Welcome to class: Welcome to jail
Wow. And to think that I used to believe I was being abused if a teacher scolded me for not doing my homework.
(Bob Herbert — NY Times) Poisonous Police Behavior — click here if you have Times Select: click here if you’re one of the unwashed masses who doesn’t.
You most likely have no idea of the abusive treatment that students and teachers at many of New York City’s public schools are enduring at the hands of overly aggressive police officers and security aides assigned to the schools.
Students are being belittled, shouted at, cursed at, intrusively searched and improperly touched by cops and security aides who answer to the Police Department, not school authorities. In many cases, the students are roughed up, handcuffed, arrested and taken off to jail for behavior that does not even begin to approach the criminal. Teachers and administrators who have attempted to intervene on the behalf of students have themselves been abused, and in some cases arrested.
This poisonous police behavior is an extension into the schools of the humiliating treatment cops have long been doling out to youngsters — especially those who are black or Latino — on the city’s streets.
We all want our kids to be safe in school, and we want discipline maintained so real education can take place.
But surely at the end of the day, a school campus should still reflect the values of a free nation, not those of some tinhorn dictatorship.
June 3rd, 2007 at 4:21 am
that’s exactly what i thought reading “Students are being belittled” - belittling and touching improperly are well-known methods of brain washing - you have to destroy the self-confidence of the victims and make them feel helpless and lonely, yearning for someone to watch over them…
best conditions for a dictatorship - helpless, self-insecure underlings, fearing everything and everyone, begging for protection