disjointed comment on arrested clockboy, uS education and teacher responsibility

[caribou]

Everyday in schools teachers are faced with enforcing or ignoring a schoolboard-approved rule or a rule derived froma state and/or federal law and/or a particular local rule that reflects the local community's expectations of its school.

Teachers get attacked by stupid parents and community members who insist that their children be given the opportunity for highly rigorous and challenging academic education yet these same people do not want homework, which is academic practice, to encroach on "family-time" and sports time. These same parents think that 90 minutes of practice afterschool for football and a weekly football game is a positive "academic" exercise and an excuse not to do real academic homework.

US children who are pupils & students tend to underprepare for their academic classes because they overestimate their ability to recall information that they have only been exposed to for a short amount of time.
FACT - learning requires continuous exposure and repetition to the same information in different formats from the stage of basic understanding and comprehension through to the "play-stages" of analysis, evaluation and synthesis and finally the creative stage of application of the information in varying configurations to new situations.

With all of that being said remember this. The minute an accident happens in school or an incident that has tragic outcomes a full investigation occurs and the teacher who does not "over-react" with total caution and total safety as her/his foundation will be held accountable if any hint of deviation is detected from the written rules meant for the safety of the learning community. So all who criticize and say he only had a clock remember that a student with a bag of cocaine only looks like a student with a bag of powdered sugar that he/she likes to sprinkle on the waffle in his lunch - the teacher who sees this same bag of powdered sugar taped under a locker had better recognize a principal and a police officer not the cafeteria manager needs to be called.

 

[Kannath]

Its a false analogy to compare the drug culture with science, though admittedly school officials would most likely see a bag of cocaine as powdered sugar if child is not of certain ethnic groups and see a science project as not a bomb if not made by certain ethnic groups.

You outlined the process needful for an authentic learning process and pointed out how the education system was broken for emphasizing sports over real academics, then turned around and validated treating children as criminals should they (as that young man did) creatively apply what he have learned.

Lets assume (only for the sake of argument) that it was incumbent on the teacher to bring the clock to the attention of the administration, who then out of ignorance then escalated it to the police. The police have stated they never believed there was any evidence the clock was in fact or had been ever been represented to have been a bomb, so why was he arrested? It was not conceivable to them that a middle eastern boy would be capable of making something like that for non-violent ends is the bottom line. It's that racism that makes this worthy of national discussion: by the teacher, by the administration, by the city mayor, by police. Its been acknowledged by the governor of Texas and apologized for by him as tragic and unnecessary.

 

[mikeyank]

First a complement that KRU finally is posting in clear, easy to read paragraphs instead of one long disjointed endless rambling paragraph. But why can't such a bright man figure out to post non site related comments on the "other side" of the forum? It looks like once again Mark will either have to move his post or delete it for his refusal to follow the rules. Bad boy KRU!

 

[gardenboy]

Caribou aka KRU- thank you so much for such a positive comment. as a former teacher, I saw all too often the attacks by parents who placed other activities before academics. Much of this was supposedly for my child needs to excel in sports so he can get a scholarship(heedless of the fact that a sports scholarship on gaurentees he will play on a college level- forget the fact that he wouldn't take many academic classes and terminate with useable degree or skills . See Time magazine several years ago on what happened to senior on Georgia Techs winning tem - od all the seniors who "graduated", ONLY ONE HAD A DEGREE AND A SECOND RETURNED TO GA TECH TO GET AN EDUCATION DEGRE AFTER 2 YEARS AFTER TERMINATION. mANY OF THE OTHERS ENDED AS CAR SALESMAN. What better evidence to show misplaced priorities in education! (as the joke goes, be kind to the geek in your class. Someday he may be your boss!)

 

[Buckeye1]

mANY OF THE OTHERS ENDED AS CAR SALESMAN.

Most car salesmen I know make a shit pile of money if they know how to bullshit well. (No degree required.)

 

[juanjo]

I agree with mikeyank that this post by KRU aka caribou is perhaps his most coherent to date. That said it is as full of logical fallacies as Swiss Cheese is full of holes. Posting unsupported opinion is not the same as supporting opinion with fact.

1. The fact that [some] parents seem unclear on the rationale behind homework means that some parents are unclear on the concept of education. There is nothing unusual about this in our society which elevates self promoting shills like Donald Trump to the height of popularity while ignoring the work of academics, scientists, architects and others who have actually contributed to society.

2. There is a large body of research which indicates that any educational training needs to employ both academics as well as creative activities like arts and music along with athletics to develop a well rounded individual. This is not a new concept. The ancient Greeks actually developed the first such programs 3000 years ago.

