What Kind of Teacher Does This to a Child?

Two Kids Kiss, School Brings in the Cops

This blog has tried to warn about how "sex offender" laws have gotten entirely out of control. While no one seriously wishes to allow children to be raped, the laws have completely left common sense behind.

In this case two children 12-years-old had a playground kiss. The school immediately called the police and reported the miscreants. Thankfully the police had more common sense in this case than the school officials did.

But laws to protect kids have become themselves threats to the same kids. One of the signs of government overreaching is when the solutions are more harmful than the problems they were meant to solve.

Now you know why the schools fail to stop bullying.

For the last couple of days the death of Jamey Rodemeyer has weighed heavily on my mind. Jamey committed suicide after bullies tormented him for the last couple of years due to his sexuality—he was gay.

The state schools are simply unwilling to deal with bullying in a realistic manner. They want touchy-feely hug moments, but without the hugs, which are just "way to inappropriate." What they do NOT wish to do is deal with the bullies.

Tanya Sydner found out her 10-year-son, Griffin, was being assaulted by two bullies while riding the school. The next day she marched down to the bus stop and waited and then boarded the bus to speak to the driver. He made excuses and told her he does the best he can—in other words don't expect anymore from him. She then told off the two monsters on the bus and that irritated the driver who threw her off.

Tanya and her son marched to the school only to be immediately meet by the school's resident police officer. These cops are now routine in the state schools to make to give an air of authenticity to the already prison-like atmosphere.

The school then deal with the issue by making the bullies and Griffin apologize to each other. The fucking morons don't want to take sides, they want to be Switzerland in an war between bullies and victims. But they can't be Switzerland, the problem is taking place on their turf. Imagine these bureaucrats being around at the end of World War II. They would have made Jews apologize to the SS. "Gee, Mr. Nazi, I'm so sorry I irritated you and forced you to gas my family."

This is not the first time the schools have tried this "touchy-feely" sort of discipline where victims and attackers are put on the same moral plane. I have read of other incidents where victims were forced to apologize to their attackers. And then the school told Sydney she is banned from the school, because she complained. When the media asks the morons who run the school to explain they refused to protect the privacy of Sydney and her son. They sent out the typical PR press release that is pure bullshit: "Minneapolis Public Schools encourages (sic) parents to contact their school immediately if there are bullying concerns. Our schools take allegations concerning bullying very seriously and have a protocol to address these type of situations."

Protocol? Right! What exactly was that protocol? It was to force the victim to apologize to his attackers as if he is mutually responsible for being such a tempting target to juvenile thugs. This isn't the first time victims had to apologize to their attackers, and it won't be the last. This ethos is rampant in the schools run jointly by the government and the teacher's unions.

A 7th grade girl in told her Missouri school that a boy had been harassing her, that he assaulted her and then raped her. This special education student was told she was making it up and told to retract her story. One of the results of her mental state is that she wants to please so she did what she was told. Then the school forced to write an apology to the boy in a letter and was expelled from the school. In addition, even though the law says all such incidents of sexual attacks on children must be reported, the school refused to report it.

The next year she was admitted back to school and the boy started harassing her and assaulting her all over. She was so afraid of being kicked out of school that she refused to report it. And then the boy raped her a second time inside the school library. She told her mother and the school again refused to believe her, after all they pushed into retracting her previous accusation.

The mother took the girl to a Child Advocacy Center and DNA samples were taken from the girl showing the presence of semen, which later proved to match the boy she had said was guilty of raping her. The boy admitted his guilt—he had raped her and she was telling the truth all along. The school is being sued. And what is their response to the lawsuit? They claim that the victim "failed and neglected to use reasonable means to protect her self." Yep, they blamed the victim for being raped twice even though they were the ones who refused to believe her when she reported it the first time, and then they punished her.

This is the moral universe of the government schools—they refuse to take sides in real cases of bullying but love expensive programs to talk about bullying in their faux sing-songy voices that are meant to "relate" to the kids. But when it comes to real bullies and real victims they are unable to distinguish between them and see them as moral equivalents. And, that is why bullying thrives in spite of millions spent on "programs" to stop it.

Secret Service Interrogates Kid Without Parental Knowledge

What the hell is going on in this country when any government department takes a child, without parental permission or access to legal counsel, and interrogates the child?

In this case 13-year-old Vito Lapinta had posted on his Facebook page that the assassination of bin Laden could inspire retaliations and that Obama ought to be concerned about that. That is hardly earthshaking, Obama own people said pretty much the same thing.

But Vito was taken out of his classes by a Secret Service agent, apparently with the full cooperation of the school officials. The Secret Service are police agents, albeit of a special kind. And no police agent has the right to interrogate children without parental permission. Even kids have rights to legal counsel.

In this case the Secret Service said he was fine and released him. But his innocence is not relevant to issue that his rights were violated. What if he had said something that sane people, that is people who are not part of the political hysteria, would deem to be threatening? Anything he said could result in criminal charges being filed against him.

It is the possibility that criminal charges may result which is the reason that government thugs have no right to interrogate children without parents, or legal counsel, there to protect the rights of the child.

Vito says he was scared and that he will now be more careful about what opinions he expresses. That is sad, that is precisely the sort of response that government thugs want, but it the opposite of what we need in a free society. No child should be afraid to speak his mind, no adult either. Civil libertarians should be outraged.

I also feel it necessary to remind people that government schools are branches of the government. You can not expect government bureaucrats to protect your children from other government bureaucrats. Quite the contrary in fact. Every teacher and administrator has to be considered an agent of the state and it has to be assumed they will put the interests of the state ahead of the interests of your child. The great immorality of state education is the relationship it creates between educators and government. It makes them opponents of the best interests of the child, which ought to be their first concern.

Why Bullying Remains a Problem

Michael Milczanowski has been bulled constantly at his high school. He says: "It was ever-constant, never changing, ongoing harassment—that's all it was." We hear constantly, when some poor kid finally takes his life to end the torment, that the schools "did all they could" to end it. We are told that they try to address such issues but that they don't know about many of the cases. Kids in the schools regularly contradict the school authorities. They say that the teachers turn a blind eye to the problem. Rarely have we had such dramatic proof.

