Friday, May 1, 2009

Public School Prisoners Part 2 - Criminalizing Kids


Do you know what would happen if a student hit your child and your child defended himself?
Thanks to the idiotic zero tolerance mentality that has replaced common sense, your child, the victim, will likely be criminalized.
Any sort of physical altercation, including SELF DEFENSE, is regarded as an assault. It is common practice at our public school for the principal/assistant principal to have a child write out a confession/account of incident and sign it. They do this without so much as notifying the parent that there was a problem . A few weeks later, the parent will be notified of the child's court date. Yes, court date - as in legal proceeding. These aren't extremely violent incidents I'm talking about. Normal childhood altercations are made out to be criminal acts.

Let me say this again...School officials will have your child, who is likely under duress, sign a paper with every intention of using it against him in a court of law.
Do you see a problem here? These are MINOR children without a parent or any sort of representation present! School administrators know full well that they will be turning these cases over to a court, but they don't consider the rights of your child.
If you think they only do this to the worst kids who are continuously terrorizing other students, you're wrong.I've seen this happen to good kids who have never been in any kind of trouble. Besides, even the worst criminals have the right to representation.

When a child has a problem with bullies, they are told not to get physical with anyone under any circumstances. No matter what some jerk does to them, they aren't supposed to touch them. Isn't that a crock?


A little more on the daily injustices inside a public school...

Now, say a students smokes pot on the wrestling bus your son is on and you ask about it. We don't need to talk about that, and there will be no court hearing for it. Nor will there be for the students caught using drugs in school. But let a good kid get caught with some Tylenol.

A troubled kid can repeatedly hit your kid in the back, but when your child raises his hand and accidentally (by admission of the principal) backhands the the kid who is hitting him from behind, your child is threatened with court. The "troubled kid" who goes around hitting people and picking fights is defended by school staff because "he's come a long way".

And did you know it's okay for girls to call boys names.. like fat, but boys aren't allowed to call girls names ..like gorilla, "because girls are sensitive about their body image"?

My child had never been to court, but I've seen it happen to good kids who should never be made into young criminals. It's insane!

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