File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9905, message 135


From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 11:35:33 +0000
Subject: Re: More like a cop every day...




> I have a fairly good raport with most of my kids 

 <snip>

> Kids getting stoned, drunk, and tripping in the 7th and 8th grades.  
> Several have weight problems.  Several have psychiatric problems.  Most
> have parental problems.  Most are either sexually active, or want to be.

Is this a QED situation?


> My biggest class has 14 kids, but on any given day 2-5 will be serving
> in-school or out-of-school suspension.  I have two classes of 1 student
> each, which is when I answer email.
> 
> If you come into my class you will see basic structure--everyone has to
> have something to wirk on.  I give days off regulalry.  We have 15
> computers so on days off or on projects there are normally several kids
> surfing the net, and I got 20 headphone sets so they can plug in and
> listen to MP3 if they can figure it out, or Realplayer Audio, as they do
> their homewirk.
> 
> This week one social studies teacher assigned papers on hate crimes and
> gave the idea that kids should look at hate sites.  Up front, this school
> has 30 black kids out of 605, maybe 30 asians, and 2 hispanics and there
> is a severe race problem, maybe one race fight a week.  The first thing my
> kids did with this assignment was feel free to go to things that make
> Stormfront look tame.  One kid found a lynching game where you tied a
> black man onto a truck and dragged the black man behind.  The object was
> to get the black guy to disintegrate.
> 
> I hate being a censor, but these are kids and about 1/3 of them have
> severe racial biases.  When the lynching game was found, all of a sudden
> there's 4 kids there hooting and laughing:  End of that research project.
> Period.   
> 
> I now simply refuse to let any kid visit a hate-site without me
> at their side so I can talk them through it, just like I do with my
> daughter Erin who has the same assignment.  I took her to
> www.overthrow.com and she was revolted; she doesn't need much supervision,
> but I wanted to make sure the Nazi and Resistance links had a modifying
> force to accomapny them.  Actually, the first thing we did was find the
> urls in text that KB has hidden from the public so she wouldn't have to be
> "counted" as a UAP supporter.
> 
> So today one of the "dirt," or "hick" kids who was at the lynching
> web-site and who is also at the heart of the race fighting shows up
> wearing a t-shirt that has a fake radio-station type-logo on it:  "WEBN."  
> This is really a racist acronym that means "We Enjoy Beating Niggers."  
> There are only a few things I won't tolerate, and race baiting and
> stupidity are two of them.  So I told the kid he could avoid a lot of
> grief if he would just turn the shirt inside-out and leave it that way.  
> I told him I have a bi-racial african ancestry nephew and I simply did not
> find this a matter of humor or debate.  The kid's argument was that
> "FU-BU" clothes were just as racist, "For Us, By Us."  I tried to explain
> that was a wirld of difference but he just didn't want to listen.
> 
> He did go to the restroom and change the shirt around so the logo wasn't
> visible and that was where we dropped the matter.  I really kind of like
> the kid, except for his stupidity as far as realizing who his real
> enemies are.  I did not turn him over to the school disciplinarians and
> that was that. Until two periods later and here comes the kid with his
> race-bating posse and he's wearing the shirt with the logo out again.
> 
> Boom.  I snapped and asked him if he was incapable of understanding what
> getting a break means.  He told me I was full of shit and that making him
> wear the shirt inside out was "bullshit."
> 
> The kid is now serving a 10-day out of school suspension for agitating
> race discord. 
> 
> I could have let the Vice Lords kick his and his buddies ass, but I know
> how this wirks:  A white kid thrown out of school has a far less cance of
> going to prison in the long run than a black kid, and I have been spending
> a lot of time trying to keep those Vice Lords in school.  
> 
> So guess what? I don't feel nearly as bad as I thought I would/should.
>   
> 
> carp
> 

Policy on the hoof is the only way forward in practice. None of this 
offends the simplistic  old tenet of 'freedom to do whatever you 
want, provided it doesn't affect someone else's freedom.....etc.

Also, you aren't being the police - the crap came years ago and is 
affirmed elsewhere. You're more the ethical elastoplast at this 
level.


_as







   

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