Milczanowski does not return the punches. He is not complicit in the assault in any way. His math teacher stands there watching and says a few words but otherwise does NOTHING. Milczanowski said: "I expected him to physically intervene to keep that from happening, but I guess I was wrong." The victim has dropped out of high school because he is afraid to go back.

The parents of this Texas town, as Texans are known to do, are attacking the victim. I have read dozens of hateful comments from parents saying that Milczanowski is violent. Odd that the "violent" student is the only one not trying to take punches?

As for the "poor" teacher that they are all lamenting about, well it appears he has allowed fights in his classroom before. And one of them was video taped as well. The second video is instructive. In the video the fight continues until the teacher says: "Okay, that's enough." I'm sorry, but that appears as if he allows them to punch each other until he decides they've had "enough" and only then does he step in.



With two videos of students fighting in the same classroom, with the same teacher, it is much harder to feel sorry for the teacher. This is especially true given that he seems to have a policy to allow the fighting to go on. In the Milczanowski case he stood by allowing it to happen even as the attacks pummels Michael, who does not attempt to fight back.

I regret having to say it but Texas is a place that decent people should avoid. The fundamentalist mind-set of the state is well-known. It is hateful state. This is a state where you can be arrested for selling a dildo, that executes innocent people in its rush to punish sinners, and that hates gay people. It is also one of the most heavily Southern Baptist states in the country. I do not think that a coincidence. Fundamentalism is a hateful religion and turns out hateful people.

But we also have the problem, in this case, of a governmental school system that tends to be, of the teachers, by the teachers, for the teachers. The teacher's unions put teachers ahead of students. And the politicians allow it because the unions make sure they get re-elected and teachers, being independent thinkers, tend to follow instructions from the unions. What we have is a system where teachers get attention while students don't. Teachers' unions treat teachers the way the police treat their own: they deny wrong doing unless absolutely forced to face reality.

If this teacher had not been caught on video ignoring a bully attacking another student, I can assure you he'd still be in the classroom. As is, various bureaucrats are defending him. The assumption from government employee unions is that their members are a sacred bunch whose interests must always come first—even when they are complicit in bankrupting states like California. Politicians who dare touch the sacred band of political parasites are pummeled, much the way Milczanowski was pummeled in the government-owned, government-controlled educational prison.

The whole rotten system has to go. I stand by the reform that all funding should follow students and that the funding should be allowed to go to private school as well. We here people whining about monopolies all the time and then defending the education monopoly. The government school system is a coercive one. It exists entirely because it has the ability to force people to fund it, force parents to send their children there, and because the unions have such a powerful hold over the politicians.

We have crappy, violent schools because they don't have to be better. They have a captured audience and captured funding. Only when a blatantly awful thing happens, and can't be ignored, does it get attention. Otherwise it is business as usual. It takes a video tape of a student being assaulted in full view of a do-nothing teacher to get attention. It takes kids around the country going home and hanging themselves, or putting a bullet in their brain, before anyone pays attention. Even then the hateful types come out and blame the victims.

The sooner the educational monopoly collapses the better.

Obama and the Equal Distribution of Blame

President Obama has given a speech on education where he admits that far, far too many students are failing and receiving substandard education. Well, that’s true, of course. Is this an admission that government has got its fingers into so many pies that it can’t even run the schools well? Of course not! Obama noted: “We are all to blame.” No, it’s not the government schools that deserve blame. It isn’t the unions that want school run for the benefits of teachers. It’s not the politicians who actually control the schools. It’s not the federal government that increasing tells schools how they must be run. Nope! None of the people who actually run the schools are said to be responsible except as they share responsibility with the rest of us.

You might remember that Harry Truman, when president, had a sign on his desk: “The buck stops here.” Not Obama. His motto is: The buck starts here and he quickly passes blame on to everyone! Obama is a true egalitarian—which is NOT a good thing—he wants the equal distribution of blame. Unfortunately he wants the uneven distribution of power; taking it from those who have little and redistributing to those who have much: he, his fellow politicians and the special interest groups that fund his side of the political debate.

Odd, how this works. There are, of course, tens of thousands of privately run schools that are doing very well with students. But apparently they share the blame for the government’s failure to run decent schools. Hundreds of thousands of kids get homeschooled and do pretty damn well compared to the government-held hostages in politically-controlled schools. But their parents are to blame as well. All those parents in the inner city, who desperately try to qualify their children for vouches to attend private schools, well they are to blame as well. We all have to share the blame. I suspect, however, that if Obama had good news about state-controlled schools, his administration would be taking all the credit for it.

I am told that the classes are too big. When I check average class sizes in the various states none of them were similar to the class sizes I had as a kid. My schools ran 30 to 35. I once asked me peers what they remembered and they said the same thing. Yet our schools had much better performances than what we see today. In truth pupils per teacher have been falling dramatically even as testing scores for students fail to improve. The Department of Education writes:

For public schools, the number of pupils per teacher—that is, the pupil/teacher ratio —declined from 22.3 in 1970 to 17.9 in 1985. After 1985, the public school pupil/teacher ratio continued to decline, reaching 17.2 in 1989. After a period of relative stability during the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, the ratio declined from 17.3 in 1995 to 16.0 in 2000. Decreases have continued since then, and the public school pupil/teacher ratio was 15.5 in 2007. By comparison, the pupil/teacher ratio for private schools was 13.0 in 2007. The average class size in 2007–08 was 20.0 pupils for public elementary schools and 23.4 pupils for public secondary schools.

The Department says that more and more teachers are being hired even while the number of school children are not increasing. They said that by 2009 the pupils per teacher ratio had reached a new low of 15.3 students per teacher. Yet, Obama admits the government schools are an educational disaster zone.

This does not surprise me. Teachers, through their unions in particular, are major funders of Democrats. The more of them there are the better off the President’s political party is. The kids aren’t better off because it and the taxpayers are much worse off. But those teachers are faithful bureaucrats who vote to expand state power, confiscate more wealth and contribute mightily to Democratic campaign coffers.

I am told that the government does not spend enough money to educate kids. Again the average private school spends less per student, on average, and still gets better results. One of the absolute worst school systems in the country is the Washington, DC district. I once looked at their total budget, divided it by the number of students they deal and got the average amount spent per student.

