Bold 14-Year-Old Girl Confronts School Board After Watching Her Dad Get Arrested for Violating Two-Minute Rule: ‘I Don’t Trust You’
This is going to end well for the Gilford NH BOE.
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In all fairness, we don't know how the father acted, and the fact that the video tape of his behavior wasn't shown is disturbing, and one sided. Innocent until proved guilty is wise even for organizations, not just individuals. How long did he refuse to stop? Did he repeatedly interrupt others? Was he warned? How many times? I won't assume. Do you wish to? At the same time, just the story he was arguing about, the sexual content of the story, would be enough for me to be looking for educational alternatives. The judgment of whomever allowed it, let alone allowed it to continue, let alone let it come to a meeting rather than simply say, "This is sexually explicit and there are better substitutes for any purpose we presently have." and can the book is stunningly bereft of ethics. I can understand his anger.
You're wasting your time...
" parents may not always know how to effectively teach that,"
The solution is not:
"public schools providing kids with information they can use to protect themselves."
The solution is:
"public schools providing PARENTS with information they can use to protect their children."
"And given the frequency of child abuse these days,"
How's that making fun of Ozzie & Harriet / Leave it to Beaver / Andy in Mayberry workin' out for ya?
Ain't we glad we replaced them with stuff like "Married with Children", "American Dad" and "Modern Family"?
Let me know when you are finally able to make the connection between the destruction of traditional American culture and all these ills, such as "frequency of child abuse these days", so we can get busy restoring the institutions the know-it-all, perpetual adolescent boomers et al worked so hard to destroy.
Also, there really isn't any practical difference between indoctrination and education. Every group, without exception, has its own ideology (it's own brand of "koolaid," if you will) that they instill in their pupils. For example, if you joined the army, at boot camp they would attempt to indoctrinate you with the mindset of a soldier. If you went to study at a religious institution, they would attempt to indoctrinate you with the teachings of their church.
And parents do have control over what kind of information their children receive. If they don't like what the public schools teach, they can send their kids to a private school. The suggestion that parents are totally powerless is nonsense.
"aim for the center of mass. Squeeze, don't pull the trigger..."
Oh, wait... they aren't allowed to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights in or around schools...
So much for wanting to teach kids how to protect themselves...
That's not even good enough to make Penthouse...
And you have to be 18 to read that...
And, the "proper action by the police officer" would have been to NOT BE THERE. This was not a question and answer parent/boe meeting...if there's police present it is then a heavy handed, intimidation tactics, FAKE meeting. And the Board KNOWS this.
-He made his statement
-He started interrupting other speakers and making comments to the board
-He was asked to leave
-He refused
-He was arrested.
I'm sure the cop didn't want to arrest him for such a dumb thing, but had to. He probably got a lot of press out of his refusal and arrest, but he should've just left.
Doubt the school board membership is going to survive this.
Getting 25 parents to take 2 min apiece on the same subject would have also been more painful for the school board as well.
The whole incident is chikenpoop on the part of the board. They need to be recalled, or whatever gets them removed from their positions. Cowards, one and all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HC2LPu8w...
It is quite clear...You can hear the police officer tell him, "You need to leave", and he says, "well, I guess you are going to have to arrest me."
Go back to your mob.
While the circumstance was weak for the officer to ask him to leave, it is within his authority. Once Baer refused and "I guess you'll have to arrest me", the officer had no choice, because Baer chose to escalate to disorderly conduct, by disobeying the officer, simple.
I didn't notice before, but Baer is an attorney. He really should know how to take much stronger steps than by just disrupting a school board meeting with a rant.
I agree the lines in the book are clearly inappropriate. I still wonder what would happen if 25 cases of contributing to delinquency of a minor (one for each student) were brought against the school system. It sounds like the teacher, the principal and the superintendent aren't listening.
Totally agree, the schools don't own our kids, and this was inappropriate material. The teacher that picked it and the principal that wouldn't meet with the father both need a big "adjustment", and the school board needs a clean slate.
It is just not an example of a totalitarian police, or violation of the first amendment.
Father, grumpy tax payer at town council or drunk guy at a bar. He was asked to leave. He needs to leave.
I call it boy scout police work, and pinheaded schoolboard marm that needs firing.
If this guy was the similarly offended atheist parents in MA that are protesting the word "god" in the Pledge of Allegiance, disrupting a school board meeting, half of those complaining about this would be silent.
