Fwd: Purely out of curiosity...

[Peter M. Fitzpatrick]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter M. Fitzpatrick <petopoet at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: Purely out of curiosity...
To: ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>


    I am not quite sure about this particular case, but as an American, I
am aware that the "zero tolerance" policy has been used to replace
education with discipline in not a few cases that smack of the truly
bizarre and Orwellian, if not completely scripted from some absurdist
scriptwriter in the sky.Case in point, when I lived in a Atlanta some years
ago, the news broke that a young 6th grade black girl was facing severe
disciplinary actions for bringing a "Tweety-bird" keychain to school.
"Tweety-bird", the cartoon character from, I believe, Porky Pig, was the
culprit. How or why or what they were thinking that she would do with this
nefarious bird replica, I do not venture to guess.
    Ahmed's case is perhaps more understandable, but he is innocent before
guilty, even if he is considered a child in the eyes of the law.
Authoritarianism in the name of safety should not substitute the sanctity
and value of  freedom, regardless of how dangerous the times might be. If
he was a white teenager, I don't believe the "terrorism" image would
immediately come to mind. Level heads should prevent a possibly misguided
adventure being misconstrued as a nefarious terrorist plot. This will
probably follow him for the rest of his life now.
     Again, what is never brought up again after perhaps a quick mention or
two, the mental health problem in this country is woefully underfunded by
insurance companies and difficult for moralists to face. Many of the school
shooters were and are mentally ill, perhaps criminally so, but if involved
parents, teachers, and yes, medical professionals, were more involved and
concerned, these tragedies could perhaps be averted. No one wants to be
mentally ill. There are wonderful drugs that can treat the disease. But the
arcane bureaucracies of school, hospitals, and insurance companies almost
guarantees that none of these kids will get these drugs. Personally, I
believe that even so called "terrorists" meet the standards of being
mentally ill, at least by the standards of in most societies, or at least
those that are not sociopaths and criminals in the first place. I am aware
that leads into the quandary of mental illness vs. criminality,
rehabilitation vs. punishment, and ultimately free will vs. determinism,
something we cannot solve in discussion list.


On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:13 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> Was the clock a school project? In other words, did a teacher, a club
> adviser, any adult in the school assign a project, and did the clock fit
> the assignment? Or did the young man make a clock and bring it to school?
>
> As far as I can tell the young man did not build a clock or make a
> project, or in any way bring something to school that was part of an
> assignment from any adult in the building. It was not a project. It was not
> show and tell. It seems the student took apart a clock, re-fashioned it and
> put in in a box and brought it to school.
>
> Why did he do this? What was his motivation?
>
> Whatever his intentions, if he re-assembled clock parts in a box and took
> them to school, he broke the law. While 14 year old boys, and sometimes 14
> year old girls, are instructed that bringing a clock in a box, a plastic
> gun, a plastic sword, a paper bomb or dynamite  etc..., even on Halloween
> is dangerous and against the law, young people do make these kinds of
> mistakes, from time to time. Best if they make them in school as school is
> the safest place in the world for students. Obviously, doing so in the
> street may get one killed by a police officer or even a gun toting citizen.
> In a school the child, age 14, will be interrogated, handcuffed, probably,
> and asked to write a statement explaining his or her intentions and the
> police will contact the guardians and book the kid. This is the law. It
> matters not the race or religion of the child.
>
> From time to time, a  brave administrator, more likely an experienced
> teacher will protect the child with a slap on the wrist, but the current
> mood in the country and in schools is making this a rare act of....welll
> not courage, but decency.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 9:02 AM, The Jonathon Hunt Experience <
> newtalkingwall at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Is there any evidence that the kid "only" took apart a store bought clock
>> and put it back together, beyond people online pointing out that doing so
>> is a thing that people can do? Beyond that, if the child acted as
>> maliciously as Richard Dawkins and others would like to believe, this means
>> his whole plan hinged on the knowledge that his teachers and police would
>> confuse a circuit board and some wires with something that can explode. If
>> our teachers and police are this stupid (which seems to be the case, here),
>> then we are lucky in getting off with a $15 million dollar fine.
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20151211/fe683637/attachment.html>