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Thursday, March 31, 2005

The Whizzinator!

Read the article/blog post linked above. Obviously, there is a humorous bent to some of it, but it discusses a pretty serious issue. Educators, especially at government schools, seem to think that children have no rights. Moreover, if you disagree with them, you must be on drugs or something.

Read the following excerpt:

No doubt we'll see a proliferation of cases like these:

[Velvet Poveromo's] son Michael, an eighth-grader at New Milford Middle School, was ordered to take a drug test last month after he argued with a teacher about a missing homework assignment and walked out of class. Poveromo said she was called at work and told to take her son to a drug-testing center. When she initially refused, she was told he would be tested regardless of her presence. "I blew up because I know better," she said. "I know my son is not on drugs." Poveromo relented, however, and brought Michael to a doctor who took his vital signs and decided he was not under the influence.

Teachers and other school officials get to decide who has to take a drug test. Nodding off is grounds enough to force students to submit a urine sample.

In Ewing Township, dozing off in class was enough of a deviation for a high school freshman to be tested. Michael Glappa was ordered to submit to a drug test after he fell asleep in a social studies class. When he refused, he was suspended.


I think that the problem with our government schools is that they suffer from the same mentality as the rest of the government - they think they know what's best for everyone and that certainty should outweigh the views of any individual. Plus, our so-called educators aren't that bright. See here:

...hard data on education student qualifications have consistently shown their mental test scores to be at or near the bottom among all categories of students. This was as true of the studies done in the 1920s and 1930 as of the studies in the 1980s. Whether measured by Scholastic Aptitude Tests, ACT tests, vocabulary tests, reading comprehension tests, or Graduate Record Examinations, students majoring in education have consistently scored below the national average.

So that's probably mean and doesn't serve to impugn all teachers or all school systems, but isn't it a little frightening. I'd love to see some personality tests done on teachers; most of mine were more than a tad dictatorial.

Kid Handsome

1 Comments:

Blogger Linda said...

I have had problems with the public school system for years. My problems lie more in with the lack of education that is provided. Since before my daughter was born, I had intended for my children to attend private school.

In the case you listed, I do not feel that any teacher should be able to have a student tested for drugs. They should be able to strongly suggest it, but the final decision should be left to the student's parents. I guess that would change if student were over 18, but even then, they might still have to have parental consent. I will have to think about that. I think as a general rule a teacher would not be medically gualified to access a person for drug use. This leaves teachers to discriminate against certain students, because they may not agree with how the student acts in class.

There should be very specific rergulations in place before any drug testing should ever occur on a minor.

5:21 PM  

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