You see someone gasping for air and fear she’s dying. You have the medicine that will help her. Should you give her the medicine? Or stand by and let her suffer? What’s the right choice?
Do nothing, says the principal of Caney Creek High School in Texas. Brandon Kivi, 15, is on suspension and facing drug charges for handing his asthma inhaler to his girlfriend, Andra Ferguson, 15, who’d forgotten to bring hers to school. Both use Albuterol Inhalation Aerosol.
“I was trying to save her life. I didn’t want her to die on me right there because the nurse’s office (doesn’t) have breathing machines,” Kivi said.“It made a big difference. It did save my life. It was a Good Samaritan act,” Ferguson said.
But the school nurse said it was a violation of the district’s no-tolerance drug policy, and reported Kivi to the campus police.
The next day, he was arrested and accused of delivering a dangerous drug. Kivi was also suspended from school for three days. He could face expulsion and sent to juvenile detention on juvenile drug charges.
The nurse didn’t think the asthma attack was life-threatening. Maybe not. But I wouldn’t think much of a kid who’d take that risk when he had the girl’s prescribed medicine in his pocket.
Via Best of the Web.
Due to zero tolerance policies, some schools insist that asthmatic kids keep their emergency inhalers at the nurse’s or principal’s office, greatly increasing the risk that the child won’t get help in time, writes Cathy Seipp. Georgia’s Kellen Edwin Bolden Act, which allows children to carry their own asthma inhalers, is named after a 10-year-old boy who died after suffering an asthma attack on the school bus.
At some schools, children with severe allergies are forbidden from carrying injectable epinephrine, which can save their lives if used in time.
Zero sense.
SuzieQ: the overwhelmingly complex institution we call “public schools.”
You may if you wish; I OTOH call them what they are: “government youth-indoctrination camps”.
Public schools are “overwhelmingly complex” because they are government bureaucracies which exist primarily to perpetuate themselves; any other function they happen to perform comes a distant second.
Why would you voluntarily subject yourself to such a broken machine? Why would you even want to?
Squelch the educational futures of millions of children with no other alternative
Let’s say hypothetically that they don’t; in your opinion, why is that? Could it be because they are not allowed to have any other alternative? If so, who might it be that’s not allowing it, and why?
Equating zero tolerance with Cuba?
No; more like “comparing and contrasting”.
Laura: My child has been in both public and private school, and let me tell you, nobody has a monopoly on stupid policies and stupid decision making.
The issue is not about which one does or doesn’t have a monopoly on stupidity; it’s about which one doesn’t preclude you from having the widest possible latitude in responding to their stupidity — up to and including voting with your pocketbook and, if need be, your feet.
Public schools are complex, as SuzieQ says, and they have to try to serve every child.
“Serve” in which sense of the word?
But I get the idea that some people WANT public schools to be as bad as possible, because that supports their choices for their own kids or bolsters their preconceived beliefs.
Be that as it may, I can’t help but observe that it doesn’t take much to make public schools as bad as possible: a few key wrong decisions, and the “race to the bottom” is off and running.
Rita C.: private schools make a lot of strange decisions, as well, but they have the right to expel students at will
Doesn’t that depend on how the customer contract’s written?
Julia: Andy, if an individual family is unhappy with a school, they CAN leave a system.
Note well: “leave a system”, not “leave the system”.
If enough parents leave a school district, that does shrink a town or city’s property tax base, and that does, in consequence, shrink a school’s budget.
At least until the state steps in with a bailout, or even an outright takeover….
In some cases, however, the school officials had no idea that such a law was on the books.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse!
Hmmmm, interesting viewpoints being posted in here these days
I am NOT putting down public education, I just happen to remember what it USED to be like, and what it has become since the US Dept of Education was formed (and I haven’t seen much improvment since that time).
Teachers have to put up with so much CRAP from students and administrators, that it is impossible for them to engage in the one task they were hired for, that is, teaching.
I have several friends of mine who are teachers, and what they tell me is they would rather wind up teaching 20 students who actually WANT to learn something, as opposed to 40 students (half of which don’t want to be there in the first place).
A lot of teachers who wind up leaving the public school system (and want to continue teaching) wind up being adjunct instructors at junior or community colleges, where a student who doesn’t want to show up to class doesn’t produce a burden on the instructor, he or she simply fails them if they don’t do the work.
