Oh shit

By Capt. Fogg

Not again.

Two students were shot at a Los Angeles high school today because some idiot put a cocked and locked pistol in his backpack and it went off when he dropped his pack on a table. One could call it an accident, but you'd at least have to put the word in italics.

There's no resemblance to the Tucson shooting, although the student obviously illegally possessed the gun, illegally concealed it, and illegally brought it into a school, even if he wasn't out to shoot anyone at that particular moment. I'll bet there will be more calls to make it even more illegal, but more than likely he was a gang member, so illegality isn't a deterrent any more than it is to a psychotic. It may have earned him some status, in fact.

It may surprise some people, but we have a maze of gun control laws and they aren't doing a good enough job with this kind of crime and these kinds of criminals: gang members, psychotics, and sociopaths -- a tiny but deadly element.

But without knowing just how the kid got the gun, I can only speculate about what went wrong and can't talk about what to do, other than to do a better job with the metal detectors. There's a gun-show loophole. There are hard-to-control private transfers, some legal, some not, and some guns are stolen. Even though nothing short of a 24-hour curfew and a police state with no civil rights will stop such crimes, it's time we stopped being comfortable with more and more "gun control" bills based on twisted descriptions, laden with straw arguments, and riddled with loopholes. It's time for -- no, please don't laugh -- some bipartisan and rational reconsideration.

It's also time to remember that in a huge country, with a growing population, crime can be on the decline and still appear to be on the rise.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

There's craziness on the loose in North Carolina

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is what happens when the culture of fear takes over: 

Sanford, N.C. — An athletic and academic standout in Lee County said a lunchbox mix-up has cut short her senior year of high school and might hurt her college opportunities.

Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, was suspended from Southern Lee High School in October after school personnel found a small paring knife in her lunchbox.

Smithwick said personnel found the knife while searching the belongings of several students, possibly looking for drugs.

"She got pulled into it. She doesn't have to be a bad person to be searched," Smithwick's father, Joe Smithwick, said.

The lunchbox really belonged to Joe Smithwick, who packs a paring knife to slice his apple. He and his daughter have matching lunchboxes.

"It's just an honest mistake. That was supposed to be my lunch because it was a whole apple," he said.

Ashley Smithwick said she had never gotten in trouble before and was surprised when the principal opened her lunchbox and found the knife.

The teen was initially given a 10-day suspension, then received notice that she was suspended the rest of the school year.

"I don't understand why they would even begin to point the finger at me and use me as an example," she said.

This month, Ashley Smithwick, a soccer player who takes college-level courses, was charged with misdemeanor possession of a weapon on school grounds. She is no longer allowed to set foot on campus.

There are many nefarious forces behind this ever-growing culture of fear: news media sensationalism (hyping threats beyong all reasonable perspective), the cult of law and order, post-9/11 security obsession, a general disregard for young people and youth culture, etc.

In this case, it's school security run amok (as schools have been hyped up into cesspools of violence), with no apparent consideration for the specifics -- which clearly exonerate this young woman.

Those responsible for suspending Ms. Smithwick and potentially ruining her life, or at least her academic career, should themselves be suspended, if not fired, for abuse of power.

And, if need be, the governor should step in and make sure that these absurd charges are dropped, that Ms. Smithwick receives not just a formal apology but whatever reparations she may be owed, and that policies are put in place to prevent this sort of madness from recurring in future.

The children are the future... so let them eat shit

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A troubling story from the USA Today:

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."

That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.

For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders -- KFC won't buy them -- and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."

Awesome.

(By the way, I don't eat KFC, and most other fast food, not just out of concern for my health but out of regard for both "quality considerations," to put it mildly, and humaneness -- just read Fast Food Nation. It's a good thing I'm no longer in school -- though I only went to high school in the U.S. and I don't think I ever ate whatever crap they were serving in the cafeteria.)

Toronto-area high school takes To Kill a Mockingbird off Grade 10 reading list over language complaint

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's not just in the U.S. that this sort of thing happens:

The classic literary novel To Kill a Mockingbird is being pulled from the Grade 10 English course at a Brampton high school after a parent complained about the use of a racial epithet in the book.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which challenges racial injustice in America's Deep South, will be removed from curriculum at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School following a lone complaint from a parent whose child will be in Grade 10 this September.

"The parent was concerned about some of the language in the book," said Bruce Campbell, spokesman for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Principal Kevin McGuire made the decision at the end of the school year to resolve the complaint quickly. The book, a fixture on high-school reading lists across the country, will still be available in the library, said Campbell.

"The school administration was aware of the parent's concern and made the decision to use another board-approved resource that teaches the same concept for the coming year," said Campbell.

"It's not a requirement that the novel be used," he said. "It's an option on our list of board-approved resources, and the school can make a decision to use whatever resource (it) would feel best suits them."

"In this case, the principal believed an alternate resource might be better suited for that community," said Campbell.

This is a Catholic school board, not a regular public one -- both are publicly funded in Ontario -- which may partly explain the decision. Still, it seems to me that the community would be better served by having what is widely regarded as one of the great novels of the last century, "bad" language and all, read by its students (in Grade 10 -- it's not like the book was assigned to young kids, after all -- presumably advanced high school students can handle, and appreciate the context of, a broad range of language).

What is the point of shielding students from a great book that just happens to contain language that some find objectionable (in this case, one parent)? Should students -- again, Grade 10 students, not children -- also not read, say, Huck Finn? Or how about Shakespeare, whose work was hardly free of language that at least one person might find objectionable (and that was, for the time, extremely objectionable). Forget that the language used in the book is appropriate to what the book is about, that the language is actually essential to the book. This obviously hyper-sensitive principal is denying his students the education they deserve and require. You'd think he had removed not a great novel like To Kill a Mockingbird from the classroom but, oh, say, Hustler.

Is censorship -- and this, indeed, is a form of it (the book hasn't been banned, but it won't be taught) -- more important to the community than literature? It would seem so.

Is the value of a book determined more by its objectionable language (even as objected to by just one parent) than by its content? Again, it would seem so.

Apparently, what the book teaches about racial injustice is outweighed by the presence of a few "bad" words. Apparently, reading those words would corrupt those oh-so-impressionable students. Apparently, the book is otherwise disposable.

This is truly outrageous, a shameful decision, a cowardly act for which there is no excuse.

Sign of the Apocalypse #61: Seclusion rooms for special-needs children

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I can only hope that the people behind this barbarity get what they deserve.

And, all across the country, there need to be laws, with clear guidelines, restricting -- and perhaps banning, if a suitable alternative can be found, as surely one can -- the use of these so-called "seclusion rooms," or "time-out rooms."

Is this seriously how special-needs children ought to be treated? By being thrown into isolation?

It makes you wonder how civilized our civilization really is.