Just to put your mind at ease—so you can sleep tonight—I’m happy to report that I picked up a new microwave oven today. It’s smaller and more powerful than my old one. Also much cheaper than I expected. What an amazing world of scientific marvels we do live in!
Mitch Berg at Shot In the Dark is upset—rightly—by this appalling story from KDVR TV, Denver Colorado:
ARVADA, Colo. — Arvada Police are defending the way they handled the arrest of an 11-year-old boy. The Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs from his home for drawing stick figures in school – something his therapist told him to do.
His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents did not want their real names used.
They say “Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when he got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.
Do you think a charter school, responsible to a board elected by the school’s parents and stakeholders, just might have come up with a solution that wouldn’t have embarassed a Soviet komissar?
It’s time to bring back public humiliation – stocks and pillories – for public officials who so utterly transgress the boundaries of sanity, decency and morality itself.
And if the Arvada, Colorado school board doesn’t fire every single party involved, and the voters don’t in turn erase every single member of that school board from any contact with children forever, and the people can stand for that sort of priggish idiocy from their police department, they deserve what they get.
I’m pretty sure “Tim” does not.
You know, I’m getting kind of sick of hearing from educational experts who warn us constantly that if a Muslim child or a “gay” child hears a single word that could possibly be offensive to them, they have probably suffered irrevocable harm, and will have to be put on suicide watch.
But handcuffing an already troubled kid and dragging him off to jail—that’s just part of the process of growing up. Good for ’em. Makes ’em tough.
The whole point of the Zero Tolerance movement is that common sense is inadequate. We need rigid rules, enforced in a draconian manner.
Well, common sense has certainly left the building.
On a more pleasant note, I recommend this new blog: Man Of the West.
It’s written by my friend Ian Barrs, an English transplant to the U.S.
You may possibly recall that I mentioned having a splendid discussion with an expatriate Englishman last spring at the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa.
That Englishman was Ian Barrs. Not long ago we became Facebook friends, and I discovered to my amazement that we have a mutual friend, a guy who’s involved with the U.S. L’Abri Center in Rochester, Minnesota (and sometimes comments on this blog).
Phil will be happy to learn that Ian is a Presbyterian.
Many thanks for the recommend, Lars! I think that’s my first bloglink! Do I get on your blogroll?:-)
In a providential serendipity, my next blog post (planned for a couple of days, hopefully to be written tonight or tomorrow) is going to be entitled “Zero Tolerance = Zero Common Sense” and be about the stupidity of Zero Tolerance policies in schools and how we now criminalize children for childish stupidity.
Ian
I worry often about our org. here in China that keeps making more and more guidelines. Only 20 people work here, it’s a christian organization, can’t we live in the gray a little bit?
Ian, Phil is the Keeper of the Blogroll. However, since you’re both TULIP guys, I’m sure you know the secret handshake and he’ll take care of you.
Ha! Of course, I’ll add his blog to the list.
You should be careful who you hang out with, Lars. Envy is the first step toward pure doctrine. Have no fear. The Westminster Confession welcomes all.
The worst theological joke I ever heard, supposedly told to a friend of mine by a professor at his Baptist Seminary:
You know what the flower of the Calvinists is, right? – The Tulip. Do you know what the flower of the Arminians is?
Its the daisy: “He loves me, He loves me not, He loves me, He loves me not….”
(Obviously, not aimed at a good Lutheran like yourself, Lars. Just a compellingly terrible, unfair but somehow hilarious line…)
Ian
I laughed at it. I remember R.C. Sproul personally telling me (by way of a mass-produced tape recording) that he debated Arminians at a college once and got nowhere in his argument against the notion that the Spirit woos us into receiving him. I think they were holding on to a particular Greek word. The context of that word, I believe, was the illustration Jesus told of the kingdom of God being like a net pulling fish out of the sea. The fishermen don’t woo the fish out of the water, he said, but somehow he could not get them to see it.
I don’t understand this story! The school actually had a rule against drawing stick figures? Or was there something about the stick figures that was particularly objectionable? Did they portray child abuse or animal mutilation or union-busting or something? And this was a CHARTER school? I’m speechless. . . they called the COPS?
Ah! I should have clicked through first. I see now he drew pictures of a threat with a gun and wrote “teacher must die.” Well, at least I understand now what kind of buttons he pushed, but really — they sent the police to his home that evening? Are they crazy? He’s freaking 11 years old!