The Death of Common Sense…2011!

Somewhere Phillip K Howard must be saying to himself, “...but don’t they ever learn?”.

His 1996 best seller, “The Death of Common Sense, How Law is Suffocating America”, should be required reading for anyone about to enter the public domain, especially in education administration.

Consider the following:

A 7 year old is being picked on by a bully on a school bus, so, in order to defend himself, the 7 year old kicks the bully in his testicles!

Simple enough, no?

But now the school is investigating the 7 year old for committing a possible sexual harassment because they consider that “inappropriate touching”!

His mother said, “He’s 7 years old. He doesn’t know anything about sexual harassment,”. I bet the lesson he’s learned from school isn’t about “sexual harassment”; but how inane rules have unintended consequences.

I often wonder why it is that stupidity like this is tolerated. Do school officials, albeit saddled with the responsibility of carrying out edicts, don’t even have the common sense of being able to interpret the rules according?

Ahh, but then you’d be assuming that they can think for themselves.

In another case, a mother said that her 9 year old son was suspended from school for referring to his teacher as “cute”.

Let’s think about this for a moment…He did not grab his teacher in any way…he didn’t even address the teacher directly.
According to the 9 year old, a substitute overheard the student talking to another student and said his teacher was cute!

Knowing what some kids think of their teachers today, if I were her, I’d have been flattered!

Ahhh, but no!

In this case, the principal of the school calls the student’s mom to say her son will have to serve a suspension.

As with everything, there are 3 sides to every story, and in this one, a spokesperson for the district said the boy was suspended for what they term
"inappropriate behavior" after making "inappropriate statements."…although they don’t define what "inappropriate behavior" is….just to say that because of the child’s “disruption of school, he needs to serve out a 5 day suspension.

And, yes Virginia, that Santa Claus you see at Macy’s is probably a fraud!

Or so claims an elementary school teacher that chided her students that the loveable jolly old St Nick is the stuff of fairy tales!

The teacher was then told by her superiors that she’d have to call every parent of her students to apologize for making such a ridiculous claim.

Excuse me for a moment, but is this what they’re supposed to be teaching in school? Preparing our kids for a future that will allow them to compete in the ever expanding global market, in which we could only hope they make a place for themselves.

Perhaps that teacher’s time would have been better spent on dreaming up a lesson plan, instead of crushing their imaginations and stifiling whatever creativity they can muster in what’s becoming an increasing insane world.

Whenever I read things like the stories I just related to you, I hear my beloved grandmother’s words ringing in my ears, truer today than they ever were:

“Ray, ‘o mund” eh sott’ ‘nn coppa”…or for the uniniciated: “Ray, the world is turning upside down!”