Birmingham Police Officers, employed as School Resource Officers in Birmingham City Schools, routinely use chemical weapons against schoolchildren to enforce basic school discipline. Mace was used against schoolchildren who were completely restrained and not a danger to themselves or anyone else. Adults taunted the children and celebrated their punishment.
The Birmingham City School System is 96% African American.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has filed a federal class action lawsuit targeting the use of mace as a means of basic school discipline. The SPLC had previously raised the issue with the Birmingham School Board which was unresponsive, prompting the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges violation of constitutional rights through the use of chemical weapons.
Conservatives have long campaigned to rid the country of public schools. The public school system is the principal method for members of the lower economic class, often African Americans, to escape to the middle class and beyond. The lack of an education maintains African Americans as lower class citizens. The use of chemical weapons and the accompanying hostility is having the effect of driving African American children out of the school system, preserving the current elite class.
If the public school system is eliminated, only the elite will be able to afford private education for their children, maintaining their current status. The public school system is the keystone in America’s ability to claim it is the land of opportunity.
H/T: Southern Poverty Law Center.
-David Drumm (Nal)
Gotta go with Elaine M. on this one…
I am the product of public schools and state universities. I achieved my educational goals and my ‘dream job’. I simply would not have had the opportunity to reach my station in life if school privatization had been the norm. There are some aspects of society that are inherently governmental functions—and accompanied by law enforcement, prisons, and fighting wars—schools should not be privatized.
Elaine M.,
Right!
Voucher Smoucher – Some sicko(s) is assaulting/torturing restrained kids with mace. Where are the criminal prosecutions?
BBB,
We all know how well banking and financial regulations worked to prevent a financial meltdown in this country. It seems that there are always those who will find loopholes in and ways to skirt regulations and safeguards.
If private and parochial schools had to address all the problems that our public educational system is faced with, they would find themselves in the same state/situation as many of our troubled public schools.
As I’ve written more than once in comments at this blog–our schools are a reflection of our society. Many American children come from families who abuse and/or neglect them. Many children arrive at kindergarten having never been read to or taught the alphabet or numbers or colors. Many come to school hungry. Our public schools need the help and support of parents and the community. We need to address the major problems facing our society which have a negative impact on our children and on our public schools. Privitization of schools is not the answer.
Elaine,
“Private and parochial schools are not required to accept all applicants. What would happen to children who aren’t accepted by such schools if public education in this country is abolished?”
That would be one of those areas where the appropriate safeguards would need to be put in place.
Elaine,
I too am a product of parochial schools from K-12. I don’t know if it was a better education because of the teachers or the curriculum, but I know it wasn’t the disruptive environment that I hear the teachers at inner-city schools talk about.
Privatization would not eliminate the high-end schools that cost big bucks to attend. Private schools have been the choice of many of “the haves” for a long time. The are considered to consistently provide a better aducation. If they didn’t, nobody would pay for their children. Those private schools have to compete for their share of the market.
Nal,
The voucher would have to be enough to pay the tuition in full for those who fall into the low-income category.
I like the idea of privatization, but only if appropriate safeguards are put in place. Competition usually results in higher quality. The trick would be to ensure that a quality primary and secondary education is made available to all.
I have a friend who teaches at an inner-city charter school. He isn’t happy. Some of his students really want to learn, while too many others are just their to disrupt the class. I don’t envy him.
Glad to see the Birmingham P.D. has gotten away from their traditional methods of “policing” African-Americans — water cannon and attack dogs. All very civilized, you know. Is Bull Connor back?
The use of vouchers will cause non academic christian schools to expand rapidly especially in the south.
Oops. Left out the url for Friends of Justice in my previous attempt to link with the result that that the link meant to go to FOJ instead goes to this Turley thread instead.
here is the correct link.
Everyone.
May I give a plug for Michelle Alexander’s recent book. “The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colour Blindness”. If you can’t get this book, Alan Bean at his Friends of justice website has been strongly influenced after reading it and many of his recent articles are on themes that Michelle Alexander covers.