I next looked at the tuition rates at the various prestigious private schools in the area. You know the ones I mean— those schools where Obama, Congressman, Senators and other government bureaucrats, send their children. Their children got superior educations from what they provide District schoolchildren and it cost less per student. They had a voucher system in DC and parents fought hard to include their kids in the system. The parents wanted it, the kids needed it; but the teacher’s unions whined that it was “unfair” since all kids apparently need equally bad unionized education. The Democrats, who kiss the ass of the unions, immediately caved and abolished vouchers for the poor. The unions were happy, the Democrats were happy, kids got screwed but you don’t think education is about the kids, do you?

I attended a small private residential school, not because my family was wealthy, which is how we libertarians are viewed by those who earn much more than we do. Actually I was admitted precisely because we were NOT wealthy. We were four kids and a single mother who was a widow. The oldest of us was barely 12 years old. The school was a charity for needy kids with tuition determined by whatever benefits the family received for the children. Various civic groups paid the rest of the cost.

Now I have some horror stories to tell about the place and might do so some day, but I doubt it. Some demons are best left buried. But those monsters are not related to the education per se. There were a handful of teachers for the students. The school itself had around 250 students. Most left in high school. There were really only a couple dozen students at that level and they lived on campus but attended the local public school. The bulk of the students, about 230 of us were pretty evenly distributed through the different grade school levels. That works out to close to 30 per grade.

There was a small school band, ROTC (yep) and some sports. There was a rec hall and open space to play but playtime was limited. There were no parents to help us with homework. We just sat down and did it ourselves. But the education itself was certainly adequate and on par with the public schools of the day, and vastly superior to the schools we now have.

After that I did one year in a huge, relatively awful suburban public high school but complained so much about it my mother tried to send us to a local private school. It had low tuition and was funded charitably but even that got too much of a burden. One day we were called to the school office and told we were being withdrawn from the school and sent back to government schools because the few hundreds dollars it cost per month, was too much for my mother to afford. We were shocked and disappointed, none of us wanted to go back to the government schools. Word spread we were leaving. By the end of the day our tuition was paid by our teachers, who took the money out of their relatively low wages—much lower than their government counterparts. The students at this school tested 2 years above their peer groups in government schools.

Being a private, unaccredited high school my diploma wasn’t recognized by the state. I had to take a GED test to make sure I was worthy of university. In most the categories I tested in the 90 percentile and 95 in one of them. All our students had to take GED tests because our school wasn’t deemed as good as the schools where our peers were two years behind us. By the way, the fact it was religious didn’t prevent my becoming an atheist and I know of quite a few atheists who graduated from Christian schools.

I think of Marva Collin’s an inner city schoolteacher who got sick and tired of the government bureaucracy. She started a school in her home and took kids the government schools said were too dumb to learn, or too problematic. She taught them and they excelled. To this day her ghetto kids, from poor families, many of whom were failing in the government schools, continue to outshine their public school counterparts. Ronald Reagan offered her the position of chairman of the federal Department of Education. She turned it down. Smart move – she knew the government system and why it was failing and simply shuffling staff around wouldn’t solve it.


We have a school system that is run like a prison. We have teachers who are more concerned about their pensions funds and early retirement that about teaching. We have school boards and politicians running the schools who are beholden to the teacher’s unions for their positions and who are more interested in satisfying their donors than teaching kids. We have a school system that has all the flaws of any system run by bureaucrats and politicians. No, Mr. Obama, we are not all to blame.

You are to blame. So is Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, George Bush Jr., a slew of Congressman, Senators, millions of politicians and bureaucrats across the country, along with teachers, and their unions. Parents feel powerless. Most have few options but to send to their kids to the nearest state educational asylum and hope for the best. They have choices in most other matters. Not in education. Kids are held hostage to the system and will be sacrificed to the gods of politics and used in the most contemptible ways to promote personal political agendas.

The whole mess will come down one day. I’m not keen for that to happen but it will happen. Government is a lumbering dinosaur that doesn’t know how to educate very well. It is a cookie-cutter system that imposes the same sort of regimen on every student, no matter how individualized the needs. Politicians make it worse, not only is every student treated the same, but they impose regulations to make every school the same—no diversity, no choice, just regimented politically motivated courses.

We should liberate the educational system. Defund all schools completely. Take the average funding per student and distribute it to the parents in the form of vouchers. Take every state educational asylum and turn them into private LLCs with all the teachers as joint owners. Let the teachers decide the curriculum; let them decide how many officials they need at the top of the rung. Abolish the department of education at the federal and state levels. Let private schools compete on the same terms as the teacher-run schools. Who ever can attract students, and keeps them, gets the funding. Those who fail students lose students and lose funding. Some of them may even go broke. And this atheist says “Thank God” for that. They deserve to go broke. Services that don’t perform should go under. But in government, failures get more funding because they are failures.

Let humanists, progressives, rationalists, libertarians and others who want secular, quality education open their own schools, or buy out the teachers at the failing schools. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Kids who thrive when left to explore on their own can go to schools that follow that policy. Those who require more discipline and regimentation can go there. We could have quality schools that aren’t bogged down in abstinence courses and fighting about “intelligent design,” because secular, science-based education is emphasized.

Will there be some awful schools that might still survive? Sure, just as today their tens of thousands of awful schools that suck in billions from the taxpayers and fail their students. But I bet there would be less of them. These god-awful educational asylums may fool the politicians but they aren’t fooling the parents. Today parents are pretty much powerless. With funding following students those parents would be empowered and they won’t take the crap that substandard schools are dishing out. Parents would move their kids and the funding would follow them to better schools. The mere threat that shitty schools could go bankrupt and close down is precisely the sort of discipline the educational establishment needs.

MYOB isn't always the best policy.

One of the problems with platitudes about life is that life is more complex than they allow. Consider one that is popular with libertarian types: MYOB or Mind Your Own Business.

It’s not a bad rule if it is properly understood. But often I think it is misunderstood. There are most certainly times when you should NOT mind your own business.

Think about the obvious ones: you see an adult physically assaulting a child. Clearly you don’t want to mind your own business. You need to do something to stop the assault on the child. You have to judge how you do that, but minding your business would be monstrous under these circumstances. Perhaps you merely wish to call the police. Or, perhaps, you feel you have to intervene immediately.

