We're teaching the kids early about the mindless bureaucratic enforcement of rules. I'd say the kids in this post just got clued in about life in 21st century America. Orwell would be proud.

I think Doombuggy has a good point. And I still think mindless bureaucratic enforcement of rules takes place mostly due to the bureaucratic impulse to cover one's backside. I'll bet the teacher and the principal are too worried about getting in trouble to actually use their heads. Nobody's that damn dumb on purpose. Are they?

ORD -

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, manage.
Those who can't manage, teach.

You would be stunned to know that the vast majority of public school teachers don't have the brains to be teaching five-year-olds. Zero tolerance rules are in place not because of bureaucratic laziness, or ass covering, but because the majority of those who are expected to enforce them are too stupid to use their own judgement.

I present as evidence of stupidity the fact that someone might think that a cough drop that anyone can buy off a peg in a grocery store is "medicine" in any meaningful way.

Oh, and if menthol makes something medication, then the teacher better stop chewing peppermint gum.

Proper response, fire everyone involved and make sure they are never allowed to work with the public again. This kind of stupidity needs to be stopped.

Amen, brian! At daughter #2's middle school, they are NOT ALLOWED to even have a bottle of water (in a clear bottle, mind you) without a permission slip from the school nurse. I couldn't send her to school with cough drops because they AREN'T ALLOWED. Never mind that the poor child is coughing her head off. But she doesn't have a fever, and it was determined that she's not contagious (by the school nurse, would you believe??), and there's nothing else wrong with her, so she goes to school. This zero tolerance crap has just gone too far.

This is one reason I'll never get elected - one of the first things I'd do is dismantle the government indoctrination and control mills known as "schools", gut the heart out of the teacher's unions, and turn education over to a non-government and non-political entity to run.

I mean, the courts have already determined that there is a Constitutional right to an education (how they found it I'll never know, it's probably there next to abortion in the original text), but I'll be damned if some idiot bureaucrat is gonna run things.

Strict accountability, and merit pay. No more unions, no more collective bargaining. If you can't do the job, then you don't HAVE the job any more.

Khalin has not been punished yet. She said her teacher and her principal would meet again Wednesday morning to discuss things further.

...and, with a little luck, they will discover that they are a pair of idiots.

Any system that don't allow flexibility in the application of their rules is counterproductive. In this very case, instead of teaching that nothing is free (A drop for a dollar, quite an honest attitude in my opinion), they each that we should assume a mindless view of the rules, regardless how gray or stupid they are.

For the rest, Brian nailed the whole thing right; too much idiots in schools make it bad for everyone.

The large majority of teachers come from the least intelligent quartile of college students.

It's not an easy job. The time off and the stability attract many people to the profession who really don't have what it takes. Then you get to deal with students who'd rather be elsewhere, parents from hell, administrators who want an un-rocked boat, a union, and government rules.

The smart students learn anyway, the rest don't. The government gets enough unquestioning taxpayers to keep itself going. That is the real goal of public education, and it still works.

The large majority of teachers come from the least intelligent quartile of college students.

I read an article the other day that cited a study of college students which found that education majors (future teachers) were the least likely to read a book not required for a course and the least likely to read for enjoyment or fun.

Amy - I'm not inclined to take anything from CSPI seriously on account of who and what they are, and what they have said and done in the past.

However, "Airborne" is bullshit for one simple reason - a sudden dose of 1 gram of vitamin C isn't going to do a damned thing for your immune system. Same with this stupid "Emergen-C" shit.

If you aren't getting enough vitamin C through your diet (or other nutrients, vitamins, minerals, whatever), a quick shot before getting on the plane isn't going to solve your problem. If you aren't taking supplements every day, then you're relying on your diet to get what your body needs to do its job.

I take 2 grams of vitamin C per day. I rarely get sick, while my friends who do not take any vitamins at all are sick constantly. Take from that what you will about the efficacy of vitamins.

Idiots and asshats, all of them. Teachers are lazy-who wouldn't want all that paid time off? The ones who care get stomped out of the game quite quickly.

Khalin should thank her lucky stars she wasn't strip searched in the principal's office. That's happened to more than one schoolgirl who innocently ran afoul of "zero tolerance" policies:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/127566.html

Zero tolerance really means zero thought. Ya'd think that people are supposed to think in school...

"If a student must take a prescription or over-the-counter medication during school hours, it must be received and stored in the original container, and be labeled with the student's name, current date, prescription dosage, frequency of administration and physician's name."

