Strip-searching a girl to look for (legal) drugs is profoundly conservative.  It involves gross abuse of authority, paranoia over drug usage, and misogyny.

The lawsuit is, of course, fully justified.  But it is insufficient; the vice-principal and any others who participated in this travesty should be up on felony charges.  False imprisonment, terroristic threats, and sexual assualt.

“hairshirt bubbles” 

You are always good for my lulz of the day.  I agree with you re: school boards.  They are the GOP farm team and Democrats have finally figured this out and started fielding candidates here in Greater Phoenix.  I’m sure that’s where whatever policy that caused the girl to be strip searched originated.

Teachers can really be conservative or liberal… I grew up in a pretty conservative town (overwhelmingly Yes on 8, to the point I was personally scared to express my perspective), and there were a lot of conservative teachers, but a lot of liberal ones too.

Administrators, though, were overwhelmingly conservative. And, more to the point, like your Vice Principal here, assholes.

Most of them start out as teachers. They go the administration route either because they like being in charge or they are bad teachers (and bad teachers, frequently, can’t connect to students because of an authoritarian bent). They make school policy, and it tends to be borderline fascist.

Of course, I speak in broad generalities. I’ve even had one or two hip principals.

The conservative argument against schools, as I understand it, is more than people with WRONG ideas get an opportunity to talk to their kids. It was never much of a problem for any of the liberal adults I knew growing up when I ended up with a creationist biology teacher. “Oh, what an idiot. Is he convincing? No? Okay, let me know if you’ve got any questions about why Creationism is, in fact, a load of shit.”

We win in the market of ideas, so they endeavor to control the marketplace—and school is an incredibly important forum in that regard.

They’re search for Ibuprofenl????  *walks away mumbling.*

I’m simply stunned that 2 female employees of the school (they don’t disclose whether or not they were teachers) would willingly comply with an order to strip search a girl over Advil.  Well, not really, in the current economy there’s probably no indignity a worker won’t put up with. 

America:  Now Doing The Jobs That Americans Previously Wouldn’t Do.

On the school board thing… conservatives and Republicans are much better at using local governments than Democrats are. I’m not sure why… maybe because church is such a potent aspect of civil society, and liberal churches don’t spend as much time on politics.

I get really frustrated with critics of our direct democracy here in California for the same reason. Yes, a series of ballot initiatives ruined our state budget, our schools, took away marriage rights, and gave the Republicans absurd minority rights in the legislature. The Democrats just haven’t been anywhere near as active as they should be in writing their own ballot initiatives to undo that damage. It isn’t enough that we control the legislature, because that’s not how politics actually work in California.

We need to keep our eyes on the school boards, the county supervisors, the ballot initiatives, and everything else. Any one got any ideas about better local-level liberal infrastructure/organization?

No, it’s not Liberal.  The “Teachers Iz Librul” myth comes from the fact that teachers are unionized and tend from time to time to challenge the white-paste textbook industry’s thoroughly vetted wisdom.  In many ways the modern school is an extension of police authority - without civil rights.  For some screwed-up reason in this country children below the age of 18 are not citizens in any real sense; they are objects under the control of parents or other authority figures.  Then, of course, once they turn the magic age of 18 they are expected to be able to vote, die in the battlefield, and be executed for crimes without any intervening period of apprentice adulthood which we see in other civilized countries.

Oh, of course, if they do a Bad Thing - a Really Bad Thing, like taking drugs - they’re made probationary adults just for the purposes of slinging their tender asses into jail where they can learn how to REALLY be criminal.  And, of course, because our society really really can’t handle people making decisions for themselves they can’t drink until they’re 21…read above where they can get gut-shot in Iraq for “freedom” and “liberty” but can’t take a goddamn drink of beer because they’re stupid children, donchaknow.

The construct of childhood in this country is completely and utterly messed up.  In essence, children are objects which are intended to absorb knowledge and wisdom but have absolutely no agency until they are 18/21, at which point they are COMPLETELY adult and expected to act accordingly.  Just look at the way we treat custody - a 16-year-old cannot decide which parent to live with, cannot decide which school to attend, cannot have any real effect on his or her future but what is dictated by the parents and/or school authorities.

<anecdata>

I had to drop some stuff off for my nephew, at his high school, a couple years ago when I looked way younger than I was, especially dressed in a hoodie and baggy cargoes. I was mistaken by the vice-principal for a student and it was an eye-opener of an experience: when I asked politely which way the office was, he immediately shot back “Why do you want the office?”

Well, jeez, doucheweasel. Maybe I want the office because I just started my period and there’s blood pooling in my pants. Maybe I want the office because one of the male students or teachers just assaulted me and I need to call my parents or the cops. Maybe I’m late for my insulin and if you keep me here giving me your bullshit authoritarian third-degree shakedown I’m going to go into a twitching seizure.

