with a girl-geek. And a bit demented as well (I bet you're a 'demon' in the sack heh)
mmmmm
I bet you're an idiot
/me loves this 'Post Anonymously' Thing
Ok, so if this kid did/does have problems, what do you do about it? How are you supposed to know when a kid is violent and should seek help? Slashdot complains about people being unfairly sterotyped and this kids first admendment rights being trappled, but how do you decide who you should watch? Or just wait till it's too late and they kill have the school?
And not everyone considers using recreational drugs in moderation to be "abuse".
Well, not to the police though. I am a teacher in a school district not far from Denton, and in fact live in Denton. It seems most people have not considered the content of his essay. If any student of mine tuned in that essay I would have have turned the essay in to a counselor and contacted the parents. Yes, I do think 10 days in jail is far to extreme and a different punishment shoulde have been handed down. We also need to consider the disposition of the student. We really dont know much about him. Like I said before, I would turn the essay in no matter who wrote it. I have students that if they wrote this essay it would have bothered me only a little but would have still distrubed me. I have other students that if they wrote the essay it would have frightend me!! I have students that if they picked up a gun and started randomly shooting it would not surprise me. Spend time teaching in any public school and you will see that kids today are filled with anger and confusion. Thier home lives are not good. I have students that are glad to come to school because they are not at home, and they have told me so. When a student comes to school they have the right to feel safe and comfortable. If a student creates a situation where he makes the other students and staff feel uncomfortable or unsafe then something needs to be done about that student. Well, Ive rambled on long enough. By the way, I teach science in a middle school.....the schools firewall will not allow access to /. !!!!!!!!!!!!
Let's look at historical examples of banning guns, shall we? Let's start in a place called Nazi Germany. Gee, I forgot what happened afterwards, but it started with the banning of guns of non-Nazi party members. Now class, let's move on to Stalin's Soviet Union. Well, here we have anywhere from 9-27 million people killed after Stalin took away guns from non-Communist party members. Yeah, let's take away guns from everyone and see what happens. Or actually, let's be more like the Nazis and Communists. Let's start with a group of people, say drug users. Then we'll move on to homosexuals. After we have them disarmed, let's single out those who just ain't right, like those geeky type. You know who I mean. Then we'll move on to the illegal aliens. Yeah, no illegal aliens with guns. Hell, why not take them from anyone who looks Mexican, his parents were probably illegal aliens anyways. Then, let's move on to the Jews. You know they're up to no good so we need to disarm them next. Now, how about those Slashdot readers. Oh yeah, they're already disarmed when we disarmed the nerdy types. Well, it's not enough that we disarm them, they should really be separate. Separate, but equal, everybody equal, but of course some people are more equal than others. Next we disarm....
The violent stories posted to USENET were only a small part of the university's gripe with Jake Baker and were not the basis for the criminal investigation.
Ever noticed an article by Katz which doesn't mention technology?
I saw the T word in this article which tried to explain what happened, but see no relevance of technology to this situation.
Ever noticed an article by Katz which doesn't mention technology?
I saw the T word in this article which tried to explain what happened,
but see no relevance of technology to this situation. Buzzword? Word which causes buzz in the brain for an intended audience?
I agree with you completely. Why would the school system want to use the brains given to them when they are not even willing to promote students using their brains. We've got to get some chlorine into this gene pool.
he's way beyond 7th grade. this kid is almost slashdot material! (double meaning :)
I am ashamed and disgusted at the conduct of most of the so-called education staff here...Ever since Socrates took hemlock education has been more about mind control than about learning...it is sad to see that fact re-inforced again just before the millennia. We have come so far and gained so little.
you disturb me and according to FEDERAL LAW i could call the police...you just confessed to conspiracy to beat some one up and deserve to be in jail..I feel unsafe with you 'free' on the srteet able to consider some sort of subtle revenge...the world is insane...i think it is population density...like lemmings or rabbits
Texas?! Only steers and queers are from Texas!
It was excellent. Thanks for asking.
thats "enforcement, not employment"
:-)
(Rob, edit feature and a checkbox for no sig please
Not to mention you cannot equate being tossed out of school with being thrown in jail.
Just trying to cover their ass again. I say more power to this kid and down with the reactionary bigots who want free speech to teach your kids that "Heather has two mommies" but want to quash your free speech if you write about something like this kid. Typical neo-nazism... Just wait...it's coming to your town next!! Have the guts to stand up for what you believe in.... Remember .. Believe in something or you will fall for anything... Especially liberal hysterics like this!!! Signed, Pissed Off Citizen
"Come see the violence inherent in the system!" "Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!"
It's not a particularly great story, but the main thing I like about it is "the spelling and grammar errors." Frankly, the fact that a seventh grader is creative enough to break so many "rules" of the English language and *still* produce a half-way decent paper is astounding. While many very good writers and almost all of the popular ones follow the rules of the language they write in, some of the greatest writers in a particular language are great because of the fact that they completely ignore what they are supposed to do with the language, and instead do what they want with the language. Admittedly, I don't think his skills are quite to the level where he should do this regularly yet, it is rare for people of any age to have the courage to break free of the constraints of language. You probably think James Joyce and William Faulkner should be banned because of their grammar and spelling, don't you?
I went on a school sponsored, week long writing retreat with my school back in my Freshman year of high school. The story I wrote was actually about a guy named Block using his "multi-overcharge-mondo-death-kill-rifle" to mow down an entire forest filled with incredibly cute (and homogeneous) bunnies, after which he was attacked by the bunnies' mean cousins, and proceeded to deal with them. The story was an intentionally thinly veiled attack at my school, the cute bunnies of course being the football players et al, and the mean ones being the administration. I got a 100% on it. I was not, however, carted off to the police despite a questionable disciplinary history, including cussing out teachers in the middle of class (and this was a snooty prep school). Everyone loved the story and it got published in our school lit magazine. I guess it just go to show you how prevelent Big Brother is getting here in the US. 4 years ago I can write a violent criticism of my school with no problem and today I'd be carted off to jail. I'm thinking of moving to another country. I was thinking Australia, but given in about three weeks they'll pass a law saying you can't touch a computer with access to the Internet, I guess that won't do :( -greer
So you Americans won the cold war only to emulate what you were fighting against, right? Re-education, thought control. What a sad nation.
If the people wouldn't be able to get guns as easy as they can now, they wouldn't feel treatend as now. If I would say I'll blow up the earth with nukes. You would all laugh with and declare me stuppid. If it would be easy for everyone to get their hands on nukes, you would probably think about this and start building a shelter. Strife
You think so? I would have been lucky to be given more than 20% had I handed that in at age 13. I'd be utterly ashamed to admit I'd written it.
Someday I'll get around to organizing my squad of assassins who go and kill all the stupid assholes you read about in stories like this.
I think Darwin would approve.
Just one problem I have with this article - we're not living in a democracy. Well, at least, not in theory.
The United States is a constitutional republic. A democracy is mob rules. You don't want to live in a democracy, as the voting sheep can be manipulated to a point where those in power can get there way by appealing to the voter consciousness en masse. Sound familiar? It should. It's already happening, thanks to our wonderful, unbiased, we-have-no-opinion-we-only-report-the-facts news media.
So the next time you hear someone say how great it is to live in a democracy, that we need to save the world for democracy, and all that other rubbish, please feel free to scoff. Inform them that they should be glad they're not in a democracy, and that they should brush up on their civics.
The US is a canstitutional republic. Our foundation of laws and values is based on a constitution of inalienable rights. This means they can't be taken away from you. Yet we've done just that over the years, traded freedom for security. And those who do so, according to Benjamin Franklin, deserve neither.
- I am 17 years old. Honestly I would not kill anyone. Your post disturbs me.
If you're under 18 like you say you are, shut the fuck up because you have no rights. Isn't that what you said?Sure, he should be kept in jail. He misspelled so many words in his essay that I'm astonished he would get 100. But then, his teacher and the morons who imprisoned him probably couldn't do any better. His bad spelling is a clear indication of a psychopathic personality, just as is the labeling of anyone who wants to make a quick comment without bureaucratic controls as an "anonymous coward". But that's America nowadays.
I am in total agreement with your comments. Poeple saying he only wrote a story and should not have been punished. Bu!!$hit, He wrote a story using his real friends names talking about getting high and killing some classmates because they made him pissed off! Hello does anyone see someting strange here. The fact he writes about getting high says that he and his friends probably do get high. What does this remind anyone of, how about just all of the school killings that have happened in the past few years. Your Morons if you think this is not a sign of a warped kid. Remember his name because we will all probably hear it again after he really kills someone. "Guns don't kill people, little pot smoking, gun toting, warped minded kids kill people"
I won't comment on the outrageous behaviour of the various authorities involved. What scares me is that a 13 year old can get a mark of 100 and a comment of 'outstanding' for the barely-literate blatherings that constitute the 'essay' in question. Is this the standard of writing that American students are expected to aspire to?
Democracy only works if elected officials are continually reminded of what the people they WORK FOR think. If you live in Denton County, or even the rest of Texas (who knows maybe she wants to run for state office one day?) mail your thoughts to this judge at: DWhitten@co.denton.tx.us
I saw a thing about this on MSNBC(I was just channel surfing, I swear) and they were interviewing one of the school's adminstrators. From what he said there, the teacher had an arrangement with the students that anyone who would read their essay in front of the class would get a 100%(which is so typical of the Amercian educational system wherein social skills are always put in front of actual education). I strongly suspect that the teacher never actually read te essay in question. She probably wrote outstanding on every single paper.
Dang Right! That seventh grade Texas cracker SHOULD be in jail, right along with his teacher! Both are guilty of PROFOUND STUPIDITY! Read his story. It's one long run-on sentence filled with spelling and gramatical errors. He got a 100 for this slop? Oh, wait... Stupidity's not a crime... It's your right as an American. Nevermind...
I have strong opiouns to stories like this related to shool shootings and overeactions to them. I was made fun of a lot in my first two years of high school, and my sophmore year, I was also failing out (F's in 3 classes). Every day I would literaly have to talk myself out of killing myself. I also freaked out at people a lot, and nearly lost it once or twice. Going a little off topic, the only thing that kept me going was being able to take out a lot of my anger blowing things up and killing people in viloent video games. Anyway, this type of though police action is very frighting (I thought it was an incredible coidence that a freind two doors down in my dorm was watching the Matrix DVD the same day I read 1984, and then this happens) They can't yet change your thoughts, but you can be punished for them. Independtent thought is not the cause of school shootings, the cause is its opposite, conformity. Also, yesterday, a freind of mine told me something that indicates another reason for them, and this is the main reason I'm not posting my name.(The other is my email server with my password for slashdot still there is down) Anyway, in this class, to keep up with the course sylabus, our teacher has been covering a lot of importent stuff quickly, and dosen't anser questions that often, and nobody has a clue whats going on or is learning everything. She said "If I had a gun I'd shoot him right now, but I'm afraid they'll blame me because I have a tatoo." We have gotten to the point where if a student wrights an essay about violence s/he is labeled a potetional terrorist and arrested/suspended/expelled. In an article in my city's newspaper about Mosic, it mentioned that in some schools cloaths and music that are not part of popular mainstream culture are considered risk factors, as are watching violent movies and tv, and listening to violent music or playing video games. EVERYONE falls into one of those catagories, even if they only watch the news. It used to be that the purpose of english classes in school was to learn to write, to express yourself creativly. Now it is considered harmfull to express yourself, when it is one of the things that makes you feel less anger, by letting it out instead of letting it just stay there, building up, untill it explodes like a volcano. I have strong opiouns to stories like this related to shool shootings and overeactions to them. I was made fun of a lot in my first two years of high school, and my sophmore year, I was also failing out (F's in 3 classes). Every day I would literaly have to talk myself out of killing myself. I also freaked out at people a lot, and nearly lost it once or twice. Going a little off topic, the only thing that kept me going was being able to take out a lot of my anger blowing things up and killing people in viloent video games. Anyway, this type of though police action is very frighting (I thought it was an incredible coidence that a freind two doors down in my dorm was watching the Matrix DVD the same day I read 1984, and then this happens) They can't yet change your thoughts, but you can be punished for them. Independtent thought is not the cause of school shootings, the cause is its opposite, conformity. Also, yesterday, a freind of mine told me something that indicates another reason for them, and this is the main reason I'm not posting my name.(The other is my email server with my password for slashdot still there is down) Anyway, in this class, to keep up with the course sylabus, our teacher has been covering a lot of importent stuff quickly, and dosen't anser questions that often, and nobody has a clue whats going on or is learning everything. She said "If I had a gun I'd shoot him right now, but I'm afraid they'll blame me because I have a tatoo." We have gotten to the point where if a student wrights an essay about violence s/he is labeled a potetional terrorist and arrested/suspended/expelled. In an article in my city's newspaper about Mosic, it mentioned that in some schools cloaths and music that are not part of popular mainstream culture are considered risk factors, as are watching violent movies and tv, and listening to violent music or playing video games. EVERYONE falls into one of those catagories, even if they only watch the news. It used to be that the purpose of english classes in school was to learn to write, to express yourself creativly. Now it is considered harmfull to express yourself, when it is one of the things that makes you feel less anger, by letting it out instead of letting it just stay there, building up, untill it explodes like a volcano. Not so much by this example, but they are trying to make it a crime to be different. It isn't the students, and in many cases not even the teachers(at least by choice), but the whole concept of school in the first place. Sit in rows, be quit, no talking, pay attetion, sit still, no eating, do drinking, no gum ... We need to teach ideas as much as formulas and facts. The history classes I enjoyed most (and got A's in) were in high school, where the dates of most of the events wern't importent, it was the ideas behind them. Why did Thomas Jefferson write the Decloration of Independence? Why did the Roman Empire Collapse? It is far more intresting, for any subject, to learn WHY instead of HOW. Criticle thinking is one of the most importent thing to learn, but it seems to be the thing our leaders lack. It remindes me of a quote from my chemistry teacher(all in good fun here) "Ok, and now what is the CORRECT anser?" That is what needs to be said to the DA and school administration in this case, and to anyone who thinks something like Moasic will help anything
Thats EXACTLY the problem we're discussing here: Some people can't deal with reality. Whenever something unpleasant happens, they want to hide it away.
You want to moderate a post down, the school administrators wanted a kid thrown in jail.
If you can honestly say that you've never ever even thought about how it would be to kill someone who have bothered you, then you're not representable.
No, I'm not saying you would kill anyone, nor that you'd even consider it seriously. But as the poster you replied to said, most people at some point think about killing. Almost none do anything about it.
And most people likely would never pull the trigger even if they DID have a loaded gun when they thought about killing someone.
The important issue here, however is that some people (such as you) try to hide problems, rather than address them.
Maybe this kid had problems, but they surely won't be better now that he knows that telling anyone about violence means his teacher and school administration will betray him, and the government throw him in jail.
What have the kid been taught? That he's a freak. That he's weird, and according to society probably a dangerous, sick kid.
Do you know what that can do to someone? To be marked as a potential killer?
If this kid ever go out and shoot someone I'd say that his school was as much to blame as he would be.
They're the one that has learned him that he's guilty just for being himself, and writing a story. So why shouldn't he REALLY do something?
Treating people like animals is a sure way to make them into animals.
And the D.A. plans not to press any charges! In other words, "We fucked up, sorry". What punishment will the school receive? And what are the NAMES and POSITIONS of unnamed "administrators" who decided to take this action? Anonymous accusations are a dangerous thing indeed.
I've noted a few arguments appearing multiple times in these comments, so I decided to summarize my opinions about them.
Argument: This is no different than getting arrested for joking about a bomb in an airport, or yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Counter: no, this is completely different. to make the situations analogous, please have the airport host a horror story reading, with free airfare for those who read a horror story. or on a more realistic level, see how much trouble you get in for writing a novel with a plotline similar to 'passenger 57' or such.
argument: jake baker got dismissed from university for written stories, so we're hypocritical to argue just because he's younger.
counter: jake baker got dismissed from university, but the charges against him were dismissed. while i found the story itself rather revolting, i fully support the rights of these people to write them.
argument: school officials were just being careful, and it's a neccessary evil.
counter: no, this one is just flat wrong. yes, we live in an overly litigious society, but it doesn't excuse suppression of liberty for "safety". I agree that this is tantamount to thoughtcrime. When I was in high school I wrote a story about a student climbing a tower with a gun and wiping out a ton of people. It wasn't serious, it was a story. Heck, I didn't even have fantasies about doing it, I just decided that 'avenue' and 'boy scout stew' were good rhymes and off I went. note: years later I ran into the teacher I handed that paper to, and she asked for a copy of it. She wanted to use it for a creative writing class as an example of 'black humour' and deriving humour by combining incompatible elements (a very happy, rhythmic flow and well.. a story about a sniper in a clock tower)
Argument: he should be forced to have counseling.
counter: why? should we all go for "re-education" whenever we say something outside the norm? this is similar to all the jokes in my current office about 'sensitivity training'. 99% of all people who say weird stuff are kidding or saying it purely for shock value. he might need counseling, he might not. none of us here have nearly enough information to make that call.
Argument: the paper didn't deserve 100%
counter: well... perhaps you're right... but perhaps the teacher was trying to get the students to do something for themselves, to get them to realize that perhaps they like writing creatively but without the pressure of grades and such.
Oh, what a time we live in. I think I'm going to go watch Heathers.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Message to all kids: Say the wrong thing, go to jail. The damn russians don't even do this kind of shit to people anymore. Our schools are being run by jack-booted facists. Still think this place is free?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
1) the kids were asked to write a scary story about being home alone and hearing noises.
I'm sure he wasn't the only one to change the premise of the story. Happened all the time when I was in school.
2) the kid has been a "disciplinary problem" for a while.
There are always kids who are "disciplinary problems." That doesn't mean they should be tossed in jail. He was asked to write a fictional story. He did that. Somehow they decide that it's not really a fictional story, but a terrorist threat. Who made that leap of logic?
3) the essays were not graded
This hardly matters.
Sounds like a jerk of a kid trying to cause trouble.
You're probably right. Usually kids like that spent a lot of time in detention, not jail.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I don't think you can really compare a college student with a seveth grader. Unless Beamon was told not to use real names in his story, I don't think he did anything wrong. There is also the point that he was told to write a scary story, rather than just writing and posting it on his own. The situations are not the same and I don't think they are even comparable.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You make me laugh. As soon as you're tossed in jail for 20 years or more for a crime you didn't commit, then you can talk about how it's a necessary thing because we don't live in a perfect world. Until then, your opinion carries very little weight.
As for dealing with bullies, your experience is your own and not indicative of anything. If you were actually able to beat other people up, then I can assure you that your experience was not the same as mine. There were many times when I wished I had a gun. I wouldn't have wanted to actually kill anyone, (although there were a couple of people who I am pretty sure aren't really human... they couldn't be...) but I would have liked to shoot them in the shoulder or leg or something like that. It wasn't because I'm a violent person, it's just that I would have liked to see them understand what it's like to have someone else hurt you and not be able to do anything about it.
Don't fall into the delusion that just because something is true for you, it is true for everyone.
I'd like to ask you to take your own advice as well. You are probably no more representative of the people here than I am, or anyone else is. We've all had our own experiences and while some of us may have a lot in common, we're all different.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
So we should say nothing unless we have first-hand experience of incident? I doubt it. We respond based on the facts as they were presented to us. If those facts turn out to be incorrect, as they did in Littleton, we will then respond to the updated version of the facts. Nobody is believing everything they read or see on tv. The net, newspapers, and tv just happen to be the best methods of getting news from other places. If the facts are sometimes wrong, then so be it. We'll just have to revise our thinking and opinions when the actual facts come in.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The problem isn't Texas culture. People here aren't that much different than people in other places in the country. Of course there are some exceptions, people who take things too far, but you can find those kinds of people anywhere.
Texas will always be about 100 years behind most states
What are you yammering about here? Give an example at least. Generalizing about something that you obviously don't know much about just makes you look stupid.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Do you really want someone who says "I'm going to kill Bill Clinton" to be free from any questioning?
That depends on the context of the statement. In the case of the kid who wrote the story, he was asked to write a fictional story, which he did. Why then was it taken as a "terrorist threat?"
In this case, a kid wrote an essay that was genuinely disturbing. While throwing him in jail may have been a bit much, I think asking him about it, counseling him for it, etc. were entirely appropriate!
Disturbing to whom? I read many such stories when I was in school. Kids wrote stuff like that sometimes. It's immature, but not really disturbing. Sure, if they're really worried, get the kid some counseling. Their reaction was a lot more criminal than the kid's story.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
We obviously don't want the kid to have been made to feel like he was an outcast, or violated some thought code...
Well, since teachers are going to do things like this now anyway, they might as well show at least a little restraint. If you've decided to do something to the kid, it seems like counseling would be a much better choice than jail. Especially considering the fact that he was writing the scary story at the request of the teacher. By counseling the student, they would have at least shown that they tried to get him help, whether he actually needed it or not. Instead, he is tossed in jail, which would probably do a lot more to alienate and anger him than any amount of counseling. Especially when he didn't actually commit a crime. If a counsellor thinks he needs real professional help, then his parents should see that he gets it. Nobody needs to go to jail when no crime has been committed.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
He did make an abrupt jump from waiting at home for his drugs and killing 20 people. That's sort of a red flag.
I thought it was "only" 4 people. Either way, I agree that it could be indicative of a problem. Even if it is, jail is definitely not the solution.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
First of all, a university is not the same thing as a public jr. high school. The kid is required to go to school there. Universities can kick you out for all sorts of reasons even if you don't violate a law. Second, the story was written at the request of the teacher. If she didn't want the kids to use real names in it, she should have told them that. They're kids! They're supposed to be learning!
This wasn't a "savage and tasteless piece of fiction," although many horror stories could fit this description depending on whose opinion you ask. Even if it was, they were asked to write a scary story and should not be reprimanded for doing so. Kids are kids and say and do things that aren't appropriate sometimes. It's part of growing up and maturing. They should not be treated the same as an adult in college. They haven't had the same amount of experience and guidance yet. Perhaps the teacher and administration should explain the rules before punishing someone for breaking them.
I don't know the kid personally, so I'm no more qualified than anyone else here to determine whether he is unstable or not. Even if they thought he was, they should have had him see a couselor or had his parents take him to a professional to try to find out if there really is a problem. This was a gross overreaction on the part of a bunch of people trying to cover their own asses at the kid's expense. I will say that it's got a lot to do with the fact that so many people in this country fly into a panicked hysteria rather than actually think when something bad happens.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
To make one person suffer injustly to stop two or more people from suffering injustly is a good thing.
That depends on the situation. It also depends on who gets to decide who will suffer.
My real point is that it's easy to just dismiss any problems with the system as being a necessary evil rather than try to fix them if you've never been a victim of those problems.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Texas is it's own country
This is more of a curiosity to most people here. It has little effect on anything. Technically, I believe that Texas is the only state that could secede and have a legal leg to stand on. I could be wrong. There's probably a lot of legal issues that would be unworkable if this was attempted which is why I believe that it matters very little these days.
