{"id":35162,"date":"2013-03-11T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35162"},"modified":"2013-03-12T07:06:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T12:06:41","slug":"abandon-ship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35162","title":{"rendered":"Abandon Ship"},"content":{"rendered":"

People in society at large are starting to notice what I wrote about six years ago; the public schools are insane asylums<\/a>, run by the inmates, when it comes to Zero Tolerance.<\/p>\n

Recent cases – a boy pointing a pop-tart “shaped like a gun”, boys being suspended for playing cops and robbers with finger guns, the usual – are old hat for me, personally.<\/p>\n

Glenn Reynolds reaches the same conclusion I the better part of a decade ago; it’s not just about the petty, venal harassment of children (almost inevitably boys) on idiotic grounds; the worst part is what it teaches the children<\/a>:<\/p>\n

And that’s the problem with all of these cases. Our<\/span><\/p>\n

justification for putting massive amounts of taxpayer money into public schools is that they’re supposed to teach critical thinking. But stories like these — and they’re legion — suggest that the very people who are supposed to be teaching our kids how to think are largely incapable of critical thought themselves.<\/p>\n

A Pop Tart gun, a finger gun, or a toy gun — even a pink one that shoots, gasp!, soap bubbles! — isn’t any danger to anyone. Nor is playing with toy guns a sign that a kid is mentally ill or dangerous. It’s a sign that a kid is a kid.<\/p>\n

When schools and teachers react hysterically to such non-threats, they’re telling us one of two things: Either that they lack the ability to respond realistically to events or that they recognize that there’s not any sort of threat, but deliberately overreact in order to stigmatize even the idea of guns. The first is educational malpractice; the second is educational malpractice mixed with abuse of power. Neither inspires confidence in the educational system in which they appear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I vote for “educational malpractice mixed with abuse of power”, by the way; if you accept the idea that the left has turned the public schools into indoctrination centers – and more and more, I do – then that’s a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

But Glenn’s mistaken as well; I’ve seen no evidence that the public schools care even a little about critical thinking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People in society at large are starting to notice what I wrote about six years ago; the public schools are insane asylums, run by the inmates, when it comes to Zero Tolerance. Recent cases – a boy pointing a pop-tart “shaped like a gun”, boys being suspended for playing cops and robbers with finger guns, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35162"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35172,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35162\/revisions\/35172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}