I also saw how unbelievably rude the staff were to the students (holding a door open and then saying loudly and sarcastically “YOU’RE WELCOME,” for instance. And it’s not that they were more rude than I remember my high school teachers and office staff being, either, it’s just that watching it as someone from the outside, as an adult, gave me a completely different perspective on it than I had when I was a student and my peers and I were treated the same way.

</anecdata>

At least for adolescent age students, being in school is a hell of a lot like being in a prison camp for the day. Where you go, what you do, what you wear, what you say and how, why, where you want to go there, do that, wear that, say that is always subject to scrutiny by authority figures. The authority figures don’t necessarily feel any obligation to be understanding, compassionate or even polite to you. And your avenues for redress if you’re wronged are pretty much nonexistent. I’ve even hard a lot of people argue that when students are on school property they stop having any rights. Now that’s scary shit.

I think school boards should have personal liability in these circumstances.

It might mean they dismiss some overzealous microcephalic vice principals before they put them all at risk of losing their houses.

Any one got any ideas about better local-level liberal infrastructure/organization?

You need to get involved in your mass meetings or caucuses at the local grass roots level.  While the races don’t have the drama of National or State races, local politicians often have a far more direct effect on your lives.  Every state is different how they do it.  Call your local party headquarters about having a mass meeting at your home.  The lower the level you get involved the more say you have.

I think a big part of the problem is that whole elision that conservatives love to do where liberal, socialist and communist all mean the same thing, so therefore if you’re a liberal, that means you agree with the totalitarian abuses of Stalin.

Which, of course, just means that wingnuts make themselves look stupid when they run around claiming that liberals are all on board with the police state, what with us being Commie pinko sympathizers and all.

Schools are a mess.  We send our children there hoping that they will become educated and yet the biggest lesson they learn is how to conform.  They routinely produce nothing but automatons as they victimize the children according race, class and gender.  What was done in this case was yet another stunning example of the way that schools routinely violate the trust we place in them to treat our children with respect.
I cannot imagine how traumatizing it must have been for this poor girl to be strip searched on the whip of a principal.  This is the sort of violation that will stay with her and she will have learned that if you are female in this world you exist without power.  There are many ways in which the principal could have handled the situation and it is telling that he immediately resorted to the solution that required the most violation of her person.  Womens bodies are considered by patriarchy to always be available and therefore choosing to have her strip searched is nothing more than a lesson in the ways she will always be viewed.

With Strip Search Sammy Alito and the rest of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court it is unlikely that this girl will get any justice through the judicial system.  These kinds of things could be handled on the local level if enough parents would get together and fire the members of the school board who are supposed to be responsible for the education system.  The problem is that people have elected conservative, rightist Christians to their school boards.  Teachers should be held accountable for things like strip searching students.

The zero tolerance policy is one of the stupidest ideas of modern times anyway.  Kids can get suspended for things like having aspirin or medications which were prescribed by their family doctor.  People really need to think about this, would you want your child strip searched and humiliated because they had a legal or prescription drug at school, or someone thought they did?  All it takes is one kid to tell a teacher that another kid has a drug to set off the fascist response.

This isn’t the teacher’s fault though, it’s our fault for letting things get this far and being so afraid of drugs that we’re willing to destroy our children in order to keep them from using.  Ha is right that we need to be much more active in our local politics.  The conservatives would like nothing better than to destroy public education, and as long as we let things like this go on, we’re helping them.

I’m in my contrarian shirt today, this is simple authoritarianism, neither indicative of the left nor the right. Both should be happy to condemn such infringements of an individual’s rights.

Though it does seem like it would be a Reaganite ideologue to search for non harmful drugs, then a liberal.

The Times article contained a quote toward the end that made me sick.

The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”

It’s not enough that they humiliated and violated this girl; they also have to cast aspersions on her character. What the fuck is wrong with these people? I think this plays into what Mnemosyne said above about the right wing tendency to tar all liberals as Stalinists. “We have accused you of being x, therefore you must also be y.” It doesn’t matter if you are x to begin with, either.

Like everybody said, but also (having once been a teenager) - this level of idiocy is just guaranteed to have the opposite of the intended effect (and in some ways, it should.)

Strip searches for ibuprofen? Well, then let’s all figure out how to smuggle in the Advil. A grotesque overreach by a fascist administration is going to generate protests, often of the passive aggressive kind.

We’ve seen it and cheered when an entire school shows up with rainbow flags when some numbnuts harasses a lesbian student. But as these things mount up, the respect for good rules goes with it, as a knee-jerk.