Similarly there are times you ought not intervene.

One of the more interesting television shows is the reality show What Would You Do? It is interesting because the show sets up moral dilemmas for unsuspecting members of the public and then watches how they react.

Often people are heroes who make a stand for what is right. Too often there are just nasty, unpleasant people who turn a blind eye. Worse, some condone the cruelties they witness.

Often the show sets up scenarios where the moral imperative is to intervene. For instance, a teenage boy is seen screaming at his girlfriend in public, she is crying and he is threatening to hit her if she doesn’t obey him. People do step in. Sometimes they watch for a second, some just immediately call the police. But others immediately intervene.

I faced this dilemma once while in New York City. I was at NYU for a seminar and had taken a lunch break and was walking through Washington Square with its famed arch. A boy of about 13 was practicing tennis against the arch. His father was standing there pouring out the most abusive, screaming, tirades I had ever heard directed at a child. The whole reason was that the boy wasn’t perfect with his tennis strokes.

I first heard the shouting from a distance and looked around to see what was happening. I could see the boy cowering from this bully of a father, trying to make him happy. But this jerk kept screaming at the frightened boy. People were close to them. Some were only a few yards away. They all tried to pretend that nothing was happening. Maybe they thought they were minding their own business.

I was furious and when I get furious I rush in first, think later. I came barreling down on this bully and unleashed an equally vituperative volley of verbal assaults on him. As I got closer and closer he started backing away—typically cowardly of bullies like him. I truly felt like slapping this asshole across the face with a 2 x 4. The poor boy was terrified and like so many abused kids starting apologizing for his father and telling me that he, the boy, was the one at fault.

The poor kid wanted to blame himself for the monster that he witnessed in his father. I turned to the boy and said: “Don’t ever say that. It’s not your fault. It’s his fault!” I pointed at the trembling bully when I said it. People in the park watched the whole incident.

I walk away and not two minutes later I heard this jerk of a father starting over again. I turned back; ready to pounce on the jerk. Then I saw a man who had previous witnessed my altercation with the man heading it that direction. He immediately started telling off the father. He acted because my actions gave him moral permission to do so.

But in an episode of What Would You Do? the situation was turned around, sort of. When shouldn’t you intervene?

In this case they had a woman in a wheelchair with a physical handicap. An actress would play a customer who wouldn’t leave the woman alone, always wanting to “help” her. She was insisting on helping even when the woman was telling her to please stop. They then showed how other shoppers responded to this “well-intentioned” woman who wouldn’t mind her own business. The woman in the wheelchair neither needed, nor wanted the help being offered.

There is a lesson in that as well. Yes, we ought intervene when someone is being attacked by others. But, when they are doing fine on their own, and they don’t want you help then MYOB is quite appropriate.

This is what government can’t understand. They seem unable to make that sort of distinction. This is why government is such a pathetic problem-solver, often doing more harm than the problem it attempts to solve.

They see a girl being raped and they intervene. But they define her voluntary relationship with her boyfriend as rape and intervene even when she begs them not to do so. Politicians see individuals who exploited children to make pornography and ban it. But then they equally punish teens who take nude photos of themselves and punish them like rapists.

The obvious difference is helping people against their will. Government has trouble operating with moral nuances. It kills flies with sledgehammers. Now, there may be times to swing a sledgehammer at a problem, but often there are times when that is not wise. Government views life as black and white, not the multiple shades of gray that actually exist. So it is constantly swinging a sledgehammer that does far more harm than good.

Consider the young boy in Colorado with anger issues. His therapist told the boy to draw a picture expressing his anger, to release the anger. The boy got pissed at his teacher—given the state of government schools that is often a justified emotion. He few a picture of a stick figure with a gun and wrote: “teacher must die.” Remember, there was NO indication that he would, or even could do anything to carry this out. He finished the drawing, felt better and was throwing it away.

The teacher took the drawing from him. She talked to the parents and the therapist even confirmed the situation. Everyone was fine, and then the police stuck their nose into things. The child was then arrested and jailed while the parents scrambled to get him out. Police in particular seem to find it difficult to make moral judgments. They rush in, fists flying, when often a simple word or two would solve the problem. Now that government schools are acting more like cops than educators they are adopting the same “zero tolerance” mentality that infects the police.

Take the situation of another student, 15 year-old Nick Stuban. Stuban was suspended for buying one capsule of a synthetic compound that supposedly mimics pot. The product was legal, by the way. No laws were broken.

School officials had heard rumors of illegal drugs and investigated, not finding those they did discover that Stuban had purchased this legal substance and then questioned him, and had him sign a statement, without his parent’s present. This, by the way, is one of the most evil and dangerous features of government schools. The schools act as if they are police officers, but without any of the legal restraints that cops would have. They are doing a policing end-run around the Constitution. All employees at government schools are government employees or agents of the government. But the courts pretend they are not.

A teacher takes a cell phone from a 17-year-old girl and searches it without a warrant or probably cause. The courts say the teacher doesn’t need them. Teacher discovers a photo of the girl topless and shrieks “child porn” and calls in the police officer that is now often routinely stationed in schools to arrest children. The police officer looks at the photo and arrests the girl as a child pornographer and her life is ruined, as she is place on a sex offender list for the rest of her earthly existence.

Stuban was active in Boy Scouts, active on the football team, but these activities took place on campus. With a signed “confession” the school instantly suspended for 10 days and said they would suspend him completely. The appeal process took weeks. The 10 days turned into 20 days. Nick felt increasingly isolated from his friends.

The “zero tolerance” sledgehammer convinced many of Nick’s peers that something far worse had to have happened, otherwise the school wouldn’t act this way—a naïve view of government education. The education bureaucrats who have the kids and parents by the throat say they are merely “helping” the kids. An attorney who has worked with such cases said that the people being “helped” “feel very often that they are in the middle of criminal prosecution.”

The pressure built up for Nick. His mother was on a ventilator suffering from ALS. She struggled to stay alive telling her family she did it because she wanted to live long enough to see Nick graduate high school. The school bureaucrats and their sledgehammer made it appear that Nick would never graduate. Nick’s father, Steve, was confused. The school said they had no idea what the substance was that they were prosecuting Nick over. Steve said, “You have an infraction, you don’t know what the substance is and you arbitrarily apply the harshest standard to it.” Yes, that is the government sledgehammer.