BBQ is the food of gods
Well, I like BBQ, but it's not ambrosia.
Executing people should be a sporting event
We've got our share of people for and against it just like everywhere else. It is legal here and it is used. We aren't the only ones though.
They have to have a bigger truck than everyone else
Hmm.. there are a lot of trucks here, but most of them are just SUVs and pickups. Not all that many that are bigger than normal. I drive a Toyota Corolla, so I'm definitely not guilty of having a big truck.
Btw, I was born in Massachusetts. I lived part of my young life in Ohio as well. I've been in Texas for the last 16 years though. It's not all that bad a place and I'll probably be here for a while.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The idea that a software package can tell you when someone is a problem is beyond ridiculous. Teachers these days are just as bored and apathetic as their students, and it shows. Something needs to be done to our school system. Instead of fostering thought, it's a depressing example of civil service-style beaurocracy.
This wouldn't even be so bad if the teacher hadn't awarded the student a perfect grade to being with! Incredible!
--
The worst part is that there is no evidence that it wasn't just PURE fiction, without even a real THOUGHT to kill anybody.
I am sure that at some point, a kid in school will discover that he or she loves to write, and will have a great talent for writing. Perhaps the next Poe. Then the kid will go to jail (after a short story assignment) and learn how to commit crimes for a living.
We are discussing whether or not school staff should accept this garbage as an "essay."
While some might argue that fiction CAN be bad enough to deserve jail time :-), apparently, the teacher didn't think it was garbage at all (at least for a 13 year old writer).
I would not, for example, ever let Steven King babysit for me.
Perhaps not, but I would hope that you wouldn't send a 13 year old version of Steven King to jail, just as he was discovering that he liked to write fiction.
Remember, this was FICTION, a made up story. Something that didn't happen. Not necessarily anything that the author wants to happen (Unless you believe that all horror writers are really dangerously homocidal).
Maybe he was dumb, maybe he was a bully, maybe he was a total inbred-Jed with 47 teeth and an uncontrollable urge to rub his nose on fire hydrants. Who cares? The point is he was entrapped by a school system who clearly doesn't want anything to do with kids that deviate from the norm (as in Norman Rockwell) any tiny bit at all... just another step in the State's unwritten mandate of creating and celebrating a boring, mediocre populace which perform thier jobs without question and act like good little consumers around Christmas.
Try to remember that geeks often do (and indeed should) have more interests than the latest toy that's come down the pike. The Real World® affects you whether you like it or not, so it's best to be aware of it and prepare yourself accordingly.
As the french say: "Those who don't do politics will be done in by politics."
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
here
-----
What really concerns me is that a grade 7 student actually got a 100 for that story. It doesn't deserve anything more than a 65.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
... the angrier I get.
I have a three year old son who'll be school age soon. I have another child about to pop out any day now. I'm not (wasn't?) the easily-angerable type before, but it seems now that this idiotic draconian system we call the education system is turning me violent.
Do I have to quit my job and stand in the back of my child's classroom to make sure that some asshole teacher doesn't pull this shit on my kids? Do I have to come between the principal and my child when such a completely outrageously fucking stupid "rule" gets enforced and my children suffer? I swear to God I feel like shooting people, and this is not a joke. I completely agree with the poster who said "It's about teaching them to think, not become slaves." I want the social interaction of a public school system but I am looking into homeschooling too... anyone have info on how to get the best of both worlds?
I am (usually) a rational, logical and quite calm person but thinking about this happenning to my children is turning me into a papa bear. I'll be god-damned if someone pulls this shit on my children (or their classmates for that matter) and I hear about it... I mean I FUCKING HELP PAY THEIR SALARIES and heads will roll if this shit happens in my school!
Yes a mark of 100 on that paper is bullshit... simiar shit has happenned to my wife's half-sisters (half sisters in law??) -- one of them drew a graph... the data was right, but the bars were too skinny. What did the teacher do? 2/10. A mark of failure for a graph which was correct but skinny? I'd go ballistic if that were my child! Hell I'm ballisitc NOW just thinking about all this! I can see 7/10, 6/10... but a FAILING mark??? I'd slap the greasy short balding prick for pulling that kind of shit.
I used to think that teachers were okay... and I know that a lot are... I have had some very good teachers... but there has got to be a way to get the pricks and bitches out of the system while keeping the good ones... there has to be a way.
... I can just see it now, I'll be the scourge of the education system... christ I can't believe how riled it makes me...
... off for a walk...
Andrew
"...we both wated and wated for Ismael because he was supposed to bring the ounce so we could get high..."
NO ONE expressed any sort of concern that this thirteen-year-old kid might be getting involved in drugs (a threat to himself). That a school-teacher could applaud such content without feeling some sort of concern for the child's perceptions and behaviour in regard to drugs is appalling to me.
Dude, if he's got an ounce of _any_ drug, he's not just "getting involved".
-- rot13 my email address for the real thing
Odds of being killed by lightning and winning the lottery in the same day: 1 in 2^55
And, BTW, WTF is this country comming to? What's next, "suspicion of conspiracy to insight potetntial threats, imprisionable for 20 years?" Yea, right, there's no such thing as Big Brother or the Thought Police.... Uh-huh...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
And a funny thing about "life": sometimes the "pissed-on" get pissed-off and start becoming violent. This should surprise no one any more than a wild, or even domesticated, animal attacking a human at random, when frightened.
Pissing people off INVITES them to act violently. Calling such reactions insane does not discharge the responsibility from those who drove them insane to begin with.
In Liberty, Rene
Sure, one *should* take responsibility for one's actions and sane people do.
However, repeated abuse (and by this I mean any action that the abuser would not wish done to them) causes people to lose their sanity.
Insane people are sometimes violent.
Ergo, abuse can be expected to precipitate violence. Call it "inciting to violence" if you will.
Saying that mature people don't respond violently to minor "pissing-offedness" doesn't fix the problem.
Does this mean we should treat each other with kid gloves all the time? No, but perhaps if we treat eachother the way we'd like ourselves to be treated such violence would decrease.
Stories like these make me angry. I can imagine less sane people being driven to violence by them "in retaliation". I'm not sure if that would be such a bad thing: the self-proclaimed spokespeople for society just don't seem to get the idea that abuse breeds retaliatory violence. Perhaps more evidence of this might change their minds. Somehow, though, while eventually solving the problem of abuse, I don't think such an approach is optimal.
In Liberty, Rene
Why would someone unfamiliar with freedom have any qualms about seeing it extinguished for others?
Why would someone who's never enjoyed individual liberty anguish at seeing someone else's oppressed?
Your rant rings hollow; it's lack of perspective painfully evident. Please, focus your attention on determining your own future. We won't be needing your assistance in determining ours.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Early 80's? Try early 70's!
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
My big problem with Katz is that he makes a lot of broad generalizations without attempting to back them up. Worse, many of his generalizations are wrong.
See, for example, the recent "Onward Christian Geeks" article. The thing was so riddled with untested assumptions, snideness, and baseless harrassment that it was almost nauseating.
On top of that, Katz seems to have bought heavily into the twentieth century doctrine of victimization -- a philisophy that I find repugnant.
This isn't bashing. This is criticism. When did it become okay to define the statements of anyone with whom you do not agree as "bashing"? Or rather, since when does that prove anything?
-- Slashdot sucks.
I guess I see a kind of justice in Katz-bashing. While I choose not to engage in it (other than the occasional sarcastic "Watch out for the evil Christians" comment) it seems to me that his tendencies to dehumanize and villify anyone he does not agree with almost makes it okay to dehumanize and devillify.
Its juvenile, I choose not to do it myself, but still there is a certain poetic justice to it.
-- Slashdot sucks.
First off, let me say that I think the "system" probably made a mistake in this case. But I would like to take a second to answer many /.'ers false assumptions regarding the right to Free Speech.
/is/ profiling. But there I'm not aware of any legal or moral reason that it shouldn't be done.
You see, according to long judicial precedent, the right to free speech does not mean being free from the consequences of what you say. It frees you to say it. After you say it, you can be held accountable for the content of what you said. So, if you (to use the classic example) shout "fire!" in a crowded theater, you can be held accountable for the damage done. Your right to free speech does not include this.
You can also be held accountable for using "fighting words" or other things designed to incite people to criminal action. And treason and sedition are still crimes, as is espionage. You are not permitted to divulge legitimate state secrets without consequence. Unfortunately, this approach to free speech (the only rational one in my opinion) has been eroded by a lot of people who want to be able to say or do anything without consequence. So far, the courts have not bought in in most cases. I hope they continue to hold out.
In any case, I don't think that there is any natural right to speak without consequences. The logical extremes of this idea are absurd and untenable. Do you really want someone who says "I'm going to kill Bill Clinton" to be free from any questioning?
In this case, a kid wrote an essay that was genuinely disturbing. While throwing him in jail may have been a bit much, I think asking him about it, counseling him for it, etc. were entirely appropriate! I'm sorry, but any kid who writes something this graphic (have you read it?) is very likely to have a problem. The school system would be derelict to not inquire -- and yes, this
Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending public schools. In fact, I am a staunch advocate of home schooling. But in this case I think that they are doing the best they can with what they've got.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Suppose this kid did go ahead and shoot up his school. Suddenly, this teacher would lose her job for not doing anything after such an obvious threat. 20/20 hindsight means you gotta cover your hind quarters.
The administrators had no choice--nobody wanted to be the scapegoat who didn't do anything, not the teacher, not the principal, not the judge.
Grammatical errors aside, it sure was a scary story. Scared the entire political and educational infrastructure half to death about losing their job.
One has to wonder how wrong they were to. Things are rarely so simple, Jon.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
How about for overreacting to the nth degreee. Would a parent/teacher sitdown and talk meeting have accomplished much more. Panic is the downfall of sentient species. The teacher, principal and judge, all panicked (sp).
Ah, but why?
See, everyone knew it was wrong. Instead of crying, it was wrong, it was obvious, lets find out why they believed a sit-down wouldn't be enough, and deal with that problem.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
True, true, except for the fact that dracula didn't kill people "because they pissed him off" or smoke dope and inhale freon.
Are you talking about Vlad "the Impaler" Dracul? The one who once impaled 20000 people at the same time because it enjoyed him?
It's funny that this kid can talk about getting high on Freon and waiting for a friend that went out to get drugs and not one official really looked at that or questioned that...it was the violence that scared them. 15 years ago if a student wrote about drugs and was a displinary problem then the school would talk to the parents and figure out if the kid was doing drugs and considering statistics about when kids start experimenting with substance abuse it's really funny that that was not considered or even considered a problem.
I think the answer to how schools are dealing with certain issues is definately generational. Administrators today were teenagers in the 60's and 70's so they didn't really have to deal with violence in school (barring the occisional fist fight) when they were teenagers but drugs - they thought that schools were using draconian measures when the schools were looking for kids doing drugs. No these teenagers are the administrators and their view on drugs seem to be very relax. But if there is potential for violence then it's time to haul the kids off to jail and re-educate them.
So I guess when the next generation comes to be the administrator maybe then there well be a relaxation in regards to violence and maybe this generation will listen to kids rather then trying to turn them into shiny happy people!
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
Welcome to public schooling. Everyone gets an `A'. Teachers are too afraid to give F's any more in fear of labeling a student as "bad". Students are rewarded in categories such as creativity and effort. They're just trying to flatten the bell curve out a little.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
what's very suprizing though, is that a person who slams on somebody's spelling can't spell "surprising". :)
and yeah, I'd put his English teacher in the brig aswell. when I was that boy's age I could do much better than that, and English is my second language...
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Jeez, who cares? At least, why should anyone care about reading this on Slashdot? It has nothing to do with ANYTHING on this site. I realize without stories like this you would cease to exist, but I suggest another venue for your tiresome missives.
| Any grade 7 should be able to write better than
;) ]
| that. It really makes me worry about schools
| today.
Back when I was in high school (class of '90), I was the editor of the school's literary magazine. I've seen writing as bad as that from juniors (who were apparently proud enough of their work to submit it to the literary magazine - it wasn't a requirement!) As a graduate student, I've taught a number of freshman-level chemistry labs. I've gotten lab reports from students that were written as poorly as this seventh grader's essay. I guess what I'm saying here is that schools "today" have been as bad for at least the past ten years.
Should the kid have been arrested for writing this essay? Heck no. Should the kid have been given a perfect score on it? Hell no! The first sentence alone would have made *my* seventh grade teacher give the thing an "F". Honestly, it sounds like the kid did a little too *much* "freeon" before class that day.
Having said all of this, I feel a little sorry for the kid because I put one of *my* short stories into my school's literary magazine. This story was about an abused child who ends up shooting his parents. I wasn't an abused child and I had no intention of shooting my parents, but I *was* questioned about the story at length.
This happened even though the story was written in third person and used no "real" names. It's a good thing that Columbine hadn't happened then, or I might have been put in jail!
[PS - No grammar flames about this post, please. Slashdot ain't no literary magazine!
-- Rick
The kid was harrassed for clearly fictional gun-related "threats", and yet the story contains another threat that is much more real and yet was completely ignored:
...we both wated and wated for Ismael because he was supposed to bring the ounce so we could get high...
NO ONE expressed any sort of concern that this thirteen-year-old kid might be getting involved in drugs (a threat to himself). That a school-teacher could applaud such content without feeling some sort of concern for the child's perceptions and behaviour in regard to drugs is appalling to me.
**>>BELCH
...first making "threats" becomes illegal...the next thing you know, anyone who complains about this policy or about the people enforcing it find themselves in jail, and then we find ourselves smack in the middle of 1984.
Ain't America great?
>Dracula was about a great warrior for good >turning into an evil monster who destroyed and >corrupted all he held dear.
:)
True, true, except for the fact that dracula didn't kill people "because they pissed him off" or smoke dope and inhale freon.
>Looks to me that expanding on the basic concept, >this kids story, rather than a terrorist threat, >could have become a great classic of horror.
Sorry, I don't see it. I remember being in school which was not all that long ago since I'm only 21, and I remember assignments like this. This is the kind of thing that I would write because I wanted to freak my teacher out or get people upset. It's the kind of thing that a kid can do because it fits the assignment, so straight off the bat any punishment is unjust, yet at the same time, it defies the "purpose" of the assignment.
Now I can't believe he got a 100 for that piece of writing, although I don't claim to be up on writing standards for (7th?) graders. But that's beside the point. Seems to me to be primarily a case of neither a dangerous person exposing his intent, nor a case of a completely harmless event, but just a case of a regular smart ass kid, freak/geek or not, who just wanted to rattle people's cages.
It worked.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Yeah no kidding. I remember how one time I begged my computer teacher to allow us to try to connect to a BBS with her computer since hers was the only one with a modem (not to mention the only one near a phone line). Boy was it good to go to college and learn about the internet...even if it wasn't good for my grades:)
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
I agree. Pointing out errors in the article might be considered offtopic (for those who don't care about proper punctuation or grammar), but it is certainly not "troll"-ish. Hopefully, justice will be done when it comes time to Meta Moderate.
I took an English course at a local community college last year. The teacher told us that we'd be using some weird book about grammar. I pointed out that it was pretty weird not to use Strunk & White. He said that it was outdated. I said that this would be like teaching a course on Christianity without using the Bible.
:)
That's how I new, from day 1, that I wouldn't like that English course.
Hey, I'm on a real run today, posting off-topic, barely-related, poorly-written replies.
How good was your writting in seventh grade?
--MD--
--MD--
I know you love to hate Jon Katz. I don't. So check YOUR facts before you fly off-- read the story. That's where the 'facts' came from. Katz only supplied commentary.
Here's a few more...
to the tune of "Deck the Halls"
Or maybe this one:
(to the tune of "battle hymn of the republic")
It's a miracle I'm not in prison now, huh.
0 1 - just my two bits
PEOPLE UNDER 18 HAVE NO RIGHTS!
So, you mean your brother doesn't have the right to live...
I live in Denton and they have been talking about this on the local radio talk shows. One lady, a former teacher, called in to the show and explained what is referred to as "Whole Language".Basically, they have decided that there is a time for spelling, a time for grammar etc... While doing creative writing teachers are only supposed to grade content and not such trivial matters as spelling or grammar. The lady calling even said teachers had to attend special training sessions where they learned how to NOT check spelling and grammar.That is the only reason I have heard as to how he could have received such a high grade on this assignment.Personally, I think "Whole Language" is a crock of ! But, that is just me I guess.
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Wait a second, what country is this? I thought we had the right to protest things we didn't like, be it against the government or just against a person. Silly me.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
--
--
"Insert witty quote here."
In both cases, a work of fiction was written that referred to acts of murder against classmates (mentioned by name).
I cited the Baker story because it DOES compare:
- The school authorities took action against the student for writing something that the school authorities decided could be taken as a threat against another student.
- The student was arrested as a consequence.
The dismissal of Jake Baker was upheld by the courts. The government's prosecution of Baker failed because the govenment failed to show intent to carry out the threat; the judge referred to Baker's story as "a rather savage and tasteless piece of fiction."Thus, according to the courts, an institution is allowed to dismiss the student for such actions, apparently if they violate some code of ethical conduct. However, such writings don't pass legal muster of showing intent to cause harm. (Note: Baker's case was tried in Federal court; Texas may have its own laws and precedents; again, I am not a lawyer.)
And I think it is this last thing that has people so up in arms... nobody believes that Christopher Beamon INTENDED to do any harm to his classmates... and if there was no intention of harm, how can there be a threat? And if there's no threat, why was he arrested?
This is a question that nobody here can answer. I just hope that the American public sees the kind of slippery slope they are sliding down when they pursue these kinds of things, whether it be a college student writing on alt.sex.stories, a seventh grader writing a "scary essay," or a pre-teen attempting to steal a kiss from another pre-teen.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I remember a few of years ago, a student named Jake Baker at the University of Michigan wrote piece of erotic fiction on USENET (alt.sex.stories?) that described acts of rape, sexual torture, and murder of a classmate, who was mentioned by name.
He had prepended a disclaimer to his work (mentioning that it contained "lots of sick stuff") and he put his real name on the postings.
When the University was informed of the postings from an alumnus who is an attorney in Moscow (!!!), he was dismissed from the University. The 6th Circuit court of appeals affirmed the dismissal.
Now... the case that Jon sites is different in that this was schoolwork that the 7th grader wrote, but the similarity was that people were mentioned by name.
I agree with Jon's sentiments that students should have freedom of speech and press (which applies here? I'm not a lawyer.). However, the University of Michigan case is a precedent that has already undergone appeal in federal court that states that such writings COULD and ARE considered threatening.
Jake's story was posted to one of the alt.sex groups in early 1995. This was way before the Columbine killings. Instead of seeing an increased panic among school administrators, I see continuity from what they were doing four years ago.
Now... I do not for one minute believe that either Christopher Beamon or Jake Baker meant to threaten anybody by their writings. However, there is still a precedent that considers these writings as threatening and should be punished.
For this reason, I think Jon is jumping the gun here in saying that this has anything to do with the Columbine shootings or the perceived "anti-geek" attitudes that were mentioned in the previous "Hellmouth" stories.
Maybe, just maybe, those shootings made school administrators more willing to take quick action.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with the disposition of either Jake Baker's case, nor with Chris Beamon's.
I think that if schools are going to prosecute people for such things, then there should be a clear policy explained to all the students; the ground rules must be made clear if we are to try to avoid such things that may upset other students or their parents. If a school has such rules, they should be published and placed under the scrutiny of the public. If they are too draconian, allow them to be challenged by the parents, teachers, or students... even the ACLU.
Otherwise, I can see this being a precedent for yet another case, where a five year old says to another student "Come back here! I'll kill you!" and gets expelled.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I don't have any problem with the subjet matter.
Frankly, I would have given him a D for the spelling errors alone.
Aside from that, the grammar is all but nonexistant.
Even if I was being extremely kind, I would feel that was being remiss in my duty as a teacher if i scored it higher than a B-.
I'm not shocked that they locked him up. I'm cynical enough that I've come to expect that sort of thing. There are two things that shock me.
The first thing, obviously, is how easy it is to get an A these days. I would have flunked out of english writing drivel like that 10 years ago.
The second thing is the discrepency between the school's description of the student to the press and their description they put on his report card.
His report card says that he is an "Outstanding" student, while the school told the press that he is a "consistent discipline problem"
I used to work for a software company that sold their wares exclusively to the primary education industry. I dealt with public school educators day in and day out. Dozens of them every day, hundreds of them in a month. In my unqualified opinion, our education system should be burnt to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.
Disclaimers: I am not a teacher, but both of my parents are.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
What's the matter with you people? The boy wrote a story. He named his classmates and teacher in the story for a joke. It doesn't even suggest a fantasy, let alone a plan of action.
If the last couple of posts are any indication, it's no wonder that this type of overreaction is becoming more common. It is not Myrrh, but dAzED1 who exhibits paranoia here, the same paranoia exhibited by the school principal and the judge. Too many of you are guilty of the same. And if you don't learn to tell the difference between real threats and self-expression, you might as well kiss your freedom goodbye.
Who'd have thought it: dictatorship imposed from below! The land of the free, my ass.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Aaargghh! If you're going to flame his grammer(sic) at least learn to spell!
Bite the hand.
How about this take on the essay. The kid was writing a cautionary tale about the dangers of taking drugs. His fictional characters are habitual drug takers, and waiting for their next fix gets them paranoid. It has also got them involved with firearms and made their thinking illogical and disconnected (as evidenced by the "deliberately" disjointed writing style and run-on sentences).
The moral of the story? Don't do drugs, it will cause you to do stupid things that ruin your life and the lives of those close to you, like your classmates and teachers.
I thought the grammar and spelling were appalling, but perhaps there is a good story in there.
David
Back when my generation was in high school (during the '80s) it was the nerds who were looked down on and often singled out. Our revenge was to go out and control the whole economy while the quarterbacks and cheer leaders were flipping burgers. Now, the people who were the ones in control are asking us for help.
What do you thing will be the current high school generation's outcast's revenge? Do you think they are all going to end up being judges and lawyers? Perhaps they will be setting the precendents that make "super norm" behavior considered suspicious.
World Beach List, my latest project.
I think it's interesting that the slashdot community is so quick to point out all 100 errors in any story about Linux put forth by the mainstream media and yet we take this story completely at face value.
We have no idea what really happened and we won't have any hope of knowing for several months.
I wish there were still news publications that could be trusted to deliver real facts and research.
Oh, well...
-Paul
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
First off, most private schools currently recieve NO government funding. I've seen many private schools loosen up over the years, but its not nearly as out of control as public schools are (in general), nor will they ever be. The difference between private schools and public schools, is that in private school the controls are in the hands of parents (a far more singular voice) and the board/principle. In public school, you've got 50k voices, and a particularly loud voice, the teachers' union -- no real leadership. For private schools it is simply a matter of taking control of the reigns, and deciding WHAT the objectives are (barring civil litigation and the like).