Yeah, Magis, but that sounds like work. I’m not going to hide behind the “I would, but other people won’t” defense… I want my political activism quick, easy, and instantaneously satisfying. Like, the Wall-E package.

Womanist, I learned tons of stuff at school. How do deal with dicks—the ones with real power, the ones with five asshole friends standing behind them, and the gossipy schemers. In high school you figure out how much of the system you’re willing to depend on to protect you, how much you care about a dumb anthem and meaningless mascot, and just how ready you are to get out into the world and get something going for yourself.

I recall Matt Stone’s interview in Bowling for Columbine… the non-conformists were all the ones who ended up doing things, having interesting lives, when they got out of that place. And I recall my asshole, wife-beating, alcoholic Republican uncle, who was a star football player in high school and still thinks of those years as the best in his life.

Zero tolerance policies always result in this sort of bullshit.  Carrying a bottle of aspirin?  EXPELLED!  Plastic butter knife in your bag lunch?  EXPELLED!  Birdshot shell from a hunting trip accidentally left on the floor of your car?  EXPELLED!  T-shirt that a teacher doesn’t like?  EXPELLED!

This case is just an extreme example.  At least she wasn’t expelled, though if it was my kid she probably would be after I choked out the fucking principal.

This story proves to me yet again that if I ever had to go through the school system that I would be the biggest troublemaker.

(The first time through I only got in trouble once and that was by accident. Turns out I had a teacher that considered “suck” to be a swear word and was inseparable from the idea of blow jobs. Well, and I had to wear a shirt over a tank top once, but that was super minor, but saying “suck” got me a day of in-school suspension.)

Good opportunity for pedophile ladies—they can see pubescent genitalia any time they want, on the pretext that a young girl is smuggling ibuprofen into school.

And what is a young girl with menstrual cramps supposed to do? Stay home? Beg the nonexistent school nurse to give her some Motrin? Or just assume the fetal position in the ladies room till the final bell sounds?

Also zero-tolerance policies are for people who are totally disinterested in acting fairly, otherwise they’d just look at problems on a case-by-case basis like real grown ups. Seriously, what’s so wrong with looking at the facts of each situation and match the punishment accordingly?

they have this odd penchant for treating kids like they’re in maximum security lockup.

As always in threads of this nature, I take the opportunity to drop a link to the work of <a >John Taylor Gatto</a>. He provides a good explanation of why this sort of thing happens in our public schools.

Hester B. says: And what is a young girl with menstrual cramps supposed to do?

Jeebus, I would probably be in school jail if I were in HS now.  I always had killer cramps as a teen.  If I was able to get out of bed and get to school, I was always packing codeine, which I was happy to share with fellow sufferers.

Zero tolerance policies always result in this sort of bullshit.  Carrying a bottle of aspirin?  EXPELLED!  Plastic butter knife in your bag lunch?  EXPELLED!  Birdshot shell from a hunting trip accidentally left on the floor of your car?  EXPELLED!  T-shirt that a teacher doesn’t like?  EXPELLED!

This case is just an extreme example.  At least she wasn’t expelled, though if it was my kid she probably would be after I choked out the fucking principal.
Jrod

Usually suspensions rather than expulsions are handed out, since students and parents usually don’t think they’re worth fighting.  The poor students would rather not be in school anyway and the studious ones’ time is probably better spent studying on their own than in class. 

I agree with Akheloios’ point that it’s an authoritarian impulse and can cross the conservative/liberal spectrum.  With the conservatives it’s often drugs (aspirin, advil, etc.) and the liberals it’s whatever could be considered a weapon (plastic knife) or illiberal speech. 

Regarding colleges, particularly state colleges, progressive thought is ascendant and authoritarian behavior persists.  This outfit is a pretty good resource for fighting unjustified restrictions of personal freedom, regardless of left or right persuasion:  www.thefire.org

I screwed up that last sentence, so I’ll try again:

Regarding colleges, progressive thought is ascendant and authoritarian behavior persists.  This outfit is a pretty good resource for fighting unjustified restrictions of personal freedom, particularly by state colleges, regardless of left or right persuasion:  http://www.thefire.org

And what is a young girl with menstrual cramps supposed to do? Stay home? Beg the nonexistent school nurse to give her some Motrin?

Yup, that is exactly what they make them do.

The other conservative aspect of this is that these sort of practices are the result of conservatives’ use of fear and “society in decline” to push their political agenda. One of the saddest things I ever heard was a friend of mine, when her children were young, talking about how they don’t go out and play in the neighborhood, and instead have “play dates” because “it’s so much more dangerous now than when we were growing up.” She lives in a nice suburban neighborhood, and by any factual measure, it is not “so much more dangerous,” but people are fed a constant diet of predators and gangs and drugs on TV, so they come to believe it, even if they never see it. (Nobody wants to find out the hard way, obviously.)