Both my parents were teachers. It is bizarre that we need police at school board meetings. I wonder if that is standard practice these days, or if the weenie school board people did see this coming.
What does "flagging" mean/do?
The note I made about god in the pledge of allegiance was a separate recent incident in MA.
Love the Common Core Cops moniker!
it's the parents' school board, not the government's.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national...
He wasn't arrested for violating the 2-minute rule. He was arrested for disorderly conduct.
I agree we don't need that sort of story line in schools. That is the issue. Yelling a school board members in a public forum, isn't the way to fix it.
As blatant as the story language is, he should've been able to get other parents behind him, and even threatened contributing to delinquency in minors with nice ambulance-chaser letter.
And I thought "give her the business" repeated over and over in Catcher in the Rye was direct.
School dictricts don't f*ck around. They'll take your kids in a blink.
Yes. Once they got him out of the room, there was no reason for an arrest. There are two reasons to arrest someone:
1. The police officer says the person is breaking the law and refuses to stop.
2. The police officer says he did something that likely would result in jail time if the suspect is convicted.
I don't understand the concept of arresting people for things they've stopped doing and for which the penalty is less than jail.
If the gov't wants to provide some "free" service and I want to speak about how crappy it is, I don't have a right to do that at a gov't meeting. I can do it right outside so everyone going in and out sees me, but I can't come in unwanted and carry on. I agree it's absurd to arrest someone for speaking out of turn one time, although I wonder what the limit should be. I don't see it as a free speech issue.
I've held signs outside a military base many times. The police were very helpful in keeping pro-war and pro-peace people apart. I didn't have the right to enter the military base and speak my message, but I could do it right at the gate so everyone going in/out could see me.
"Freedom and liberty are often conflated, and I’ve chosen to differentiate the two, somewhat. In my definition, “freedom” is little different from “license”; one might say authority over one’s life without responsibility for it. Whereas “liberty” is freedom with responsibility. You have supreme authority over your life, but you are responsible for dealing with the consequences of how you choose to exercise that authority. There is no safety net with liberty, except the one you choose to weave for yourself, to the best of your own ability, with the resources you manage to gather unto yourself. "
I think that khalling hit the nail on the head with her comment of 'no expectation of being arrested for speaking at a BOE meeting'. This is not a venue where you expect that 'going a few seconds over' or even 'filibustering' would get you arrested. Yelled at, yes; arrested; no. And I do not think that two minutes is a really long time in this context.
'Unacceptable' comments by not-Rand-PC-participants (ptewie...what a revolting phrase to even type...need to wash my fingers now) should be welcome as long as they are comprehensible. I make the latter proviso because I almost always look a redacted comments and my most common reaction is, "What the heck did [person] mean by that?" The comments on this topic were all interesting and to the point (except one - see below) and I think they contributed to the discussion. Though I am wallowing in reading/participating in generally intelligent dialog amongst people who have some of the same values I do, I welcome outliers: they give context and sometimes new perspective to the conversation.
What the heck does Reardon's marital infidelity have to do with ape-shit? I mean, it is realistic, it is pertinent (can't tell you how many times I have seen marriages like this in real life) and I consider it improper only in that he did not advise his wife up front that he was going to have an affair. And that he caved to blackmail because of it...oh well: it was a different world when the book was written.
Jan
Hank Reardon is not portrayed as a paragon but as a fallible human of great worth. (He even succumbs to blackmail, you note.) It does not matter to me that in a portrayal of his personality he engages in an affair. It is more interesting that the affair that he chooses is discriminate and with a woman much more akin to him than his wife is.
Jan
FIFY
Beats thinking and/or taking responsibility, I guess. Especially for people who cannot think.
A few days ago, four Sheriff's vehicles showed up in the parking lot of my building after a couple on the third floor was having a shouting match. Seemed like overkill to me.
(I gave Circuitguy a point up. He's back to zero as of now. It is interesting that here, again, points up and down are used not to acknowledge good discussion, but as a bludgeon to punish the non-conforming. That is ironic, considering the topic here.)
Both of my parents were teachers and I raised two kids. I've been to alot of school board meetings and there certainly weren t any police officers there as a precaution. It's heavy handed for sure. We are seeing more and more videos of school board meetings being tightly controlled. Why?