A disciplinary hearing was held and school bureaucrats warned the family against bringing an attorney by the bureaucrats. They foolishly listened. Steve says the hearing turned accusatory and vicious. Sandy Stuban started crying in her wheelchair. Nick started crying. The school officials, no doubt, were proud of their sledgehammer.

Two more weeks dragged on before the bureaucrats told the family anything. Nick would be assigned to another school, where he couldn’t be with any of his friends. The bureaucrats thought they were being lenient. Steve told Nick, “There’s no way to win.” Depressed the teen actually did turn to drugs, something that wasn’t the case before. He was trying to find a way to ease the depression and pain he was suffering. The boy texted a friend that he wanted to take his life. The family took him to a psychiatric hospital where he diagnosed as clinically depressed. They treated him and advised counseling, which Nick started.

Nick took his own life, describing how much pain he was in and how unfair life was. Nick didn’t understand. Life is neither fair nor unfair, it merely is. People are fair, or unfair. In this case the government officials who pretend to be educators were the ones who were unfair. They used the sledgehammer.

They were morally and intellectually incapable of telling when help is needed and when it is intrusive. But that is how government is.

And now, for a change: just some good news.

Almost two weeks ago we reported the sad case of Laurent Ghilain and Peter Meurrens, a Belgian couple that were caught in a bureaucratic nightmare. They wanted a child in their family and decided to use a surrogate in the Ukraine with Laurent as the donor. Their son Samuel was born two years ago but they have not been able to bring him home because the Beligian government has refused to issue a passport for the child. Even though the boy has a home waiting for him he has been stuck in a Ukrainian orphanage. The bureaucrats claim they have no regulations for this situation so they can't do anything because they don't know what to do. (A Facebook page for this case is here.)

Today Laurent sent out a notice:

The Belgian judge said YES, we just got the decision. The judge recognizes, after 2 years of waiting, the "lineage" (bond between father and son). Prosecutors still have 1.5 months as from 28/02 to appeal. We will demand a Belgian passport for Samuel at the Ministries of Foreign Affairs this week, and we cross our fingers that the response is immediate and that we do not hear of an appeal. If all goes well, it should go fast... let's hope."

This is damn good news and I'm thrilled for little Samuel and his fathers. Given the nature of bureaucrats, they aren't human, I still worry that more heartache will come to this family before final victory. But I believe they will eventually win, but they need the loving support of everyone.

More Justice, Well a Little Bit

Kelley Williams-Bolar is a mother who lied, and I applaud her for doing so. Kelly is a 40-year-old mother of two who is working on a teaching certificate and works with special needs kids at a local school. She lives in a housing project and the local government school is a pretty awful place to send children. Kelley's father lives in a a different school district and she registered her children in that school district using her father's address. Kelley would drive her daughters to a school bus stop, and after school they would walk to their grandfather's, who would watch them until Kelley got off work and could pick them up. For this "crime" she and her father were arrested.

When those damned bureaucrats (yet again) learned of this they demanded Kelley pay them $30,000 for tuition fees. When she was unable and unwilling to do so they put her on trial and she was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, reduced to 10 days, two years on probation and 80 of community service.

After hundreds of thousands of protests were lodged, the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, has asked the Ohio Parole Board to consider a pardon. Of course, that is a rather cowardly way for Kasich to deal with the situation since he could issue a pardon on his own. But he'd rather have a bureaucratic stamp of approval on it first. Kasich said: "Many people have shared their thoughts with me in letters, e-mail and phone calls and I appreciate their outreach." (Anyone want to bet he doesn't appreciate their outreach and finds this whole thing a headache?

The teacher's unions don't like cases like this as they don't want any attention drawn to the sorry state of public education, unless, of course, it is to find a reason to increase their salaries again. And the sad reality is that the public school system is now run for the benefit of the teacher's unions and not the students.

The best solution to the inequality situation is allowing parents to send their children to any school they wish, with the funding following the student. Yes, that would defund some schools—the shitty ones, who either have to get their act together or go under. But the unions want to protect those schools and those teachers at the expense of the children.

And, of course, Egypt

There is really good news in Egypt as well. As you no doubt know the entire Middle East is in turmoil after the Tunisian people successfully rid themselves of their dictatorial government. Then Egypt erupted in similar protests with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in amazingly peaceful demonstrations—in spite of violence being used by the government and their thugs. I was absolutely convinced these would succeed and that Mubarak would be ousted. It took a few days more than I thought it would, but he resigned.

The most recent marches in Egypt, however, were quite interesting. It was the police marching, telling the public they are sorry about how they treated them. I guess they realized that things have changed and they better apologize if they want to have employment, and with Mubarak out of power they aren't working for him anymore. Now, if we can just get the TSA employees to walk off their jobs and apologize to the American people for their groping, fondling, intrusive photos, abrupt and rude manners and flagrant disregard for the humanity of their victims.

More good news out of the Middle East is that the protests are spreading from one Arab dictatorship to another. Contrary to the hysteria pushed by the war lobby and Israeli lobby, a very large percentage of people in Muslim nations actually do want modern government that is democratic and, at the very least, respects a greater amount of individual rights than currently is the case. These sentiments are held down by an alliance between the dictatorial government and the radical Islamists—which in Iran is the same group.

Now hundreds of thousands of people are protesting, yet again, in Iran. The Islamist theocracy there has never been popular. It was put into power as the only real opposition to the tyrannical rule of the US-backed Shah of Iran. Had the US not backed the Shah I doubt that the Ayatollah's would have come to power and the modern Islamists political movement would be much less than what it is today. Truly, US foreign policy has created, as Jonathan Kwitny put it, "Endless Enemies."

Iran has always been one of the most Western Muslim nations in terms of culture. And with most the population being young people, who are not enamored with the moralistic rule of Iran's version of the Republican Party. There has been widespread hatred in Iran for their godly rulers. The one thing that would unify the people behind their government would be US intervention there. That is not likely so there is a chance that this time the people will topple the religious regime that is holding them down.