The end result is that the half of the students who really WANT to learn something, get deprived of that chance by what we used to call in my day the class clown or screwup (you know the kind, always in trouble, cutting class, never doing their assignments, can’t shut the piehole under their nose, etc).
Just another point of view from the mind of reason
I get the impression that if NCLB were miraculously to fix everything that’s wrong with public schools in this country, some folks would be disappointed and would refuse to believe it.
Laura,
The NCLB is more garbage just like Bill Clinton’s “Goals 2000″ in education (btw, did you know that as a nation, the United States failed to achieve a SINGLE goal which was stated in “Goals 2000″?).
I suspect the NCLB will meet the same fate, and when the next occupant of the white house (whatever person wins in 2004) starts another bold concept to “reform” education, that too, will fail as well (I’ve watched the US Dept of Education fail in every plan it has managed to get it’s hooks into).
(sigh)
Laura,
The NCLB is more garbage just like Bill Clinton’s “Goals 2000″ in education (btw, did you know that as a nation, the United States failed to achieve a SINGLE goal which was stated in “Goals 2000″?).
I suspect the NCLB will meet the same fate, and when the next occupant of the white house (whatever person wins in 2004) starts another bold concept to “reform” education, that too, will fail as well (I’ve watched the US Dept of Education fail in every plan it has managed to get it’s hooks into).
(sigh)
I’m afraid the NCLB act as it is now is counterproductive. Requiring children with IQs of 60 to perform “at grade level” is going to revolutionize what “grade level” means, and in a bad way, I’m afraid. But Lamar Alexander recently admitted that NCLB is going to have to be fine-tuned, so maybe they’ll fix that. As it is, I don’t necessarily expect NCLB to accomplish much, but I’d really love to be pleasantly surprised. Bill, I hope you would too.
Andy, I’ll clarify: if you think responsibility is partly a function of control, you haven’t argued from that basis; if you think responsibility is solely a function of control, you’re an idiot.
It is possible for parents to change the policies of a school system. But it’s not possible for parents to change the policies of a school system in time to help their own kids. Their grandkids, maybe.
I get the impression that if NCLB were miraculously to fix everything that’s wrong with public schools in this country, some folks would be disappointed and would refuse to believe it.
Laura, “miraculously” is an adverb well chosen, because that’s what it would take for the same fedgov that brought you IRS, the Post Office, and Amtrak to pull this particular rabbit out of its hat. (Again? But that trick never works
I for one would refuse to believe it, and look for other causes, aside from the trifling consideration of NCLB functioning entirely without constitutional authority….
As it is, I don’t necessarily expect NCLB to accomplish much, but I’d really love to be pleasantly surprised.
I’m sure we all would; but I greatly fear that your viewpoint represents “the triumph of hope over experience”.
–Requiring children with IQs of 60 to perform “at grade level” is going to revolutionize what “grade level” means, and in a bad way, I’m afraid.–
Should an 18 year old with an IQ of 60 be graduating high school? Only if the most is made of every IQ point and the child knows enough to be a productive adult. If a child does not understaand enough math, science, and language to pass the third grade; the child should remain in the third grade. There is a difference between a child being “held back” and a child being “left behind”. I think a child is left behind everytime he/she is passed to the next grade without comprehending the previous grade’s material.
Also, I agree that public schools are “incredibly complex”. I believe that is the problem. The mission of a school should be to educate students and nothing else–not a very complex mission. It is the myriad of additional objectives laid on the schools that hinders a solid education.
Mark: are you saying that you automatically set aside information that conflicts with your ideology? That’s a temptation that probably all of us have, but I think most of us try to fight it.
Keith, the only way public education could not be complex would be if all the kids were exactly the same. The same system(s) (depending on your ideology) has to deal with kids at almost the full range of IQs. If I’m not mistaken, and I may be because this is not my field, the first IQ test was commissioned to help track children in school, and the “intelligence quotient” is the mental age divided by the chronological age of the child. Thus an 18-yr-old with an IQ of 60 would have the mental age of an average child of about 11, so of course I wouldn’t expect such a person to get a high school diploma. I don’t understand why these kids can’t have a relevant, meaningful program (which repeating 3rd grade 8 or 9 times would not be) without the school having to play statistical shell games to stay off the target list. This is the kind of thing that argued against mainstreaming, and that Individual Education Plans were supposed to prevent. Oh well.
