...they are private schools that students have elected to attend...
Um...Last I checked, students don't *elect* to attend any school. Their parents may elect for students to attend a private school, but the minor children have no choice. Nor do they have a legal right to make a choice.
The simple fact of the matter is that some students who are sent to private schools will dissent with school policy and they should have the legally protected right to do so.
People in this country seem to have an impression that children are somehow second class citzens. They have no legal rights, they are tied to their parents who are often oblivious and indifferent to their condition, they have school teachers and administrators whose lone priority is keeping "order" in the classroom no matter what the cost to civil liberties or Constitutional freedoms (which is okay, because under the law minors don't have any,) anyone who is different from a "normal" kid is forced to endure relentless ridicule and harrassment by the "in crowd" who are more often than not protected by the aforementioned administrators, they are subjected to emotional, mental and physical torment every single day. And then society has the balls to wonder why kids shoot people.
Somewhere along the line, our society as a whole stopped giving two shits about our kids. If we're to ever see the downward spiral that our country is in come to a halt, we have to start caring again and give our kids a reason *not* to hurt others just so they can be taken seriously.
...when you can't even hang a car, in an obviously well planned way, off a bridge without fear of spending the next few years in prison?
Notice the CHP didn't call UBC's engineers for help in figuring out how to get it down? No, those morons at CalTrans who haven't done anything more challenging than point at a map and say "put a lane here" in the last 20 years were content to let commuters just sit there while they grappled with the obvious: "Hey, let's cut the cable!"
For that matter, what if the CHP does arrest the culprits? And what if they do go to jail? Gee, if they can manage to hang a VW Beetle off the Golden Gate without a soul noticing or bothering to report it, surely nothing that the California prison system has can hold them. Better put them in solitary confinement. Wouldn't want them conspiring to build something. These engineers are dangerous you know, they just randomly go out and build stuff. They must be stopped!
Does this sound anything like the geek persecution after Columbine to anyone else but me? I mean sure, the students in this case are guilty, but the authorities are just taking everything way too seriously these days.
I've been legally blind since birth, and just had corrective surgery to "fix" my vision. IMO, the problems one will encounter doing this kind of procedure are not medical in nature, they're psychological.
Before my surgery, my uncorrected vision was 20/200 in my right eye, and 20/1000 in my left. With correction, I could get down to 20/80 in my right eye and 20/200 in my left; a marked improvement. With special adaptation, I was even able to get my right eye to 20/30 at distance so that I could get and maintain an unrestricted driver's license. I still walked with the aid of a white cane due to my lack of depth perception (since the vision in my eyes was so unbalanced) and peripheral vision. All in all, I was a pretty well adapted, employed, and productive person.
The problems I encountered were primarily social. I found that the sighted public in general wants very little to do with anyone who is obviously disabled. Even if someone would initiate a conversation in a social setting, the only thing they'd want to discuss is my vision. Now, maybe I'm at fault here, but after 25 years of talking about my vision with every Tom, Dick, and Harry; I just didn't want to do it any more. So I talked to an opthomologist and scheduled lens implant surgery to try and correct my vision. Although the surgery was deemed a success in medical terms, my useful vision is substantially less than before.
The difficulty that I encountered wasn't medical. The medical procedure was perfect. The problem I'm encountering has to do with my perception of the images I see. Having worn thick glasses my entire life, my brain was used to a greatly magnified image of the world. After surgery, that image was no longer magnified at all, and everything seems small and distant. As a result, I'm not able to pick out much detail in the images that I see, which effects my useful vision. Some of the side effects are quite disturbing. For instance, I can no longer read a magazine, or street signs. This has severely impeded my independence as I have a great deal of difficulty even driving myself to work.
These types of problems appear to be common in people who had significant vision impairments for most of their lives. The exact same surgery I had has been performed on countless people who had normal vision for most of their lives, but who developed cataracts later in life with no ill effects whatsoever. In fact, most people return to 20/20 vision or better within days. I had the surgery nearly a month ago, and even with glasses I can not see as well as I did before.
This type of medical advance is great, and medically it's a quantum leap in the field. The problem is that there is no rehabilitation available to people in situations similar to mine. There must be a way to teach the brain how to deal with "normal" vision when it isn't used to coping with it. This same phenonenon is what causes the "confusion" in people who have been given sight after being blind for most of their lives. A great physical improvement does not always result in a higher quality of life. It certainly hasn't in my case, and I don't believe it will in others who weren't sighted before the procedure.
