Dispatches from the Creation Wars

We had a case earlier this year where a student at our local fundy college was hounded by the Secret Service and had his computer seized because he had posted lyrics to a song about the Kennedy assassination on his MySpace page and changed the name to Bush. Welcome to the new reality in America.

I note that in the news report there is no mention of whether the teacher who "felt threatened" had ever met the students or had them as students. Generally, there is a reasonable person standard for assault (which is essentially what the school system is arguing that the kids did). The local DA failed to charge, presumably because no reasonable person would be threated by a teddy bear going all Chuckie.

Posted by: kehrsam | November 27, 2006 3:57 PM

It's paranoid, disproportionate behavior like this that is making our public schools a laughingstock, taking resources from actual education, and prompting anyone who can afford it to send their kids to private schools. I'm the child of a public school educator and went through the system myself, and although it left me somewhat unprepared for college, I always thought I would send my own kids to public school as well. But lately I'm just not so sure. I don't want the school board policing their private lives. I kind of want them to learn about evolution. Oh, and if they're girls, I'd like them to learn math.

I know, I know, it's so much to ask.

Posted by: bioephemera | November 27, 2006 4:31 PM

And I would appear to be right. From The Indianapolis Star:

A homemade horror-movie parody about evil teddy bears led to the expulsions of four Knightstown High School students who produced it, two of whom are suing to get back into school.

In particular, a teacher in the movie who is threatened by the teddy bears shares the same last name as a teacher at the district's middle school.

The boys, who are sophomores, spent a number of months on their project, working on the video from the fall of 2005 through last summer.

In a letter to School Board members Nov. 3, Superintendent McGuire said teacher Daniel Clevenger, who teaches seventh grade at Knightstown Intermediate School, felt threatened.

There should be some limits to students' freedom of expression, McGuire wrote, citing a phrase familiar to First Amendment students: "Your freedom to swing your fist ends at the point of my nose."

Posted by: Skemono | November 27, 2006 5:27 PM

What galls me most is that these sort of zero-tolerance policies don't bother to discriminate between actual threats and teenage pranks like this one. Instead, an incredibly wide net is cast over anything that has the appearance of containing any violence at all, the result of which is actually a decrease in the effectiveness and safety. There is only so much time available, after all, and whenever some of it is taken up with bullshit like this, it takes away from time that could be spent on evaluating real dangers.

Let's get real here--most of the kids who have gone on to become school shooters have displayed clear signs of their intent long before the actual incidents. And by that I don't mean that they made movies about a killer teddy bear. They threatened and bullied fellow students (or were threatened and bullied themselves), intimated (and sometimes stated outright) to friends that they would kill others, and displayed a fascination with violence and death that they were all too ready to share with others. If that didn't set off some alarm bells, then expelling students over a humorous video won't do a thing.

I'm reminded of a George Carlin act that touches on our obliviousness to actual signs of danger: "They always say that the quiet ones will get you. But let me tell you something--I've never been in a bar and been worried about the quiet guy sitting alone and drinking his beer. I'm worrying about the guy who's waving a machete by the door and shouting, 'I'm gonna kill the next motherfucker that walks in here!'"

Posted by: ThomasHobbes | November 27, 2006 11:09 PM