Sunday, September 9, 2012

Fascist Schools, Fascist Parents

As a one-time unarmed, unprotected child ourself, we were horrified, nauseated, &c. by this example of America eating its young, from some creep unwilling to take responsibility for the trauma that living w/ him for five yrs. inflicted on his once-innocent daughter.
In my public school 40 years ago, teachers didn’t lay their hands on students for bad behavior. They sent them to the principal’s office. But in today’s often overcrowded and underfunded schools, where one in eight students receive help for special learning needs, the use of physical restraints and seclusion rooms has become a common way to maintain order.

It’s a dangerous development, as I know from my daughter’s experience. At the age of 5, she was kept in a seclusion room for up to an hour at a time over the course of three months, until we discovered what was happening. The trauma was severe.

According to national Department of Education data, most of the nearly 40,000 students who were restrained or isolated in seclusion rooms during the 2009-10 school year had learning, behavioral, physical or developmental needs, even though students with those issues represented just 12 percent of the student population. African-American and Hispanic students were also disproportionately isolated or restrained.
It is truly a wonder & amazement that there is a single parent, teacher or school administrator still breathing in this fascist shit-hole of a nation.

The ultimate fault is always the parental units, however fucked-up & fascist the schools to which they send their children. What psychological trauma did Bill Lichtenstein impose on his daughter that she would “get fidgety and restless when she is unsure as to what is expected of her"? A five-yr. old who thinks she should be performing & conforming to the desires & expectations of others 24/7? That's just wonderful, innit?*

There's no age limit/requirement in the Second Amendment, & if anyone in this nation of bullies & enforcers needs weapons for defense against the fascism of physical superiority it is those under 18. Note well that (No surprise here.) those of darker skin hues get more of it.

Guns to the youth to free them from restraints & solitary confinement!

*No comments there. Maybe himself-a-bully Bill Lichtenstein was aware people might wonder why his daughter can't handle freedom/thinks she should be under someone's thumb at all times. No parent is innocent, are they?

15 comments:

mikey said...

Question Authority!

Fight the Power!

Pigs off Campus!

Shee-it, kids, if you can't get guns you can make pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails and napalm. Have you no creativity at all? APPLY yourselves!!

M. Bouffant said...

Home-Schooled Drop-Out Editor:
The educational system has made them all into little consumers, unable to think or to do a damn thing for themselves.

mikey said...

Huh.

Thought that's what the intert00bz were for.

Well, that and porn.

But even when your a teenager, you can't masturbate ALL the time...

mikey said...

Er, at least I can't...

Weird Dave said...

Solitary confinement for being in kindergarten.

What. The. Fuck.

And yeah, the parents have a lot to do with this but the schools that actually think this does good? Where the fuck does that even begin to come from?

Oh wait. I know. It is the cheapest, easiest way for them to deal with a problem.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

mikey, I have a friend whose parents wouldn't let him watch TV.

So her went to the library, learned how to make explosives (the garage roof outside his BR window was his test platform) and proceeded to destroy the communities mailboxes, one by one.

Smut Clyde said...

As Loomis suggests at LGM, this is no more than can be expected from the culture that also produced Abu Ghraib.

M. Bouffant said...

Added Unnecessary Work Editor:
Dammit, if we'd seen that in the reader we would've just commented there. How'd we miss it? (As if we were awake at 0631 on a Sunday, but we do read what's happened overnight.)

Course there's a much longer & lovelier tradition behind it than just Abu Ghraib.

Fuck, our parents didn't even have a telebision set, specifically to keep bad influences from us. (Didn't work, did it, jerks?) Not nearly enough mad bombing activity in the newspapers of the late '50s & early '60s to inspire us.

BadTux said...

When I was teaching crazy kids (*and I mean cuh-RAZY kids, as in, psychotic kids who saw things that weren't there and shit like that*), we used timeout for kids who were misbehaving, but it was just a cubicle and only for 15 minutes max. A typical office job is more punishment than that! We also made sure the kids knew at all times what was expected of them and made sure they got properly recognized and rewarded for doing what they were supposed to do. I had to restrain kids at times when they were doing something dangerous or about to do so -- I still don't know what was going through that crazy kid's mind when he decided he was going to run in front of the buses, but you can bet I grabbed him and hustled him face to the wall arms behind back lickity split until I could ascertain he wasn't about to go splat himself in front of the buses -- but isolation rooms? I was teaching kids who were balls to the wall CRAZY and we didn't need sh*t like that!

As for the little girl, it isn't necessarily the parents who made her anxious. One thing I discovered while teaching is that kids are generally more comfortable when they know at all times what's expected of them. The unhappiest kids I dealt with as a teacher (talking sane kids now, not the crazy kids) were the kids who were basically raising themselves -- a lot of them were good kids, but that was way more responsibility than any kid is comfortable taking on, childhood is a trip into the unknown and if you don't even have a fucking *map*, it's crazy scary. So anyhow, if a teacher isn't doing that -- letting the kids know what's expected of them at any given time, giving them the map, so to speak, of what they're supposed to be doing in the classroom -- she ain't doin' her job. Just sayin'.

- Badtux the Former Teacher Penguin

M. Bouffant said...

Knew It Editor:
So you're saying at least some of the species has an innate desire to be ordered around? Confirms some of our unfortunate suspicions.

BadTux said...

There's a difference between laying out expectations and ordering people around. I *expect*, for example, that you are not going to take an AK-47 and go out and start plinking random people for fun. But *ordering* you to not take an AK-47 and go out and plink people for fun would be just silly.

Similarly, when I was a kid my parents expected that I would go to college and laid out my K-12 education accordingly. They did not, however, *order* me to go to college. That would have been just silly, trying to order someone who is legally of age to go to college!

I expect that that this message on expectations has laid your questions to rest on the subject. I am not, however, *ordering* you to lay your questions to rest on the subject of expectations vs. orders. That would be just silly.

- Badtux the Expectant(*) Penguin
(*) No, not in *THAT* way!

M. Bouffant said...

Now Looky Here Editor:
People & their institutions are awful, & nothing will convince us otherwise.

Structure & expectations of it are fascism. If the little bastards are uncomfortable w/ not doing something or performing to someone's expectations all the damn time, they've already been indoctrinated into being cogs in someone else's machine.

Weird Dave said...

You know, sir, in many ways you are quite correct but I still do believe that some sort of structure is needed.
While you may be smart enough and viscous enough to get by, I doubt I am.

Weird Dave said...

"vicious"

And someday I might learn how to spell.

M. Bouffant said...

Structural Analysis Editor:
We are just a little inner-directed, aren't we?

And we'll grudgingly admit some structure is needed, but a normal child should be relieved when nothing is expected of them for the time being.