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Um...Last I checked, students don't *elect* to attend any school. Their parents may elect for students to attend a private school, but the minor children have no choice. Nor do they have a legal right to make a choice.
The simple fact of the matter is that some students who are sent to private schools will dissent with school policy and they should have the legally protected right to do so.
People in this country seem to have an impression that children are somehow second class citzens. They have no legal rights, they are tied to their parents who are often oblivious and indifferent to their condition, they have school teachers and administrators whose lone priority is keeping "order" in the classroom no matter what the cost to civil liberties or Constitutional freedoms (which is okay, because under the law minors don't have any,) anyone who is different from a "normal" kid is forced to endure relentless ridicule and harrassment by the "in crowd" who are more often than not protected by the aforementioned administrators, they are subjected to emotional, mental and physical torment every single day. And then society has the balls to wonder why kids shoot people.
Somewhere along the line, our society as a whole stopped giving two shits about our kids. If we're to ever see the downward spiral that our country is in come to a halt, we have to start caring again and give our kids a reason *not* to hurt others just so they can be taken seriously.
...when you can't even hang a car, in an obviously well planned way, off a bridge without fear of spending the next few years in prison? Notice the CHP didn't call UBC's engineers for help in figuring out how to get it down? No, those morons at CalTrans who haven't done anything more challenging than point at a map and say "put a lane here" in the last 20 years were content to let commuters just sit there while they grappled with the obvious: "Hey, let's cut the cable!" For that matter, what if the CHP does arrest the culprits? And what if they do go to jail? Gee, if they can manage to hang a VW Beetle off the Golden Gate without a soul noticing or bothering to report it, surely nothing that the California prison system has can hold them. Better put them in solitary confinement. Wouldn't want them conspiring to build something. These engineers are dangerous you know, they just randomly go out and build stuff. They must be stopped! Does this sound anything like the geek persecution after Columbine to anyone else but me? I mean sure, the students in this case are guilty, but the authorities are just taking everything way too seriously these days.
I've been legally blind since birth, and just had corrective surgery to "fix" my vision. IMO, the problems one will encounter doing this kind of procedure are not medical in nature, they're psychological. Before my surgery, my uncorrected vision was 20/200 in my right eye, and 20/1000 in my left. With correction, I could get down to 20/80 in my right eye and 20/200 in my left; a marked improvement. With special adaptation, I was even able to get my right eye to 20/30 at distance so that I could get and maintain an unrestricted driver's license. I still walked with the aid of a white cane due to my lack of depth perception (since the vision in my eyes was so unbalanced) and peripheral vision. All in all, I was a pretty well adapted, employed, and productive person. The problems I encountered were primarily social. I found that the sighted public in general wants very little to do with anyone who is obviously disabled. Even if someone would initiate a conversation in a social setting, the only thing they'd want to discuss is my vision. Now, maybe I'm at fault here, but after 25 years of talking about my vision with every Tom, Dick, and Harry; I just didn't want to do it any more. So I talked to an opthomologist and scheduled lens implant surgery to try and correct my vision. Although the surgery was deemed a success in medical terms, my useful vision is substantially less than before. The difficulty that I encountered wasn't medical. The medical procedure was perfect. The problem I'm encountering has to do with my perception of the images I see. Having worn thick glasses my entire life, my brain was used to a greatly magnified image of the world. After surgery, that image was no longer magnified at all, and everything seems small and distant. As a result, I'm not able to pick out much detail in the images that I see, which effects my useful vision. Some of the side effects are quite disturbing. For instance, I can no longer read a magazine, or street signs. This has severely impeded my independence as I have a great deal of difficulty even driving myself to work. These types of problems appear to be common in people who had significant vision impairments for most of their lives. The exact same surgery I had has been performed on countless people who had normal vision for most of their lives, but who developed cataracts later in life with no ill effects whatsoever. In fact, most people return to 20/20 vision or better within days. I had the surgery nearly a month ago, and even with glasses I can not see as well as I did before. This type of medical advance is great, and medically it's a quantum leap in the field. The problem is that there is no rehabilitation available to people in situations similar to mine. There must be a way to teach the brain how to deal with "normal" vision when it isn't used to coping with it. This same phenonenon is what causes the "confusion" in people who have been given sight after being blind for most of their lives. A great physical improvement does not always result in a higher quality of life. It certainly hasn't in my case, and I don't believe it will in others who weren't sighted before the procedure.