Black Shards, In Your Eyes, Blinding – Truth, Injustice, Fact, Fiction – What's the Difference?

Quanell X, grandstander supreme and champion of criminals, among other well-deserved titles, completely missed the point in the recent flap in Houston after a teacher allowed students to hit the class bully. The man is so wrong, so often, that he must be doing it on purpose.

The X-man’s take:

"What that teacher did was so reprehensible, so foul and wrong, why did you not make a police report about what this woman did?"

The reality:

"The kid didn’t get beat up — this is a kid who has repeatedly beat up kids in my school," [director of Robindell Private School Chuck] Wall said. "He had punched a little girl like a punching bag and was caught by one of my teachers and what he got back … was absolutely minor in comparison to what he did to this poor little girl." Wall said the boy’s parents have been unresponsive to the school’s pleas for help in controlling the child.

The boy’s mother goes on to make excuses for him, saying that he has medical conditions. True or not, schools cannot tolerate students who are negative influences, particularly those who create an unsafe environment for their peers.

Wall had to fire the teacher for instigating an escalation in violence, true. But the truth is that the brat needed to learn the very lesson she taught him, namely that violence begets a violent response.

It’s unfortunate that the teacher in question had to lose her job because of failing parents, a failing educational system, and a failing society. She will pay the price in terms of her career for a school system that lacks the ability to purge itself of miscreants who render it unable to fulfill its function, educating those who can learn. Of course, it’s unfair to blame the school because we, as a society, lack the moral courage to state the obvious: Some children simply do not belong in mainstream school classrooms.

Devarius Williams is evidently one such child. Woe to the children and teachers at his next school. Perhaps Mr. X should consider their pain before blabbering on about what’s reprehensible.

ADDENDUM

Another interesting note to this story is the Chronicle’s ad hominem attack against Mr. Wall:

Wall said he fired the teacher the next day after Williams’ mother called the school to report the incident. He said she was the second teacher to be fired in six weeks for allowing another student to strike the boy.

Wall, whose school offers up to 12 hours of daily care for $110 a week, then disparaged the boy’s parents.

Regarding “disparaged the boy’s parents”? How so? In whose opinion? Based on what words, exactly?

Frankly that’s a line I would have expected from the Magnolia Potpourri back in the day when it was run out of a one-room shack, not one of the country’s leading newspapers and the only source of print media in the 4th largest city in the U.S.

In 1999, a group of researchers led by William Pelham released the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA), a paper that failed to note the benefits that children receive from their medicine decline over time.  The MTA ran into controversy when an academic review of the paper questioned why it played down negative effects of the drug and team members publicly stated that the report was biased in favor of drug treatment programs.

Now the latest data, released in 2007, shows that children who were medicated for 3 years showed no behavioral improvements over un-medicated peers.  Interestingly, the medicated children were shown to be slightly shorter and lighter, implying that the drugs may have interfered with their natural growth processes.

Brooke Molina, also a co-author and a University of Pittsburgh associate professor of psychology and psychiatry…said the data do not “support that children who stay on medication longer than two years have better outcomes than children who don’t.”

And James Swanson, another MTA co-author and a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine said:

“If you want something for tomorrow, medication is the best, but if you want something three years from now, it does not matter,” he said. “If you take medication long-term beyond three years, I don’t think there is any evidence that medication is better than no medication.”

William Pelham, who seems to have done an about-face in regard to his original findings, now says that the primary purpose of ADHD medicine is to give parents an opportunity to get their child behavioral counseling.

A yet-to-be published study, Pelham added, found that 95 percent of parents who were told by clinicians to first try behavioral interventions for ADHD followed through on that advice. When parents were given a prescription for a drug and then told to enroll their children in behavioral intervention programs, 75 percent did not seek out the behavioral approaches.

Obviously that doesn’t bode well for the majority of children diagnosed with the disorder given the short-term nature of drug therapy.  Two reason spring to mind that might explain the drop-off in parental follow-through.  First, the drugs’ short-term effects may lead parents to falsely believe that their child is somehow cured and that no other action is needed on their part.  Second, behavioral counseling undoubtedly takes more time and effort on the part of parents than opening a bottle of pills.  Unfortunately, I think that part of the 75% is simple laziness.

U.S. District Judge Edward Korman says that the Food and Drug Administration’s refusal to approve Plan B for over-the-counter use by juvenile girls was politically motivated.