In many ways American ideals—even those now discarded by our own politicians—and culture still inspire those who seek freedom in other nations. Unfortunately our foreign policy has continually botched up our natural appeal by linking us to oppressive regimes. The US continually backed Mubarak as it backed the Shah of Iran, pushing the oppressed people into the arms of the very groups we say we are working against. American interventionist policy is the biggest boost the Islamic radicals have had. I do think the true sentiments of a large percentage of the Muslim world is what we are seeing in these protests. We could quite possibly be in the first stages of multiple revolutions across the Islamic world that will push them toward modern, liberal values.

Screw the kids, save the unions.

Consider a for-profit hospital that is filled with patients but faces a budget crunch. The hospital has various employees with various skill levels. Some staff are highly paid, but have lower skill levels. But these highly paid employees have an “in” with the board of directors. The hospital board owes these staff members some favors.

The board keeps the highly paid staff members, to the detriment of the patients. And it cuts the lower-paid staff, even if they are better at their job. Of course, since it is firing the lower-paid staff it has to get rid of more of them to make up the deficit. Had it fired these less qualified, more highly paid staff it could have covered the deficit with fewer lay-offs, to the benefit of patients.

What would say about this scenario? Is this the evil nature of capitalism? Is this “private” enterprise at work?

Before you answer you might want to know that the scenario above exists, just in a different field. The field in question is the public education system and for the proof I turn to the normally left-of-center Los Angeles Times.

The Times tells the story of John Leichty Middle School. The staff at this school performed miracles, bringing up the grade schools of students who had previously performed quite badly. But with a budget crunch the school board started firing teachers and because many of the teachers at Leichty were new they were dismissed. The school board, and the politicians, and the teacher’s unions have a backroom deal that says firing takes place on seniority basis, not job skills. As the Times says:

Quality-blind layoffs are just one vestige of seniority rules introduced decades ago to promote fairness and protect teachers from capricious administrators. Enshrined in state law and detailed in teachers' union contracts, the prerogatives of seniority continue to guide many of the key personnel decisions made in public schools across the country, including pay and assignments. The effects are most keenly felt by students during layoffs.

By looking at the performance of the students of the teachers laid-off compared to those who were retained, the Times determines that “the district laid off hundreds of its most promising math and English teachers. About 190 ranked in the top fifth in raising scores and more than 400 ranked in the top 40%.” The Times also found that since some of these very good teachers were “new” teachers they were paid less than those retained. “An estimated 25% more teachers would have kept their jobs if L.A. Unified had based its cuts on teachers’ records in improving test scores.”’

Of course attempts to reform the “seniority” rule is opposed by the California Teachers Association, the trade union for government teachers.

The kids at Leichty had done poorly in their previous schools. But this school tried to do things differently and the teachers there believed the kids had the ability to learn but had been short-changed before. And the teachers were union members, not that they have a whole lot of choice in the matter. But most thought the union represented them. So when over half the teachers at Leichty were laid off they wanted to know what the union would do.

When the union officials meet the teachers their message was a sorry one. They made it clear that these teachers would be fired because the union was wedded to the “seniority” rule and not to performance. According to the Times, the union president “said he told teachers there was no evidence that new teachers do better than veterans, seniority-based layoffs were part of union policy.”

The teachers who were let go went off looking for other positions, some in private schools. Many made it clear that they would never return to the school system again. And the kids, who saw test scores take-off faced plummeting scores again and lost interest in the school.

The teacher’s unions donate millions of dollars every election cycle, almost all of it to Democrats. These candidates then make sure the unions get the legislation and benefits they demand. So the teachers hand the politicians money and they politicians then raise the pay of the teachers. And so the cycle goes. It’s one hand washing the other. It works out nicely for everyone concerned except the kids and the taxpayers.

Another dead kid, thanks to hate.

Asher Brown, left, was just 13-years-old. A few days ago he took a pistol to his head and killed himself. He was the unrelenting victim of anti-gay bullies. He attended Hamilton Middles School, in Cypress, Texas, just outside of Houston.

When Asher's step-father, David Truong, returned home from work he found the boy. "I thought he was laying there reading a book or something. My son put a gun to his head because he couldn't take what he was hearing and the constant teasing." Shortly after the boy's mother, Amy, returned home to find the police and discover that her boy was dead.

Fox News reports: "The Truongs say over this past summer, Brown [Asher] confided in them that he was gay. The paper says: "Facebook is now full of condolences for the 13-year-old student. An outpouring of love from his peers over his death. Love he obviously did not feel in life."

Asher, according to Houston Chronicle, regularly "had been called names and endured harassment from other students." Because of this he "stuck with a small group of friends who suffered similar harassment from other students."

Reports say that boys grabbed Asher in gym class and forced him to pretend that he was having sex with them. In an incident that took place the day before his death, Asher was walking down the stairs at school when a boy purposely tripped him. Asher fell down the stairs to the next landing. His books were scattered on the landing. The other boy then came down and kicked the books down the next flight of stairs. He did the same to Asher as well.

Kelli Durham, a spokeswoman for the school district, simultaneously claimed that this incident was investigated but also claimed the school had no idea the boy was being bullied. The Chronicle reports: "Durham said that incident was investigated, but turned up no witnesses or video footage to corroborate the couple's claims." Elsewhere, the same article reports she said, "no students, school employees or the boy's parents ever reported that he was being bullied." So, if no one reported the bullying then exactly how were they able to "investigate" an incident they didn't know about?

Amy Truong couldn't believe the claims: "That's absolutely inaccurate—it's completely false. I did not hallucinate phone calls to counselors and assistant principals. We have no reason to make this up... It's like they're calling us liars." The Chronicle reported that students and parents left messages at the Fox News site stating "that the boy had been bullied by classmates for several years and claimed Cy-Fair ISD [Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District] does nothing to stop such harassment."

The boy's mother said: "It has to stop. I don't want any other family to have to go make funeral arrangements like I did for my son. He wasn't supposed to die at 13."

Yes, it has to stop. But it won't. At least it won't until every anti-gay bigot out there knows that their view are "not okay." I am not saying ban their speech, I am saying we have to condemn it. I don't give a flying-fuck if you think that you are channeling Jehovah, Jesus or Allah, when you express your hatred for gay people. You can take your holy book and shove it, for all I care. Kids are dying, damn it. Can't you get it through your thick skull that your religion is teaching your kids to hate other kids. And that those other kids go home and kill themselves.

