Wednesday, March 09, 2005

When everyone's a felon...

...who will vote?

At the rate zero sense tolerance is going, every person who spends more than a week in public schools will emerge a felon. Once that happens, having a felony conviction on your record will be utterly normal. Will felons still be unable to vote? In that case, only the home-schooled will be electing our public officials.

How easy is it to get charged with a felony? How about drawing "threatening" stick figures?

What should have been a minor incident at an Ocala, Fla., elementary school has attracted national attention because of the school's response. Two boys, aged 9 and 10, were charged with second-degree felonies and taken away in handcuffs by the police because they drew stick figures depicting violence against a third student. There was no act of violence, no weaponry. According to news reports, the arrested children had no prior history of threatening the student depicted in the drawing. The parents were not advised or consulted. The school's immediate response was to call the police and level charges "of making a written threat to kill or harm another person."

...continued in full post...

This is one of three similar incidents at that school that week. Appallingly enough, not only did the school call the cops, the cops showed up, cuffed the kids, and took them away.

Folks, this is a beautiful example of a punishment way out of proportion to the offense. It sends all kinds of wrong messages to kids: rules and their enforcement are arbitrary and unfair; winding up in jail does not mean you did anything all that wrong; your government is out to get you; etc.

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again. I don't approve of litigiousness in general, but if I were the parent of one of those kids, my second step would be to find a lawyer willing to go berserk against the school, the teachers and administrators personally as well as agents of the school, and the cops, personally as well as agents of the police force.

My first step would be to get my kid out of that school. Home-school, if nothing else is available.

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