“These political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications for decision-making are not the only evidence of a lack of good faith and reasoned decision-making,” Korman said. “Indeed, the record is clear that the FDA’s course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency’s normal procedures regarding similar applications to switch a drug product from prescription to non-prescription use.”

Korman’s justification for his ruling is that the FDA rejected the advice of a committee it assembled to review the question of allowing minors access to the drug.  Was the committee’s opinion binding in some way?  Undoubtedly not.  Still, the facts may be as Korman has stated them.

What is clear is that 17-year-old girls are still subject to parental control, making the issue one that, like abortion, concerns parents just as much as it does the sexually active teen.  The parents’ legal rights and responsibilities now seem to have been swept aside in favor of those of minors engaged in ill-advised activities.

Will another birth control opportunity help reduce total teenage pregnancies?  Or will it provide another excuse for teens to have sex long before they are mentally, physically, or fiscally ready to assume responsibility for their actions? 

Sounds like a Master’s thesis question waiting to be developed.

I recently wrote about public libraries planning to ban older books because of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act passed by Congress last year.  The NY City Journal has picked up on the story now that the damage seems to be spreading to retail book resellers.

Not until 1985 did it become unlawful to use lead pigments in the inks, dyes, and paints used in children’s books. Before then—and perhaps particularly in the great age of children’s-book illustration that lasted through the early twentieth century—the use of such pigments was not uncommon, and testing can still detect lead residues in books today. This doesn’t mean that the books pose any hazard to children.

As many have written in regard to the Democrats’ colossal spending bill that’s just passed into law, the first priority of all governmental action should be this simple maxim – First Do No Harm.

Old books never hurt anyone save for the barbed words written on the page.  Certain of them have been toxic in that regard and remain in the hands of readers to young, naive, or foolish to make proper evaluations of their contents.  Yet there is no complaint from Congress on that score despite the damage wrong by bad ideas spread in the 60s.

One can only make two assumptions about legislation such as CPSIA: Either Congress fears children will consume by mouth sufficient quantities of lead trace ink in proportion to lab rats testing the cancer-causing profile of artificial sweeteners or they are simply incompetent.

You be the judge.

“Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot.
Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman.
But, alas, I repeat myself.”
– Mark Twain

The Washington Post reports that a new study has determined the obvious: teenagers who watch sexually explicit programs on television are more likely to become pregnant than those who don’t.

“Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy,” said lead researcher Anita Chandra. “We found a strong association.” The study is being published today in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

…

About 25 percent of those who watched the most were involved in a pregnancy, compared with about 12 percent of those who watched the least. The researchers took into account other factors such as having only one parent, wanting to have a baby and engaging in other risky behaviors.

Surprise, surprise.  More:

Although TV viewing is unlikely to entirely explain the possible uptick in teen pregnancies, Chandra and others said, the study provides the first direct evidence that it could be playing a significant role.

“Sexual content on television has doubled in the last few years, especially during the period of our research,” said Chandra, a researcher at the nonpartisan Rand Corp.

Studies have found a link between watching television shows with sexual content and becoming sexually active earlier, and between sexually explicit music videos and an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases. And many studies have shown that TV violence seems to make children more aggressive. But the new research is the first to show an association between TV watching and pregnancy among teens.

The study doesn’t weigh in on the debate between advocates of sex education in public schools and those who favor spending public money on abstinence-only programs.  That argument can be expected to continue during an Obama presidency that I expect will put more emphasis on the former.

Neither approach is likely to be a silver bullet because the problem is multi-faceted, the major players being teens themselves, their parents, their friends, and the media.  The last of these is now inescapably linked to the biggest problems that teenagers face in America.  But the media’s response is likely to be to ignore their culpability. 

As Time says, TV sex is getting more and more explicit in shows targeting kids.  Sex sells, even to teens and younger children, and that’s evidently broadcasters’ business model.

Sex on TV has come a long way in the past few years. Anyone who saw the first episode of 90210— a pair of students engage in oral sex in the first episode of the new sequel to Beverly Hills 90210 — can attest to that.

As the only influencing factors in a teenager’s life that are truly capable of caring or changing their behavior, it’s up to parents to reject the inappropriate influence of media in their children’s lives.  It’s also incumbent on them to take up the matter of sex and marriage with their kids at an earlier age than ever before, before it’s too late.