In just the last few weeks I had to report on Seth Walsh, (left) 14, of Tehachapi, CA, who hanged himself from a tree in his family's yard. Seth was harassed for being gay. UPDATE: Sadly I must report that Seth died yesterday. Billy Lucas, (left) 15, of Greensburg, Indiana, went into the family's barn, to be with his horse. It was there he hanged himself. He was bullied and attacked for supposedly being gay. Justin Aaberg (right), 15, of Anoka, Minnesota, was gay, he was bullied, and he too, is now dead because of it. Three other students in his school district, according to various sources, recently killed themselves as well, because of anti-gay harassment.

Yet, during the mourning period for Justin the Catholic Church mailed out over 1 million anti-gay DVDs to their members, to fight gay couples being give equality of rights. As if that corrupt, vile institution has any moral standing any more. When priests rape kids they cover it up, when two adults of the same gender love one another however, they are deeply offended.

An example of the sort of hatred that gay teens face comes from Justin's own school district. Two teachers Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson "are accused of repeatedly harassing one of their students because they thought he was gay." Yes, I said they were teachers.

Jaheem Herrera (left) didn't even make it to his teens. He was eleven years old! The student from Dunaire Elementary School in DeKalb, Georgia went home and took a belt and hanged himself in his closet. His mother said: "He used to say Mom they keep telling me this... this gay word, this gay, gay, gay. I'm tired of hearing it, they're telling me the same thing over and over." Jaheem's mother, like many of the other parents of dead children, said she reported the bullying to the school but they refused to do anything about it. Instead it "just got worse and worse and worse." The morning of his death he didn't want to go to school again. When he came home that afternoon he gave his report card to his mother—it was good—and went upstairs. His younger sister discovered him, she grabbed her brother and tried to lift him up to prevent the belt from strangling him, while screaming for help. It was too late. School officials tried to claim that when other students were bullying the boy as "gay" that what they really meant was that he was "happy."

Carl Walker-Hoover (right), was in sixth grade. He too was just 11-years-old. He was relentlessly attacked by other kids for being gay. His mother, like most the other parents referred to here, reported the attacks to the school, New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, MA. He also hanged himself when he couldn't take it any longer. The Boston Globe editorialized that "an act so desperate by one so young is a clear reminder of how schools can become torture chambers for students perceived as different."

Below is a memorial video that was produced to honor Justin Aaberg, The music you will hear is a recording of Justin playing the cello. While it was created for Justin, I don't think those who created it will mind if it acts as a memorial for all these kids, victims of the anti-gay prejudices that are pushed by the Religious Right and the Republican Party. Never, never, never, let one of these bastards ever get away with the fraudulent claim that they are "doing it for the kids." They are doing it to the kids. Never forget that.

CBS News report on cyberspying school district.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

CBS News has reported on the cyberspying school district that we reported previously.

If this is true—it's damn frightening.

This is one of the more troubling stories that I've read in a long time. What I'm reading is the court filing in a lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District, on behalf of the minor, Blake Robbins, filed by his parents.

The school district issued laptops to the students. The laptops had webcams installed. In legalese the suit contends that the school district has "been spying on the activities of Plaintiffs and Class members (Blake and other students)" through the "indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District." '

The law suit contends that none of the literature given to students and their parents contains any reference "to the fact that the school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webacam at any time the school district wished to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera at the time of the activation."

In other words, the government school district issued laptops to students and the district could activate the webcam and use it to spy on students anytime the computer was turned out. This was done without informing people this was possible and can be done without the knowledge of the computer user. Consider where students are likely to have their computers. It is not unusual for a student to take a laptop into their bedroom, where they undress, change clothes and engage in otherwise, very private activities. Yet school district bureaucrats can remotely use the students laptop to watch these activities.

This new method of spying on students, in the privacy of their home, was revealed when Blake was told by the Assistant Principal of Harrington High School, Lindy Matsko, that he "was engaged in improper behavior in his home." As proof of this improper behaviour the school showed him "a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor Plaintiff's personal laptop issued by the School District."

Blake's father, Michale, "verified, through Ms. Matsko, that the School District in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a students' personal laptop computer issued by the School District at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer." Equally important is that this can be done so it "will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it."

The suit says: "As the laptops at issue were routinely used by students and family members while at home, it is believed and therefore averred that many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress."

Unless the allegations in the suit are entirely invented by the family, which seems unlikely, this indicates a dangerous new method of putting the public under surveillance. The law suit is making claims based on laws that are supposed to protect privacy, due process for surveillance, and similar manners. I think they should go for the jugular.

Let us make a few points to law the foundation for having the School District arrested and tried as sex offenders. The District gave laptops to 1800 teenage students. In the laptop was a webcam that could be turned on by government bureaucrats to observe those students at any time, including in the privacy of their home. Almost 100% of these students will, at one time or another, engage in legal sexual activity in the privacy of their bedroom. By legal I mean either with another teen considered legally capable of consenting, or in masturbatory activity. With 1800 students engaging in such sex acts the possibility that computer will be sitting there is very high. And government bureaucrats may be watching said activity. Thus the School District has created a webcam operation which shows teens engaged in sexual activity.

It is entirely possible that the signals could be intercepted as well, by others, who may view these "sex webcam shows" that the School District created. The School District officials who set up the program, those who implemented the system, and all school officials who may view these webcams should thus be investigated immediately for the production and dissemination of child pornography. All those found involved should be required to register as sex offenders. In teens who engage in "sexting" voluntarily are arrested then why wouldn't it be a crime for school officials to drag teens involuntarily into something equally explicit?

This is precisely what these School Districts do to teens who engages in "sexting." School Districts, that discover that students voluntarily, and consensually, photograph themselves in the nude, routinely have those students arrested as child pornographers. So why should school officials, doing the same thing, but without the consent of the teens involved, be treated any differently? Criminal charges should be filed immediately.

In fact, along with the law suit, I think parents should file criminal complaints against the School District for the recording and dissemination of child pornographer because the District could watch underage students in the nude, or engaged in sexual activity.