> Andy likes to pick out a poster to attack by talking about her in third person and mischaracterizing what she says.
Since there are multiple participants, identifying them is not only appropriate but good.
Julia has argued that the parents are responsible. The fact that her position is silly/wrong doesn’t make my comments an attack or a mischaracterization.
However, it is nice to see “Julia is a good person, so anyone who claims that she’s wrong must be a bad person and wrong” pop up.
> if you think responsibility is solely a function of control, you’re an idiot.
Actually, responsibility has to be solely a function of control.
Why? Because without control, the responsible party can’t do anything about the object of said responsibility.
Liability is often different – folks are held liable for things that they can’t change all the time.
“Julia has argued that the parents are responsible. The fact that her position is silly/wrong …”
Oh, for pete’s sake. Will you look at what you just typed?
“However, it is nice to see ‘Julia is a good person, so anyone who claims that she’s wrong must be a bad person and wrong’ pop up.”
I don’t see such a statement on this thread anywhere. We’re clearly reading two different things.
Andy, the original comment was that the parents were responsible for studying the policies, not that they were responsible for the policies. As a taxpayer and voter, I am to a degree responsible for what my government does with my money and what policies that put into place. If the school district had a policy that I thought was harmful to my child, I would push for it to be changed. Initially I would use the channels that the district provides, failing that I would take it to the media in order to exert additional pressure for the change. I vote or individuals depending on how they have (or I believe they will) vote on issues that I consider as key. We have had changes in our district based on the feedback and activities of parents, so I know it can be done.
I believe that I am responsible for the raising of my children. That means I am responsible for their safety, education, and behavior. Once they reach a point of maturity that I determine, they can assume the primary responsibility of what they do from then on. So I do believe that I am responsible for determining if the school’s policies are in keeping with my own and if my child does something in another person’s yard that cause anyone harm.
Laura: Mark: are you saying that you automatically set aside information that conflicts with your ideology? That’s a temptation that probably all of us have, but I think most of us try to fight it.
No, Laura, I am saying that when one suddenly gets something one wants by means that have failed the crucial test of reality repeatedly in the past, then it is time for healthy skepticism about the means: paying particular attention to avoiding the fallacies that “correlation equals cause” and “success equals skill”.
When something occurs that is widely at variance with what you think you know, does your spider-sense not tingle even a little bit?
I wouldn’t be “disappointed” if NCLB “miraculously” fixed everything wrong with “public schools” — but I would sure as hell want to know why, all of a sudden, NCLB should succeed so miraculously when all previous fedgov efforts have failed so abjectly!
Yeah, my spider-sense tingles. I like that image.
There’s a verse in I Corinthians 13 that says, “Love delights not in evil, but rejoices in the truth.” I’m going to stretch that concept close to the snapping point by saying I think that means it’s wrong to enjoy schadenfreudian glee at public school problems, since children suffer from them, and it’s right to acknowledge any positive steps that are made in fixing them and be happy about those.
I’m going to stretch that concept close to the snapping point
This thread is almost there already, so (like Jack Burton always says) what the hell
.
by saying I think that means it’s wrong to enjoy schadenfreudian glee at public school problems, since children suffer from them,
I agree, if all one does is enjoy instead of following-up with ideas for solutions.
BTW are you sure that what you’re calling “schadenfreudian glee” isn’t simply the inner satisfaction that comes from being proved right? Would there be anything wrong with saying “See, I Told You So” once, and then proceeding to offer constructive suggestions from there?
and it’s right to acknowledge any positive steps that are made in fixing them and be happy about those.
As long as we could agree on what constitutes a “positive step”, I have no problem with that.
Joanne, is this thread far enough off-topic yet???
Yes, I’d say the thread is far enough off-topic. I’m going for Little Green Footballsish numbers here.
Let me say, in the interests of civility, that readers of this site share a concern with education. Nobody here that I can see is rooting against kids learning. Some think it’s not possible to reform the public system and favor radical alternatives; others think strengthening public schools is the way to go.
Personally, I think we have to work on improving the public schools, which educate 90 percent of children. But the way to improve the public system includes providing more competition and more alternatives.