The SF Chronicle says:

The town of Turlock and much of the rest of the nation was shocked when a 27-year-old man beat and stomped his 2-year-old son to death on a rural road. But what was nearly as stunning for many people was that none of the motorists and their passengers who stopped and saw the attack tried to tackle the man.

The story goes on to discuss how average citizens aren’t psychologically prepared to deal with a situation like that, how we’re unsure of ourselves and easily cowed into inaction, etc.  All of these things are true, of course, but at no point does the article venture into more core issues. 

For one, suppose one of the witnesses had attempted to physically intervene on the boy’s behalf.  If the obviously deranged father began to get the better of the Good Samaritan, would anyone else have jumped in to help?  In my mind that’s the most important aspect of the psychological angle – our complete lack of confidence in the willingness of others to do what is right and necessary.

Similarly, no mention is made of adults’ inherent moral obligation to come of the aid of a defenseless child.  Yet this obligation exists, whether our modern society chooses to acknowledge it or not.  Our lack of faith in our fellow man is understandable.  But it’s a little harder to accept our lack of faith in God.  Does He condone inaction in such a case?  No.  Does that not compel us to do what He wants us to do?

Finally, the paper fails to mention the chilling effect of America’s lawsuit-happy legal system on the willingness of these people to physically restrain the killer.  If they’d ganged up on the murderer and beaten him into submission there’s a high likelihood that they would have faced legal action as a result.  No judge or jury in their right mind would convict them, but travesties of the law have happened before.  The mere fact of being named in such a suit brings with it major legal expenses and possible financial penalties, possible loss of employment, etc.  This unfortunate side-effect of our litigious society limits in the extreme, I think, our willingness to act.

Shock and surprise can stop us from doing what’s right.  But fundamental flaws in our legal and moral codes do so even more effectively.

Personally I hope I’m never confronted with such choice.  While I’m relatively strong and athletic for my age – 42 – I wouldn’t be confident facing down a younger, stronger, enraged brute alone.  Praying for moral courage to override physical cowardice might be the only way I could do what was right.  I wonder if anyone did so that night?  That too unknown.

Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminism and author Alice Walker, who publicly called her own child a calamity in her life, has some interesting things to say about the movement.  Well worth reading.

the truth was I was very lonely and, with my mother’s knowledge, started having sex at 13. I guess it was a relief for my mother as it meant I was less demanding. And she felt that being sexually active was empowering for me because it meant I was in control of my body.

…

A good mother is attentive, sets boundaries and makes the world safe for her child. But my mother did none of those things.

Although I was on the Pill  -  something I had arranged at 13, visiting the doctor with my best friend  -  I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don’t remember my mother being shocked or upset. She tried to be supportive, accompanying me with her boyfriend.

Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I’d never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.

As a child, I was terribly confused, because while I was being fed a strong feminist message, I actually yearned for a traditional mother.

…

I know many women are shocked by my views. They expect the daughter of Alice Walker to deliver a very different message. Yes, feminism has undoubtedly given women opportunities. It’s helped open the doors for us at schools, universities and in the workplace. But what about the problems it’s caused for my contemporaries?

…

Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: ‘I’d like a child. If it happens, it happens.’ I tell them: ‘Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.’ As I know only too well.

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They’ve missed the opportunity and they’re bereft.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women’s movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them  -  as I have learned to my cost.

Walker’s views closely mirror those of Lori Gottlieb, who wrote this popular, much-debated article for Atlantic a few months ago.

There’s something to this, I think.  Even if it’s nothing more than the opportunity cost of a chance not taken, getting something always means giving up something else.

Has feminism been worth the cost to those who have been on its front lines?  And what about the families they left behind by not having them or not being there?

The questions applies to many men as well, of course, although it’s less interesting to me because our work/sport-centric lifestyles haven’t undergone the radical change that feminism demands of young women.

Having children does enslave women, in a certain sense of the word.  Many mothers give up a good portion of their lives for their children.  Of course, the same is true for men – at least the ones who don’t run away from their responsibilities.  Having children is the most demanding activity in a person’s life, man or woman.  It’s also the only thing worth doing on this planet.

In pointing out another case of legalistic lunacy, Susan Duclos writes:

The "zero tolerance" policy at some school and in some states, reaches levels of complete incompetence when a 6 years gets written up as a sexual offender for copying what another kid did and playfully smacking little Katherine DeLeon on the bottom twice.

…

Where is the line drawn between zero tolerance and common sense?

When are school officials going to start using judgment instead of some generic general rule to decide a case on an individual basis?