In addition, since the daughter was there, it was a good way for these "educators" to reinforce the lesson that when one presents a rational argument against the powers of the legally emplaced heirarchy the expected result is excessive force to make sure those present understand the empowered's actions and decisions must never be challenged. I also noted they were trying to shame her into silence using their official rules by making her give her residential address, even though it was already on record. That she stood up to them... well... I bet she is now receiving some "extra-special individualized instruction" by her teachers, at the behest of the school board.
And I thought things were bad in California...
I don't spend a lot time arguing with vendors who are caught up in politics or don't want to play ball.
My wild guess is people are turning the meetings into venues for political speeches. The school are a gov't org, so they attract employees and board members who are geared toward mindless bureaucratic rule-following. Instruction-following was an important job skill during the industrial revolution, and it's precisely what we don't need for modern jobs. So you've got yahoos more interested in making a political scene than getting stuff done at a meeting run by mindless rule-followers. This is why I probably won't use the public schools for very long. We're moving our 6 y/o to public school next year, but we're not counting on it lasting long.
When I came across Rand fans years ago, I thought Rand's message was "don't think for yourself. We have a highly politicized orthodoxy for every public policy issue. We live in a frenzy of outrange and angst at how crappy things are because the world isn't smart enough to adopt our orthodoxy."
Roark exhibited some of this angst about being misunderstood, but without the politics and bellyaching. He put his nose to the grindstone for years getting little respect from the establishment in his industry. He found bits of happiness like when this young man contemplating suicide saw the spirit of owning our own minds and lives in Roark's art, and it got young man out of his depression. And in the end things turned out well for Roark and those who lived for themselves.
to your take on Rand fans. It is not "bellyaching" to point out consistencies in policies and trends in society. It is refreshing to be on a site where people "get" that the US is a much different landscape now than in 1957 when AS came out. and the landscape in 1957 is different from the early 1900s. Vigilance is very important and expressing anger when anger is an appropriate response is also important. There are all kinds of heroes. Some are like Roark who ignore the rest of the world and continue to create without caring what's happening until the day they find they've been deeply wronged. Other heroes, like novelists or poets or journalists who write with a message, connect the dots between events like this one for others to see. There are a number of us on this site. It is productive and useful. It requires high level skills to do it well. Weaving a life philosophy into the fabric of our culture is essential to changing that culture and eradicating the real evils which try to thrive whether you care or not in being productive, raising a healthy family, loving and playing.
But then AS isn't about family values, it's a book about economics.
And, the book really isn't "about" him cheating on his wife, unless I remember it wrong. If it were it would probably sell even MORE copies...
IMO
George Saunders was one, and Nathaniel Branden was certainly well know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_B...
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sh...
Was she moral?
I hear the defense "we are a Nation of laws..." More and more our lawmakers infringe on our rights. The more they do their work, making laws, the more restrictions in the land. It's not so bad when it effect the guy in the next town or down the road. Sooner or later, lawmakers take the rights from all. To those that say "We are a nation of laws, not a nation of men", what do we do if the law is unjust?
I wonder why the police were there in the first place. I can't get the context from the brief video.
Assuming the school did call the meeting, how long do we have to let some filibuster before we physically kick him out. These people were obviously on a hair trigger b/c he only went on for a few more seconds before they kicked him out. Is there some rule about how long someone should be allowed to carrying on.
If I were on some local board asked to review this, I would be looking for any reason to disallow the police force but I don't see it unless there is some rule for how long people are allowed to carry on outside their turn. This is based on philosophical understanding of force, my experience participating in unpopular speech outside of Madison, and my recent experience having a legal dispute with a school.
1. School issues a controversial reading assignment.
2. School holds a parent meeting.
3. One parents voices his opinion that the school should not assign this reading.
4. Another parent offers the straw man that the other parent is for banning books and stifling free-speech. This parent violates the 2-min rule, but the school doesn't object b/c he's stating the position they believe in.
5. The first parent feels slandered and says, "Wait what he said about me was wrong."
6. The police asked him to leave b/c it wasn't his turn to speak. He said you'll have to arrest me, and they did. (I'm less clear on whether they were going to arrest him anyway.)
7. The school likes this policy b/c it allows them to give public events that offer the illusion of listening to their customers without actually listening to their customers.
What a mess. This is why I hate gov't. A normal operation never would have had a bogus hearing. They would have said, "Sorry, this is our program." or they would have offered him an some alternative. I can't stand the gov't CYA hold-a-bogus-meeting approach. The first time I smelled that I would be out of there.
<sarc>is going to end well</sarc> = is going to be a nationwide, generation-spanning embarrassment.