The class war has been going on for a long time, at least since Reagan fought ruthlessly and effectively by your ruling class at the same time as they scream out “class war” when any evil leftist or liberal points this out. The black underclass has already been defeated and the plutokleptocrats are now working on destroying the middle class.
Those of you who are lawyers who post on this blog may think that your jobs are safe, but when courts finally become virtual it will be easy to replace you with Indians trained in American law for a fifth of what you are earning. It has already happened with computing, it will also happen with some medical services such as radiology that can be outsourced to the net.
Cruelty, greed, and selfishness all rolled up in one neat package. Sometimes I sit here in front of my computer completely dumbfounded by man’s inhumanity to man.
See the archives of Greg Palast’s web site for the full description of how the voucher idea is about subsidizing the private educations for the children of the rich while pretending it is about the making good education available for the children of the poor.
I am too tired do do so now, it is 01:34 AM in Sydney so I will leave the exercise of finding the particular Palast article to the rest of you. It was 2007 or earlier.
BBB,
School vouchers rarely pay for the entire amount of tuition charged by private and parochial schools. A number of the private secondary schools in the area where I live charge as much in tuition as elite colleges and universities. How will poor families manage to pay the difference? I’m a taxpayer. I’d prefer my tax dollars be used to support public schools–instead of private and parochial schools. (Note: I attended parochial schools from first through twelfth grade.)
Private and parochial schools are not required to accept all applicants. What would happen to children who aren’t accepted by such schools if public education in this country is abolished?
A voucher is just a subsidy for those who can afford private school tuition.
BBB:
Most low-income parents don’t pay any income taxes at all, so a voucher is useless. Of the parents who make enough so that the voucher is beneficial, they can’t afford the balance of the tuition.
If you’re proposing a voucher that pays for the entire tuition, for low-income parents, I support that. But, I doubt if that’s the kind of voucher most conservatives are talking about.
BBB.
Low income children will receive vouchers which only cover part of the cost education at a decent private school, but since their parents will not be able to bridge the gap between what the voucher pays and the full cost of such an education, the poor children will only be able to attend the lowest tier private schools, those profit making charter schools which have taken over the assets of the former public schools, but still only provide a child minding service for the school age children of the poor until they are ready to occupy the privately owned prisons in white rural areas that provide jobs for poor white trash and profit for their wall street owners.
The vouchers will not be means tested so rich parents will be able to use them to defray part of the cost of sending their children to an effective school.
All the anglophone nations see the main purpose of education as preventing upward social mobility by the poor because this put pressure on the availability of positional goods that those who have already achieved upward mobility feel that they are entitled to keep. Conservative are determined to destroy effective free public education i the UK and Australia as well.
Exactly. Upward social mobility was great when decent white people are advancing socially and economically using the positional goods confiscated from the UnAmerican native Americans but when it threatens to spread to brown skinned people it must be stopped. Destroying public education is only one arm of the attack, the other is the war against drugs which is really the war against niggers.
The great beauty of making normal human behaviour illegal is that the laws are not able to be enforced effectively. The number of breaches is so high that a serious attempt to stop drug use would bankrupt the organs of law enforcement, but in such cases they do not need to try to stop all breaches only those by the usual suspects, members of despised racial minorities. If lives of white people were being wrecked by the drug laws at the same rate as are those of brown skinned people the laws would not be tolerated for five minutes. But selective enforcement and special sweet deals for whites who do get caught keep the collateral damage to the respectable races and classes to an acceptable level.
Nal,
Your post addresses two completely different subjects:
1. The use of mace on a restrained child; which I don’t see anyone supporting.
2. The proposed privatization of primary and secondary schools.
It is your understanding of what that privatization would mean that I want to address.
“If the public school system is eliminated, only the elite will be able to afford private education for their children, maintaining their current status.”
I’m not sure what you mean by “maintaining their current status”. It is my understanding that low-income students would receive vouchers; thus eliminating your claim that “only the elite will be able to afford private education for their children”.
Here’s a good analysis by Milton Friedman
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html