…

In what alternate reality do we live in where a six year old or a four year old are accused of being a sexual offender, simply because they are too young to understand their natural inclination to play and touch are wrong?

I don’t want to justify this kind of gutless, inept decision, because it’s wrong and stupid just as Spree says.  But there are many reasons why school officials make these kind of decisions and it’s important for parents who care – which is a minority, to be sure – to realize that they aren’t made in a complete vacuum. 

Let’s touch on a few, shall we?

First, realize that when little Johnny can’t behave during school, teachers and principals are usually powerless to discipline him in a manner that teaches the cause-effect relationship; i.e., misbehave repeatedly in school and an unpleasant rump-paddling will occur.  Bad behavior stops.  But that’s so direct, it’s offensive to the refined values of a certain misguided segment of the parental population, to say nothing of the know-it-alls who define what are and are not acceptable ways to teach children.

Strike 1.

Second, consider the effect that a single willfully ignorant parent has on an entire classroom of children.  Given that real discipline cannot be meted out during school hours – somehow assigning extra work to a kid who doesn’t do his regular assignments just isn’t effective… go figure – teachers must rely on Johnny’s mom and dad to take care of modifying his bad behavior.  That works about as well as you’d expect given that his parents are the ones who have molded his actions from the time of his birth.

Far too often mom and dad either refuse to attend parent-teacher conferences as scheduled or show up only to blindly defend their child.  Yes, it’s unpleasant to be told that one’s baby is a brat or a bully or refuses to give teachers and classmates the respect they deserve.  It’s hard.  But it’s often the truth and too many parents refuse to accept what they’re being told.  Parental follow-up is therefore lacking in many discipline situations.

Strike 2.

Third, teachers and principals are college-educated individuals, most of whom have a genuine desire to teach their students to the best of their ability.  They are also over-stressed, over-worked (during the school year), and woefully under-paid relative to their education level, job requirements, and, most importantly, expectations.  As a result, burnout is common.

Common sense, which is lacking, I realize, tells me that teachers ought to take a break in their careers to do something different for a while, to interact with other adults in professional settings and to get their enthusiasm back.

But this is discouraged by administrators who often have trouble simply filling teaching slots with qualified instructors to begin with.  The problem is further exacerbated by the teachers union and the retirement system that it has put in place. 

There is only one way for an educator to grow old in relative prosperity after working for decades for low wages:  retire through the Teachers Retirement System.  This requires varying years of service depending on one’s locale but is certainly at least 20 years and often more.

The system is thus heavily back-loaded and forces educators to continue working in the profession when their interest level and enthusiasm – very important qualities in a teacher – have waned or vanished.

This is important when it comes to cases like the one in question because using common sense, as Spree rightly demands, can be a risky endeavor.  This is especially true when a teacher or principal can be called to account in front of the school board for failing to invoke the applicable but draconian policy called for by the district’s policy manual.

The truth is that educators often cannot afford to act as reason tells them to for fear of legal repercussions or outright fear of physical assault at the hands of parents.

Strike 3.

So yes, it’s a bad, useless decision to label a 6-year-old as a sex offender. 

An assistant director of the National Association of School Psychologists, Ted Feinberg, says he is "stunned" by the school’s reaction to a child of six that has no concept of what those behaviors mean and he states, "I believe they do not have the capacity for awareness of sexual motivation … it seems like a gross mislabeling of the behavior and an overreaction."

It’s also something that can be reasonably predicted given the environment in which educators find themselves.

Kids these days – it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.  Turns out the 11-year-old boy who reported an abduction attempt in Houston earlier this week was making it all up.

"He admitted that he had been missing his mother who was at work a lot and and made up the story to get attention," [Houston Police Department spokesman John] Cannon said.

Here’s hoping little Johnny gets "the attention" he needs.

So does that mean that the Houston Chronicle was right to issue only a vague description of the reported kidnapper.  I’m sure there are some editors there who are, if not high-fiving it around the office, congratulating themselves on having played it cool.

If so, they’re wrong to think they served the public trust, just are they were wrong to release a useless description of the suspect in the aftermath of the report.

The only thing this incident demonstrates is that children are often unreliable witnesses, something that only makes believing other children’s real problems harder.

Samantha Torrence says:  "One of the major societal epidemics in America today is the lack of respect for not only the sanctity of life, but a lack of love for our own children."  No surprise that this comes during an epidemic of self-indulgent, irresponsible behavior.  Suffering the consequences for one’s actions, it seems, is no fun.  So why bother?

