In what has become the new normal for teachers and administrators, we have yet another case of a suspension based on a thoughtless and heartless application of a school rule. The latest outrage comes from Caprock Academy in Grand Junction where Kamryn Campbell was suspended when she showed up at school with a shaved head. The teachers and administrator said that a shaved head violated the hair code of the school but she explained that she shaved off her hair to support a friend battling cancer. The school basically said “that’s nice” and suspended her.
Kamryn’s good friend Delaney, 11, has lost her hair to chemotherapy due to her neuroblastoma and Kamryn did an extraordinary thing in shaving off her own hair. It is the type of sacrifice that shows tremendous humanity and maturity and was met by the complete absence of those traits in her teachers and administrators.
What is astonishing is not simply that some teacher reported the girl and administrators punished the girl, but the board of directors thinks that this was a justified action. Catherine Norton-Breman, president and Chair of the academy’s board of directors, insisted that the dress code “was created to promote safety, uniformity, and a non-distracting environment for the school’s students. Under this policy, shaved heads are not permitted.” There is no statement of outrage or disgust from the board about the treatment of this noble child. Until I read Breman’s comment, I thought that this was a case where someone needs to be fired. Now it appears that it is a far greater and endemic problem in this school. I cannot imagine putting one of my children in the care of such people, but I would remove any child from the school after reading this story. (To make matters worse, Norton-Breman is a lawyer who is President and General Counsel of Allen Incorporated, an asset management company).
We have previously followed the suspensions and discipline of students under zero tolerance policies that are used by teachers to justify zero judgment or responsibility. I have long criticized zero tolerance policies that have led to suspensions and arrests of children (here and here, here and here and here and here). Here is a prior column on the subject (and here).Children have been suspended or expelled for drawing stick figures or wearing military hats or bringing Legos shaped like guns or even having Danish in the shape of a gun. Despite the public outcry over the completely irrational and abusive application of zero tolerance rules, administrators and teachers continue to apply them blindly. If you do not have to exercise judgment, you can never been blamed for any failure. Conversely, even when the public outcry results in a reversals, teachers and administrators never seem punished with the same vigor for showing no judgment or logic in punishing a child.
It the mission statement for the school, families are told:
Character is more than an adornment of a classical education; it is its conditio sine qua non. It is only fitting, therefore, that the mission of our school is to hold everyone to high academic and ethical standards. . . . Any time we transcend the status quo, we have to seek out a certain amount of discomfort. The removal of ignorance from our minds requires effort. . . . we are all working for the benefit of your child’s intellectual and moral growth. . . . Our students delight in being challenged, they rise to the tasks we give them, and they astound themselves, their parents, and us with their eloquence, their learning, and, more often than not, with a maturity that is beyond their peers.
Of course, Kamryn showed amazing character and ethics in her action and was punished for it. She is the mature figure in this story. The only accomplishment from this mission statement is achieving that level of discomfort for most of us.
Source: USA Today
Looking at Brian Harris’s post, it’s really rather simple: about 2.5% are psycho’s convinced they have to get the other guy before he gets them. They affect a total of about 20%, so now there is a much bigger percentage you have to look out for; however these guys can be returned to the social majority if you don’t trust them too much while they are under the influence of the supressive personalities. Meanwhile you still have 80% of us willing and ready to get along. For more on this read Hubbard.
Screw empathy and compassion, we got our rules!!
Zero tolerance as a principle should be met with zero tolerance for the perpetrators of zero tolerance; ultimately this would mean firing all those condoning zero tolerance, but one needs to be more tolerant than the enemy and give them a chance to change, like a heavy but temporary penalty like a month’s suspension without pay, no matter if they are employees or board members. The best examples of zero tolerance in history include Ghengis Khan, Alexander the A/H, the Spanish Inquisition, French Revolution/Napolean, Hitler’s Nazi Party, the Biafra Conflict, Pol Pot, Serbian Conflict, Ruanda Conflict, with Sudan, Congo & Syria trying hard for recognition right now. So I ask these A/Hs: “Do you really want to be classified with Hitler & the Gestapo?”
An interesting read:
http://www.trulia.com/schools/CO-Grand_Junction/Caprock_Academy/#parent_reviews
“Another friend also shaved her head last week, but she didn’t encounter any opposition at the public school she attends. More friends have vowed to also shave their heads.” -Denver Post
Girl’s shaved head draws national furor at Grand Junction school (The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25418689/girls-shaved-head-draws-national-furor-at-grand#ixzz2x5Amr1nn)
“Caprock is a state-affiliated, public charter school so it is not governed by the District 51 School Board.”