This outfit is a pretty good resource for fighting unjustified restrictions of personal freedom, particularly by state colleges, regardless of left or right persuasion:  http://www.thefire.org

Ugh, FIRE. This is the organization that defended a campus housing group that wanted to exclude non-Christians and a professor who called his Muslim students terrorists, murderers, and Nazis. No thank you.

I teach those kids; they’re generally pretty scarred by the lack of progressive responsibility in their lives and are at a total loss to organize their own time.  Without regular authoritarian intervention, they either just hang out or engage in the stupidest imaginable activities.

OMG as strong as two Advil.  The last time I got prescription Ibuprophin it was 800mg (an anti-inflamatory dose), which is as strong as four Advil.  Clearly I’m a dangerous junkie who needs to be locked away.

They go the administration route either because they like being in charge or they are bad teachers

Or they want more money.  The administrators’ parking lot at my high school was full of BMWs.

I get really frustrated with critics of our direct democracy here in California for the same reason. Yes, a series of ballot initiatives ruined our state budget, our schools, took away marriage rights, and gave the Republicans absurd minority rights in the legislature.

Has there been even one initiative in California state that’s done anything good?  I’m racking my brain, but I can’t think of one that doesn’t deprive the government of funding, institutes new spending WITH a funding source (kind of necessary when other initiatives wind up cutting revenue), doesn’t eliminate affirmative action, doesn’t fuck over immigrants, or doesn’t deprive gays of equal rights.

The only progressive victories in the initiative process that I can think of involve defeats of much worse right wing initiatives.  The initiative process in California is garbage.

This happens fairly often in Chicago.

The young women involved are invariable poor and are not melanin-challenged.

When exposed, it does tend to get the fuckers suspended, and then fired.  It’s a matter of getting the exposure and suing, which isn’t easy to do.  And is why it happens to the poor and POC students.

kesh, progressive victories tend to be little things through the ballot in California, because the big political machines aren’t paying attention.

In 2008: Approved a SUPERTRAIN connecting the North and South, progressive regulation on animal confinement in factory farms, 1b for children’s hospitals, 900m of support for veterans. And we defeated parental notification and harsher criminal penalties.

We dropped the ball on Prop 8. We’ve dropped the ball on a lot of things. Let me point out, though, the direction of politics in California and nationwide, and that Prop 8 can be undone through the ballot as easily as it was done in the first place.

The common argument is that voters will vote to spend money, but not raise taxes. But look at what Colorado did on TABOR in 2005—suspended their taxpayer bill of rights so their legislature could straighten out the states’ finances. As bad as things got this year in California, I’m sure we could have crushed a bunch of the Republican’s favorite initiatives from the past. WHERE ARE THE DEMOCRATS?

Your criticism of my point, though, is somewhat off the mark. I’m saying that the Democrats haven’t tried to accomplish anything through the ballot—so, instead of pointing to out lack of progressive action, perhaps you could point to some major progressive initiatives that have failed at the ballot.

(Btw, on Prop 8—there needs to be a 60% vote requirement to change the constitution. But that is an aside from the principle of direct democracy itself.)

Also: no one goes into education to make money. As an administrator, or a teacher. Its about rewarding work, lots of time off, good work environment, and sometimes getting to act like Hitler.

(I’m not sure why they tossed the honors student part in there.  If she did poorly in English class, it wouldn’t have been any more okay.)

It’s just one more step on the way to absurdity.  She wasn’t a kid with discipline problems or someone who would have frequently turned up in the office for some other offense.  This wasn’t a case of the administrator getting overzealous (read: nazi psycho) with a student you would normally stereotype as problematic.

This student could have been anyone.  Lacross bro or math geek.  Valedictorian or drop out.  It makes the assault look that much more irrational.

This happens fairly often in Chicago.

The young women involved are invariable poor and are not melanin-challenged.

My rich white affluent high school had its fair share of this bullshit as well.  Students with connections to administrators (through friends or family or just by being buddy-buddy) could practically do no wrong.  There was beer in the locker rooms and pot in the bathroom stall if you knew where to look.  But if you weren’t an administrative favorite, there was always a power tripping Vice Principal looking to get “tough” on school discipline by beating up on kids for just about anything.

There were a couple of admins who always had shit to prove.  Generally, it helped if you were the wrong color or in the wrong tax bracket.  If your parents were registered Democrats or went to the wrong church that helped a lot too.  But as often as not, they’d just go after any old warm body that wasn’t in the right social circle.

The sad thing about my high school was watching all the best teachers retire or transfer or get retired or transferred while the jackholes just kept climbing that ladder.  Not surprisingly, years after I graduated, I got to watch my high school drop from inside the top ten HS in the nation into the hundreds.  It’s painful to watch good schools go bad.

