Educational Philosophy

Another political carrot offered to the voting public by career seeking school board members, corrupt politicians, and uncaring principals in order to make themselves look good is zero tolerance. It is offered under the pretext of giving parents the idea that the schools their children attend are safe and drug free.

But zero tolerance is not working. First of all, it gives uncaring principals a blank check to expel any student they don’t like under the disguise that said student is a threat to other students.

Secondly, not only is it removing from school those students who most need an education – the poor student, the behavior problem student, the maladjusted student – but it is also removing good students who are guilty of nothing more than being Good Samaritans.

For example, the honor student who helped move his grandmother from one apartment to another. A bread knife – not a steak knife or a butcher knife or any kind of sharp knife – but a bread knife had fallen out of a moving box and was found in the bed of his pick-up truck. He was recommended for expulsion for one year for having a weapon on the school grounds.

There was also the teenager who talked his friend out of committing suicide and was suspended for having in his possession the knife that she was going to use to kill herself.

Then there was the ten-year-old who was suspended for bringing a scissors to school. (Are not scissors a tool used by ten-year-old elementary students in their classrooms?)

Extremists are taking over our classrooms and forcing their perverted idea of truth and justice on all of us, making pointless any mitigating circumstances.

If I may quote Mr. Jarvis Deberry from whom I got this information: “Their (students) teachers, principals and school board members are all working together to warp, if not totally destroy, any sense of justice and judgment the students develop ... They render insignificant the student’s intent or even knowledge of an infraction, and they equate the most trivial of offenses with far more serious ones,” (Times Picayune, 12/17/2004, page B-7).

I myself was the victim of zero tolerance by an uncaring principal. I was talking to some middle school science students about asteroids striking the earth and how this has caused mass extinctions in the past. I told them that large asteroids hit the earth with the force many times that of an atomic bomb.

A student asked me what makes an atom bomb so powerful. I told the class that it was the enriched uranium within the bomb and that an atomic bomb wasn’t just a simple bomb. It was more like an implosion one sees when demolition companies bring down a high rise building.

Another teacher over heard only part of what I was saying and reported to the principal that I was teaching the students how to make homemade bombs. I did not tell the students how to build a bomb. I merely told them some – not all – of the component parts of an atomic bomb. (How anyone could imagine that middle school students have enough knowledge to build an atomic bomb is beyond me?)

The principal reported me to the school board and I was suspended pending an investigation. About a month later I was exonerated when the true facts came out. Meanwhile, the students did not get an education. But the principal still recommended that I be assigned to another school – he didn’t want me in “his” school. I was reassigned to a different school.

But he is the one who started the problem by asking my students only what I had told them about bomb making. Within a few minutes every child in the school knew exactly what the principal wanted to hear. Had he instead asked numerous students about what several teachers are discussing with them – sex, alcohol, drugs, violence, bomb making, etc. – then no one would have known what he was searching for.

These are only a few examples; there are many more. It doesn’t stop there. School librarians are being forced to remove books such as Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird and For Whom the Bell Tolls from their shelves just because some extremists believe that they contain objectionable words and objectionable scenes. (There is no such thing as a bad word, only evil thoughts!)

Then there was the art teacher who was suspended for bringing her fifth-grade students on a principal approved field trip to an art museum because one of her students saw nude art in the museum, and the child’s parent complained (Times Picayune, 10/01/2006, page A-9).

School Board members, principals and politicians do not understand the importance of having children learn about the good, the bad and the ugly of life’s lessons in a controlled atmosphere. They do not perceive that the best place to learn of such is in a classroom, not in the streets.

They do not perceive that it is far better for our children to read about intolerance, bigotry, racism and chauvinism and to see the evil inherit therein through books, than it is to be the instigator or worse the victim of such.

They do not want our children learn about the dangers of uninhibited and unprotected sex in an environment where they cannot get pregnant or catch a sexually transmitted disease. They do not see that there is no evil in the nude human body and that those who see evil therein and cover it up are the real perverts.

The point that I’m trying to make here is that zero tolerance is good as long as one uses prudence and discretion in administering it. But if someone allows hysteria and ignorance to influence their decisions then nothing good can come out of the situation.

Having a bread knife in the back of one’s truck is not bringing weapons to school. Middle school students cannot be reasonably expected to build an atomic bomb, even after being told some (not all) of the parts of one. Principals should know this and act accordingly. Instead they add their fears to the most blameless acts and then they equate this with violent acts of terrorism. In the end, innocent children suffer because principals cannot control their paranoia.

Schools across the nation are being forced to install filtering software on the computers in their classrooms to prevent students from going to pornographic web sites. This is great, for we do not want our children to be sexually abused on the Internet. But why can’t we just depend upon our college educated teachers to monitor their students? Don’t we trust our teachers to do the job they were hired to do?

(If our classrooms were not over crowded then it would be a lot easier for teachers to monitor what web sites their students went to.)

Or is the real reason for the software nothing more than political rhetoric of self-serving politicians? Is the real reason we have filters on the computers in our classrooms is so that big business and big government can maintain control?

This is to say nothing of the fact that the filtering software that is installed is too all inclusive. A student cannot do an honest web search on such subjects as breast cancer, sex abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, erectile dysfunction, uterine cancer, Female Genital Mutilation (FMG), The Naked City (A late 1950s TV crime drama) and any other Internet search that has words or topics in it that extremists consider evil and vulgar.

(As I have said elsewhere, there are no bad words, only bad thoughts.)

Further, there are ways to get around these filters and go to pornographic sites and many students know how to do it. Thus, filtering software only hurts those students who want to do honest research on “controversial” subjects.

Children are being forced to learn sex education “in the streets” where they can catch diseases and get pregnant (or get someone pregnant) because some extremists do not want sex education taught in school.

Teachers are forced to teach scientific creationism and intelligent design creation because some right wing fundamentalists want equal opportunity to teach their perverted religious beliefs under the guise of science.

Extremism is taking over our schools. Our children are getting an ersatz education and without a quality education a child is a ship without a rudder.

If our elected politicians, school board personnel and principals want to give our children a quality education then the first thing that must be done is to raise the quality of life in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Then lower the teacher/student ratio in all classrooms.

(A regular education classroom should have no more than 15 students in it and a special education classroom should have no more than 8 students in it. All schools should have both a before care and an after care for their students whose parents work.)

This means hiring more personnel, not wasting precious resources on ersatz, ineffectual staff development programs, producing boring, impotent educational how to materials or offering self-serving political carrots to get one’s self elected.

The third thing that must be done is to have a curriculum that allows special students to take special courses in those areas in which they excel or need help. We need to teach vocational and artistic skills to all students, particularly those students who are not going on to college. Having a student graduate from high school without any job or artistic skills is like throwing that child into shark-infested waters without any life saving equipment.

Finally, filters should be removed from school computers so that students can do real research. This would allow college educated teachers to do the job they were hired to do: monitor and teach students!

Scholastic Schools