;)
That being said though, this kind of random violence is bound to happen at private schools as well. The problem has between little and nothing to do with discipline. Private schools do have other more significant advantages, but I don't believe this is one of them. Kids such as the ones at Columbine aren't neccessarily going to set off any blips.
Futhermore, this "random violence" problem is statistically not that big of a problem, for public and private schools alike. There have always been kids with serious emotional issues at all schools. I, for one, believe that if we could somehow get the media to not DWELL (eg: one hour -- people shot -- end of story) on such acts we'd never see such spikes in violence -- they're clearly "inspired" by one another. Kids have not fundamentally changed in the past 20 years. It is the media. Forcing the media to ignore the situation would be best; I suspect the ACLU might object.
I was in one of Judge Whitten's business law classes at UNT and while she was a little strange herself, she struck me as being a solid person, well grounded in the law. Although this was ten years ago, I can't see her given to flights of fancy and reckless acts. I wonder if there's something going on here that isn't being reported.
Really, honestly, it should be illegal to write a story like this, and a felony offence to film one. We just need to apply the law equally. Then the next time all the cable channels make a fictionalized account of some well-publicized crime we can arrest them all and get something decent on the air instead...
:) )
(For the humour impaired:
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I just read the essay, that was horrible.
I'm so proud of our educational system, where "facts" and "math" and "spelling" do not matter anymore, only "feelings" and "processes" and "self esteem".
Outcome based education, here we come!
Lady on a bench: "Our education system is terrible, our children aren't learning anything that will be useful in the real world, wewill be a nation of janitors"
Dogbert: "But think of how clean it will be"
Finkployd
Nope, read the story, it was the teacher. You are mistaken.
Finkployd
I hope something is done to this teacher. What a fscked up way to praise a child who has done a paper (at your request) that you deemed "outstanding" and worth 100, send him off to jail.
I'd like to see the teacher spend a week in jail, then perhaps she would learn the meaning of threats and see some "real" danger*
Finkployd
*Disclaimer: While this sounds like a mean thing to say, remember, I'm not a schoolboy so I have a right to free speach.
Or I'd be doing fucking life! When I was in Jr High I didn't write a single story where someone didn't die or get maimed.
I remember that bitch of a teacher (Yes, Ms. Kresovich I mean YOU) had letters sent to my parents, and the whole 9 yards.
I had the "parent-teacher" double team for the rest of the school year "What's wrong with you? Why can't you just act like everybody else? Why do you have to be different?" and I guess you can imagine what it was like.
It's my belief that "wierd" kids are produced by the educational system, I was wierd because I didn't fit in with the school sanctioned cliques.
I wasn't a Jock, I wasn't a preppy, I was smart, but I was an underachiever so I didn't get good grades, I was fat, I wore THICK glasses, and being black didn't help either.
Now that I'm older I see myself in so many young guys that it saddens me. I do my best to help them out with guidance and insight but I know that the hard lessons must be learned through experience.
Since people like us don't tend to work well with others I don't think that there is much we can do as a group to change things for the future "wierd" kids.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Sarcasm and humour not withstanding..
Overlooking the terrible grammar and poor spelling, the kid was pretty creative about doing his homework. He saw his cultural context clearly enough to write a scarry story about something not seen in a traditional 'horror' movie.
I just hope that the creators of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, et al. do not decide to sue him for IP infringements. The kid wrote something that might serve as a back-plot for an NYPD Blue episode. He wrote a scary story, true to life as he sees it, and close enough to home to provoke an emotional response, not just from his audience but from the community. Good for him.
But, bad for the rest of us. He drew on what he saw for his inspiration. Everyone was enthralled by the Columbine tragedy. Cop shows like Homicide and NYPD Blue are and have been (Hill Street) very entertaining for a long time. We've come full circle folks. This is art imitating life that imitated art.
Should a scarry story, that is possible, be punished on the grounds that it may be a threat or that it may inspire someone to perform an IRL copy-cat killing? Should people who help to bring such a vision before the public eye be viewed as accomplices, since they serve as potential inspiration? Should Anthony Hopkins be jailed for his portrayal of Hannibal Lechter?
But why beat around the bush? Let's ban the Bible - it's full of sex and violence, and that's just not healthy. It sets a bad example for our children:
Cain killing Abel (worse than Columbine)
David sending his lovers husband off to war (on the next Ricci Lake)
God testing Abrahams loyalty by telling him to kill his son (sounds gang related)
Sodomy (not in MY backyard)
Prostitution (that Jesus hung out with the WRONG element - see what happened to him?)
Those Commandments (who does this Yahweh think he is, infringing on my inalienable human rights).
Ah well. Disasters come in threes. I think I'll complete the pattern and blow away a few co-workers.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
So I suppose that BJM is an out-of-the-question movie?
Beamon wrote for a small audience. Using real names just added to the realism of the plot. It made it more scarry. Had he been told that it was for a large-scale contest, he would have probably made up names. Heaven help him if one of the made up names was a real one though. Then he's a premeditated stalker, rather than a lucky guesser.
Than again, it's entirely possible that he's another Hinkel, headed off at the pass by vigilant administrators. Yeah! That's it, I'm sure.
As for setting policy, it's a real hard call. It's so subjective, that we'd be looking at law suits and expulsions for looking at someone funny. A grandmother of mine died of Emphysema. Your smoking, or faking a cough with your friends (even if completely unrelated to me) may be argued to be insensitive and a cause of emotional distress...
I realize that it's taking the point to an absurdity, but there's not a clear place to draw the magic line. "That's a very angry looking integral sign Little Johnny! Off to therapy with you!"
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I read this story last night on CNN, and I said to myself, "Gee, I`ll bet Jon Katz writes an `article` on this one."
I often wonder how it must be to waste one`s life away writing poor commentary. Actually, I got a little feel of it writing this post. Man, it must suck to be Jon Katz.
Quoting directly from the article:
There ya go.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Sure, school shootings should never happen. But neither should normal murders, rapes, armed robberies, grand theft auto, manslaughter, drunk driving, tax evasion, or shoplifting. Yet they all happen on a daily basis.
At some point, the prevention of even the most horrible crime becomes worse than the crime itself. Society must accept some risk in exchange for the absolutely incredible level of freedom which we enjoy. This is not the same as accepting murder. Murder should be abhorred, but taking every effort possible to prevent murder is not a prerequisite for not accepting it. Once you've proven that a guy is guilty, I don't care, bring the full wrath of society down on him. But until and unless he actually commits a crime, he should be free. We cannot punish someone just because we think he might kill somebody. We can make him understand that, should he actually carry through with it, the consequences will be severe and unpleasant, but we have no right to interfere before that point unless the murder is actually in progress.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
> We are discussing whether or not school staff should accept this garbage as an "essay." An idle, short, quick "thought"
:) ).. from everything I've seen he's actually a really nice guy.. just has one hell of a wacky imagination. If I'm not mistaken, he's a father himself too.
> is one thing. To spend the time to write the thought down is another. It begins a pattern of follow-through.
> No longer is he just thinking it, he's actually writing about it. He has progressed to the point of thinking it is ok to submit the crap for an
> assignment. I would not, for example, ever let Steven King babysit for me.
Hmm.. when I was a senior in HS (91) I took a creative writing class. One of the stories I wrote involved a terrorist that bombed his government (no it was not the current US gov't or anything like that).
Let's see, I've graduated, have a job and responsibilities, never hurt anyone, never have done illegal drugs (well, drank underage and inhaled some Nitrious Oxide), but gosh, I wrote it! I guess I should be in jail now. My parents (who _were_ involved in my entire educational career), my school's administration, etc all let me down by not seeing this as a warning sign and putting me in jail!
What a moronic thing it is to claim that just because someone wrote this down, that they're suddenely moving a step closer to doing it. For all we know he never even thought this before being asked to write the story.
BTW, I _would_ let Stephen King babysit for me (fo course I need to have some kids first..
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
The problem is the personal belief by Americans that revenge is an acceptable response. Its not. Its one thing to sue big tobacco for purposefully lacing cigarettes with addictive substances. Its an entirely different issue if you accidentally rear-end someone and they sue for emotional trauma.
Sticking it to your fellow American is not what lawsuits were intended to be used for.
I see alot of this on slashdot with with the principal of this school for example. Revenge on him is not the answer. The problem is the fact that the liability placed on him is unnecessarily large. I'm in no way saying I agree.
Here's an example:
A student at MIT dies from binge drinking that was involved with a frat. The dead student's parents decide they're going to stick it to the school, since its their fault.
Has it ever occurred to the parents that if the student wasn't a stupid mother-fscker that he himself could have prevented his own death? Since he did cause it himself. Absolutely not, because the parents are thinking of revenge, not prevention.
This attitude of vengence is just ridiculous. I hate to express my morals on people, but this is one that society just can't survive without.
"Would Christopher have been hauled off to jail he if was the star quarterback on the high school football team? Not likely. " Would the star quaterback have been able to write a coherent sentence? Not likely.
"God is Dead"
--Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is Dead"
--God
I suggest contacting the administrators of this school and system and asking them (calmly) what their reasoning for making such an abhorrent decision.
h .htm
POC info is as follows:
http://www.esc11.net/schools/PonderISD/high/hig
This contains all staff information.
yp.yahoo.com information:
Ponder High School
501 Shaffner St
Ponder, TX
(940) 479-2245
Variance --- listed information on homepage:
Ponder High School
300 W. Bailey Street
Ponder, Texas 76259
940-479-2900
webmaster's email: hooperr@tenet.edu
It appears that the new Superintendent is Dr. Byron Welch.
This school appears to be in Texas Region IX. Here is the URL for contacting the Board of that region:
http://www.esc11.net/staff/bdadmin.html#board
Honestly, there were no responses when I started to pen that "3 scary stories" response. By the time I was done, I was about the 7th person to express exact opinion.
Somehow, Katz did not latch on to that aspect of the story. But then, one could have guessed that beforehand.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
I must be getting old. How can a seventh grader be praised for a story with such horrible grammar, spelling, and structure? Sure, it was creative. Sure, it was scary. But even in this email-driven, post-modern age, there are still some rules for well-formed written English.
The teacher ought to be forced to read Strunk & White. The kids ought to be assigned to each memorize a chapter. Yikes.
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
When I was in seventh grade (only 7 or 8 years ago), one of my assignments in english class was to construct a horror story.
90% of the class had stories about killing a particular teacher or student. It was all a joke, and the teacher got a kick out of it.
I have a 10 year old brother, who never does anything along those lines. Kids who draw pictures of "evil" things are sent to the counselors for review. Draw a skull and cross bones on a pirate ship, and you're viewed as a possible nutcase.
--EOM
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
The big point missed is the one Katz already treated.
The important, and relevant to this case point that has been completely missed by the media, Katz, and my dear fellow readers is that this is a grand example of -perfectly healthy behavior-!!
The kid was asked to write a scary story. A story detailing things that he'd normally find repulsive, morally wrong, etc. So, he writes about shooting classmates and teachers, defending against an intruder, etc. Wonderful. Fantastic--he's clued enough to realize these things can happen, and moral enough to realize what's *wrong*. It's this that makes the story scary.
If he'd been asked to write a happy story for thanksgiving and wrote about this, there'd be something wrong. That he wrote this for an assignment for a scary story means that everything's going great.
Expression of these types of ideas through words, images, and other art is healthy. Expression through action ain't. A good way to reduce expression through action is to allow expression through art.
Hell, back in 5th/6th grade I had a whole series of short stories I worked on for class assigments about a teacher getting murdered, and how her ghost came back and helped the kids in her class avoid Really Bad Things. It was bloody, full of gore and murder and whatnot, and the whole series got up to like 20 pages all said and done. And it was set in a fictionlized version of my school.
I'm practically a model citizen nowadays. I vote, I watch the news, I pay my taxes, and I help my landlady carry out her trash (wait, that last one's Neo). I don't shoot people. I am to my constant amazement commended on my calmness and ability to cope with things rationally, and help others do the same.
They've probably scarred this kid for life for doing not only his assignment, but a socially healthy version of it. I hope the media drags them over the coals for it.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I'm sure he wasn't the only one to change the premise of the story. Happened all the time when I was in school.
/., that's only going to fuel the fire if it's a prank, and it will only hurt him if he really needs help.
He did make an abrupt jump from waiting at home for his drugs and killing 20 people. That's sort of a red flag.
There are always kids who are "disciplinary problems." That doesn't mean they should be tossed in jail. He was asked to write a
fictional story. He did that. Somehow they decide that it's not really a fictional story, but a terrorist threat. Who made that leap of
logic?
I agree with you here. It's not a terrorist threat. But it is either 1) A big red flag that someone should help this kid before he hurts himself or others, or 2) a nasty joke that he should be disciplined for. Either way we shouldn't be reading about it on
-Rich
Talking about shooting another kid is not a crime, regardless of what school administrators say. Shooting someone is. Writing
/. can know what he was thinking, but he does. Talk to him, talk to his parents, figure out what it is he is getting at, and get him on the right track if something is wrong. Maybe nothing is. Maybe not. It's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to figure that out now as everyone backpedals away from the facts to pretect their interests.
about violence is not a crime, and should not be.
I agree, He should have never been treated like a criminal. Both the school's and his best interests would have been better served by dealing with him personally and trying to figure out what motivated him to name classmates by name in a fictional shooting spree. No person on
-Rich
...Perhaps it should be dismantled - one idiosyncratic bureaucrat at a time. Any nation, culture, religion or system that substitutes state regulation for self-responsiblity and superior educative measures MUST (and will eventually) be overthrown and it's sympathists destroyed by those who would dare to take upon themselves the full brunt of consequence for their own thoughts and actions.(read: Maturity) These kids can't articulate that...save with adolescent violence. Sad that we as a culture let them be driven so far. "Mayhap thou shouldst seek the banishment of thyself, Father. Devils are only scapegoats...with horns."
I just watched the Breakfast Club again this weekend and I'm reminded of the reason that Anthony Michael Hall was in detention. he brought a flaregun to school.
A flaregun! this is 1985 and a student has a flaregun in school. He was (according to the writer) sent to detention.
Why can't we use counseling and existing forms of in-school discipline before the sheriff gets involved.
Earlier this year, an friend of mine was arrested, and forced to spend the remainder of the school year in AEP (one step up from juvenile) for having a list of people that he didn't like on a school computer.
Also, two days ago, one my ex-roomates was arrested and spent the night in jail because he is a goth and didn't sign in at the main office at the High School his sister is attending while bringing her a note during lunch. He is being charged with evading arrest, public disturbance, and various other baseless charges. All of this is because the school administration is afraid of anything different, and would rather deal with the symptoms (disaffected and alienated students) than with the disease (intolerance and cruelty in out schools).
I urge all of you to write or call the Districe Attorney's office and the Juvenile courts. Please keep it nice, as these people truly do not understand the nature of their actions. Contact information is as follows:
The Denton County DA's Office Web Page
US Mail: Denton Criminal District Attorney
3rd Floor, Denton Courthouse
1450 E. McKinney
PO Box 2344
Denton, TX 76201
Phone Numbers:
Main: (940) 565-8556
Metro: (940) 320-4802
Fax: (940) 565-8588
email: dentonda@co.denton.tx.us
For the Juvenile Courts, the web page is here, and contact information is below:
Building: Denton Probation Building
Address: 210 S. Woodrow Lane
Denton, Texas 76205
Phone: (940) 898-5870
(Metro): (972) 434-5017
(Juvenile Clerk): (940) 898-5874
Fax (Judge): (940) 898-5878
And Darlene Whitten's email address is DWhitten@co.denton.tx.us
Remember to be courteous and to the point. The more these people can be educated, the better they will do in the future. Be cool.
Dr. Zymotic
Actually I can understand why the essay got a maximal mark - when asked to write a horror story, the kid wrote a horror story that shocked his target audience. I'd say he scored a bullseye!
Isn't that the dream of all writers - to reach out and stir emotions in your readers ?
If I were an English teacher, I would give it less than 100% because of its bad spelling, grammar and punctuation; however it can be argued that the imagination involved in the story overrides all the previously mentioned points.
I'm surprised the Beamons don't have some grounds for claiming compensation/damages. He wrote an essay to the theme set by the teacher, which had to include real people since the subject was about the write being home alone and hearing noises.
Any story can hardly be a threat [without corroborating evidence] - all authorities, from the school teacher to the judge appear to have totally overreacted.
In other posts, people claim the kid needs counselling - why? He just needs a good spellchecker!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I heard this on the radio afternoon also, I found that it was an interesting story. The problem I have is that I found it here. This does not qualify as "News for Nerds." It has nothing to do about new or interesting technology or any scientific advances that you might expect. The only reason I think that it is appearing here is that it's loosley related to the Hellmouth series. I thought that the Hellmouth series purpose was to discuss the problem of geeks not being "normal" and how society reacts to this. So...this story might have some merit if it the person involved was a geek, but that is not the case. This kid was not only dumb, but was probably the type of person that beat up geeks as a hobby. This kid could not even use proper english or spell and he got 100%?!? Maybe you if you wrote from the aspect that geeks can't the good education they want and need in the public school system. If you did that I'd find it much more relevant.
-Al-
I was reeding the news on the internet and i was looking at cnn.com and i saw a story about a boy beeing in jale for writing a story about GUNS in school and boom i new that john cats was going to rite about it boom DING DONG john cats in my head and then I thought it might be safe but boom no becaus the next day in the morning as i was eating my Breakfast i went to read slashdot in a very slowly scared way and BOOM Ding dong john cats in my face and i saw columbine and it was about the boy being in JALE for riting a story about killing his teacher and guns BOOM and freon bustin out his 9mm so i was reeding the article and this bloody body droped down in front of me and scared me half to death and ismael did some freon with me Then we saw these piles of rocks and some twigs hanging from a tree and now we are dead. I wish that john cats would rite a halloween storie and get put in jale BOOM because ding dong no more stupid john cats in my face and grate i wish john cats didnt have any heads
----
-- in china, chinese food is just called food.
Something's not right here, as several have pointed out. A crappy essay receives a 100% "outstanding" grade. (This might be adequately explained by lowered standards in school, but still, 100+%?) Being asked to read it aloud in class, then being sent to jail for a week? Why would a teacher send the student to jail if the essay was so good? Laughing at the portrayal of the death of a teacher?
Hypothesis One: The teacher was genuinely amused, and a student who was in the class and heard it read aloud reported it to higher authorities.
To corroborate this theory, wait to see if that teacher faces disciplinary action for "encouraging" violent threats.
Hypothesis Two: If you're paranoid, you'll love this. The teacher was disturbed by the contents of the note. To play along with and placate the student, she gives him the best possible grade and overacts her enjoyment of the story. She then later turns him in, after he's left.
If this is the case, the teacher will not face disciplanary action, and will probably be held up as an example of how to act under these circumstances in the educational circles.
Does anyone have anything to add to resolve these apparent inconsistencies?
Am I the only person who is outraged by this???
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Claiming that nothing can be done is so much easier than taking responsibility and at least trying to change things. Yes, you may fail. But if you don't try, you can't win.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
Dear god, what a set of priorities.
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
I am 17 years old. Honestly I would not kill anyone.
Can you say that never, ever, in your entire life, you have never, or will never, ever even THINK about killing another person.
Because that's what this is about. THOUGHT. Not action, thought.
This boy harmed nobody. He did not kill anyone. He did not bring a gun to school. He did not bring a knife. He didn't say "I'm going to kill you" to anyone. He made no threats. He harmed no-one in any way at all.
He wrote some words on a page, at the request of his teacher, and read them aloud. He spent 10 days in jail for this non-crime.
Face up to it. They said to write a scary story. The Columbine massacre sure scared the hell out of me, and I'm a grown man, not a child. Just think of how much it must have scared some kids, that a thing like this could happen. Then a kid writes a story similar to that, that he considers scary, and goes to JAIL for it?
Yes, there should be rules. Yes, there should be limits. No, the rules and limits should not be absolutely insane.
whew.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Well, the story is total crap that deserves an F, in any case. I'll give them that.
Here's the story: (it's on the Dallas Morning News Website)
---
My flashlight went out and I heard someone right behind me and I turned in a very slowly scared way and boom the lights came on and the door bell rang. I walked very slowly and creepy and turned the knob ding dong the door bell went again. I said just a minute and I will be right there and I looked through the little hole in the door and Robin said Boo. I told him to come in and have a seat and we both wated and wated for Ismael because he was supposed to bring the ounce so we could get high but half an hour later still no Ismael so I got the idea of freeon and we grabbed a bag and a knife and ran out back to the airconditionar. We througth the bag over the nostle and covered it tightly and used the knife to press the volv. We started to hear something after we got high so we ditched everything we quickly run to the door to see who it was and there wasn't anybody there then we heard someone at the back door to see who it was I thought it was a crook so I busted out with a 12 guage and Ismael busted out with 9 mm and we step off the porch and this bloody body droped down in front of us and scared us half to death and about 20 kids started cracking up and pissed me off so I shot Matt, Jake, and Ben started laughing so hard that I acssedently shot Mrs. Henry. Ismael saw somebody steeling antifreeze so Ismael shot over ther near the airconditonar and hit somebody [indecipherable word] also scattered out and went home and my mom drove up and everything was back to normal but they didn't have any heads.
---
Even so, if it was read properly, it could be fairly good. Reading in front a group is a lot different than writing something.
Also, the grade depends on the intent of the assignment. The teacher would grade differently if she was wanting a plot development type-of-thing rather than simple grammer. Or perhaps it was just to get the student to speak in front of the class, get them used to public-speaking..
You just can't say this didn't deserve a good grade because you don't know the intent of the assignment.
Anyway..
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Our sue-happy society pisses me off to no end.
:-)
I will be enraged if the parents of this kid attempt to sue the school. And I am sure they are getting plenty of offers from lawyers this minute. Yes, it was stupid of the school and they over-reacted... but to sue them, and waste education funds because of it!?
I don't think the school should be sued either. I think that the principal and the teacher should be fired and banned from working for the state (at a minimum) ever again.
You just really can't understand how much this angers me.
Yes, society is to blame.. Yes, sueing people has gotten entirely out of control..
However, beating the crap out of 'em doesn't seem like a feasible option.
Honestly, I feel that there should be punishment against the people who caused this outrage to occur. Yes, it is an outrage. No, nothing will probably happen from it. That's the real tragedy, because this teacher and principal are still in charge of myriads of students, and one just can't help but feel sorry for those poor kids.
Damnit.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I never signed those things when I was a kid. I bloody well refused.
:-)
More to the point, I did so loudly, angrily, and blatently. Teacher handed me the paper, I read it, said out loud, "I won't sign this thing," and threw it in the trash. Every year I saw the principal because of it, but, legally they can't make you sign shit. If you don't agree with it, you don't sign it.