So let me get this straight, it's over the counter, and you need the prescription dosage and the physicians name....uhhh dumbasses, it's not prescription....so how can you have any of these? BLind adherance to policy. No thought (in a school?), or free will to make decisions allowed. What an education kids get these days.

Whenever I read these bash-the-public-school-teachers threads, I always wonder how many of you actually know any teachers. MarkD is right, it's not an easy job, and Momof3 is right that people totally unsuited for the job are attracted by the idea of summers off. But I observe that those are the people who "get stomped out of the game" precisely because they don't care enough to put up with the bullshit. The teachers I know, including my mother, work most summers teaching summer school (which is a miserable job AND you take a pay cut compared to the regular school year) and often work a second job so they can make a living wage, care about what they do, are smart, capable people and work their asses off.

A friend of mine is an 8th-grade teacher, and she reads a lot. I think she is a victim of the bureaucracy as much as anyone else.

When you put a vast, government-run bureaucracy in charge of both running something and paying for it, instead of letting privately-run schools and parents duke it out over cost and content, this is going to happen. Same as with healthcare. If someone ELSE is paying for it, you have little incentive to care, and also little input to make changes. You aren't the customer.

Sam -

You're going to have to get used to the idea that the few teachers you know are the exception.

The bulk of government-school teachers do not know the subject matter they are teaching. We're talking eighth grade math teachers that do not understand algebra, here.

Of course, it helps to understand that the purpose of the government schools is not to educate, but to indoctrinate. And also prepare good little consume-bots.

Any child that actually learns anything in a public school typically does so in spite of the teachers, not because of them. And for the 5% of teachers that have a clue and give a fuck, well their work is completely obliterated by the other 95%.

Which is why college professors are amazed that they are getting freshman classes that are functionally illiterate and cannot do basic mathematics.

Brian, (and I realize your comment was directed at Sam) you may find it interesting to know that my 8th-grade teacher friend is specifically assigned to "at-risk" students. (She teaches reading and writing.) These aren't students with learning disabilities or anything like that - they're just kids who come from really messed-up homes. It is, um, interesting that we actually have to have teachers designated just for that kind of thing.

PJ - I find it neither interesting nor surprising. I do however find it appalling.

Why? Because their parents are invariably products of the public schools who "fell through the cracks". The bulk of teachers don't give two shits about whether or not their charges are successful in life, only that they pass the class and move up a grade without creating a major hassle for the teacher. "social promotion" and all that.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the only children who do well in government schools are the ones whose parents demand excellence and help their children achieve it.

Otherwise, you need teachers like your friend, and I dare say that if she actually shows positive results with those kids, she'll get an earful from the union about it.

Orwell would be proud.

Please, can we refrain from making momentously stupid comments like this. Orwell was decrying this sort of bullshit, not promoting it. He was warning us to watch out, lest we end up with the world he was describing.

Sorry, this is a big pet peeve of mine. There are just too many people who seem to think he was actually supporting something he most certainly wasn't. Before you go making comments like that, please read what he actually wrote.

brian -

You're going to have to get used to the idea that the few teachers you know are the exception.

I hate to break it to you, but that's just not true. About the closest that comes to describing the truth, is that a lot of decent teachers end up jaded and reach the point where they just don't care.

I won't argue that we don't have far too many that suck ass. But a firm majority of teachers really do care and know their shit. They work their asses off against a lot of bullshit, including apathetic parents or parents who are working multiple jobs and just don't have the time. They deal with kids who know absolutely nothing about respect and rules that allow kids to get away with shit that would have gotten me suspended and beaten for the suspension.

And they all too often don't have the luxury of making distinctions about the rules. They may know full well that something like the article above is a crock, but if they treat it as such, they can also get in a hella lot of trouble. So they do what they've been told and overreact, because if they don't, someone else probably will and bye bye job.

But by all means, assume that your limited experience with public school teachers is correct and most of them are fucking morons.

Amy -

Probably, but I have heard that all too often, coming from people who aren't. And as a huge Orwell fan, it annoys.

"About the closest that comes to describing the truth, is that a lot of decent teachers end up jaded and reach the point where they just don't care."

My teacher friend (gee, maybe I should invite her here and let her explain it herself) sees some of the other teachers around her get to this point, especially late in the semester. She hasn't gotten to that point yet. She loves what she does, but she gets attached to some of her students, and worries about what they are going home to at night. They are the reason she loves what she does in the first place, in addition to the fact that she loves reading and writing, which is what she's teaching them. I'm glad she gets the summers off, to disengage, ride her bike, and recharge, though. She always wants to do more than she can, but does have her own sanity to look out for.