WHERE ARE THE DEMOCRATS?

Thanks for the reminder of those smaller initiatives, but even this quoted sentiment makes me wary of initiatives.  The purpose of Initiative, Recall, and Referendum was to put more power into the hands of the people.  With a few exceptions, but especially in California, it’s been used to push the agenda of the powerful and well-heeled.  The Democrats shouldn’t have to push back.  It should be a grassroots process put forward by citizens’ groups, not Republican asshats buttsore over the fact that the California lege is controlled by liberals.

Even the recall can be abused by one megalomaniac with too much money and time on his hands.  *cough* Darrell Issa *cough*

*Sigh* I guess I was lucky.

When I was in high school, I was on the Academic Team (nerd squad), and we were about to go to a meet.  My parents gave me the family (HAHAHA I’m OLD) cell phone so that I could call and tell them who I was riding with.  We worked this out at lunch, and I waited until after school to step outside of the building and leave a message on my parents’ machine to tell them.

On our way out the door, the principal (who didn’t really give a shit about us otherwise) stopped me and asked if he had just really seen what he thought he saw.

I got in trouble for using drug-related paraphenalia on school property, because apparently criminal drug dealers use cell phones to call their parents to let them know which of her nerdy friends is giving her a ride to the library.  Fortunately, Mom was a teacher in the same district, and active and LOUD in the union- there’s certain benefits to being a well-connected pariah- so it didn’t stick.  However, I connect it very readily with the fact that I got demerits for a dress code violation that I never knew existed because I chose to take band instead of phys ed with the cheerleaders within a matter of days.

Echoing Punditus Maximus—this kind of treatment doesn’t prepare kids very well for adulthood.  I teach college freshmen; it’s frustrating how unable they are to handle their academic responsibilities because their lives have been so structured before college, and downright sad how surprised they are at even basic freedoms like being able to choose their own paper topics, assert their opinions, go to the bathroom during class, or leave the classroom to work on group projects (“we can go outside?  You mean like outside outside?”).  I feel like I spend every semester trying to do the psychological damage of high school.

(Hi!  Long time reader, first time commenter.)

Wow.  “As strong as two Advil” means “an extra-strength Advil”.  This is why the Internet invented the phrase “WTF???!!!!!1!?”

I sometimes feel nostalgic about being a kid - no responsibilities, no money worries, a great family always there to help me out - and then I hear about shit like this.

Okay, okay, derailing, but - hi there Angry Geologist! *is captain of school Academic Team*

Wow, I feel incredibly privileged to have gone to an authoritarian private high school where there was a strict dress code, punishments for talking back to teachers, punishments for being late to classes or gym, punishments for a long list of other things, and where zero tolerance would have been laughed off the grounds.

Odd though, that generally the news stories are about young women being strip-searched and otherwise abused—is that because it’s more fun for the administrators, or because it just doesn’t make a hot a news story with young men? (The stories you see about male students are usually some honor student getting caught with an object classed as a weapon—which would have let me and all the other swiss-army-knife carriers right out of school)

I think that the majority of teachers I ever had—including at Catholic school, which I attended between 1st and 10th grade—were more liberal than I was. That’s because I was batshit insane, or at any rate officially held positions that I would now declare batshit insane.

Even so I could name a few at least as right-wing nutty as I then aspired to be.

And of course later I went pretty far in the other direction and now I suppose most of those same “too liberal” teachers would be, in retrospect, conservative. At least compared to my current theoretical stance.

But one reason I went so far left is that I belatedly understood some of the stuff some of my teachers were trying to open my mind to.

Education, like everything else, has a strongly dual nature. On one hand, it is definitely a part of the social enforcement mechanism and there are lots of aspects of our system that are strongly at odds with our ideals of a democracy of free, responsible people.

On the other hand, there is such a thing as love of knowledge for its own sake. Most teachers have some allegiance to that passion; some shine with it.

And reality, as we all know, has a strong liberal bias.

[singing]:

They’re gonna clean up your looks
With all the lies in the books
To make a citizen out of you
Because they sleep with a gun
And keep an eye on you, son
So they can watch all the things you do

They said all teenagers scare the living shit out of me
They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed
So darken your clothes or strike a violent pose
Maybe they’ll leave you alone, but not me

My favorite part of the NYT article:

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”

Using that logic, how do we know that those school officials don’t diddle little girls (or boys) whenever they can get away with it? The fact that they were never charged with sexual abuse just means they were NEVER CAUGHT.

I sometimes think zero-tolerance policies in schools are a plot to get future generations used to a police state.