If they FORCE you to sign it, then it is not legally binding. By rejecting it, refusing to sign it publically like that, then even if they force you to sign it later, it means nothing. Signature under duress.
Anyway, it got me a reputation as a "bad" kid, which didn't bother me, but did bother teachers. Let me add I had straight A's too, with practically no effort, which I imagine pissed off the teachers to no end.
Oh well. Screw 'em. They didn't respect me, and I didn't respect them. But, at least it was a mutual hatred you could rely on.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
First off, he probably shouldn't have got 100, but perhaps the true brillance was in the reading of it, okay people? Interpretation is everything... :-)
:-)
Stories like this anger me, because it causes me to recall back to my high school days, just under a decade ago..
Mainly, however, it reminds me of a story..
<rant>
My sister is diabetic. We discovered this maybe three or four years ago. She has to take two shots per day. No problem.
Except, the idiot people at the school won't allow her to bring a needle to school. Fir enough, easy compromise we suggest, keep the needles and insulin in the nurse's office, so she can come there to take her shot. Many kids did this when I was a child (this is 7th grade, BTW).
School's response? No, we can't do that because if some other kid wandered in and shot themselves full of insulin, we'd be liable... WTF!?!?!? The stuff is in a locked cabinet, in a locked room behind the principals office, which has two people in it at all times. They must be joking right?
Not at all. In fact, they wouldn't even allow her to take her shots ON SCHOOL PROPERTY because then they could be held as encouraging DRUG ABUSE! Can you believe it? I sat there with my mother as the principal spouted this nonsense off. I almost hit him.
He convieniently ignored the fact that without the shots, my sister would probably die. It was all we could do to get him to allow her out of classes to take the shots. Even then, she had to go out to the PARKING LOT where my mom had to be waiting in the car with her medication and blood-sugar testing equipment. Needless to say, they moved away from there soon after, but I still say we should have sued their asses.
Remember, this whole story is pre-Columbine. The point is that schools are now so concerned about liability, esp. after the shootings and so forth, that all forms of common sense in the school system has been lost. NOBODY, not the principal, not the superintendant, no-one, is allowed to use their brain in any form whatsoever, because they fear that they'll be accountable if something happens down the road.
And that of course is the problem. Brainless droids mindlessly implementing a policy that's open to interpretation. Ever read those "zero-tolerance" policies? You could get expelled for a year for having a single aspirin at some schools. Seriously.
The fact is that when any policy gets implemented with NO exceptions, you get some unfair occurances. Sometimes extremely unfair, esp. in the public school system.
What's really sad is that a lot of the policies are downright illegal. Many take away the kids rights (yes, kids have rights too) without informing the parent, informing the kid, or informing the state. If any parent actually read these things, they'd disagree with many.
But how many people would take a school to court over these policies, until it directly affected their child? Few. Damn few.
These are PUBLIC schools. The public should decide these things, true, but they must be WITHIN THE LAW. That's all I ask. If a child can have an aspirin outside the school, he should be able to have one inside the school.
</rant>
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Just not so severely. Let me give you an example.
I was in second grade when the art teacher asked us to draw the best scarecrow we could think of. It was near Halloween, and there were a number of scary movies out. I had also just received a Ghostbusters toy for my birthday-- a Mummy. Being the weird kid I was, my thought processes were like so:
The purpose of a scare crow is to scare birds away. If you need something to scare away the birds, they obviously are not very easily scared. If it's hard to scare these particular birds away, then the best scarecrow will be the *scariest* scarecrow. There isn't anything scarier than a mummy, so a scarecrow that looks like a mummy would be the best scarecrow possible. QED (Well, I didn't think "QED", it seemed irrefutable to me at the time).
I then proceeded to draw what looked like a mummy with a big stick up his ass stuck out in the plains of Nebraska. My art teacher thought it was a great picture, and put it in my "portfolio" (students were *required* to enter at least two drawings into the art contest each year, both out of his or her "portfolio"). That January, I only had two drawings in my portfolio, and both of them were entered (by default).
The reaction was astounding. I was told that my drawing was "unacceptable" and my parents were told that it was disturbing. I refused to change it (they tried to make me), and my parents wouldn't force me (they told the school to fuck off-- God bless 'em, I couldn't have asked for better!). So, while I was absent from class one day with the flu, the teacher had another student draw *over* my mummy to turn it into a normal scarecrow. The school counselor was then called in, and (without informing my parents) I was told to meet with Ms. Corfield, the disturbingly cheery bitch who passed for a school counselor. To make a long story short, my parents found out and hell broke loose-- I never had to meet with the counselor again!
So we know that schools have been overreacting since before Columbine. I'm not posting it out of any "pity me, I was opressed" sentiment, but to show that schools have historically reacted without thinking through the consequences. It has always been that way.
The heart of the issue is the extent to which the school reacted. Sending a letter home to the parents would most likely be "okay" in this situation-- even though the situation doesn't (IMHO) warrant a letter home, the letter wouldn't wind up on the kid's permanent criminal record. I guess you could call a letter home a "socially acceptable reaction" (SAR). Arresting the kid is a "socially unnacceptable reaction" (SUR).
While I don't think we can stop SARs, I think that we need to at least make schools realize that we won't allow them to continue this pattern of SURs. Showing one school's stupid reactions to a harmless (if ill-written) story is a good story. Maybe a few stories like this will make schools think twice before they have kids arrested on nonexistent grounds.
Any other suggestions on stopping SURs?
Some moderator over the age of 21 moderate this up as funny. Being a huge ST fan, this made my fucking day.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
It [freon] will work as well as most other inhalants. It will indeed get you high.
Only if most other inhalants work by merely causing oxygen deprivation (which is possible, given that oxygen deprivation can make one pleasantly - or unpleasantly - lightheaded). It's been a long time since I took any classes about it, but as I recall, freon is mucho unreactive. It even requires UV to make it react with something very reactive - like ozone in the upper atmosphere. Of course once it does the reaction continues unchecked (a radical chain reaction IIRC). But in any case I have my doubts that freon would react - at the mild temperatures and pressures of a human body - to produce anything toxic or psychoactive. But it would work as well as any other inert substance to keep adequate oxygen from being absorbed into the blood.
This is not to say that it's safe to inhale freon. Oxygen deprivation can kill.
The teacher gave Beamon a score of 100 on the writing assignment, on which she also wrote "outstanding."
Then, perhaps remembering the ongoing post-Columbine assault... [snip largely-irrelevant bit about who the assault is directed at, as that shouldn't matter. It's wrong, regardless of who it's targeting] she thought better of the grade and his story, and turned Beamon in to the principal.
Here's where this really gets sinister. Turning him in to the principal was the entirely wrong thing to do. Turning him in to (or just asking him to visit with) a school guidance counselor would be far more beneficial.
It's the counselor's business to determine who in the school is sufficiently disturbed to really do something destructive to themselves, others, or school property, and who is just being normal (or even harmlessly abnormal) for an adolescent. At least that's what counselors did when I was a student, lo these many years ago.
The counselor, who should be more qualified than the principal in these matters, can then determine whether the police need to get involved.
Calling in the police in this case was even more wrong-headed than calling in the principal. This kid wrote a paper ferchissakes. He didn't detonate a bomb, come to school drunk or high, or assault other students. Those are the kinds of things that principals and police need to put a stop to - not creative writing, however violent or poorly spelled it is.
This story should not have resulted in the incarceration of the child. It should have resulted in a parent conference. The school should have asked the parent about knowledge of or signs of drug abuse.
One of the problems out there right now, though, is parents who go ballistic whenever a school official suggests that their little darlings are leass than perfect. My mother works in a high school and they had an incident where a ring of students was selling copies of upcoming tests for profit. When the parents of the children who bought and sold the tests were brought in, several of them threatened to sue the school if they damaged these kids chances of getting into ivy league schools.
Parents do not seem to see that an unearned degree doesn't do anyone any good. Cheating doesn't improve things for anybody in the long run.
This is a halloween horror story. But the horror is the inarticulate writing, the unimagintive substitution of gore for fear, and the fact that a 13-year-old is fully literate in the drug culture.
Something should have been done for this young man a long time ago. Someone should have rewarded his diligence and been disappointed in his laziness. Someone should have been proud of him.
I don't know the particulars here, but freedom is not a right of childhood. It is not and it shouldn't be. Parents and educators should have both a right and a obligation to constrain the behaviors of the young. The young should have the right to try and get away with everything they can. That's what the passage into adulthood is, the establishment of a unique identity that knows that society is bound to him and he to society. I don't mean blind, mindless obedience, I mean enlightened self-interest.
Nihilism and self-destruction seem to have replaced optomism and cooperation. I don't know why, but I do know two things that should NOT be done about it:
1) Children should not be treated as criminals because they have the irresponsibility of youth.
2) Children should not be allowed to run wild, doing whatever they please, saying whatever they please without regard to how it affects others.
The condescending and paranoid adult attitudes towards the young dovetail neatly with the arrogant, disrespectful, "serve me now" attitude that the young seem to display towards educators.
The combination is a formula for disaster.
A 13-year old doesn't know that he will die. He WILL die. When he dies, everything stops. If he loves, everything he loves will one day be lost. Time is short, life is so precious, and we are teaching our young to waste it by being callous, unfeeling, indifferent, nonchalant, self-centered, nihilistic, and bored. The worst thing a young person can be is passionate.
The sad thing to me is that I think it is the ones who deep in their hearts know that life is a magnificient, intoxicating, awesome thing, those who have shown their caring and vulnerable hearts cautiously and tentatively to others, who have had their deep feeling and thought mocked and belittled. They are the ones most harmed. They are the ones most likely to be unable to live with this world that seems not have a heart. They are the ones most harmed by the "paranoid adult" attitude that so rankles Katz and company.
The problem is that the adults can't tell the difference between those alienated children and the others who definitely do exist. Those whom we have made sociopaths. Those who take pleasure only in cruelty. Who have known only the tenderness of the blue flickering phosphor tube, those who have been held in human arms so rarely that they are scarecely aware of the absence. Those who cannot see others as feeling beings because they no longer are.
You see, they've learned that the only love they've had, that flickering phospohor tube, only wants to sell them something. It doesn't love them either.
We need to ask ourselves (those of us here old enough to be parents) what we are doing by bring a child into this world and raising them this way.
I'm going to quote from what I think may be one of the most important films of all time, a film made in the mid-1970's called Network. Watch it. Feel it. Make it a part of you.
"...because fewer than 8% of you people read books. Because fewer than 15% of you people read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what comes to you over this tube. Right now there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the Gospel. The Ultimate Revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers, this tube is the most awesome goddamned force in the whole godless world, and that's why woe is us...
"So, you listen to me! Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park. A traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, jugglers, and football players! We're in the boredom killing business! So, if you want the truth, go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. Man, you're never gonna get the truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We'll tell you that Kojak always gets the killer, and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house, and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, just look at your watch, at then end of the hour, he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear.
"But YOU people sit there, night after night, day after day; We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the lies we're spinning here. You're beginning to believe that television is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing, we are the illusion!
He proceeds to chant "Turn off your television sets, turn them off, turn them off and leave them off, turn them off!"
The screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, had something important to say, I think...
I've rambled here. I haven't been exactly on point, but I'm concerned. I think our society is deeply sick and the problems of youth seem to me to point only at it getting worse. I don't think youth is to blame. Quite the reverse. We are for overcoddling, indulging, being fearful of the rebuke of parents, courts, lawyers. We don't hold children accountable when they're young and ready for moral learning, so we abuse them when they're adolescents and either (as I think most of them are) just awkward and searching for themselves, but basically just fine, or they are that tiny minority of true sociopaths, and its already too late for them. So we abuse the sensetive because we fear them, and we continue to let media and consumer culture raise our young because we are too busy making money to buy crap ourselves.
I don't know the way out.
I don't know what to do.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
He did score 100% on his paper, which goes to show how education in this country is degrading. I can honestly say that, when I was in 7th grade, such grammatically poor, horrendously misspelled tripe would have been summarily failed.
Where are our educators? In Gestapo school?
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
> BTW: We've just had a Columbine here in Germany a couple of days ago.
Funny... I've not heard a peep of this in the media here. I think they're keeping a lid on it so popular sentiment in the U.S. will continue to lean toward gun control, because "we allow guns, and we're the only country where this type of thing happens".
How long the world's memory seems when Columbine is discussed, but who remembers the school shootings in Scotland, and who's heard of this one in Germany, where gun control is the law?
Frustrated,
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
... in so very very many ways.
Our society, our entire world, has become obsessed, gripped by an inoxerable (sp?) fear of anything we can't quantify or control. No one bothers to stop and think. No one takes the time to consider what they are doing.
If I was in this kid's situation, locking me up for 10 days would make matters a thousand times worse. I think the same could be said for just about everyone. By doing what they did, the powers that be just bred for themselves a bigger problem than the kid would have been in the first place. You can be sure that he has zero respect for authority, zero respect for the intelligence of our government and our criminal justice system after this incident. He followed instructions, he did his assignment, and for that he was thrown in prison.
When are we going to realize that this is not working? When is it going to sink in that such rash overreactions make matters infinitely worse, and certainly not better. Locking up a seventh grader for over a WEEK for something like this is obscene. The teacher LAUGHED when he read it aloud; I would hope that she is feeling guilty for having informed any higher authorities of the matter now, I imagine that she certainly did not want such severe action taken. If anything, she simply wanted the kid to get any help he needed, not to get locked up for a week.
We need some kind of regulation, some kind of measures put into place to stop this kind of abuses of our justice system. The American system is giving itself a bad name with these obscene overreactions, and something has to be done about it.
That's my $0.02, from someone who has been there and done that. Got the T-Shirt too.
---
Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
Actually, he was a "a deranged sociopath that needs counseling". My wife, at some conference on children's therapy, listed to a presentation by the person who was one of his therapists when he was a kid. She helped him learn to "redirect" his "disturbing impulses" into his writing.
The therapist was Lenore Terr.
here's my story, m0f0s. i torture, mame, and kill everyone in columbine so brutally that their screams can be heard on the other side of the planet. the end. now, somebody call the cops. i'm a literary terrorist now. "i wonder why we're f*cked up as a race?" - bill hicks
I read Katz's piece. I read the original link. I read the kid's story. I became totally infuriated.
Is it post-Columbine or just a symptom of something else happening in western society? Sounds to me like a general lack of responsibility on everyone's part. That the child could have been given a 50% for this garbage is beyond me let alone a 100%. So what happened to the teacher that she thinks this is perfect? What happened to the school system that allows kids to think they can write this poorly? And what in God's names were they thinking locking the kid up for something he wrote? (*&%$#(*!!! If they lock people up for that then they should line every actor in Hollywood up against a wall and execute them for crimes against humanity. What about the folks who did Pulp Fiction?
What's with everyone these days? Hypocrites all! First people worship this stuff if it's spoon fed to them by the media giants, they fawn over celebrities, then they do this to kids trying to emulate what they see as being the holy cow of their society. Excuse me but it's all (*&823ed up right now!
ALSO...
Firstly, if this is average fare for today's thirteen-year-olds then I suggest making them read a book.
Secondly, if a teacher gives this stuff a 100% I suggest she read a book. And for goodness sake enforce standardized testing.
If what I said is nonsense,
I'm making a point with it.
If what I said makes perfect sense,
you obviously missed the point.
I was in my room and I was like just staring at the wall thinking about everything but then again I was thinking about nothing, and then my mom comes in and I didn't even know she was there and she calls my name and I didn't hear her and then she started screaming, CHRIS, CHRIS, and I go what, what's the matter, and she goes what's the matter with you? I go there's nothing wrong mom, and she goes don't give me that, you're thinking of killing teachers, I go no mom, I'm not homicidal, I'm ok, I'm just thinking, why don't you get me a bean burrito? She goes, no, you're gonna shoot up the school, I go mom, I'm okay, I'm just thinking, she goes no, you're not thinking, you're gonna do a school shooting, normal people don't act that way. I go mom, just get me a bean burrito, please, all I want is a bean burrito, and she wouldn't give it to me, all I wanted was a bean burrito, just one bean burrito, and she wouldn't give it to me, just a bean burrito!
(apologies to Suicidal Tendencies)
I wonder what Judge Whitten would think of the classic school yard ditty
?I was in 7th grade. I had Miss Gooldy for English. In her class we had a standing weekly assignment known as ``Thursday writing.'' Every Thursday, each student was to turn in at least four pages of written material. You could write on any topic you wanted. You could write stories, plays, essays, poetry, book reports -- anything at all as long as you filled at least four pages. This was one of the best assignments any teacher ever gave me throughout my education. Students could volunteer to read their assignments aloud before the class if they wished, although no one suggested anything as silly as extra credit for such a trivial task.
Where does a 13-year-old come up with enough creativity to fill four pages a week? He cribs from the popular culture, of course. In 1980, the popular culture was defined by the question ``Who shot J.R.?'' I fulfilled four weeks of my Thursday writing assignments with a serial tale about the shooting of a classmate with the initials K.R. and the subsequent investigation, entitled -- you guessed it -- ``Who Shot K.R.?'' Every character in the story was a real person in my school.
Reading news stories like this one makes me enormously thankful that I grew up in a time when teachers, principals, police, and judges all had a good measure of common sense and judgment, and when teachers actually expected their students to write well to receive a high (not to mention perfect) grade. I read my serial aloud weekly to the pleasure of my classmates, my teacher, and myself. Miss Gooldy never would have thought to see me as a threat who needed to be jailed. And she never would have given that ``scary story'' from Texas any grade higher than a C+.
Thank you, Miss Gooldy, wherever you are. And ``Nuts!'' to every fool involved in this fiasco in Texas.
What grade would you give the ``scary story''?
You just can't say this didn't deserve a good grade because you don't know the intent of the assignment.
Any teacher in any subject who does not expect good writing skills in all written assignments and does not correct errors in submitted work is doing his or her students a grave disservice. ``Intent'' of the assignment has nothing to do with it.
When I first read the story in question, it was not the violence or the gory details that surprised me most. I was far more amazed by the fact that the teacher gave the student a score of 100 on an essay composed of one paragraph that is full of grammatical mistakes.
I very much understand that the student in question is a 7th grader, but for some reason I think that the essay is sub par even at that grade level. Am I wrong here? Is this what passes as an A essay for 7th graders these days?
witold.org
In this case, repercussions were not severe at all. The boy was almost suspended but ended up being chastised for the essay instead. (This wasn't, after all, in proximity to any major shootings.)
The essay was written by a 13-year-old as well and I for one found it to be exceptionally well written and actually captivating.
Here is the link
There was a newspaper story to go with this but I don't have the link.
witold.org
Check out:w eb?getdoc+site+site+27116+15+wAAA+columbin e
http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fast
For how the media blew the whole 'trenchcoat mafia' story _way_ out of proportion.
Be wary of what is reported as 'fact' and what is just media hype feeding off of itself.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
First of ....DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ. Sheesh.. second of all... DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHNG YOU SEE ON THE TV NEWS...
All it takes is some "news story" from Podunk USA about some poor little innocent boy wrongly imprisoned blah blah blah... and people jump on the "This is wrong"..."Our rights are being infringed upon" "blah blah blah" bandwagon.
You don't know the facts.. you know what the oportunistic sensationalistic media has presented.
It might be accurate, it might not be. Sheesh. Why do we just love to believe the absolute worst.
The other one I remember was:
Glory Glory Hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler,
I met her in a bank,
with a U.S. Army Tank,
and she ain't my teacher no more.
... in a parade,
... with a grenade,
... in the attic,
... with a semi-automatic,
etc for as long as you could rhyme places with weapons.
America sure can be a strange country ...
... ...
If this deserves 10 days in jail, what will be the sentence for writer Brett Easton Ellis, author of Best Sellers like Less Than Zero or American Psycho
These are considered (cult?) classics but even with my well trained stomach, i sometimes had problems with scenes in American Psycho
I would hardly call it 'threatining' infact the shotings were acidental There were no threats whatsoever! To put someone in prison for Writing somthing is absolutly abhorent, no one, no one would exspect such a thing to happen from writing a document (Notice that the kid didn't even get in trouble with the teacher for reading it in class).
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I have a little brother in HS. I wan't every kid talking about shooting another kid immediately in prison.
yeh, who cares about context, or actual danger, lets just lock everyone up who 'thinks different'. Do they dress funny? Lock 'em up! God forbid we should have freedom of expression, or anything like that. If everyone who talked about killing someone did, there would be no humans left on earth. Would you be able to look me in the eyes, and tell me that you've never, ever uttered the words "I want to kill them" I seriously doubt it.
I don't want to have my brother dead because the school didn't want to violate some kids rights.
Out of the millions and millions of children in school, only a handful have ever died. Trampling on hundreds of thousands of peoples rights, putting people in jail for there words, is hardly worth it. Just because you can't quantify reality doesn't mean that we should take archaic action against something that you are less likely to die from then having an airplane fall directly onto you're head
PEOPLE UNDER 18 HAVE NO RIGHTS!
Where the hell did you hear that? People under 18 have certain restrictions placed upon them, to protect others from there poor decisions. They can't vote, because they'd screw up our democracy. They can't choose to drink or smoke because it's believed that they might make the wrong decisions regarding those things. However, they do have rights. If you believe they don't then all I can say is that you're an idiot. Other then that, they enjoy all the rights that we have, including freedom of speech.
Where are my damn moderator points when I need them?
It's called meta-moderation. Censorship minded moderators are weeded out.
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
No one here has mentioned protesting, the kind wasn't protesting, he wrote what he thought was a scary, funny story. I realize that you might not have read it (making you actually unqualified to post, but that doesn't stop people very often).
Maybe you didn't pay much attention to what those people who where willing to die for beliefs actually believed. On of the things was that you could protest. And they did win....
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Freedom of Speach. Freedom of the PRESS
You can say, and write whatever you please (as long as isn't direct threat)
This kid didn't write a story about shooting up his school, he wrote a story about accidentally killing a friend while he was high (you did read the story, right?), If the school didn't like it, and appropriate thing would have been to give him a 0, not throw him in jail. No, the school didn't have to accept the story, but they had no right to Incarcerate him. That is simply insane, and illegal.
If the student had made threats in his story (IE, "I'm going to kill whoever") It would be another issue, but he did not. That's just what they charged him with
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, you can't put someone in jail for being stupid, no...
The teacher on the other hand....
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If you're referring to the columbine thing, Let me remind you that 11 people died, this is hardly 'countless' and hardly statistically relevant (Though still a tragedy).
People are thinking with there hearts, and not with there minds.
This kid did not yell fire. He wrote a story, that to anyone reading it, would appear to be a joke.
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
He's never denided that he's used Cocaine. Of course, that dosn't mean hes an addict
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Anyone know where it came from? It dosn't seem like somthing like that could actualy manage to cross the contry by word of mouth only. Where Did it come from?