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/girl-suspended-in-headshaving-act-of-support/
Don’t forget folks, most schools are run and taught by liberals and progressives.
“Character”… “Accountability”… (from the BOD pages)
Really?
http://caprockacademy.org/board-of-directors/board-feedback/
“Board Feedback
The Caprock Academy School Board would love to hear your feedback, thoughts and concerns.
If you would like to speak to the Chair of the Board of Directors, please contact Catherine Norton Breman at cnortonbremancaprock@yahoo.com.”
She’s clearly demonstrated that she’s in no position to lead. Send her packin’.
As for mission statements in general:
Whenever I see a mission statement the first thing that comes to mind is how at least a 100 worker/hours was wasted on conjuring up some lofty, insincere, and braggadocious gobbledygook.
I seem to recall watching a television science program more than twenty years ago, of a desert area, as I now recall, in Africa, where it may rain once a year or less.
The program started out with the seemingly-lifeless dry desert. Then the rain came. Plants appeared. Insects appeared. Small frogs appeared. A snake appeared that set about eating small frogs. The snake, busy eating small frogs, may not have noticed a nearby bullfrog.
The narrator, as the snake disappeared into the digestive tract of the bullfrog, said, in effect, “So, a snake full of frog becomes a frog full of snake.”
Will that do as a parable of adversarial social philosophy?
At issue, methinks, is not the educational system in America.
At issue is the incomplete social evolution of the members of the human species.
The fundamental attribution error of social psychology is a magnificent way of preserving deception as the root of all of the social norms that are inescapably destructive?
“The fundamental attribution error”? “Social psychology”? Wikipedia?
I wonder how long these school officials would last in their view of Zero Tolerance™ if the society and the local authorities put them under the same expectation:
Imagine what they would think if the following were assessed on these officials
Get cited for the following traffic violations:
Drive 3 miles over the speed limit
Crack in windshield
Rear window defogger not operating
No litter bag in vehicle
Tinted cover on license plate
Or miss miss a mortgage payment for a partricular month and suffer immediate foreclosure
And how about shaving their head and getting arrested.
Don’t think they would appreciate it when it applies to them.
FYI, here is an open letter to both young girls that was published yesterday:
http://www.stbaldricks.org/blog/post/an-open-letter-to-kamryn-renfro-and-delaney-clements
Paul Revere
From the school’s website:
Caprock Academy is a public, tuition-free charter school. Charter schools are one of the options Colorado offers families under the Schools of Choice statutes.
“…..moral growth….” – What is more moral than shaving your head in support of a friend, who is a young child, going through chemotherapy fighting a terrible disease???? This is just a sad reflection of the current education system in America!!!!!
Schools are acting more like the security state each passing day. Truth tellers are harassed and jailed while the liars and criminals are rewarded. This brave girl gets punished for doing a good deed that helps many and harms no one. Glad to see that the school reconsidered its jackbooted ways….
Yes, this is a horrible piece of news. And perhaps the greatest irony is that the largest private-sector source of funding for pediatric oncology research in the United States today is based on getting volunteers to raise funds by finding folks who agree to sponsor them for SHAVING THEIR HEADS in solidarity for kids who undergo chemotherapy. It would be great if every parent of every kid in that school shaved his/her head and made a donation on behalf of the administrators to help find better and less toxic cures to fight childhood cancers.
Pretty gutsy kid for that age. But, the brouhaha is over with a happy ending:
Caprock Academy third-grader Kamryn Renfro got permission Tuesday night to do exactly what she set out to do when she had her head shaved over the weekend — sport her new bald ’do at school and elsewhere to show support for her best friend, neuroblastoma patient Delaney Clements, and raise awareness of childhood cancer.
Educators can be a sorry lot; there is so much that could have been done with this that was not done because they did not think. Mis-education to the max.
Talk about “challenged” these administrators are ethically challenged for starters. If there is any public money going to this school it should be pulled. This action is a symptom of what is wrong with this school and education in general.
Is this “Academy” receiving public funds as some sort of “Charter School”? Revoke the Charter. The kids need to dress up in the hoods of their fathers and shave this Principal’s head.