Was a girl in Katy ISD a few years back who got arrested for sharpenening her pencil with a pocketknife. She beat rap by explaining that in her native Korea small knives were considered an indespensible tool and that she never understood school policy to exclude such small knives.

The honors part was mentioned because in a lot schools, behavior is counted towards exceptance in to the honors program.  At my school, to stay in the honors courses and take advantage of all the neat stuff that came with it you pretty much couldn’t have so much as a tardy.

rea, i love you for that. :D

Thank goodness I went to a small and relatively relaxed HS. Even so, I was not the most beloved of the teachers and administrators, and not because I was a particular discipline problem. It’s ugly, even in a small and fairly friendly environment like that to see the way that teachers will choose their favorites and not make much effort to hide it. To some extent it can’t be helped, because people are people, but it was frustrating to be uncool to many of the teachers, not just the students. In the end, I do think I got the best end of the deal - the teachers I remember with the most gratitude, and from whom I learned the most, where the ones who ‘got’ me, or if they didn’t ‘get’ me, didn’t worry about it, and gave me the respect and instruction that I needed, even if I didn’t deserve it. That’s something that authoritarians don’t often get (and I didn’t understand, either), which is that whether or not kids deserve respect is really beside the point; they need it. It’s like paying it forward. It took me years to process what I learned in high school, and beyond. Too much bullshit, and it might just end up being too much to figure out.

I’ll never forget one of the nicest things an adult mentor (not one of my teachers) said to me when I was in my senior year of high school. Extremely paraphrased, she said, “You know, you say a lot of dumb shit, and you get called on it a lot - but it’s obvious that you really want to get it right. You want to say the right thing, you want to help people, not hurt them, and I can tell because you’re willing to get called out on it” That’s smart educating. Kids fuck up. This authoritarian crap is incredibly counter-productive, because kids, who by the time they’re in HS usually are feeling like they should be pretty independent, resent having discipline imposed on their lives. And it does have to happen to some extent, because HS kids will do some seriously dumb shit without adult intervention. Building more anger and resentment than necessary, causing more unhappiness than is absolutely necessary, is counter-productive to the goal of ending up with sane, decent adults. This should be obvious. Zero-tolerance policies, abusive “discipline”, and simply being rude to students are incredibly stupid things, but removing them requires the use of judgment and careful thought on a case-by-case basis, and administrators really seem to hate anything that requires actual care and consideration.

Students with connections to administrators (through friends or family or just by being buddy-buddy) could practically do no wrong.

This.  When I was in high school, the principal’s football-playing son was involved in a student scavenger hunt that basically involved stealing a whole lot of shit, including a fucking Stop sign from a residential intersection.  They could have gotten someone killed, but not a damn thing ever happened to him or his buddies.

A year or two later, our choir got busted for having a booze-fueled hotel party in Chicago, and the administration came down on everyone involved like a fucking anvil.  Actually, they came down on every *student* involved—the nationally-renowned choir director, who apparently hoisted a few along with the students, got the full lets-not-do-anything-rash treatment.

And what is a young girl with menstrual cramps supposed to do? Stay home? Beg the nonexistent school nurse to give her some Motrin? Or just assume the fetal position in the ladies room till the final bell sounds?

She’s supposed to leave her icky girl parts and their accompanying disgusting problems at home like a proper young lady, because they’re highly disruptive to the learning environment.

The honors part was mentioned because in a lot schools, behavior is counted towards exceptance in to the honors program.  At my school, to stay in the honors courses and take advantage of all the neat stuff that came with it you pretty much couldn’t have so much as a tardy.

Spooky Skeptic on 03/24 at 11:28 PM

Which is really fucking weird and wrong.  My state mandates gt programs and that gt kids be identified, yet the stupid anal retentive curriculm director insists on calling it a merit program and telling kids they can screw up out of it.  Uhhh, no, that’s be like telling a special ed kid, sorry, screw up and we take your IEP away.

MiddleageLiberal, I find it hugely problematic that you mention ‘The poor students’ and ‘the studious ones’ as if they’re discrete and mutually exclusive groups. Apparently poor people are never studious and don’t want to learn?

MiddleageLiberal is not known here for liberalism.

How much of this culture I see described is a function of how large American schools seem to be (from an outside perspective)?  My secondary school (11-16) in a small northern English town had about 450 pupils.  It was on the small side of these things, but by no means considered tiny.  My husband’s secondary school (11-18) in SE London had 1500 pupils and, in the UK at least, that is considered huge.  Huge enough to have separate “houses” (pupil groupings) within the school.

I have a theory that perhaps the rudeness and authoritarian attitude I’m seeing described comes from the anonymity that comes with having so many kids in a school.  It seems unlikely that children have much of a chance of being treated as respected individuals when they are just one of a teeming mass o faces.  Does this hold any water?