The School District admits that the computers came with the remote webcam feature, which it claims, is only used "to help locate a laptop in the event it was reported lost, missing or stolen" and that it is not used "for any other purpose." But Blake was disciplined for improper activity at home, which had nothing to do with a lost, missing or stolen computer. A photo, taken using the webcam, was provided to him as proof of his action. This indicates that the feature was, in fact, used for purposes other than tracking missing computers.

And while the School District says that the webcams will only be turned on, in the future, with the "express written notification to all students and families"—notice it doesn't require their consent, only that they be told it will be done—there is nothing to prevent school officials from turning on the feature, without notification, if only to browse for titillating scenes. What parent would take this sort of assurance seriously?

What the new policy boils down to is that the school district, or individual employees of the district, will have the ability to turn on the webcam at will, but promise they won't do so without warning students in advance. And, if the officials, don't announce they did it, but still do it anyway, how is that monitored? What assurances do parents have that school officials aren't getting their jollies by turning on the webcams during the hours students would be preparing for bed? The School District continues to have the ability to spy on students anytime it, or any one with access to the systems, wishes and all parents get is the promise that this won't be done. In other words, there is absolutely nothing to stop it happening but the solemn promise of a bunch of government bureaucrats—and we all know what that is worth.

The big media finally notices.

Almost a full month after this blog covered this story, CNN has finally noticed it and does an interview with Will Phillips, the 10-year-old who refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance because he said that there wasn't real "liberty and justice" for all. CNN does an interview with the boy, who is accompanied by his father, even though Will pretty much does all the talking. He's clearly a smart kid.

Another school goes overboard with zero tolerance.

The bureaucratic mind is a wonder to behold. It is rigid, unthinking, and bound by manuals and rules. Minutia and inconsequentials are the rule of the day. The culprits in this case are the morons who run the Lansingburgh High School.

Matthew Whalen, sounds like a budding militarist to me but that doesn't mean he isn't the victim in this case. Whalen is an Eagle Scout anxious to go off to U.S. Military Academy and a member of the National Guard. True to his budding nature he keeps a "survival kit" in his car which contains a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal and a tw0-inch pocket knife. These things are kept locked in his car.

But the bureaucrats who control the government school learned these things were locked in the car and saw, not a would-be militarist off to invade some country, but a terrorist, or perhaps a criminal about to rape and pillage and execute most his fellow students—all with the tw0-inch pocketknige that was locked up in his car in the parking lot. Obviously an immediate threat.

So they suspended him from classes for five days. And then they held a hearing and decided the crime of having this survival kit in his car was such a threat to their rules that they added another 15 days to his suspension. The school says:

"The district also has an established policy of zero tolerance with respect to possesions of weapons of any kind on school property or in school buildings. We believe this policy allows us to fulfill our duty of maintaining the safety of our district's educational environment for our students, faculty, and community members."

Zero tolerance is a policy loved by bureaucrats because it removes the necessity to think. The rule is the rule and common sense, something that is missing among the rule bound, is almost totally absent.

That zero tolerance is so loved by the bureaucrats and teacher's unions tells us something about the current state of government-run education. State schooling is run by individuals who can't think, who can't apply principles to situations based on the evidence. They don't have independence of spirit, an ability for critical thinking, or a desire to instill these values in the children under then control. They cling to rules like the most rabid authoritarians. They are in the government system because the system relieves them of the necessity to think—which really ought to be the central task of their job. How do these people teach critical thinking and common sense to the young when they are so afraid of practicing these themselves.

And to be quite honest, I'd be a lot happier if I thought that Matthew had been taught critical thinking instead of mindless obedience to authority. Unfortunately it seems that the schools and the military are both united in a campaign to stamp out such traits in the young.

Fifth grader sets cat among the pigeons.

Will Phillips, is a fifth-grade student at West Fork Middle School in West Fork, Arkansas. He is also a student who got into a bit of trouble with the school authorities, especially a substitute teacher who overstepped her boundaries.

Not long ago Will came home and told his mother and father, Laura and Jay Phillips, that he was no longer going to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school. He told them that the pledge talked about "liberty and justice" for all, but that he didn't think this existed for gay people. He told his parents: "To say them [the words of the pledge] and not mean them would be a lie."

But a substitute teacher started getting on his case every day he refused. The teacher just wouldn't let the matter rest. On the fourth day she tried guilt, telling the boy that his mother and grandmother would want him to say the pledge. His response was: "With all due respect, you can jump in a lake." As Laura Phillips said: "Don't push him—four days of hassle, hassle, hassle and raise your voice. He's going to lose his temper." He did, and he had every right to. The matter of forcing students to say the pledge was cleared up in 1943. Apparently this part of Arkansas is stuck in 1942. Schools have no such authority.

The pledge itself is a rather interesting thing if you know its history. Consider how elected officials are supposed to pledge allegiance to the constitution, not to the flag and the government, as the Pleadge requires. Two cousins, Francis Bellamy and Edward Bellamy, along with a friend, Daniel Ford were advocates of a socialist state as envisioned by Edward in his book Looking Backward. They felt that the American school system should be like the Prussian system and wanted to use it to teach loyalty to the state. In particular they meant it as a way of making people loyal to the federal government.

Edward Bellamy lamented the Constitution of the US because it limited government functions. He admired the British system where the Constitution did was a plethora of legislaiton and traditions not a written document with enumerated powers. Bellamy wrote: "England's Constitution readily admits of constant though gradual modification. Our American Constitution does not readily admit of such change. England can thus move into Socialism almost imperceptibly. Our Constitution being largely individualistic must be changed to admit of Socialism, and each change necessitates a political crisis." Bellamy hoped that his Pledge would push the public more in favor of a centralized state. This is why it amuses me to watch the Right constantly defending the Pledge while the Left seems to hate it. Funny that.

The teacher was way out of line. Will was quite within his rights to refrain from saying the Pledge of Allegiance. His parents had warned him that some people would criticize him, or perhaps insult him, for that decision. But he said he was prepared for that to happen. He was still going to do what he believed was right. But what I don't think he was prepared for was an adult in authority using her position to try to bully him into caving into conformity.

Telling the woman "to jump in the lake" may not have been the best choice of words. However, in his situation I suspect that my comments wouldn't have been nearly so refrained. From my reading of the situation it appears that Will was the most adult individual in that room that day.

To find someone so bright at 10 years of age is refreshing and in Arkansas! He must get lonely.