10 HAMODIA

16 ELUL 5772

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2012

Ed-Op

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EDITORIAL

Pens, Pencils, Books And Knives

If the destiny of New York City lies with the children now in its public school system, the city should brace itself for a much more violent future. Last week New York Citys Department of Education released frightening statistics on the violence taking place in the citys schools, further confirming that the $21 billion public school system is horribly and dangerously broken. The number of violent occurrences in the citys public schools would be a black eye for a medium-size city, let alone an educational system. The DOE reported that violent incidents rose a staggering 50 percent since 2005, totaling 68,313. Thats on average 40 violent incidents a year per New York City public school. While at one time the only sharp objects students would bring to school would be pencils, now they are also packing knives in their book bags. School officials recorded 2,775 incidents involving students caught with a weapon. Assault where serious injury was involved accounted for 491 of the incidents. The expulsion could be to a special school for violent children or, in the worst-case scenario, permanent. The collective rights of students to good and violence-free education superseded the right of the one student who impeded learning. That common-sense approach ensuring a quality education for students who wanted to learn at the expense of those who didnt was turned on its head, and with it came the deterioration of our educational system. Thanks to misuse of the vitally important Individual and Disabilities Education Act, schools have to provide an education to all regardless of the disability. Unfortunately, what constitutes disability under IDEA has been ludicrously stretched to include students who cant function in a classroom setting. Students who, in any other society, would be labeled as hoodlums or troublemakers, unfit for enrollment in an educational system, are now called emotionally disabled. With most disruptive and violent students now falling under the elastic definition of disabled, principals have no option to ship students out of the system. Instead, the most they can do is transfer these hooligans from their school to another, where they become a new headache for a different principal. The threat of expulsion has been taken away from New York City principals. Legal intimidation has also taken away the ability of teachers to impose any kind of true discipline. Ever since the 1975 Tinker v. Des Moines High School District case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that students are entitled to due process, school administrators are terrified to suspend or discipline students. Before handing out suspensions, administrators have to make sure that students had sufficient warnings and that there were witnesses to the incident. School officials are so handcuffed by a raft of inane regulation that when one student walked into a New York City school with a bat studded with metal spikes, the principal couldnt issue a suspension because the weapon was not on any official list. According to the New York Post, City Council Education Chairman Robert Jackson said, The amount of incidents indicates that we have a serious problem in our schools as far as serious injuries with weapons, and intimidation and bullying. Serious? State of emergency sounds more like it. Klaxons and sirens should be going off in Gracie Mansion and in City Hall. Certainly, the mayors soft-drink crusade and bike-share program should be placed on the back burner for now and prioritization should be given to a total restructuring of the citys school system. Not only is the city failing to provide an adequate education for its children, but its also placing its most vulnerable citizens in a violent environment.

OPINION

Satire: No Outer Space Invasion Should Interfere With President Obamas Fundraising Schedule
BY BARRY RUBIN

N.Y.C.s teachers are afraid of disciplining students. In fact, teachers are more afraid of students than students are of teachers.
The mayor has banned sugary drinks from the citys schools, but he should be fretting about more toxic substances used by students: drug and alcohol possession has doubled since 2009. The likely and wrong-headed course of action to counter this surge in violence will be more metal detectors, video cameras, security officers and a phalanx of psychologists who will try to understand why students are resorting to violence. Thats been the failing approach to the increasing violence in our schools for the past 20 years. Metal detectors have become as ubiquitous as chalkboards in our schools. But more security and more metal detectors is not the answer to controlling violence in our schools. Its a band-aid that wont stop the bloodletting. The solution lies in a word that has been removed from educators vocabulary lists: discipline. Today, due to years of civil rights lawsuits and pandering legislation, New York Citys teachers are afraid of disciplining students. In fact, teachers are more afraid of students than students are of teachers. In the not-so-distant past, when New York Citys schools were churning out future Nobel laureates, principals could expel disruptive students from the system.

Note: The following is my daydream of a New York Times editorial a few weeks hence, after the craziness regarding the hurricane and the Republican convention. It is intended to be over-the-top satire that might make you laugh. The point is, though, that things have become so totally bizarre that I wouldnt rule out something like this happening. [By the way, doesnt it seem as if Obama is running for national student body president, as if all the voters are on campuses? In a sense, I think that reflects a very real belief of him and his cohort.] Under any circumstances, the appearance of an alien attack fleet would seem to be a cause for alarm. Of course, we are not referring to good aliens, the people sneaking across our borders in the hope of getting citizenship and the ability to vote in elections not necessarily in that order. No, we are referring to the aliens from the star system of Alpha Orionis whose space ships are even now circling our planet. As everyone knows by now, the aliens have broadcast a threat that unless their demands are met within 24 hours they will start destroying one American state a day, killing all forms of life within its borders. There are those who have wrongly concluded, however, that the president should immediately cease his fund-raising activities and that the schedule of the Democratic Convention be altered. We view this as shortsighted, mainly pushed by the far-right faction that has taken over the Republican Party. There is a big difference between an alien attack that bodes ill for the survival of all Americans and a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast. No one would suggest that the president prefers to be partying while Americans were dying horribly. Its just that doing so is his personal duty, made perhaps less onerous by the fact that some of the specific states that might be wiped out, are Arizona or Utah for example. Fund-raising and nominating conventions are a necessary part of the American political process. Consequently, these are legitimately the highest priority for a

president compared to, say, dealing with the wrecked economy, massive unemployment, inflation, the takeover of Egypt by a genocidal-oriented totalitarian regime and such relatively secondary problems. Finally, we should address the potential advantages of the destruction of America by the space invaders advanced weapons. The U.S. debt would be wiped out overnight. Since no one would be alive to look for work the unemployment rate would be zero. And we would have achieved perfect equality. As an added bonus, the United States, a country that has done so much damage in the world, would be gone and the rest of the globes people would be free to pursue their development without fear of someone stealing their resources. Well, someone other than those from Alpha Orionis at least.

We should address the potential advantages of the destruction of America by the space invaders advanced weapons. The U.S. debt would be wiped out overnight. Since no one would be alive to look for work the unemployment rate would be zero.
We do not know much about the culture or even the skin if they have skin or the gender if they have gender of the voyagers from Alpha Orionis. But we can certainly say that they are part of the universes rainbow of diversity. Who is to say that [mankind, who has] ravished this planet environmentally, is superior to these visitors? Perhaps they have ... recycling, the main [feature] of a truly advanced civilization. In short, who are we to judge? But one thing is clear: threats of the imminent destruction of America should not disrupt the presidents schedule or the Democratic Party convention. That would be truly silly.

The opinions expressed on this page are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hamodia.