Zero tolerance actually means zero rights.  I had to put up with stuff in high school, and basically it means the perfect adult teachers are always right and the stupid baby children are always wrong.  One of my teachers explained it to me and said that constitutional rights don’t apply in schools.  Teachers can search a student, their locker, or their bags on a whim.  They do not need a warrant or even probably cause.

In my school, we were not allowed to even have a cell phone, even it was turned off.  One day, my bus driver got mad at a few students and drove all the way back to school to kick them off, and so the rest of us all got home late and our parents were understandably worried.  After that, my mom made me take a cell phone to school (and keep it turned off except in an emergency).  She said that if anyone had a problem with it, they could talk to her.  The heating didn’t work very well, but we couldn’t wear coats or even heavy sweatshirts because it could conceal a weapon.  It’s hard to learn much while I’m shivering.  I was supposed to leave my inhaler with the school nurse, but if I had ever needed it, I wouldn’t have time to go to the nurse and get it! So, I just carried it with me all the time.  We weren’t even supposed to have nail clippers with us.  Someone left a bomb threat in a bathroom, so the school had the genius idea to close all the bathrooms but one in a gigantic school.  Of course, if there had been another threat, it would have been even harder to track down the person because there were 10 times as many people there.  So, if you had to pee, that meant missing 10-15 minutes of class.

There were so many silly rules that by the time the teachers got done enforcing them, half the class time was gone.  No wonder so many students failed.  I hated being treated like I was in prison.  I’m just thankful that we didn’t have to wear uniforms.  I just can’t think of any other place where people could legally be treated like this, except prisons.  Aren’t liberals the ones who want civil rights for all people, including minors?  Personally, I think that some of this could be solved by lowering the voting age to 16.  If the people living through this stuff had some political power, maybe politicians would do more to protect their rights.

And what is a young girl with menstrual cramps supposed to do? Stay home? Beg the nonexistent school nurse to give her some Motrin? Or just assume the fetal position in the ladies room till the final bell sounds?

At my school, the teachers would have told her to do jumping jacks or something.  According to my gym teacher, exercise helps with cramps.  It probably would work, if anyone could manage to exercise in the much pain!  Or, the school nurse might let her use a heating pad, but not at my school where the nurse assumed everyone was faking to get out of class.  You could have blood gushing out of your face and she’d still assume you were faking it.

“MiddleageLiberal is not known here for liberalism.”

I read him to mean poor students as in bad students, not don’t have any money students, but yeah.

My son’s school seems to be decent enough, but the principal avoids any and all contact with parents that he does not control.

Last year, the vice principal was way out of control and was harassing my son about repeating a grade due to unexcused absences.  The most serious flu epidemic in twenty years was raging, and the school had an attendance policy that was supposed to apply to the administration and was not being followed, but still he harassed my son.

I finally sent in a letter explaining that the attendance policy, which I signed, also binds the administration.  If there was a problem with the doctors notes we sent in, which were not required unless requested (and had not been requested), they were to contact me THE PARENT per the attendance policy set by the district. I also handed my son my business card and told him to hand it to this ninny prick the next time he opened his trap, and tell him that the official attendance policy in the school handbook clearly says he is to speak to me about such manners.

Well, I never heard shit.  But my son has been left alone this year.  When Vice Principal Numbnuts started in about doctors notes, son raised his hand and said “for every illness? That’s not in the attendance policy (kid has a copy to refer to in his handbook for when numbnuts makes shit up).  It’s also a vast waste of healthcare resources”.  VP backed down quickly.

Kid 1 has a great “but gee Mr. Numbskull, I don’t understand - the attendance policy says ... and you are saying ... which isn’t in what we signed” pseudoconfused takedown.

sorry - that’s speak to me about such matters.

MiddleageLiberal, I find it hugely problematic that you mention ‘The poor students’ and ‘the studious ones’ as if they’re discrete and mutually exclusive groups. Apparently poor people are never studious and don’t want to learn?
Moniquill

I meant “poor” in the sense of “not interested in schoolwork” rather than economic circumstances.  It was a poor (i.e. unclear and perhaps ambiguous) choice of words.  I apologize for the miscommunication.

speaking of illness/attendance problems, I had a teacher put on my report card that “kodiak would do better in physical education class if she were not often ill”. Ya, that despite me NEVER missing a class, and teaching at a private swimming pool 4 days a week (which involved holding kids up in the deepend while they worked on their strokes/doggy-paddle) and biking 4miles to and from school as long as the weather permitted (read, as long as I didn’t have to try wearing a winter hat under my helmet).