--
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I certainly agree with this. Ever wonder why "geeks", "nerds", and CS majors tend to be paranoid? Why privacy is such a major issue in internet circles? It's not that businesses haven't been tracking consumers for decades, but that the people who built most of the net and built the security tend to be from these disenfranchised groups. They want privacy and anonymity because of this 'open up to us so we can lock you up. err.. help you' mentality.
Am I paranoid? Sure. My wonderful high school taught me the benefits of being paranoid, and college taught me how to be paranoid. No information, no evidence, they can't touch you because they can't prove, or even infer anything. Fortunately I realize that this isn't really a good way to live, and I'm working on breaking out of it.
"The truth will set you free or kill you" - Jarod on The Pretender
- Mike
It was an assignment. He wrote it because his teacher requested him to do so. Not only was he sent to jail for not commiting a crime, this is a case of entrapment, where his oppinions were solicited in the guise of schoolwork and then used against him.
This disgusts me.
...and didn't get any comments written on his paper. The teacher gave him extra credit for reading it in front of the class (a pre-emtpive grade...she gave the credit before she knew the content) and then handed it over to the school bigwigs...who immediately had him jailed for five days for his terrible grammar. Or at least that's how it should have read.
I have very strong views on certain subjects, and that will show in this post. So for those who don't want to hear them, for those who believe this world is, say, race-blind, etc...please don't read this article.
:). I honor the fact that the black culture has taken this insulting word and used it among themselves and turned it into a friendship greeting, even. I find that admirable.
/. about the Hellmouth has been a raging tirade by john katz or someone. It's been "we've been raked across the coals, they should learn."
And I don't intend it as flamebait either.
I'm reminded, by the segregation of these kids, of the segregation of the blacks. I'm too young to remember it, so what I garner is from history books and recollections from friends. It sounded like a horrible time to be a black (I don't use African-American, not to be insulting, but because of the points I shall bring up later). I believe it is quite evident that the situation has improved - John Street has just been elected Mayor of Philadelphia, something that wouldn't have happened fifty or so years ago.
But let us take a look at the flip side. If one were to listen to a lot of rap music these days, the most common word in the lyrics is most likely "nigger". If I, a WASP through and through, were to say nigger in the hood, I would promptly be trounced (most likely
I don't know a single white who uses that word now, or would even dare to.
The racism, imo, has flipped, and now there are massive black supremacist movements, etc, where once it was white. Now if you claim to be a white supremacist, you're a racist. If you're black, you're praised (well, depending on your tactics, but in general yeah).
So how does this relate to Post-Columbine stuff?
Yes, the geeks are getting segregated. Yes, it isn't fair. Yes, the mass populace is using the wrong tactics to make our lives safer and more fulfilling.
But every single post I've seen to
To paraphrase, "shootings do happen in schools". They should never happen.
This is geek supremacy. It is as wrong as jocks stuffing people into trash cans. It's fought in a way that we like, and so we support it.
I for one won't.
I will not say that this kid did not deserve his treatment. I think the harshness of it was extreme, but the kid was a disciplinary problem. Him being so isn't just an insular thing about him, it will affect other classmates and hurt their learning experiences.
All I seem to hear these days is "Joe so and so is a disciplinary problem. He's an outcast. Let's support him!"
"He's a murder!"
"Oh, well, so? he's an outcast. Outcasts like us are better!"
Enough with all this.
~~Dan
So many things couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams coming out of the blue
ls:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?
just because one of his kids liked to draw belly buttons on her pictures
/can/ be analysed by psychologists and are used in (particualrly primary) schools for spotting early signs of abuse at home. But at least we realise that it's only a sign, I think that's where a difference comes in.
/her/ fault.
... invariably involve emotionally-disturbed adolescent white males with access to lethal weapons.", on racist grounds. There is *no* racial prerogative for school attacks / killings.
Apparently, over here in the UK, kids' drawings
The problem with (post-) Columbine reactions is the f*cking LUDICROUS escalation from one kid's story to national newspaper and jail, etc. If the teacher requests "a scary story" then the results are
There is a sizeable inconsistency between the implied age where someone would write a horror story that scares the establishment IRL, and someone who can still get 100% for putting obscenities and misspelling stuff in the story - I mean, "pissed off" pisses me off, "acssedently" would be permissible younger than required for it to be scary, IMO.
I object to the idea that "School killings
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Also, even though it may be morally hard for some people to deal with, his point is correct. To make one person suffer injustly to stop two or more people from suffering injustly is a good thing.
Actually, no.
The American justice system was set up in a manner so as to minimize unjust punishment of the innocent. This is why you have "innocent until proven guilty" rather than the other way around as it is in France.
One thing I am curious about:
When my father was a kid, he had a gun of his own which he used for hunting in the woods from time to time. He had no firearms license since he didn't need one.
He went to school, hated his teachers, got in fights, and essentially did what most other kids did in school.
Now tell me this:
What has changed so much that we now need to arrest kids for wrong think?
The "society" he should have been removed from was the classroom. He should have been moved to a councellor's office, who should have then proceeded to figure out what was wrong with the little tyke. And yes, I assert that something is, in fact, wrong with him.
Hmm, there must be something wrong with me then since I found his piece rather humorous, although a bit crude.
Too bad I'm not in school anymore, eh?
Guess I'll just have to buy me a gun and start hunting people down.
Oops! That was a violent threat! Quick! Call the thought police!
"Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
but how do you decide who you should watch? Or just wait till it's too late and they kill have the school?
Right.
Think about how many times this kind of thing has happened. Ever.
Now think about how many students out of the MILLIONS of students out there act violently causing serious harm or death.
Can you even get to 0.1%? 0.01%?
Now, even if 1 in 10,000 students acts out violently during his school career, does this give school administrators license to round up the 20% of students who "act strangely" or are "different", branding them with a stigma that will affect them during the most important years of their lives?
Does this imply a need for flakey cash-grab programs such as Mosaic 2000?
The fact is: Shit happens.
Shit has always happened.
Shit will happen again.
Every now and again you get some Jack the Ripper who strikes terror into the community, and then just as quickly, he's gone.
Nobody knows where he came from or what caused him to do what he did. And nothing happens again for a long, long time.
These are the kinds of things that you CANNOT prevent. They are freak episodes, claiming the lowest rung in death statistics.
If you're interested in preventing death, try educating Fat America about their sugar intake.
Well, like Otto's sister, my brother has diabetes. The school was generally understanding towards his condition, the shots were allowed in the clinic office, his blood tests were allowed and all of that other stuff, except for one thing. He needed to carry around sugar tablets in case his blood sugar level dropped. The school, it being a very reasonable place, called him in to the office and confiscated them, saying he was not allowed to have medicine on his person, all medication needed to be kept in the clinical office. These were just tablets made of compressed sugar. Same kind of stuff you can buy in any store on the face of the earth. Yet, as schools need to practice by the very LETTER of the law, he wasn't allowed to have these tablets which could save his life sometime. Not being allowed to have something completely harmless because someone reads his file and decrees it is against the rules, the perfect enigma of how things are with schools now a days. =\
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts." -- Cecil Adams
...and got pissed. Thoughpolice are in effect, if you even think, or god forbid write, about doing doing something bad it will end you up in jail. Of course, this is only if you are someplace that doesn't respect human rights, like school.
+&x
Yup, it was called "Rage" and you can find it in the Bachman books with the Running Man and the Long Walk (a personal fav)
Basically a kid gets a handgun and decides to be heard for a little while. Sad to think that one of the most prolific and successful writers of this era is really a deranged sociopath that needs counseling or jailtime to help him conform to the blandness of normal society. Wouldn't the world be a better place if he had been stifled as a child?
+&x
and this is why. For every situation where somebody is wronged in the slightest a gaggle of lawyers wanders over, says "Don't worry about a thing, I'll talk care of you. It won't cost you a dime unless we win." Person says o.k., lawyer goes to work. Somehow the L proves that somebody made a mistake, caused mental anguish (which should NEVER be equated to money), and generally caused someone to have a bad day. Then they argue that these feeling shoulds be compensated with money (of which the L gets 1/3). This adds up so eventually you are trading bad feelings (which everyone gets everyday) for money, which usually represents something of actual value. Eventually you must move to a society where you can't hurt anyone feelings ('cause of the fsckin' liability) or do anything out of the ordinary without fear of being sued into oblivion.
Lawyers and thier greed are the single largest factor in the disintegration of rights and freedom in this country (US).
Unfortunately no one wants to stop suing. Even the originator of this thread, while ranting against restrictions caused by lawsuits, wants to sue the school and take more money because of the already ridiculous nature of the situation.
Anybody see the Southpark where they addressed this issue (schools getting sued for children playing around with each other, err, sexually harassing one another)? Laughing at the patently absurd is good therapy, but not a solution. What is?
+&x
Putting a child in jail for writing a story.
That's not simple? Not simply wrong? CYA does not make its o.k. to put people in jail for writing fiction. But, but, but, the liability..fsck the liability.
Suddenly, this teacher would lose her job for not doing anything after such an obvious threat.
How about for overreacting to the nth degreee. Would a parent/teacher sitdown and talk meeting have accomplished much more. Panic is the downfall of sentient species. The teacher, principal and judge, all panicked (sp).
+&x
that's what editors are for!
Why, Katz?
You seem to be reaching hard this time for a subject to champion as "one of the oppressed" in your long list of Hellmouth 'victims'.
And now it's kinda personal.
Last year, my brother wrote a story for his teacher in which he changed the names of the teacher and his own into pig latin ( how clever! ) and detailed a story in which he shot the teacher. Soon thereafter, he also threatened the lives of my parents, and the principal of the school. Was he the product of a school system that excluded him based on his "difference" from the others?
Bullshit.
I have a hard time feeling pity for those who seem to forget that in all situations, one's actions carry a social impact as well as a personal one. Sure, we like to pretend that our "limitless freedom of choice" allows us to carry out any action, from writing stories in which students get high then shoot some fellow classmates and a teacher to reacting violently to exclusion/abuse from other students, but the fact remains: act against the social norm, and the reaction will be a bitch. Of course, some may immediately interpret this as my saying "don't act against the establishment" - this is false. What I wish to say is "act responsibly" - or, in another way, "pick your fights carefully". Some kid writing stories in which he shoots other people is not "being different" ; it is stupidity, plain and simple.
Slapping ourselves in the head and crying "I didn't expect to get stinged" after kicking a beehive seems rather ignorant, don't you think?
netshade
"I could float off the floor if I wished to. But I do not wish to because the Party does not wish me to." - Abridged,
This is wrong... The kid is essentially praised for his story, and then the administration turns on him, and puts him in Juvee Detention for it... I'm not one to advocate needless legal action, but he should at least threaten them witha alaw suit, if only to make them sweat about it... (an Eye for an Eye?
Truthfully, there is nothing wrong with writing stories about killing people... Back in HS, (7 years ago) I had dyed blue hair, I wore black, listened to Metal/goth music, and I was skinny, and frail looking.. My NickName (Baptised on me form the Jocks) Was Faggy... And I would often spend ample study halls, carefully illustrating in my notebook, about what I wouldn't mind doing to them.. it usually involved electric cattle prods, chinese water torture, and sevral knives.
But none of it was serious, and I wish no ill-will on them today... I get other gratification.. mostly from having dropped out of School, and now making Uber bucks... While the college bound jocks with the schlorships? They're working at Mcdonalds, and the local lumber yard.. and another was arrested for stealing a camera at Wal-Mart.
Yes, what goes around DOES come around!
;-)
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
That's exactly what I was thinking. The "essay" is poorly written, to an extreme degree. The scary part is that it was given a 100%. It is not suprizing though, considering how many people graduate high school and are still illiterate. The "essay" itself was rather disturbing, not the "normal teenage boy" type thing some /.'ers are trying to say it was. If I were his principal, I'd put him in jail too...along with his english teacher
It is easy to complain. But realize that you are complaining in complacency. In some countries people are still killed, just for complaining. I know you've heard that before, and you probably think its droll, but its still true. Open your mind.
Its kinda odd that it is so popular in the US to be so anti-US. Oh well.
hehe...well, I didn't actually slam his spelling, I slammed the whole thing in general. And any teacher that gave me a 100% on some of my writing should be put in jail too ;)
And it's part of human nature for the pissed on to be, well, pissed about it. Then the smarter of the pissed-on write stories/get someone to write stories about their plight, get posted on /., and have responses like 'it's part of human nature to piss on the weak'.
Welcome to fatalism.
I find it unbeleivable that the essay is even available to read
:)
So this kid got out of jail because they found that he is in fact mentally stable... now watch his essay be acted out by some not-so-stable 11th grader somewhere in the US because it's getting "plubicity"
Doesnt the american media learn anything?
and my 2 cents worth... well... better safe than sorry right? Good job on getting this kid checked out.... don't forget how many of those shootings may have been prevented (ie.. kid taking a gun to school the day before... sent home with a tiny suspension)
yes.. lets get these kids checked out... I'm not an american parent and I even think this is a good idea... I understand the "rights" issue but come on people... lets be practical... and as the story stated... you don't get off on "your rights" crap in airports when you yell "BOMB" as a joke... and for good reason.
people may have rights... but so do I and the government's and police's job is to protect me and my rights... good job system
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
I once wrote a scary story for my English class in the 7th grade. It went like this.
The authorities deterimined that I was a threat to society, so they locked me up and threw away the key.
On the news last night, I heard that the guy in Hawaii who (allegedly) killed 7 people was sent to "Anger Management Counseling" because he once kicked an elevator door while at work. Looks like it worked.
School administrators make a big deal out of trivial things. What they need to realize is that shit happens. Just like airplane pilots accept the fact that they could crash, school administrators need to realize that people are different and that they cannot punish those who stray from the norm.
When a student says or writes that he is going to kill everybody in the school then it would be appropriate for the school administrators to consider that student dangerous and it is their duty to call in the authorities so that the student can be given the help that he needs. However, when a student is asked to write a scary story and he turns in one about how he is going to kill his classmates and the teacher, the school should not call in police because the student was provoked. Why punish the kid for having an imagination? It is no different than a kid saying that he wants to be the President of the United States. Some will say that they are different, but they are just figments of a child's imagination on opposite ends of the good/evil spectrum. If the student was asked to write a fairy tale and turned in a story about school violence, then the school should have been worried.
I do not think that it was the teacher that blew the whistle on the kid, it was the parents of the other students in the class. The teacher, who most likely knew the kid, decided that the story was just fiction. However, the other kids probably went home and told their parents what they heard in class. I can picture a bunch of angry mothers calling the school's principal and complaining about something they do not know the facts about. How many of them do you think knew that the assignment the story was written for called for it to be scary? In turn the school administrators were worried about public relations and more importantly: their jobs. They did not want to have to answer the parent's questions, so they throw the kid in jail. Did any of them ever talk to the kid or the teacher? Probably not.
Did any of the school administrators ever think that the reason why he wrote the story is that he too is scared about the possibility of this happening in his school? Sometimes when a young child is scared, they often draw pictures about what is bothering them. In older students, they might be more inclined to write about their fears rather than talk about them, especially if they are loners.
Just a few years ago I remember saying, "I'll kill you," to another student because they did something rather mean to me. This kind of speech was common and it could be heard throughout the school on any given day. Did I get punished for this? No, because everyone knew that it was a figure of speech and another way of saying, "I'll get you back." I did not really intend of killing him. Because a few bad apples decide to turn classmates into Swiss cheese, the rest of the students in the US have to watch everything they say because it can and will be used against them, even if it was a figure of speech. Did my school have a problem with violence? No.
I was considered a geek even when I was in the first grade. I was sort of a loner during high school. Why was I by myself? Because almost all of my friends left for private school and I did not have time to make really good friends since I was taking college classes so I could graduate early. I had a few friends, but I was not going to make any more since I had known everyone in the school since kindergarten. Just because my friends and I ate lunch together, talked about computer all the time, and did not try to be popular does not mean that we had anything up our sleeves. We were just being ourselves. I was lucky that I was considered a good student by all of my teachers. I could be walking down the hall and pass the Principal. He would say hello and keep going. If there was someone else behind me that was not part of the 10% of the student body that were considered angels, he would give them a hard time about their hall pass.
My high school had a student population of about 350 and was 99.1% white. When teachers talked, if they mentioned a name of any student in the school, most likely the other teachers would know whom they are referring to unless they were new to the system. It was a school where every teacher knew every student and every student knew all their other peers. It would be hard to go unknown in this environment. This helped since names in my school carried a title with them. If you were talked about as being good, then you had no problems. Even if you gave a few teachers problems, it would not hurt you. However, the major troublemakers were dreaded and dealt with severely because they disrupted class too often.
What if I had gone to a much bigger school where the administrators did not know my name or any of my siblings? Most likely I would have been considered someone that the school administrators had to watch at every moment in the school day just because I kept mostly to myself and a close circle of friends. In a big setting like this, teachers and administrators cannot know every single person. When they see a loner and do not know anything about them... that is when they blow the whistle. Instead they should try to find out more about the student before jumping to conclusions.
I am currently working on my B.S. and will be certified to teach history and journalism in the State of Texas in grades 7 through 12. When I start teaching I will not be watching my back like a crazed hyperactive lunatic that is worried about the world ending because I know one important fact: shit happens. If you look at the number of students that were killed or even affected by a school shooting, the numbers are very, very small. Just like when people hear about a plane crash they go all crazy without realizing that it is one of the safest modes of transportation... even safer than your car. Working in a school is no different. There will be some students that have the need to kill their classmates, and if they feel the urge there is not much that can be done to find and stop them before the fact. They won't be caught before their act of violence because nobody caught the signs or they did not show any. But with thousands upon thousands of schools in the United States, the chances of this happening in school I'm in is very small. I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting killed in a school massacre.
I really hope that the school administrators, teachers, and parents realize that some students will be different and that they should not be feared because of this. They should fear the ones who show violence. I think that you cannot use the fact that someone is different in order to determine that they are violent. It would be like saying you are a child abuser because you are a drunk. Some child abusers are drunk, but not all drunks are child abusers. Misconceptions can only hurt... they never help. If you single out someone you fear because they are a loner and that is the only reason, you most likely will cause them to seclude themselves even more, but they probably will not cause anyone but themselves any harm. However, if you single out someone who is different and it turns out they would actually use violence because "normal" people are after them, they will just have more evidence to prove to themselves that violence is the answer because people are after them.
I hope that nobody else is killed in school violence, but the fact is that this will never happen. It would be like hoping that nobody would die from cancer. It will never happen, but we can still hope.
** This is my opinion... nothing else... ***
Peter Gogas
P.S. Sorry about being long winded, but it is a subject that has been bothering me.
Texans aren't different from everybody else except for the fact that they think:
- Texas is it's own country
- Texas, My Texas is the national anthem
- They have to have a bigger truck than everyone else
- Executing people should be a sporting event
- BBQ is the food of gods
Don't get me wrong... I'll be living in Texas for at least the next five years, but people here are crazy... maybe it's just because I'm from Massachusetts.
This is more of a curiosity to most people here. It has little effect on anything. Technically, I believe that Texas is the only state that could secede and have a legal leg to stand on. I could be wrong. There's probably a lot of legal issues that would be unworkable if this was attempted which is why I believe that it matters very little these days. Actually, Texas cannot secede because of the Constitution which they agreed to upon entering the Union. All states are considered equal and on fair footing. Texas has only the rights that other states have and it has been shown from the civil war that no state has the right to secede. This is a major misconception that the football coaches teach in their civics classes here.
Seeing that made me think of one we sang in school, and it goes a little something like this:
Joy to the world, the school burned down,
And all the teachers are dead.
The janitor is gone,
We flushed him down the john.
The principal is dead,
We shot him in the head.
oo-OOOOO-oo The School Burned Down.
-- iCEBaLM
Remember, Party members, there are no certain physical signs of a thought criminal. Many traitors are clever (though obviously badly deluded, or they wouldn't be traitors, now would they?) and carefully conceal their dangerous, criminal ideas behind a mask of normality! Every member of the Party must remain constantly vigilant, lest these anarchists and vile suborners of our perfect social order work ruin and destruction on the State.
*spit*
The day of my liberation was the day I was told that my services as a high school teacher were no longer required. Kids, if you want the best advice I can give you, it's this: DROP OUT. Go get your GED and go to college where, while the administrations are just as facist, the libraries are generally not censored.
-- The Sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone. --Lao Tzu
I lost a job over this kind of knee jerk reaction. As a desktop support person I was dealing with a particularly troublesome user with a long history of "probems". When I was done I commented to an admin that I needed a fully loaded semi-automatic assult rifle to do some venting (in jest of course). But given the prevailling climate (my twisted sense of humor, and poor timing) in less than an hour I was escorted off the property by security! With no explaination at all, just "you've got to go"! We can't use you any more........
:>)
Rick B.
here's the real problem with that. if the schools did nothing and he did kill someone. then they could be in trouble right? everyone would say, 'you mean he wrote a story about killing people and read it out loud, and you didn't see the warning signs?' so the school has no choice but act on this and they get, "what are you doing? it's only a story." so it seems to me they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
Katz and the kid do have a point -
"Watch what you say"
We're living in a time where free expression stops at the slightest hint of mental deviance.
This *does* relate to the Columbine shootings, and the Atlanta shootings... and every other incident
where pissed-off kids couldn't find a better way to express their rage, their frustration, than by violent actions against their peers.
There's a reason these shootings and detainments are happening in *schools*, people. Not the local wal-mart, not McDonalds, not the local hangout - Something's flawed about the way people relate to one another in school.
What new differences, new pressures are kids giving each other these days?
Oh, forget it. It's all a y2k bug. Not enough marmalade on the toast in the morning. or any breakfast at all. Our Children are Undernourished! They're threatening each other for sport! Our lives are lacking! The Spirit of the Suburban Schoolkid is being stamped on by an (imagined?) Orwellian boot...
Excuse my ranting, please. They've shut the water off to my apartment complex, I'm hungry and poor, and it's damn hard to get up into the bell tower with this rifle in my backpack...
umm.. the story was about getting high off freon (because their drugs hadn't arrived yet) and then shooting people because they got pissed by being spooked. This wasn't anything close to a school shooting.. so that was utterly dumb of them. Him talking about how he was getting high off freon and such seems far scarier than that. I can't see why anyone would make a fuss about the imaginary guns he had, and not the drugs.
Lots of stories by adolencents are with violence, just not many with drug use. That's what they should be concerned with. Otherwise, it was just a political thing.. as it had no relevence to columbine at all.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
The only way this could have gotten 100% from me is if it had been turned in by Pirini Scleroso.
(See the SCTV FAQ). I haven't seen such bad writing since I was an assistant in an ESl class.
I'm surprised that there have been so few comments about the obvious drug references in the student's story. You'd think this would also have been a big deal in Texas.
