A 12-year-old girl was arrested, handcuffed, and marched out of school by police for doodling her name on her desk with washable marker. The principal insisted that this was done according to district policy, though the district called it a mistake. Apparently the NYPD will start using Velcro cuffs on unruly kids. I don’t understand why any cuffs, metal or Velcro, are used on someone for desk doodling. On top of that, they made her do the perp walk out the school. American law enforcement is very quick to cuff and/or shackle arrestees. Because they affect so many more ordinary citizens in their everyday dealings and are intended as means of public humiliation to show the power of the police and the impotence of civilians, those policies are much more damning evidence of an overbearing police state than the occasional warrantless wiretap of a suspected terrorist sympathizer.
Then there was the 9-year-old boy in New York who was disciplined and nearly suspended for bringing a two-inch solid plastic toy gun and fitting it to a Lego figure during lunch time.
In both cases, the principal enforced these rules, presumably under some “zero tolerance policy.” I have noted before the sheer mindlessness of these “one hundred percent intolerance policy” enforcers. Principals typically have advanced degrees from education schools. Education degrees have long had the notoriety that they are earned by the least intelligent among graduate students. That stereotype is proved valid over and over, as by these two. Political correctness, identity group victimology and other leftist topics, leaden jargon, and trendy, but ineffective, teaching methods are taught at the ed schools. Rational discrimination, discretion, and common sense obviously are not.
“The facts of life are conservative.” - Margaret Thatcher
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