The purpose of Torrence’s post is to promote this bill put forth by Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and his co-sponsors and similar legislation.  Ryan’s bill, which has yet to have a vote, would:

(1) reduce the abortion rate by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and supporting women facing unplanned pregnancies;

(2) prevent unintended pregnancies from occurring in the first place–

(A) by reducing teen pregnancy through education, after-school and other programs, and involving parents; and

(B) by extending Medicaid family planning services to more low-income women; and

(3) support pregnant women, new parents, and their children, through measures that address domestic violence and sexual assault, provide health care services, information about pregnancy, and other supportive services for pregnant women, and provide supportive services for new parents.

Certainly these are worthy goals, as well as being a fiscally-sound investment:  The bill specifically states:  "By helping couples avoid unintended pregnancy, Medicaid-funded and Title X contraceptive services are highly cost-effective, and every public dollar spent on family planning saves $3 in the cost of pregnancy-related care alone."  It’s a logical argument and would make for sound policy, I think.

But I still can’t help but wonder about the fundamental reason why poor women – 73% of women having abortions cited financial fears as a contributing factor – allow themselves to become pregnant.  Yes, mistakes get made.  But so many?  If I’m too poor to have a child, I’m certainly too poor to have unprotected sex.

It’s a fallacy to think that education is the problem.  The Ryan bill states that 49% of all pregnancies are unintended.  Are we to believe that this is because of ignorance?  Obviously not.  Virtually every person living in America who is over 10 years of age knows how babies are made.  Access to cheap birth control might reduce pregnancies, but I doubt it for one simple reason:  Birth control is not expensive, even at market rates.

Another strike against sex education as the core of an unwanted pregnancy reduction strategy is that "only" 20% of abortions are performed on teenaged girls, which means that 80% of abortions are performed on women who fully understand the facts of life.

That’s why I don’t think that Sex Ed is that meaningful in terms of solving the problem.  Feel free to shoot me down.

Even so, I believe that schools ought to offer Sex Ed programs.  Every little bit helps.  Adults have the information and there’s only one valid reason for us not to share it with our youth:  parental objections.  So let people opt out of the classes and start holding them, by all means.  Just don’t plan on distributing birth control through schools – that’s a bit much.

Torrence goes on to link unwanted pregnancies to child abuse and infant homicide, two very probably follow-ons to a mother carrying to term a child who isn’t wanted :

There must be something we are missing here as a society, obviously there has been much progress in the concerns over unplanned pregnancies with minor setbacks. … Why are 14 year olds killing their children or clueless to being pregnant, for that matter why are they sexually active? … Why are Americans killing viable fetuses and then are surprised when someone kills a newborn?

There are a lot of things that we could blame our dysfunction on – Vietnam, hippies, drugs, Bill Clinton, CNN, etc.  But it really all boils down to a fundamental reduction in the amount of character people in this country have, compared to previous generations. 

George H.W. Bush tried to campaign on this issue in 1992 against Bill Clinton.  As a young man I remember hearing his speech when he called for more "personal responsibility" on the part of every American.  I laughed.  Who could possibly think that was a viable campaign issue?  Turns out that he was right.  Like a good portion of Americans, I just wasn’t mature enough to understand what he was talking about.  The Clinton presidency was our reward for shallow thinking.

Many women who face an unwanted pregnancy do so because their so-called "man" fails to live up to his obligations.  That’s a character issue that transcends race and age boundaries.  Children who grow up without a father often do so for the same reason – lack of character on the part of their sire.  In other cases both parents are utter failures and doom their children to repeating a life like their own.

No government program or well-intentioned bill will change that until individual men – and some women too – decide that children, who should be the pride and joy of every parent and are the hope of this nation, matter enough that they will sacrifice some of their time, money, and even happiness now so that their son or daughter can grow up in decent environment.

It’s hard being a parent.  Sometimes it is a job that’s miserable beyond words.  But a man who abandons his child is no man at all, regardless of how cool his ride is, how much he can bench, or how many notches he’s got on his bedpost.

Too many boys in America don’t know this.  They don’t have a clue how to be a man.  So show them.  Meet your obligations to these boys, whether they’re your sons, nephews, grandsons, or neighborhood strays. 

Love them.  Keep your promises.  If you don’t know how to do that, start here.  Be a man.  Jesus would.  There’s no reason why we can’t.