3. The comparison of a child bringing a home made clock to a bag of cocaine is fundamentally absurd on far too many levels to adequately cover although someone already touched on some. I would point out that the ease of testing a bad of white powder is pretty easy. Even without the usual chemical test easily purchased anywhere in our country, a simple and very slight taste of the powder will determine if it is cocaine or sugar as any former purchaser of cocaine can tell you, not to mention any cop. That being said a child bringing a clock into a school to show to someone what he had done is much more easily understandable and believable than a child bringing a bag of powdered sugar to school. The fact he showed it to a teacher and that teacher recognized it for what it was is also important to the correct understanding of the events which unfurled at this school.

4. This also leads directly to my last point. If the teachers and administrators thought this was a bomb or bomb components, they did NOT follow any of the proper protocols. First and foremost, they did not evacuate the students form the school. They did not remove the student form the presence of other students. They did not call the bomb squad. They did not check to see if any other bomb making materials were on the school premises. They did not contact the boy's parents. They did not verify his story as to having shown it to a teacher earlier. Instead they called the police who showed up sans the usual protective accouterments brought in where a bomb is suspected. They arrested him publicly in front of other students and perp marched him out of the school. He AND THE BAG were placed in the back of a squad car and hauled down to the station. The school was NOT shut down, the students removed and the building cleared by the bomb squad to determine there were no other bomb parts on the premises.

In other words either these were the most incompetent, over-reacting group of authority figures in modern history or they were acting out of some other motive such as bigotry based upon the student's ethnicity or skin color. If we look at the history of school mass shootings and similar acts of terrorism the fact is that they have been committed by people with obvious issues and none of that was evident in this child. Setting aside the fact virtually all such attacks have been perpetrated by Caucasian males, the fact of the matter is that these people over-reacted in a manner completely unjustified.

Let's compare this group of idiots in Texas to another group of school officials in the SF Bay Area - in Pleasanton California two days ago when someone phoned in a bomb threat. The school was shut down, the students removed, the parents immediately notified and the school search from top to bottom by the local police using the proper gear. http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...Police-Investigate-Bomb-Threat-328191191.html

Frankly I would love to represent this kid in Texas in the lawsuit against the school district and the police [who admit the did not identify the device as a bomb or part of a bomb but arrested him anyway].

 

[tampa24]

4. This also leads directly to my last point. If the teachers and administrators thought this was a bomb or bomb components, they did NOT follow any of the proper protocols. First and foremost, they did not evacuate the students form the school. They did not remove the student form the presence of other students. They did not call the bomb squad. They did not check to see if any other bomb making materials were on the school premises. They did not contact the boy's parents. They did not verify his story as to having shown it to a teacher earlier. Instead they called the police who showed up sans the usual protective accouterments brought in where a bomb is suspected. They arrested him publicly in front of other students and perp marched him out of the school. He AND THE BAG were placed in the back of a squad car and hauled down to the station. The school was NOT shut down, the students removed and the building cleared by the bomb squad to determine there were no other bomb parts on the premises.

In other words either these were the most incompetent, over-reacting group of authority figures in modern history or they were acting out of some other motive such as bigotry based upon the student's ethnicity or skin color. If we look at the history of school mass shootings and similar acts of terrorism the fact is that they have been committed by people with obvious issues and none of that was evident in this child. Setting aside the fact virtually all such attacks have been perpetrated by Caucasian males, the fact of the matter is that these people over-reacted in a manner completely unjustified.

Let's compare this group of idiots in Texas to another group of school officials in the SF Bay Area - in Pleasanton California two days ago when someone phoned in a bomb threat. The school was shut down, the students removed, the parents immediately notified and the school search from top to bottom by the local police using the proper gear. http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...Police-Investigate-Bomb-Threat-328191191.html

Frankly I would love to represent this kid in Texas in the lawsuit against the school district and the police [who admit the did not identify the device as a bomb or part of a bomb but arrested him anyway].

Great post Juanjo!

It seems the whole lesson the school administration and police were trying to send was never really about protecting the students. Instead they seemed intent on sending a message to "those kind of people" [Muslims and Middle Easterners] that they better not try to start any sh** in our schools. To arrest him without cause and make him do the handcuffed walk of shame in full view of the other students is just absurd. Now the school and authorities are trying to pat themselves on the back and say that while they may have overreacted, they did it out of abundance of concern for the safety of their students. And that's more important than an ignorant teacher, principal, and police force actively participating in an illegal false arrest.

As you say though Juanjo, if it really was about that (student safety) and not racism, then why didn't they evacuate all the students from the building, notify parents and send in bomb detection squads? The school now says it would be "happy" to have him back. The boy's parents are saying in as many words, No way in hell. Can you imagine the kind of bullying and harassment he would get if he ever went back? If the teachers and the staff of the school are that stupid and ignorant, I can only imagine how mature the rest of the boy's classmates are. If I had my child in the school, I'd be very worried about the quality of education he or she was getting. I'd want to pull my child out immediately if I could afford it.

I hope the boy's family gets lawyers and representation as least as good and well versed in the law as you Juanjo and they sue for damages and substantial punitive damages.

 

[johnny]

Great Post juanjo..Some of you guy's are just so smart..xo And Tampa