My mom was a healthcare professional, read that and went totally apeshit over it. a) teachers are not qualified to make diagnoses on health issues of students, b) if there had been a problem why hadn’t it been raised to the parents, and c) if there’s going to be a health diagnoses on *my* child’s permanent record can I please see the doctor consulted to back this up?

Ya, that teacher caught hell from the administration… but only after it became apparent that my mom wouldn’t back down. 3 years later, my little sister had the same teacher… mom said to give it a shot and see if she had learned a lesson and was willing to deal fairly… ya, little sis came home from her first class to quote the teacher “I hope you aren’t as much trouble as your sister was”. Which was when my mom talked to the board of ed and the teacher was convinced to take early retirement.

Ms. Kate, you are a good mother.  I had a mom like you who would stand up to the school district on my behalf.  She even managed to get my bus route changed once.  I’m thankful I had her to stand up for me, and your son should be thankful to have someone like you.  Maybe if all the students’ parents go angry and did something, the schools would stop this nonsense.

Thanks, Catgirl. 

I think they don’t want parents challenging them, and are increasingly rattled by the number of professionals who didn’t grow up here and weren’t taught adoration of authority figures by the Catholic heirarchy.

I think an important lesson from this is to read the official policies, keep a copy handy, and point out where there is unacceptable variance from what is written.  It would be extremely difficult to discipline a student for knowing the rules that you insist that he or she know from the beginning of the school year.

Then again, these whacks act like Catholic School Educators - so it is no wonder why they get upset when they hand someone a bible and that someone actually reads it and challenges you with it.  Ain’t what they are used to.

Oh - I might note that two middle schools share busses and there was a serious incident on one a couple of months into the school year.

They finally put a new bus on a cut a new route - which they should have done a very long time ago - because a kid cel-phone videotaped other kids lighting paper and throwing it out the window. That kid’s parent and a media personality parent with a kid on that bus were abundantly clear that there were two options: fix the problem, or face the reporters and the national syndication of stupid in your city.

Beg the nonexistent school nurse to give her some Motrin?

HA. Like you could ever convince her to deal such deadly drugs! Maybe she’ll let you have a cup of tap water if you writhe enough. School nurses couldn’t give me *anything* when I went to the office in pain. (Weirdly enough there is a similar thing at my college; I needed to make an appointment if I wanted to get a Tums from the nurse. So I just bought a box of them at the school bookstore… 9.9)

School administrators are largely idiots. I suffered from severe depression and anxiety off-and-on from 3rd grade through high school and they never got a clue. My grades went from a 4.0 in freshman year to a 2.0ish in sophomore year when I got briefly worse. My mom was shocked that no one had mentioned this to her (I had no idea what my grades were at the time; I didn’t even remember by the end of each day what classes had been scheduled, or whether I had ended up going…) They told her that until I was failing no red flags went up. She told them “my daughter is a 4.0 student; getting straight C’s *IS* failing for her!” So then they told her I had run out of absences and really would fail if I missed any more class, ‘cause they didn’t accept notes from my therapist… or from my mother, any longer.

Mostly what I learned in school was to hate people. My friends in college are sometimes shocked at how much concentrated hate I can feel for a person, and I tell them I learned it in elementary school. (I sure as hell didn’t learn much *else* in school after all.) It’s also the reason I’m glad my parents never owned a gun, ‘cause that would have probably wound up coming to school with me at some point… the intense apathy of the administration and the enforced helplessness while they hurt you in millions of tiny ways made me borderline sociopathic when I got upset enough.

Now that I’m out of it I can calm down and remind myself that I’m *not* trapped at the whim of those assholes, but back then hating them was the only form of self-defense I had, and the only way to keep a few shreds of self-respect. Shit like this story reminds me perfectly of what childhood was like.

My school story goes like this:

My 8th grade year was a year of enormous expansion; I took a standardized test and did well, and I got suddenly snapped up by the pro-merit establishment that desperately searches for talented kids.  I realized that I was cruising in school and could do much better, and that, moreover, I should, because there were all these very smart people out there I was going to be competing with.

So I undertook a very simple thing; I asked my mom to get my local high school to allow me to take Geometry and Advanced Algebra concurrently.  These really are two separate branches of mathematics, and one doesn’t really need one to understand the other, which is why the order they are taught in is essentially arbitrary.

The school was totally unprepared for this request.  No, unprepared is the wrong word for it.  The school had no capacity to comprehend the request.  This is a decent suburban high school, and it was just incapable of processing the idea that a student might be seeking a greater academic challenge.  It was as though we were speaking a foreign language to these people.  It took literally six months for us to get the idea across, by which point we had missed our chance. 

Fortunately, I went to a magnet school after that, and my life got much better very quickly.  But I will never forget how totally my principal understood that his position was one of a warden, not an educator.