Ok Jon, this stuff was interesting, even compelling the first few times. Now it's a bit stale, though, don't you think? Simply rehashing for the n-th time another "hellmouth" incident and bemoaning the "Draconian school measures" and "ignorant media," however true these things may be, isn't going to help anything. Perhaps, in your next article, you might try presenting actual THEORIES about how these things might be solved! Just think of it... you could, instead of simply complaining about how horrible things are (from second hand accounts, mostly), you could actually contribute to the solution. But I suppose that's for other people to think about. Oh well.
(I suppose this I'm another "Voice from the Hellmouth," as I'm submitting this from the computer lab of my public high school...)
-- Be alert. The world needs more lerts.
WHY is nobody SUEING this fucked up school?
Im no fan at all of sueing anyone one makes you unhappy, but putting a kid in jail for writing a story, which the teacher asked for dammit, is like suing Army Soldiers for murder, cus they OBEYED orders when killing some Iraqi.
And all this for the paranoia of some bored middle aged, clueless housewifes?
Who, if they were REAL parents, should have talked to the little writer, and there sons, why they hate each other, if thats the case.
(Do the complaining parents put THEIR kids in jail next time one of the little brats spouts : "I HATE YOU" to their mums?)
But, the school, listing to those parents, is really at fault here.
After all Moms dont get a mom degree, but teachers, especially principals, should have a clue about kids. Or more general people.
By jailing a kid, marking his psyche for his life, because he wrote an innocent story on the teachers request even, the school demonstrates a total lack of interest for the kids, or a total failure in understanding kids all together.
Mismanagement in gross proportions, hurting a little kid in the process. Even in liberal Holland, this would be a possible reason for a lawsuit based on lack of competence of the school.
The negative publicity alone would close the school.
Close the damn school. Or at least fire the cunt of a principal.
ps Did I get all 7 no-no words?
ps2 yes Katz IS a nerd. And thats why I love him.
Greetz SlashDread
oh dood that was the funiest thing ive red all day sumone shoold print that comment out and male it to the kids jale sell so he can reed it too and see how much of a dummas he is for riting such a retarted storee.
Seriously man, 100% for that load of crap?! It makes me afraid to ever have a kid....
-- My neighbors dog has a four inch clit.
I don' know the source or the context of the statistics, but if it is true that kids that are taught by their parents how to handle guns are less likely to use them "inapropriately" the reason may not be because they are taught how to handle them, rather that it shows their parents actually take an interest in raising their children. Whether teaching them how to use guns is good or bad not relevant.
Parenting is a full time job, not something you schedule or fit in when you can. Along with rights, come responsibilities.
Heh, the irony of criticizing grammar, and misspelling the word "grammar".
-Warren
Well, we all know that these kids should be policed to hell and back, right? I mean after all, if 2 or 3 of them bring guns in to school then we must lock them down and treat them like dogs... Same thing for adults though. Re: Honolulu shootings. Re: Seattle shootings. So far this year I can count 3 or 4 mass murders committed by adults in the workplace (probably more) but only one done by kids at a school. I think that those 4 adult murder stories got less media time COMBINED than the one at a school. So, we're going to have to live in a police state! After all, it's for our saftey that we allow our hapless government officials to drag us around by the nostrils and abuse the crap out of their power in the interests of their re-elect*COUGH* our saftey. Folks, this is going to get worse. Mostly because when the stories get worse (and they will), the reactions will be worse which will cause future reactions to be even more worse (gr?) and the cycle will become gruesome before anyone in this country makes it an issue worth arguing seriously over instead of just drooling at it while it's on the evening news...
You have to remember that he was a 7th grader... most 7th graders aren't exactly highly skilled in the arts of written language.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
You have to remember that he was a 7th grader... most 7th graders aren't exactly highly skilled in the arts of written language.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
In the last two days, there have been two workplace shootings. Clearly, it's an epidemic and needs to be stopped. To that end, all corporations should put metal detectors at all entrances, have armed police officers wander the halls, monitor all employee communications, and if anyone says anything slightly negative about a coworker, they should be sacked immediately. Have zero tolerance on negative attitudes in the workplace.
Propose that to coworkers and friends. If they are appalled, ask why it's acceptable treatment for our children.
My brother is in a class where almost a quarter of the children are on some type of medication (most of them for ADD). He is seven years old.
Most of the kids are normal, but in todays society where nearly every adult takes some type of medication, and as parents hear more and more about ADD, and how it can cripple a child mentally, they become more and more sure their child has it.
Parents are drugging their kids, we don't need to provide for that in schools!
Parents have to start realizing that their children are normal, and they are behaving exactly how 7 year olds behave. My brother gets unruly sometimes, as do all other kids. The answer is to take away stimuli. Set them down, and have them sit somewhere until they calm down! That worked with me (although I was on antidepressants for a couple years), and that has worked with generations before.
This whole story is a joke as far as I'm concerned. So many adults think the only way out is the easy one.
I just hope my children never have to go through what I did. There are a few good schools left. I went to two of them. Now I'm out, and I'm free from a lot of the garbage.
-ex
I find this doubleplusungood.
And I'm just talking about the kid's poor spelling.
He got 100 on that story? Doesn't spelling count anymore?
At least he wants to be a fiction writer, instead of a technical writer or a sysadmin, or a programmer.
"Why does it say "maek: not found"
George
The essay talks about wating [sic] for an ounce.
Of what, taco sauce?
I'm saying all pot smokers are dangerous, but like Chef said, there's a time and a place for everything, and that place is college, not seventh grade.
George
The boys story, while *unusual*, is not a problem. It is our reaction to it that causes long term damage. What did the boy learn from this? Violence and the implied threat of it scares people, and that gives him a sort of power, if not respect.
How many of us have suffered through diversity training? Well, diversity is more than race and sex. It includes social behavior. As a general rule, a person who thinks, acts, or believes differently does not need to be locked up. When we learn to accept and appreciate people at the fringe of society we learn to stop pushing them over the edge.
-Computers hate being anthropomorphized.
It's obvious that Jon's writings are getting farther and farther from making sense as with the essay from the Beamon kid.
[Regarding the essay:]
Maybe it's better for this mess be written than the kid saying "SERENITY NOW!!!" If he were to be picked on. Perhaps the essay was made as an allegory for the results of being a messed-up SOB. The essay had nothing to do with being in a school setting, excepting the mention of the teacher. That reference just popped out of nowhere.
Call me back if someone writes a school shooting story in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Even better, a solution to the nerd (proletariat)/jock (bourgeois) wars written in the style of Marx.
[Regarding the Hellmouth situation in the long run:]
This has nothing to do with the big picture of the nerd/jock wars that happened in our lives. That Beamon kid and his essay didn't represent me.
Watch what you say, or safer yet, don't speak at all.
Uh-uh. We have to tell the truth. Let my homies go.
A friend of mine who's a second-generation scadian liked to borrow his dad's chainmail to set off the metal detectors. The admin laughed it off, mostly, then. Now, they'd probably lock him up.
Or maybe not. This is, after all, a city magnet school that concentrates a good bit on theater, not a white-bread suburban school that never had a sense of humor even when it didn't have metal detectors.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I sort of end up with a split-down-the-middle situation; I'm fairly free with personal info (on the net and elsewhere), because I'm a resourceful little brat and I haven't done anything horribly illegal lately (though I used to commit the occasional acts of civil disobedience for various causes; never got arrested, though). However, I know that there are a lot of people who don't want les/bi/gay, pagan, leftist, supporter of drug legalization, scadian, or plenty of other things I'm not thinking of right now (all of which apply to me) as concepts that are traceable back to them. So the right to privacy is one of my big causes. I'd also appreciate freedom from the threat of being thrown in a mental institution (this was done to me by my mom, long story, but she didn't actually manage to get me in one *sigh of relief*) unless you are a genuine threat to society. And well, most people just aren't that dangerous.
As I've posted before recently, my boyfriend fits the "profile" of an abusive man (broken home, "troubled" high school days, "fascination" with weaponry -- he's a wargamer and a SCA heavy fighter). However, I know damn well that the only way he'll EVER hit me is if I take up heavy fighting or he takes up fencing and we're both appropriately armored. Still, folks tell me we should break up because he's got all the signs of being abusive
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The Hellmouth has been going on for years, in one form or another. My mother, the valedictorian, suffered from it when she was told she couldn't be an exchange student because "HER father is just a stupid steel worker," so some girl whose father had a classier job got to go instead.
Anyplace that clueless/ignorant teachers are given the opportunity to control the lives of students who are smarter (or at least make better use of their brains) than the teachers, there you will find a Hellmouth. They are everywhere, and have been for years. My mom identifies with Harris and Klebold, too. Not that she would ever have DONE something like that even if given the chance, but she understands the rage. She's been there, too. And this was in the shiny-happy 1960s.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
THAT is wrong. And (speaking from personal experience) every school counselor I've had the misfortune of dealing with created more problems than she solved. When a student on meds is being so completely not-monitored that it becomes possible for her to fatally OD on Zoloft, and then the same folks hand out MORE Zoloft when my then-housemate goes to them saying "I need drugs," there is a big problem. When a senior throws a seventh grader up against a hallway wall and says "I'm going to fuck you before I graduate if it kills us both," the seventh grader reports it to the high school counselor, and is told "Oh, he's just a flirt, and if you can't handle it that's your problem!"
Lots of kids write scary, depressing stories. Lots of kids enjoy scary, depressing stories. My 9th grade classmates and I freely traded old VC Andrews back and forth. Not exactly sweetness and light, there. And someone (accidentally or deliberately) being killed at school or at a school function is a staple of teen culture books and movies. It's been that way for quite a while. This teacher, at the very least, severely overreacted.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Speaking of which, check out www.wm3.org
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
But people NEED to talk about it. Why do you think it got so much media coverage in the first place? Even the media felt the need to talk about it. We on
Those of us who write for purposes other than class assignments tend to work things through via our writing. Of course, some of it comes from thin air or from other resources -- my Amber fanfic certainly contains a lot of things that have nothing to do with MY reality. Yet I identify strongly with the "villain" of that story-world because he's another smart kid who couldn't stand the stupidity of the world anymore and went ballistic (at least, that's how I see it). There have certainly been times when I've wished I *did* have some appropriate way to make those who made me miserable suffer as they made me suffer. But it's better to write a story about blowing things up than to actually blow them up, n'est-ce pas?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I think the style he wrote it in was pretty good actually-considering the kids in the story were trying to get high(and if I saw correctly were in the end), the "messed-up" style seemed pretty appropriate...
anyway, I liked it...if that style was a stylistic(sp?) intent of the writer to write it in that manner.
my 2 cents
mike kohout
Did anyone else notice that they were getting freon out of the air conditioner to get high? A 7th grader? Isn't this more disturbing than talking aboutshooting someone?
.sig this pop I as Watch
-G
+--
stack. the off
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)
(Putting aside for a moment the "This is worth a 100?!" question...)
Look. The problem of hyper-reactive teachers/school administrators is systemically inherent . If you think the problem is bad now, just wait! It will proceed to get a lot worse. There are no forces working to reduce how hyper-reactive teachers are. There are forces (teacher accountability, parental economics, political grandstanding, etc.) which drive this process, but the only faction which cares to object is the students themselves and maybe a few geeks.
So if you are a parent, and you object to your kids being treated like this, you have two choices:
If you're a Conscientious (Schooling) Objector, you're in good company. Go read Teach Your Own by John Holt, contact Growing Without Schooling here, check out this portal for everything homeschooling. There's only several zillion resources for someone determined not to submit their kid to an institution they do not approve of.
Parents, stop whining about the system. If you don't like it, opt out.
P.S. If you think being schooled fscked with your head, and you've been working on getting over being institutionalized, there's an email list for people you. It's on OneList. Find it for yourself if you're interested.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Or, maybe the day after tommorrow a few of the pissed-upon band together for mutual protection and stop the bullies.
Or, maybe parents and teachers come to understand that it's not a good idea to let kids piss on each other. (If you're consenting adults, of course, it's you're own damn business. Weird, but your own damn business.)
That's life too.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
>In this case, a kid wrote an essay that was genuinely disturbing. While throwing him in jail may have been a bit much, I think /is/ profiling. But there I'm not aware of any legal or moral reason that it shouldn't be done.
>asking him about it, counseling him for it, etc. were entirely appropriate! I'm sorry, but any kid who writes something this
>graphic (have you read it?) is very likely to have a problem. The school system would be derelict to not inquire -- and yes,
>this
I definitely do not think that the content of a horror story is an accurate insight into the psyche of its author.
I consider myself to be a happy and well-balanced person, but if I were asked to write a scary horror story (as this boy was asked by his teacher), I could make it drip with the most repulsive, disturbing imagery known to mankind.
Why? Because I know a lot about things that happen to people entirely unlike me. Because I have a good imagination and I can easily imagine what it would feel like to be somebody entirely unlike me.
If I were to write a horror story about a crazy woman who kills and dismembers babies and kittens and then eats them, it would certainly not be because I have any desire to do anything like this myself.
Is it any surprise that the subject matter of the story in question was the shooting of a teacher and some students, considering the post-Columbine media hysteria? It was supposed to be a scary story, and wow, did some people get scared.
Is the inclusion of real people in the story cause for concern? Why? The boy wrote it as a school assignment. It was intended for a limited audience consisting of his classmates and his teacher. Perhaps he thought it would amuse them to appear as characters in a horror and didn't even suspect that anyone would read this far into what actually happens to them. Perhapshe did, and it was intended as a subtle form of dark humour, or maybe he wanted the story to be more realistic and relevant. I think that the *least probable* hypothesis is that he is a deeply disturbed potential killer who genuinely wished to whack his teacher and some of his friends, and used the assignment to tell them about it.
A lot of people are questioning the detailed descriptions of drug use featured throughout the story. It is entirely possible to know this much about something you don't do yourself, *especially if people around you do it*. Drug use is prevalent in today's youth culture, and unless a teenager leads a very sheltered life, he or she will inevitably learn a lot about it. Although it is possible that the writer has actually had personal experience of the activities mentioned in the story, he may simply have obtained all his information from colourful anecdotes spread by his friends.
As for the story being gory rather than scary, after two Screams and two I Know What You Did Last Summers, what did you expect? Movies like this have, unfortunately, redefined the horror genre for the mainstream public.
It goes without saying that I think each of the people responsible for the kid's arrest should be tarred and feathered and run out of town (I hope I don't get arrested for saying that).
I don't think that there would have been any reason whatsoever to send him to a school counsellor. If the teacher was concerned about some of the content of the essay and wanted to know why it was included or how he knew about certain things he described, she should have talked to him about it after class.
If that led her to believe that there was a problem, *then* she should have taken further action.
Arrrgh. It's 4 AM here. I'm going to bed.
"The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination." -- Garak, ST:DS9
"I'm in the middle class, you're in the middle class, we're all in the middle class, the government fucks us."
There is so little that can be done. We can't change the school system, or the parents who think it perfectly alright for 7th graders to be talking about getting high and shooting people. It isn't right that this poor kid was arrested and detained, but there has to be some way to educate our children to grow up to be educated civilized members of society.
Thanks mochaone for expressing this problem so well. As a /. member I've been very embarassed by our treatment of Jon.
1000 SlashDot sigs
This kid spent several days *in jail*. Was he convicted of a crime? Was he even *charged* with a crime?
*That's* why this is a problem.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
This has made me remember something from grade school - sing along with me!
.44 slug.
On top of old smokey,
All covered with blood,
I shot my poor teacher,
With a
I went to her funeral.
I went to her grave.
Some people threw flowers.
I threw a grenade.
I looked in her coffin.
She wasn't quite dead.
So I took a bazooka,
And blew off her head.
Hmmm - should I be in prison???
That was pre-Doom, so maybe Space Invaders and Pac Man were my problem.
I can't begin to describe how outraged I am that a kid could be jailed for writing a story in school. I can see counseling, or a teacher or administrator sitting the kid down and asking him why, or what he was thinking, or what might have provoked him to write a story such as he did, but to just cart him off to jail? It's sounding more and more like the school authorities are saying, "Write clean and sanitary stories, devoid of bad feelings and anything objectionable, or otherwise you will be punished." It sounds like something out of Huxley's Brave New World, except fortunately the public schools haven't yet begun drugging their students. Not yet anyway. But who knows? Maybe in the next couple of years they'll put anyone who deviates from the so-called norm on Prozac, and then all our kids will just be bubbly and happy and we'll have no problems whatsoever! Ha!
Ah, we live in such a crazy age. I can only wonder if this madness will continue, and to what end. I just thank God that I managed to get out of the public school system two years ago, just before everything went down. I could already see it happening--Jonesboro had just happened a month or two before I graduated--and I worry about friends of mine who are still in high school.
I remember my high school taking the stance that students, whether minors or adults, give up some or all of their constitutional rights at the door. I've heard of at least one court case that threw that attitude out. So where's the good old First Amendment in schools today? What happens if not just schools, but society itself, manages to make it illegal to write a story about violence, or express discontent with the system under which we live? It seems to me that a lot of people are going to be taken to jail. And on what charge? Inciting people to violence? Conspiracy? How about plain old creativity, or writing down feelings that would have otherwise been acted upon? What might have happened if the killers at Jonesboro or those at Littleton had written stories about what they wanted to do, rather than actually doing it? The tragedies might not have occurred.
I can tell you, though, that if this trend continues, there's no way in hell I'm going to put my kids through public school.
After reading the paper that 7th grader wrote, I can honestly say, it does not deserve a 100%. It was one of the most horribly written and unimaginative papers I've ever seen. Yes, even for a 7th grader.
But thats not the problem. The problem is, young kids on the fringe of social norms ARE getting hauled into the counselors office against their will.
Although it seems more prevalent today, this situation is not new. I remember back when I was a freshman in high school. I didn't get along well with many people, I was picked on, and generally, no one really liked me. One day, I was called down to the office to talk to the counselor. They wanted to know if I was trying to start a "Satanic cult" in school! I suppose it was because I was reading the Satanic bible. Now maybe some of you don't agree with that sort of thing. Thats not the point. The point is, I don't believe in God or the Devil. I was simply reading it out of curiosity. In fact, it was quite an interesting read. Unfortunatly, my teachers and counselors didn't see it that way. They called my folks and had a talk with me about the "evils of the devil and cults". They actually said they would prefer I read the Bible when I asked them if there were any difference between the two. I tried to explain to them that they were being hypocritical for suggesting one over the other as they were both religions.
Now, ten years later, I realise the sad truth is, this isn't a new problem and its not going to go away. The media coverage of shootings in schools has only strengthened the resolve of many administartors to terrorize innocent kids that are a little different.
The real question is, WHAT DO WE DO TO STOP THIS!
Bd
is neatly expressed in this letter to the editor of the Dallas Morning News.
See second letter - Horror story
Funny; when I was in grade school back in the early 70s, I often read books about such topics -- one even had cutaway drawings of what the author thought a nuke would look like.
No one hauled me off to jail, but I did spend quite a bit of time with school counselors & shrinks, due to general weirdness.
When did it become okay to define the statements of anyone with whom you do not agree as "bashing"?
Let me point you to a comment in my original post:
Katz should not be above criticism, of course, but the type of comments that are usually directed his way are very personal and tasteless.
I personally don't agree with everything Katz has to say either, and I've responded to some of his features with my criticisms.
As I've mentioned, criticism comes with the nature of his job. When I refer to bashing, I guess I'm talking about some of the things that Hemo discusses in his feature Thoughts from the furnace
Slashdot is all about the intercourse of ideas and thoughts. Some of the issues being debated are very emotional and personal in nature. I think it becomes very easy to devolve into mud-slinging barbarians at times, and lord knows that I've been guilty of going on the jihad at times.
The main reason I wrote the comment was that until I saw a picture of John with his dogs, and read the article about his family, I hadn't really thought of John as a person. I thought of him as this thing who periodically released an article. I think that is how most people think of him (and of each of us in general), which makes it easier to dehumanize him and treat him accordingly. I'm just trying to appeal to everyone to take a second and think about the human on the receiving end of our comments.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
It seems that Katz bashing is a favorite pasttime in this forum and I sincerely hope that this article does not become another open license for attack on Katz. There is quite a bit of the Pavlovian, knee-jerk, vitriol that makes its way into this forum and it really needs to stop.
Katz should not be above criticism, of course, but the type of comments that are usually directed his way are very personal and tasteless.
Someone pointed to an article that had a picture of Katz and contained a brief blurb on him. You know what? The guy is human. He is married and has a wife, daughter and two dogs. He lives in North Jersey, which is my neck of the woods, and is really no different than me or you. He just happens to be someone who writes for a living and whose topics are usually complex and controversial. He is not above interjecting his opinions because he is not a newspaper reporter; he is a writer who writes about issues that concern him.
Just remember, his daughter might be reading the comments about him.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Do you have to go to jail for doing your homework? .Oh my god, he might be a freak planning a massacre!!!!
In my school (about 2 years ago) you had to go to the principal if you did nOT do your homework.
but knowadays...
a 7 year old boy got a 100 for writing a story with some violence in it
---
The teacher obviously did not feel threatened by the story. Not only did the teacher give him a perfect score, but she also commented that the story was "outstanding." Personally, I expect a 5th grader to be able to write better than that, but I digress.
I'm really sorry that this kid isn't the most popular guy in school. It's a shame that the 7th graders don't look past physical appearance to see "inner beauty" or whatever you want to call it. But someone who is in a good mental state of mind doesn't generally read this kind of thing aloud to his class. And some of you wonder why his classmates think he is "weird." There is a huge difference between being your own person and being different for the sake of being different - just so you can shock other people. This is a 12-13 year old kid, for God's sake. He'll fart in class just to get attention. The story was just a way to draw attention to himself and try to shock the cheerleaders and football players and to be the one who is talked about at the lunch table.
What probably happened is that the teacher saw a kid who probably has negative feelings towards a lot of the other kids in his class, so she let the principal know. Maybe the principal overreacted, or maybe he knows more about the kid than Mr. Katz does, and he did the right thing. It's probably a combination of both.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
On a similar note of how bad schools are with respect to things like this. Yesterday at my school someone found a bullet. Next they made an announcement that everyone was being locked into their classroom. Then they forced everyone to empty their pockets/backpack/purse/et cetera. They found a number of cell phones, pagers, and various others not allowed in school, but no gun. This seemed a little illegal to me(isn't there something about undue search and seizures in the bill of rights?), but I guess I am not a lawyer. I would have gladly emptied my belongings, because I suppose there was an extremely minor threat. But it irks me that there was no option. Also, they would not even tell us what was going on until after everyone had been searched, and they unlocked the classroom doors.
I think the scariest part of this story is that the seventh grader got a perfect score for it. I am greatly alarmed when I read things on the Internet written by people in junior high and high school, as much of what I read seems to be written by 5 year olds. It saddens me to think that Maybe this is what the education system should be concentrating on...............
