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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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HAVE WE LOST OUR MINDS? 10-year-old girl handcuffed PHILADELPHIA Dec 11, 2004 — A 10-year-old girl was handcuffed and taken to a police station because she took a pair of scissors to her elementary school. School district officials said the fourth-grade student did not threaten anyone with the 8-inch shears, but violated a rule that treats scissors as potential weapons. Administrators said they were following state law when they called police. Police said department rules required them to handcuff Porsche Brown and take her away in a patrol wagon. Police officers decided the girl hadn't committed a crime and let her go. However, school officials suspended her for five days. Administrators will decide at a hearing whether she may return to class, or be expelled to a special disciplinary school. School district officials have promised a crackdown on unruly students this year. New policies give administrators the power to expel students for infractions as minor as violating the dress code, chronic tardiness or habitual swearing. Administrators say the steps are needed to regain control over a notoriously unruly school system, but some parents have complained that discipline has been overly harsh and that school officials have been too quick to call police about minor problems. GRETNA, La. December 11, 2004. A fourth grader was suspended because traces of alcohol were detected in “Jell-O shots” she brought to school. But a school official said it could have been the result of natural fermentation. School board president Gene Katsanis said the gelatin cannot be retested because it was not refrigerated after being discovered in the student's book bag last month. “It will always remain a mystery,” he said Friday. The 8-year-old girl took the gelatin to school in small containers similar to those used by bars that serve liquor-spiked Jell-O. The girl's gelatin was made by her mother, Adrienne Noble, who works in a French Quarter bar that serves alcoholic Jell-O shots. Miss Noble has insisted that the gelatin never contained alcohol. She said the containers were innocent treats for her daughter's classmates. However, the girl was suspended for nine days because of a rule against possession of materials that appear to contain alcohol. Allentown, PA. 1958. A 16-year-old male student brought a knife, a rifle, and ammunition into Allentown High School and placed them in his locker. Later that day, the student removed the weapons without incident. He attracted no attention. No crime was subsequently reported. I sat one seat behind that student in 10 th grade homeroom. Reggie was a rough, woodsman kind of guy who lived far down on the east side of town, by the river. While my buddies and I were playing ball and chasing girls, Reggie was fishing, hunting rabbit and squirrel, and trapping muskrats. One day he showed up wearing a reeking coat because a skunk caught in one of his traps had still been alive. Sometimes he brought his rifle so he could head for hunting grounds to the west after school. This caused no alarm among school authorities. A few other students may have done the same. Nothing like this would be remotely possible today. Reflecting over these incidents from both the recent and distant past, I wonder if somehow the country – specifically, public education – has lost its mind. I conclude that, in a way, it has. I believe what has been lost is the skill of discernment. This $2 word means being able to tell one thing from another – e.g., important from trivial, harmless from dangerous, or true from false. Clearly, there was a time when educators could do this, but just as clearly the recent incidents cited suggest that they no longer can. An example might illustrate how discernment used to work. In mid-March 1959 I returned to school after my grandfather’s funeral to find a note from the assistant principal asking me to report to his office. Mr. Fatzinger was the AP. We all knew who he was, but no one really wanted to see him, personally. The Big F was the Hammer – the tough guy who knocked unruly vo-tech guys around and slapped high-jinking jocks upside the head. He was not really a big man, but he was fierce as a lion, bald, red-faced, and intimidating. His voice carried a city block. He was, shall we say, pre-Miranda in his disciplinary style. You did not want to cross him. My circle kept out of his way. I couldn’t imagine why he wanted to see me. When I came to his office, Mr. Fatzinger was out of character. He spoke, not in his Führer-voice, but as any ordinary person would. He had seen the notice of my grandfather’s death and wanted me to know of their acquaintance during his own boyhood when they were neighbors in a rural suburb of Allentown. He said what a fine man my grandfather was, and how much he was liked and respected by all of his neighbors. Naturally, I had no idea that Mr. Fatzinger had a past connection to my grandfather. After he reminisced briefly about life in Allentown, circa 1920, we parted with a handshake. He offered his condolences to my family for our loss. I never spoke personally to him again, but the incident stuck in my mind. I recall it now because I think it showed something important about Mr. Fatzinger and professional educators of his time. In a huge high school of 3,000 students, he knew his students. He knew who the real bad guys were. He knew the cut-ups and the pranksters. And he knew the serious students. I was one of the latter. Mr. Fatzinger never troubled us because he knew we were not a problem. This was why incidents like Reggie bringing his hunting gear to school attracted no attention. Mr. F knew him, too. Obviously, Mr. Fatzinger had discernment about students and situations. In his world he treated students according to the degree of respect they had earned by their previous actions. You could get on his bad-list, but not very easily. You had to work at it. Largely because of him, I believe, we never had a shooting or a knifing at school while I was a student. The police were never called to take anyone away in handcuffs. Whatever arose, Mr. F handled it. And I very much doubt if he had to refer to a list of regulations for the actions he took. Today, all that is changed. Discernment is obviously in very short supply, and guys like Mr. F are hard to find. Very little thinking seems to be going on in matters of discipline. In the reports from Philadelphia and Louisiana (above), notice how school officials cited rules and state laws as justification for draconian actions that were so far over the top as to look absurd. Doesn’t this sound a lot like “Ve vere chust following orders”? Is this the best we can do? Is there anyone left who can stand up and say: ‘I don’t care what the regulations say. Stuff the regulations. We’re not calling the cops to arrest a 10-year-old girl over a pair of scissors.’? And who in the world makes regulations like this? We need to know their names so we can ask them what they think they’re doing. All kinds of explanations and excuses are vouched for these and similar cases, which seem to appear regularly. Experts say our society is more violent than it used to be. Educators say students are more unruly. They say parents want tough action; that their hands are tied by the rules. They say they have to go by the book to keep from being sued…yadda, yadda, yadda… But it all boils down to this: we don’t know how to think any more. We lack discernment. We don’t know dangerous from harmless or one student from another. We treat delinquents like model citizens and good students like bums. We elevate silly incidents into crimes, but our obeisance to “diversity” prevents us from recognizing when a real crime is forming up. At Columbine High School those kids who eventually shot up the place went around dressed like Death the Avenger. They stuck out like a sore thumb. A child could see that they were beyond weird, yet nothing was done because their diversity had to be respected. Mr. F would have been on their case all the time because he would have recognized that they were dangerous. Guys like Mr. Fatzinger were great educators because they were smart, tough, courageous, and wise. They operated in an environment that allowed those qualities to flourish. I, and millions of students like me, benefited from what they were permitted and empowered to do. If Mr. F is still living, I hope he will see what I have written about him and know that he holds a place of honor in our memories. Without him, my life might not have been as full and successful as it was. I believe we have little hope of reforming and improving our system of public education until we rediscover how to re-create that environment and grow educators of that stature again.
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