I think all children with AD&D should be medicated ;)
I don't recall it saying anywhere that it was the teacher who turned him; unless, I missed it somewhere. I'm willing to wager that if she gave him a 100, she wouldn't turn him in too, but there was probably a horde of classmates in the adim. office after he read it allowed, everyone of them ready to be a documented case of emotional trauma
Banfield
In '90-'91, I was involved in certain projects which involved "movie" production. Or, as much movie as you could produce with two VCRs and a VHS camera. :) Anything I produced absolutely sucked, and was pointless, but other teams' projects I remember were:
--"love triangle/ghost story": Woman finds man cheating on her, pulls out M-16 and annihilates both cheater and "other woman", while the two are having sex on the couch.
--"monster": 5 sports stars throw a party, and are, one by one, killed by a sock monster. Inventive stuff here. Electocution via headphones was the killing that I remember best; it was pretty funny.
If someone tries this nowadays, we'll be reading about them in a Katz piece. Bastards.
To top it off, the kid doesn't know how to write. I can't speculate what level of class we're dealing with here, but he should not be in 7th grade with that kind of writing. Or should he? I'll leave that debate for later.
The worst part of this episode is that the principal and teacher will not be disciplined/fired for their actions.
I haven't read the article yet. Probably won't. What I'm curious about is why I'm still seeing Katz's articles. I filtered this guy forever ago, and I still his articles periodically. sigh...
jason
Have a good day?! Impossible! I'm at work!
This is just one of maybe 10,000 reasons why you should think, "Move from Texas."
Where is this essay?
Did not notice the link the first time I read it.
... and it is pretty poor.
I wish the red marks were included:
threw vs through
What upsets me the most about this whole ordeal is that right now, kids are learning to keep quiet.
Many said they regretted speaking frankly about their feelings about school, and wouldn't do it again. They were wise.
So here you have teachers and councilers trying to get kids to open up, and then they turn righ around and suspend them. That is so incredibly assinine. It seems like a place of learning should know that punishment is not the best solution. I am sure some of these kids will never open their mouths again when it comes to their personal feelings.
How do you feel about the Columbine murders?
Well, to be honest, I can sorta identify with how the kids who did the killing felt.
So in this case, the obvious solution would be to suspend the student. He will certainly know better in the future to ever think that!
Great fucking solution.
It seems fairly obvious that the kid wasn't actually planning to shoot his classmates at random. (well duh, but...) If he were actually going to harm anybody, why would he announce it and lose the look of suprise on his classmates' faces?
"h3y 1c3 kr34m!! 4r3 j00 3r33+!?" "y3z crackd, 4nD n0w 3y3 w1lL h4xx0r j00r m0u+h! h0h0h!!0"
After glancing over the story, I see that it is rife with spelling errors and run-on sentences. His vocabulary is sufficient. While this story may be somewhat creative and perhaps even darkly humorous, there is simply no way that it should merit a 100. I'd give it a 70 or 75, which would be below average (or rather, below what we should accept as average). By seventh grade, this child really should be capable of better writing! It astounds me how society can lower its standards so far.
Sorry to say that. But after watching the american "culture" a bit closer in the last time (after living 9 months in the US) I can only come to the conclusion that the reaction is TYPICAL american.
Instead of trying to solve the problem they are shooting on the Sympthoms (if lucky) or overreact.
Instead of trying to REALLY figure out what causes such outbreak of violences (gunlaws?) they simply try to find an easy answer.
That won't end, the american society likes to think of itself as free but after living there and in Europe I must say I feel much freer(sp?) in Europe then I do in the US.
Why? In the US everybody tries to cage himself in (e.g. Gated Communities etc.).
America the land of the free? Only if you have so much money that you can choose where to live and WHO your neighbours are... Oh yes, and if you can afford a high enough wall around your house.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Back in elementary school (Circa 1983), I was asked to write something along the same lines; In my crude story, one of the class 'bullies' lost control and started shooting people.
You know what happened to me? Well, the front page has 'Jim, pay attention to your cursive! 90%'
Even with a bodycount of fifty, pipe-bombs and what could be termed a open challenge to authority, no one thought twice about the fact that it was simply a story, nothing more.
Shouldn't we expect our kids to do something like this once in a while, as a challenge to authority? Cease the paranoia!
I wonder what the effect of forcing our kids into a cookie cutter, 'PC or Juvy', thoughtpoliced environment will do to them? Do we really want to walk down that road?
.sig: Now legally binding!
Activist liberals at Duke University coined the term "politically correct" and liberals hailed the "temperance" of speech and actions against minorities, disadvantaged and the like. What has happened since is a complete annihilation of the 1st Amendment. Don't you get it? You can't prescribe the "correct" things for people to say and not be infringing on their rights. By defining what is acceptable, you are taking away the free will and liberty of the citizen. Sure, we will all make mistakes and we need to learn to tolerate them. But, to punish persons for not saying, looking, acting, being what is defined as "politically correct" is insane. What is amazing is that the most draconian of all movements in the USA is one that is a liberal initiative. Liberals are the most dangerous element in politics.
Consider another point. A conservative will espouse certain virtues and eventually fall short him/herself and violate one of these virtues publicly. Then the conservative is chastised mercilessly for "saying one thing and doing another". Liberals can never fall into this trap because they do not stand for anything. They can commit any atrocity and not ever be accused of hypocrisy. Hey, you elected me and you knew I was a scum bag, "so there you go!"
Liberals do incredible and are never held responsible for the results of their insanity.
Columbine is just another result of blind liberal support of the public school system "as is". Liberals will never fix the school system. That leaves the conservatives to fix the system, and nobody wants that either.
My suggestion:
Become a Reform Party candidate in a local election and solve the problem yourself.
It's so good to know that in ten years when MY kids are in school I will have to condition them to writing little bunny stories and lying on psych tests. I can't wait to go to juvy hall and pull my seventh grader out because he told his english teacher he would rather be dead then write another damn essay with bunnies in it.
Something that I always though was strange is that Americans fully endorse the use of violence. We go out of our way to reflect this in movies, commercials, stories, writings, and art. We've been told to embrace something that isn't healthy. In fact, it's plain out destructive. On the other-side, we've been told that sex is bad, evil, and if you enjoy it, you're a pervert or a sexual deviant.
Does anyone else think it strange that something that is natural, healthy, and required for our procreation is wrong (sex) and something that shouldn't be actively practiced (violence) is socially acceptable in almost all forms.
A good example of this is, two kids in school start to fight. Which do you think happens:
A) The majority of the kids rush to stop the fight?
B) The majority of the kids make room and begin cheer to smash a nose or eye.
Hint: If you picked A, you're not living on the same planet as the rest of us.
It's not that it comes naturally for most of us, it's because it's expected of us by our peers and society at large.
It was an assignment. The teacher wanted a scary story and got a scary story. Maybe if somebody had discovered this story stashed away in the kid's notebook or published on a personal website, there might have been cause for concern and a parent teacher meeting. Then counseling if the child was deemed to be unstable.
But to throw a child in jail for doing what he was told to do by his teacher is a travesty. This constitutes entrapment pure and simple.
Besides, did you notice how poorly written that supposedly, "perfect 100% plus extra credit for reading it aloud" story was? Maybe if teachers weren't so busy trying to entrap kids into revealing themselves as potential Eric Harrises or Dylan Kleybolds, they might have time to actually teach their kids proper spelling and grammer.
Does this
No, you're not. And while I despise tort lawyers as a class, I can think of even more despicable objects for them to attack: that school, its principal, Mrs. Harris the teacher and the judge. This kind of outrageous reaction must be punished. Having the kid visit with a school counselor to ask if he meant anything would have been fine. Throwing him into jail, giving him emotional scars for showing his feelings and making him fodder for the media is unforgivable.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I'm sure the friends and families of the people that have been investigated over the last few months would love to be told about it.
Rather than posting an oppinion, however, I thought I'd toss out an example of the reasoning that produced the incident. What follows is a recount of a similar incident and how one of Jeffco's district reps handled it. When you're finished, you're challenged to answer the following: in light of the explaination given, how was the school's descision any more reasonable or rational a choice?
The Post:
Yesterday, a 7 year old boy was suspended from school. He was suspended because he brought a pair of fingernail clippers to school. The
suspension is for 45 days The school considers this a weapon. They also consider pencils and pens weapons. Why isn't everyone in school suspended. While I realize weapons are a big problem, I don't think a pair of clippers
are a weapon.
This is as bad as my brother getting suspended for having a firecracker in his pocket. The firecracker had obviously been through the laundry several times and there was no way it was going to go off. He was only
suspended for one day though. Back to the little boy. He will be provided with a tutor for 1 hour a
day during his suspension. Can anyone say "held back a year". He wont be able to keep up with his class with just one hour a day of help. I think 45 days is unreasonable. If he must be suspended, I think just a day or two is more reasonable.
The Response:
The article says a lot, including some of the points I was afraid to
take a guess upon.
The two key points are these:
1. The student qualifies for special education.
2. The mother describes him as "hyperactive."
What does that tell us?
All special education students have an Individual Education Plan (IEP)
that includes an entire section on behavioral issues. It is created
after a series of tests and evaluations by a variety of people. The
screening ("staffing") in which the IEP is created (or amended) is
attended by a large number of people who have been working with the
student and the parents. They and the parents have to sign the IEP to
show that they understand it and agree with it. It is extremely
thorough.
Go here to download the Jeffco IEP in whatever form you wish:
http://204.98.1.2/sped/index.html#down. If you make the choice of the
PDF format, you will get most of the supplemental forms with it, linked
to the appropriate place. The rest will be available next week--I'm
working on it as fast as I can!)
Since almost all of the IEP is prescribed by law, this student's IEP
form would be pretty similar to Jeffco's.
If the mother describes him as hyperactive, you can be sure that he is
on a behavior plan (see that section in the IEP), and you can be sure
that he must have a behavior history, despite what the mother may be
saying about him never being in trouble before. When such a student
violates a school rule--or state law--that can result in an expulsion,
the student must have a "manifestation hearing." The purpose of this
hearing is to see if his/her behavior is a "manifestation of the
handicapping condition." If it is, then the student is protected from
the full imposition of the rule or law. The student gets a 45 day
period away from school with some sort of alternative education (the
tutoring in this case) instead of the more harsh penalty usually imposed
in a case.
The theory is that once a handicapping condition is identified, the
school is supposed to help the student overcome it. It is a part of the
IEP. That need of a special education student to receive appropriate
education has to be balanced, however, with the rest of the school's
right to live in a safe environment. Thus, if a student has been shown
to have a handicapping condition that makes him prone to violent
behavior that could harm others, the school has to walk the tightrope of
teaching him to overcome that tendency while providing for the safety of
other students. The 45 day period is seen as a balancing act. If the
student is too violent to continue in the school, then a permanent
alternative environment must be found--at the school's expense.
Note that it is not to the school's advantage to do this. The student's
regular education program is already fully paid for; the alternative
program is provided at the school's expense and comes from funds the
school would rather spend elsewhere. Almost all of what I describe is
done in accordance with federal--not state--law. (Ref: PL 94-142)
As I said in an earlier post on this issue, the school has declined to
comment because it is not allowed to comment. Again, federal laws
prohibit providing information about all students, but they are
especially stringent with special education students. For example, even
as a high school teacher, I cannot look into a special education
student's file without specific permission from an authorized
individual, and I have to have a valid reason to do so. (By the way,
that is one of the reasons that information about several of the
Columbine victims was so sketchy.)
Thus, the parent is free to say anything she wants about the case,
whether it is true or not. The school is forbidden to say anything at
all about the specific case.
In closing?
I noticed with mild amusement somebody thought Cullen's article ("Everything you know about the Columbine shootings is Wrong", Salon Magazine) somehow substantiated a motive throughout all of this. Passionate but ill-informed, holmes.
Dave didn't make any value judgements one way or the other, what he did was add weight to another CHS student's assertion that Dylan had once asked the difference between Fame and Imfamy and wondered if the line was so distinct as people beleive. Cullen's examination of statements relating to Harris' writings taken from his room indicate that he (Eric Harris) was media-conscious during the time he planned the assault.
He didn't want to simply be dismissed as a Jonesboro copycat and was aware that he'd gain stature following the incident and was looking forward to it.
He also had a bit to say about the prom date he couldn't get, not finding a college, etc. Taken at face value, however, the subject of infamy can reasonably be estimated at a grand total of 5-6 lines. Total material for unrelated writings I don't think anyone can make a formal estimate of, but assuming there was a whole page on the subject? That leaves twelve pages, minus the five or six lines mentioned.
He cared enough that he was found with an outdated 'Hit List' on his person when they discovered his body. If he was just a nobody that wanted attention?
They would have found a press statement.
Closing?
Life sucks, it's getting worse and some of us aren't as close to the subject as we once were but this notwithstanding? Part of the TcM as well as the other people incidentally investigated (and there were a few) returned to Columbine. There was supposed to be a 'we' in it or something.
Don't kid yourself. The same jocks are pulling the same thing right now, as you read this. The reason you're not hearing about this now is that they already know the price, spent an entire summer paying it.
They're geeks.
They're out there.
Find one and ask.
Ah, but you have hit the nail on the head -- or the head on the nail.
The point is, this child was NOT yelling bomb in an airport as a joke. He was writing a fictional essay in class.
Now I don't know this child, but if there was any concern that this fictional essay represented the child's true intentions, the CORRECT procedure would have been to discuss the matter with the child's parent(s), discretely and if the situation warrented it to seek out evaluation and counseling.
Instead, this child was thrown in jail (Juvenile Jail, but jail none-the-less) for a creative writing assignment.
When the child is carrying a gun in school, fine arrest him. When the child is writing an essay, I don't think so.
We are agents of the free
"The next day, he was in the local juvenile detention center for suspicion of making "terroristic threats."(Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible)."
I am pretty impressed that a kid would say something like that. That really is ingenius and it also shows a very healthy patience.... something that is probably lacking in people who run around with shotguns shooting people. I know if I was thrown in jail for writing a fictional tale, the second I would talk to reporters, I would be ranting and raving...
Fisics
The actions of the principal and police in this story seem a tad abrupt to me. Are there any lawyers out there who know if this is indeed the case?
It seems like the kid was jailed without legal representation for a crime that was at best speculative. He's also *way* a minor so I find it difficult to believe that he could be held for 5 days in an actual jail without being transferred to a juvenile facility.
Just how deep did they dig themselves for a mondo damages lawsuit? If I was that kid's parents I'd go for several million and dismissal of the teacher and the principal.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Most of the comments have complained that this boy got a 100% for this story. That's a good observation, and I think that most of us would have failed the assignment if we turned in garbage like that. But I have seen teachers give preferential treatment when grading students who usually do poorly (due to unintelligence or laziness). Perhaps this story was so much better than the average for this student that she felt it warranted a 100%. Either as encouragement, or because she felt it was the best he could do.
The above is not meant as a defense of our school systems, just a possible explanation. I can't imagine someone not failing an essay that poorly written, after about the 3rd grade. The teacher must have felt she had some justification for it.
Now that that's out of the way - my real concern is, what charge was this boy arrested on? I don't see anything in that essay that even remotely seems like a threat. Is it because he's a minor that he was arrested without breaking any law?
Good that he learned his lesson.
There is no reason to tell children to trust teachers or other school officials. I have not found them to be any more trustworthy than the average person, and I think that many others share my sentiment.
There is no reason to trust random people any more than you absolutely have to. You certainly shouldn't teach children to trust people just because of their job.
...is that the kid got a "100" on an essay filled with grammatical and spelling errors. ;) What has our education system come too...
Throwing the boy in jail is, as others have pointed out, an example of massive over-reaction. Even if we make the dubious assumption that the kid is "troubled", jail is not the place to help him; if anything, it's likely to make him rebel even more against the system, probably increasing any of his latent tendencies toward violence.
Columbine looms large, with victims of the violence suing school districts and law enforcement for huge sums. Admittedly, there is some evidence that the police fouled up at Columbine -- but today's reality is that everyone is almost as frighten of lawsuits as they are of guns.
We need a society where we see our neighbors as neighbors, and not as targets for bullets and lawyers.
Yeah, I'm already working on a list of authors who have written disturbing or subversive fiction so I can request that the FBI haul them in for 'evaluation.'
sarcasm bit has been flipped
-beme
-beme
1971
So he still got a 100 even though he went to jail, right?
I'm so tired of this hellmouth garbage. It's part of human nature to piss on the weak. I was pissed on. Someone else was pissed on Yesterday. Tommorrow someone else gets pissed on. It's life.
--
rJames.org - illustration
The school had little choice but to do what it did. Maybe a heavy dose of counseling with both the student and his parents would have been better, but the school had to do something. Are people saying that if they were in this position, they would rather do nothing ? I can hear the cries now if they did nothing, and the kid acted out his story.
Alot of people may not like it, but the freedoms in school are not the same as the freedoms in our society, nor should they be. IMHO, lack of discipline in public schools is one of the many reasons that private school vouchers are getting more and more support (although I am personally against them, since they will make the public schools worse).
As an aside, how did he get a 100 on that essay ? My first-grader can spell better than he did.
"it seems like a year ago, a big ol? long year"
"ol?"? oh Jon, Jon, you were gaining such credibility, then you post something with the tell-tale stigmata of Microsoft.
Be a good lad and buzz it through the Demoronizer first. That way you'll get away with it.
cheers
jsm
IMHO, it is ridiculus that people are arguing he never should have received a 100% on the paper due to the topic. Not to start a flamewar, but i twonder how many of you read the students actual writing?
A grade should not depend on a topic for most regards. For instance I should be able to write an essay on how Freud is the biggest idiot the world has seen and recive a high mark if I can be creative, back up my conclusions and be thought provoking. The psych teacher may not be happy I went against her/his vision of Freud, but that's a personal problem that should be ignored.
In the case of a seventh grader I would bet that the most weighted criteria for a grade are grammer related and creativity. The child could write a story on how he and 5 friends get stoned because they pass out and dont have to go home and be beaten... the story grade should not suffer for perspective.
Please note I am not saying that such a young child writing a story like that on his own would not make me raise an eyebrow if I was a teacher, I am talking soley from the grading point of view.
(Also, in this case he was given the topic anyway. A seven year old isn't going to realize political reprocussions. He probably doesn't even know what a political reprocussion is)
- Sig
you mean, this kid gets sent to jail, for completing his writing assignment and getting a good grade. I dont know which is worse, the fact they threw him in jail for 'threating terristic violence' or the fact that noone complained about a 7th grader explaining how to get high of of freon in a school paper?
I mean, I know he was supposed to write a horror story, but he didn't have to mention the freon or getting high. This whole thing reminds me of something that happened to me recently actually, March (or was it May?) this year.
I had decided to talk to my mom about a serious, thoughtful subject, death/life afterwards. All I said was that I didn't think dieing would be as bad or scary as most people make it out to seem, she mistook this whole conversation (which I'll spare you the details of...) as saying that I wanted to kill myself. I was like WTF?!?!?! she didn't even get the point, I just wanted to talk about how I feel about something I felt was important! But instead of talking to me on a serious level, I spent 2 weeks in an outpatient program @ a psych hospital, where I learned that "drugs are bad, dont do drugs, mmmkay", and from the patients, that its easy to get high off of tin foil and pencil shavings (dont ask).
The moral of the story is, parents/teachers/administrators, tend to completely miss the point behind things like this. I mean, this seems to me an obvious cry out for attention and justification of his "getting high", why didn't they make a big fuss over the actual problem in the story? I mean, the teacher etc... getting shot seemed more like an after-thought than a threat, I mean, I've seen episodes of pokemon that were more violent!!! (that show is so cute... hehe... dont shoot me)
I guess what I'm saying is that people need to get a grip on reality, and stop this BS over "oh no, he wrote a shitty story, now he's going to kill everyone in the skool" kind of crap. I mean, its ridiculous, they seem to have completely misinterpreted this kids story, once again, and it looks like he's going to pay the price for not keeping his mouth shut! (like I did)...
Well... like Rob (he posted this right?) said, that's what we're teaching kids today, NEVER talk about how you really feel, you'll end up in jail, or a mental hospital, oh well, not like it seems this country is going to last much longer @ the rate its going anyways, but thats a different topic....
have a nice day... hehehe
fsck -t goldfish
What in the hell is going on?!? This kid wrote a paper, not even a very eloquent paper, containing violent content and he gets detained by the court system?!? Excuse my language, but how in the fuck is it the business of ANY government agency, be it the local police or the supreme court, as to the thoughts that someone sets to paper. He didn't threaten anyone; I'm sure there have been many variations of this story written that didn't result in anything, so why this? Columbine? Give me a break; just because a story has elements of a real life travesty does NOT justify prosecuting THOUGHTCRIME!
So now that we're setting precedent here, how about doing some catching up. Let's start by tossing Stephen King in the pokey for his story "Rage", which is OBVIOUSLY a fully detailed plan to conduct a takeover of a classroom.
What, this doesn't make sense to you?
IT SHOULDN'T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE!!! Just as attempting to prosecute this kid for thoughts that he put on paper is completely ludicrous. The people who took part in detaining this boy should be immediately removed from any position of authority for flagrant abuse of power! There is absolutely NO reason that this should have EVER happened.
Allow me to tell you a quick story: two kids walk into school and commence to firing on their classmates. By the time that they are taken down by the cops, 23 fellow students are dead and more are wounded.
NOW COME TRY TO ARREST ME, YOU FASCIST BASTARDS!
Deosyne
Apologies for raving, but I have NEVER been so angry as I am after reading about this.
These are PUBLIC schools. The public should decide these things, true, but they must be WITHIN THE LAW. That's all I ask. If a child can have an aspirin outside the school, he should be able to have one inside the school.
Here's another possibility of where this road may lead: rational upbringing in an environment may become a class-based privilege, as private schools advertise their "less retarded than public schools" environment.
This would be a great change from the past, when private schools were the home of strait-laced disciplinarian attitudes.
But think: Racial and class anxieties lead upper middle class parents to fund private schools all the time, especially in "dangerous" areas. This, of course,in addition to a presumption of better teachers, facilities, etc. Now add to this the idea that ANY public school is a) dangerous, because any white kid might go crazy now, and b) irrational and punitive against all students, as a response to a).
I don't think that this situation will be carefully investigated or understood, but that instead local pressure will cause politicians to support initiatives that send public money and kids to private schools, there is a name for it, I forget.
This, will of course, bring these same problems to private schools, where civil liberties will be fought over briefly, until it is decided that they are public institutions because they receive public monies.
At which point, people will be back at square one, and forced to actually analyze the problem of how to run a decent public school, when the emotionally brutalized members of the student body are at any time likely to explode.
Marc
If you want to stop school violence, stop it at the source, send bullies (and students that score high on a bully pre-screening psych exam) to re-education camps to learn to be civil (and stamp license plates while they are doing it). All these posts from people who know a kid in HS, and are in support of Draconian measures for their protection, well, they just don't get it do they, that it is never worth it to live in a police state just for a little extra security.
It's not online yet, but the latest copy of the Leftist rag "Mother Jones" has a long article linking FPSs like Quake to Colombine-style killings. There's a classic line in the story about how even though there is still no scientific evidence linking violence and video games, at some point you just have to take it as common sense or somesuch nonsense.
Now, I doubt this is the case for the student in question, but I was called a "disciplinary problem" in 4th grade because I had already learned everything my teacher was going to teach the rest of the class and she didn't feel like dealing with the fact that I needed something to learn. She decided that if we concentrated on making me more socially adept, she wouldn't have to teach me anything. When that didn't work, she referred me to the principal for a bunch of "incidents..."
The point is, "disciplinary problem" can be just as often the school's failure to effectively teach the child as it would be something like the kid going out back and smoking a few. Did the article make any mention of what "problems" the kid actually had, or was "disciplinary problem" just a buzzword thrown in to add some credibility to a very shaky accusation?
Just like this whole over publicized issue is. ,opressed, rejected and loughed at they'll dream of a day of glory and revange. A day when they will show everyone that they indeed are special.
People fail to see the source of the problem. Of course if geeks and neards are constantly tortured
What better way to psychoanalyze a kid than to have them write a story for you, or draw a picture. It is a common practiceamong therapist and counselors of young children. Did the teacher feel shock, guilt, or pleasure when she read this story? After reading this report, a few things stuck out. Who taught this child grammar? (I realize it is Texas, but there are some rules there too, aren't there?) Second, he knows WAY too much about illegal drug use. Third, how can the teacher give him a grade of "Outstanding", then report him? This smells like a setup to me. "Ok everyone, write a scary story. The one that scares me the most gets a week's vacation!" I wonder what would have happened if little Stephen King, Wes Craven, or John Carpenter was in that class. Do they make straightjackets for 13 year olds? This story wasn't scary. If anything, it looks like the script from about ten different rap videos. School violence is on the rise BECAUSE of incidents like this. Repression breeds violence, it doesn't hinder it. If administrators keep trying to "control" all of the students' emotions, we will only see more incidents. Taking the student out of the school doesn't eliminate the problem. With no attempt to determine root causes for this behavior, schools are only dooming themselves to see more of it.
Fast, cheap, correct. You get to pick two.
Give me a break. These school administrators are persecuting and assassinating the character of a young boy who will probably be warped for life now. However, these same schools use dark, violent books such as Crime and Punishment as TEACHING TOOLS! This book's plotline follows a man through life and how he copes with MURDERING A PAWNBROKER AN HER SISTER WITH AN AXE. All details are described, down to the last piece of blood and gore. Books like this are considered GREAT WORKS and should be READ BY EVERYONE! However, when a kid writes a viloent story, albeit without much literary merit, he is thrown in JAIL! I just read Crime and Punishment as a REQUIREMENT for my AP English class, as I am a senior in high school. In my personal experience, I write for an underground newspaper for my school which is put together by a friend of mine. He has been called to the office and they have tried to silence him and his paper (nothing more than some cheap joke editorials and David Letterman top 10 lists). However, his paper lives on thanks to his vast knowledge of the American legal system, thanks to a CLASS AT THE SCHOOL WHICH TAUGHT HIM THOSE LAWS! I find it funny and sad that he was able to outmanuver our vice principal as they tried to catch him in technicalities. Think what you will of my writings, but take them to heart as I speak from the ranks of the opressed.
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
Hell.... /year more than my high school paid
Im 21, a colledge dropout...
working in an entry level sysadmin/programming
job...
I am make $13k
its teachers!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
On one hand, you should be able to write about what ever you feel like when writing a paper, and locking up the kid seems a bit drastic, but then again, I guess we can never be too sure these days.
[begin sarcasm]
Instead of locking him up, they should've just looked on his computer for copies of Doom and checked his CD collection to see if he owned any Rammstein.
[end sarcasm]
--------------
--------------
for the latest news in underground punk, ska, hardcore and metal:
Do you not understand the US legal system or was this hyperbole? The boy was not prosecuted he was arrested with sufficient probable cause (yeah,right). The arresting officer only has to apply this simple "probable cause" test to make an arrest. The police are not lawyers and the state's attorney in the case determined that no law was broken (or at least insufficient evidence that a law had been broken).
That being said, I do agree that it is another indication of our society going to that proverbial hell in a hand basket.
a few random points:
I'm sure that Ms. Beamon is bemoaning the price tag on this "scary" story. Not only did she have to pay for the legal representation she is seeking a private school for her little darling. Neither one of which comes cheap.
I also would like to reiterate what was said in an earlier post in case some of you may have missed it. The spelling and sentence structure problems would not necessarily wanted a low grade on this assignment. Not knowing what is in this child's IEP (if indeed he has one) or the exact requirements for the assignment makes it difficult to grade the piece out of context.
The story did have elements found in many of the "modern" horror stories found at any movie theatre or in any video store.
NT is based on the premise that anyone who can manipulate a mouse can administer a system. Huh?!?
I have to admit that I never went to public school here in NYC. No, I did 13 years of Catholic school instead. From my experience, it was almost as bad. High school for me was 4 years of an all girl Cath. school where if you weren't a jock or a super-scientist, you were less than crap. I was (still am, actually) a gamer and a comp geek. Computers were only a tool, and being able to manuever around one meant you were something of a mechanic. Completely unacceptable. Add on my refusal to be the jocks target (not only did I fight back, I fought back dirty. may as well take out as many as you can while you're bleeding...) and my smart mouth, well most of you probably know. I made the mistake in my senior year of writing a short story about black magic. Granted, it was a twisted topic and a really twisted story, but it was good enough that the teacher gave me the highest grade in the class and raved about it for an entire afternoon. Well, that was slightly uncomfortable, but it got worse when one of the literate jocks ratted me out to the principal. From there, it was about three months of counseling (that's all that was left in the school year) and about a year of lectures from my parents. Yeah, in that time I thought about going on a rampage, but I didn't. Most sane people don't. I don't care who it is, push them far enough and they'll start thhinking about the extreme. We're all human, and we all have a breaking point. The sooner the rest of the world realizes that geeks are poeple too, the better off we (and they) will be.
Stories like this really make me wonder how authors like Stephen King have been able to get to where they are now. Look at a story like Rage: that would almost certainly have landed him in some correctional institution, assuming current attitudes existed when he wrote it. It makes me wonder just who our "great authors" in the next century are going to be. Almost every author/artist/musician who has contributed to the development of culture has had some traits which make them stand out from the status quo. Is writing going to be limited to serialized garbage; the adult equivalent of the BabySitter's Club books?
It seems to me that people in our society today are trying desperately to hold on to something which is consistant and static. We want companies to always post a successful financial quarter; we want sitcoms to run forever; if Garry Trudeau or Gary Larson goes on sabbatical (or God forbid, stops producing our favorite comic strip) then we get pissed off. I truly think that we are in an era which fundamentally resists progress (beyond new and great technical acheivements...1.1Ghz :)). If a movie deviates from the Hollywood formula, then it does poorly, and then that deviant filmmaker has less chance to spread his nasty little message around.
Oh, dear. I've gone off on a little ramble/rant. Um, there are always going to be people who are not all right in the head. Does that mean that we should be ultraparanoid about anyone who does not try to maintain the status quo? No. Progress is natural, and by trying to hold things in place as we are, we are effectively wiping out any true innovations for the future.
Western civilization is a stale cache.
--
Mac OS X--Unix without the assholes^Whassles.
What gets me is all the posts saying, "the kid obviously has something wrong with him." Look, with the school staff obviously being hypersensitive about the previous school shootings, I would not be at all surprised if they've done various things there to "improve security". And as part of that, they've probably made sure the students know that they're "taking steps". At the same time, the media is harping on this same theme over and over and over.
So, during school -- which has been advertised by the staff and the media as being a potentially deadly place -- a kid is asked to write a scary story. What's scary to a kid in school these days? School shootings. It's an obvious topic, and one that probably is scaring the kids -- including the one who wrote it -- already. The point is, it wasn't the kid's inner feelings that (probably) brought the idea into his head, it was the school itself with the help of the media.
Most pre-teen boys, when writing a story for school, use the first person and make themselves the protagonist. It's because their still ego-centric; they think about themselves most of the time. So he wrote a story about himself doing a school shooting. But in the current hysterical environment, writing such a story is likely to have much more to say about his environment than about his inner feelings.
The kid needs to be sat down and talked to, to make sure he's not on the verge of cracking up. And then the school staff need to be sat down and talked to, to find out why they're scaring the kids like this. And then the judge needs to be disbarred for being a moronic fool (IMHO).
I wonder why a judge competant enough at business law to teach courses in it, would wind up deciding juvie cases?
The media can never be trusted to provide enough significant information about any event or subject. But perhaps there are things you can't learn about a person by taking a class from them, as well.
How insane. Another sign that the American public school system is going straight down the crapper.
The complaints were made by two female students in the class to their parents.
Their parents contacted the school and complained to the principal.
What blows my mind on this is that the student made over references to drugs in his essay, and THAT issue was not addressed.
Also interesting is that the father is absent from all of this, and the mother waited 5 days before trying to hire an attorney to get her son out of jail.
There is an apparent lack of parental concern here as well, which makes the whole thing that much more complicated, and scary.
Either way, this kid is messed for life now. He will never again trust an authority figure. If the school had taken a different tack, this kid could have spent the past week in counseling, perhaps getting these issues addressed and handled. Instead, he has been stuck in an ADULT criminal facility, and whatever problems he had before are probably 10x worse now.
Zero tolerance.. what a wonderful thing...
Check out Magic Firesheep!
My friend's little brother has worn a trenchcoat to school for quite awhile... and shortly after the Columbine incedent happened, some kids started harrassing him...
One girl was bothering him at lunch with ridicule like "So, are you going to bring guns to school and kill everyone too?", and Justin being the sarcastic little guy that he is came back at her with "Yeah, and you're gonna be the first one I go after!"
He got suspended for 3 days for this, and i guess this is actually more of making a threat than writing a story...but it seems like kids can't say anything without it being taken seriously by some anal administrator.
btw, since i graduated my high school a mere 2 years ago They've added over 20 video cameras and hired a full-time security guard....sad...
...
It seems like every few years the schools get really hyper about something and seem to think that it affects every kid. ADHD anyone? I remember a few years back a friend of the family was accused of sexually abusing his children just because one of his kids liked to draw belly buttons on her pictures. Violence is the "in" thing this year and, unfortunately, some innocent people are going to be affected. It can be difficult to make people aware of an emotionally charged issue without causing them to overreact.
The phrase "and then the company is screwed" is not something you want in your business plan. (B. Schneier)
We have to keep in mind what a clusterfuck the (American)public education system is. At the high school I went to (until june) a member of the football team known for violent behavior attacked a female student for making fun of his superman tattoo. He also attacked her boyfriend when he tried to protect her. Several months later in a most likely steroid-induced rage, he nearly beat someone to death in a convienience store parking lot, claiming that "he flipped me off". I saw no response from the administration whatsoever, no outcry about crazed teens in jerseys. Several months later, in a _DIFFERENT STATE_, Columnbine High is shot up. Then, everything snapped into action. Trench coats were banned and grief counciling was availible for something that happened hundreds of miles away. And why is this? The psychotic football player was a "good kid". He did what he was told to, and "helped out the team", while the trench coat wearing (and other similar) freaks couldn't give a teaspoon full of shit about school spirit or anything else that they were told to care about. I am very glad that Washington pays for community college for high school students. That was where I spent most of my time.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
Bruce Issaacks (940)565.8556 401 W Hickory ST Denton, TX 76201 Fax 940.382.0845 Email BIsaacks@co.denton.tx.us Thought maybe some of the slashdot readers could make some noise and tell Mr. Issacks what we thought of the treatment of Christopher. I got one other number from my search but it may just be someone elses phone number so if you want his home phone do a search.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
The worst thing about this incident is that they are punishing the student for using a constructive outlet for what I would consider his well placed rage considering the conditions in our schools. I was not harrassed tremendously in school, but did have my problems with other students, teachers and the administration. I would definitely be called a "discipline problem" (despite the fact that I ranked 1 in my class and played soccer and captained quiz bowl and debate)I even recall writing a story about blowing up the school on parent-teacher conference night. Fortunately, I was smart enough not to share it with the morons at the school and the only teacher who did see it, understood it for its real value- A LITTLE RANT TO HELP ME COPE WITH THE STUPIDITY OF JUNIOR HIGH EDUCATION. I think that writing art and music are all good ways for people to let out their agression towards a deserving institution. In fact, I think these outlets, writing, art, and punk rock, were the things that kept me sane. When schools take these things away they will not be curtailing violence, but driving frustrated kids that much closer to the brink. On another halloween note, my younger brother and his friend spent tons of time creating ellaborate FFVII and Darth Mal costumes (check them out at http://user.pa.net/~ghing/g/ , click on pics), the latter which took 2 hours to apply the makeup. These kids are both great students, student-athletes, and much less of a "discipline" problem than I was. They got no direct complaints. Even the teacher with whcih they were going to a local university to take some test had no complaints. However, the moron principal seemed to think that this was a bad representation of the school since the school had visitors from other schools. Oh, I guess creativity and craftsmenship are not values we should teach in school, my bad! He also cited that their costumes depicted "blood dripping from their mouths". As I said before the guy's a moron. I encourage any of you, particularly adults who hear about this sort of thing going on in your communitites to give the school administration a piece of your mind. These kids are the best and brightest and we can't afford to have them become jaded and burn out because they get no support.
Here I was hoping that with the name "Demoroniser" that it would magically remove all Micro$oft products from the computer that created the document and replace them with.... Well anything would be better... I have an old copy of Apple Works from 1980...
BTW: Have I threatened Bill Gates' life yet today... I should get off my ass and help the world.
Qybix ----- I do not have a belief system; I'm an Anti-theist and proud of it! Saying that not believing in anything i
I agree that the kid shouldn't have been arrested, but did anyone read the essay? I can't believe that thing got 100%. Any grade 7 should be able to write better than that. It really makes me worry about schools today.
Would Christopher have been hauled off to jail he if was the star quarterback on the high school football team? Not likely.
Would Christopher have written an "outstanding", 100-scoring essay if he was the star quarterback on the high school football team?
Not likely.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
"And what do we do with witches???" (small crowd roars) "BUUUURRRRRNNNN THEMMMMMMM!!!!"
I went to the same school and it started sucking pretty hard right after that Columbine shit happened. I decided to graduate early b/c of I knew I would get harassed as a person who plays violent video games often, is known to dislike most of the people in my former high school, and the fact that if I had worn my trenchcoat to school I would have scared people shitless(I like getting dressed up prim and proper occassionally). That incident was simply that, an incident. People being pushed too far. BTW. I thought Justin was suspended for a far longer period of time? You should have seen the number of cops at the prom b/c of the incident. It was pretty cool... I had a LAN party instead of going to prom, but I passed by my high school while getting some Mountain Dew.
This is a horrible thing. He was tasked to write a horror story. Many horror stories have a component where the hero turns and destroys his friends and loved ones. Innocent people often get caught in the crossfire. Heres some parralels:
Dracula was about a great warrior for good turning into an evil monster who destroyed and corrupted all he held dear.
This story is about two friends who were heroes fending off an assault, then turned and destroyed their friends.
Dracula had innocent people get caught up and destroyed.
This story had an innocent bystander get caught up in things and destroyed.
Looks to me that expanding on the basic concept, this kids story, rather than a terrorist threat, could have become a great classic of horror. What would have happened in Bram Stoker was sent to jail or a mental institution for his work? A great classic would not be on bookshelves, some of the greatest movies of all time would not exist, The best RPG would not exist, my favorite 3 tv shows wouldn't exist... A huge selection of artwork in various mediums simply would not exist. What if this is done to all artwork deemed contreversial? That would be a sad day for art.
I sure am glad i'm a homeschooler living in canada, where we have gun control. It's not as if you can go on a killing rampage in a school with a kitchen knife.
Why isn't anyone taking recourse against this? Ah screw it you parents are all cowards
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This is borderline entrapment, you know.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Some people are trying to make other people see that they can handle it, and violence can be controlled, but at what expense?
The future of one student or individual?
It's not the school or authorities fault or any student, the last thing you can do right now is blaming a student for something that wasn't done before(nobody could know that it would happen), Why? just so someone can feel better, sortof say that it's not our fault.Just say it, "It's not our fault" Does it really help saying that?
Is this draconian act is to help them young ones? Or is it to help the people responsibe of taking care and teaching them to feel good that it's not their fault. When it's actually is no one's fault at all.
Two way communication, helps. And for only one side to be at the receiving end this much, what should I call it, bashing? It really doesn't help anybody.
Scapegoat?, I don't know. Figure it out.
Smells like National Socialist Spirit: "Hey, that's not Proper, I'd better contact the autorities to remove this menace from society!"
To be honest I am reluctant to even make a post to this atricle. Comments about learning things from horror movies on television, the Colorado shootings??? Sometimes I wish that people would understand that people that kill someone didn't do it because of the voices in their head told them to...they did it because their finger was on the trigger. As far as giving this kid a perfect score on a poorly written gramatically incorrect essay goes - I remember when I was in high school...spelling and grammer always counted. Are those rules out the window these days? I look at this from all points of view....the government is attacking this kid for doing what the teacher asked him to, and they punished him for being creative. That's not right, but I am not an elected opfficial, and never will be. force_VinNy http://www.computer-gfx.com PS - I never claimed to be a grammer or spelling expert so don't hold my paragraphs and other stuff against me :)
I think it's more of a crime that the kid got a "100" on such a horribly written essay.
:wq
With the rate the educational system is going with this, some geek will be studying nuclear physics in his spare time, some teacher will catch wind of it, and the geek will be hauled off to jail for being suspected of wanting to build nuclear weapons.
Where is the ACLU during all of this? This is absurd. They should have made a national issue of this months,if not years ago. I hope many of you can find the time to visit them http://www.aclu.org and tell them what you think. Maybe some of you can join them and kick in a few dollars to insure that students can be free thinking individuals and not the trained sheep of a big-brother police state.
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Since the incident at Columbine High School, Jon Katz has talked about little else but the poor plight of 'oddball' kids who are cruelly singled out for torture not only by their classmates, but by the evil Establishment which controls our public schools.
Nevermind that Salon Magazine published a story refuting the nonsense that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold committed these murders because they had been picked on or that they were 'nerds.' Nevermind that, by posting these 'stories,' Mr. Katz appeals to the narcissistic desire of 'nerds' to hear that their problems in society are not their fault, and that the deficiencies in their anti-social lifestyle can be explained in terms of evil Others who seek to undermine them.
Jon Katz does a disservice to the living he speaks to as well as the dead he speaks of.
But enough of Columbine-- for the moment. Let's take a look at Katz's blatantly sensationalist 'story.'
It begins right away. His front-page blurb for the piece mentions that the boy was accused of making terrorist threats.
I can't help wondering where Mr. Katz gets his information. The copy of the Associated Press report in my local newspaper doesn't have this tidbit. Neither does the Dallas Morning News that he links to. What the Dallas story does say is this:
"I do want people to understand that, just like making a threat at an airport, a threat in a school situation is very serious, even if it was in jest," she said [...]
The correct conclusion to draw from this statement is that free speech is limited. Not censored, but limited. In other words, there are certain things which you may not do: shout "fire" in a crowded movie theatre, "I've planted a bomb on the plane" in an airport, or "I busted out with a 12 guage [sic]" in a high school.
It's true that the boy's story was meant only as a work of fiction. But assigning undue motives to the administration of the school serves only to demonise them. Which, of course, is what Mr. Katz seeks to do.
Mr. Katz goes on for several paragraphs with charged words such as 'Hellmouth' and 'post-Columbine assault.' Since these paragraphs are meant to prey on emotions and contain little in the way of fact, I can't comment on them other than to say that it is shameful 'journalism.'
Then, he surprises us by revealing a 'subliminal' message, carefully hidden in the words of a district attorney. Apparently, star quarterbacks are incapable of being discipline problems. I don't think we can agree with that statement. Had this happened to a star quarterback, there would be an equally loud outcry-- the only difference is that it would not come from the substantial mouth of Mr. Katz.
(Did Mr. Katz consider another possibility? Social activities such as sports have been shown to reduce societal problems such as undirected violence.)
After tying in the doubly malicious 'Mosaic 2000,' Katz brings up the spectre of Columbine again, in case he didn't beat it enough at the beginning of his piece.
He returns to reality-- somewhat-- by asking questions about what rights children have. He uses this as a demonstration that they do not, and are simply at the mercy of the Establishment.
This is not the case. As I pointed out, the rights of all people are necessary limited. This is an exercise of that limit.
If there is a lesson to be learned in this, it is simply that investigations need to be conducted with speed. The boy did not need to be held as long as he was.
Now, what about Mr. Katz? Aside from Columbine, his other favourite topic is the 'Old Media' versus the 'New Media,' the latter being precipitated by the Internet. Katz's rabid adoption, however, of 'Old Media' techniques such as sensationalism and colouring of the facts is an apparent contradiction.
What a time when the "society" whe live in requires that children be left to be themselves, but God forbid they become something other than the sports star or academic angel so many parents pray for. How many stories of a person's past start: In High School he was wierd, withdrawn, a nerd, but now he's just a criminal. A violent person, not many. Most of these kids become the front runners in technology and business, because while others were memorizing plays for football they dreamed of the future. In my experience those kids that didnt speak up are still in college or just out and making a true contribution to the world, while the football star got kicked out of college, has a dwi and abuse chargeses filled. The biggest difference is the nerd is dreaming about the future while in the present and the football star dreams about the past while in the future. Hypocracy in it's true form is wanting kids to be themselves as long as there something that apeasses the masses. What a shame, who will lead the world into the future when no one is allowed to dream about it!! That is what is scarest to me, not a kid writting a story about weilding a gun.
The slashdot focus on Hellmouth stories now begins to border on masochistic. Oh, we're geeks; oh, society is insane, gnash gnash snarl snarl.
We need a change of emphasis. Can anyone explain cogently why school murders are happening? Explain it in a way that evades left-right politics, is understandable to The Popular Kids and their elders, and compress it down to a slogan. *That* would be productive.
A few thoughts:
Constitutional issues aside, banning all guns *would* send the message that we value human life. Mandatory firearm training might do the same thing. Point is, talk is as cheap as it's ever been.
The guy who jumped up in the courtroom and yelled, "Jesus Christ is the answer, Kip Kinkel," kinda had the right idea. But for the rest of us who need to lose ourselves in something larger, I humbly submit that The Answer is GIVING THE KIDS SOMETHING TO DO IN SCHOOL THAT DOESN'T MAKE THEM FEEL LIKE THEY'RE WASTING THEIR LIVES. Like LEARNING something maybe.
I mean faaahhhk. Teachers should be the highest paid, most honored individuals in the nation. Let's do away with the filmstrips, already.
pp
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