For teachers, there is nothing more sacred than the space of a classroom. While the sanctuary of rooms are sometimes shattered by violence, it remains thankfully rare. That makes the video this week particularly disturbing as physics teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, New Jersey is attacked by one of his students. The other students do not come to the aid of the 62-year-old physics teacher as he is thrown to the ground by a sixteen-year-old student, though one student eventually comes over to tell the attacker to break off the attack. The teacher had taken the teenager’s cellphone.
The student has been charged with assault and the case seems pretty clear from the videotape. The question is whether the teenager will be charged as an adult, which is likely given his age and the violent character of the alleged crime. While New Jersey juvenile courts have exclusive authority over all criminal defendants under the age of 18, prosecutors are allowed to petition for the transfer of minors over the age of 14 who are accused of certain violent offenses.
Here is the video:
Nick–how about what a historian instead of a partisan has to say?
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/usr/2014/672794/
This paper examines the dynamics of economic change in the City of Paterson, New Jersey, from the time of its founding in the late eighteenth century to 1990, with emphasis on the post-1945 era. Analysis shows that from the time of its founding to the first half of the twentieth century, Paterson experienced a period of economic growth followed by economic decline in the 1960s, characterized by major changes in its principal industries of cotton, locomotives, and silk. Economic growth in Paterson up to the early part of the twentieth century is attributable to several locational factors, including the availability of water resources, transportation, labor supply, and markets. Its decline in the post-1945 era is attributable to a combination of local, national, and global economic factors including periods of depression, labor discord, product substitution, decentralization of economic activities, and deindustrialization. Economic decline resulted in a high rate of unemployment, poverty, and urban decay. The most significant effort to reverse urban decline in the city is the urban enterprise zone (UEZ) program. The impacts of this program on economic growth in the city, however, remain inconclusive.
Nick, Republican Chris Christie is being investigated for corruption. Would you say he can’t be corrupt because he’s a Republican? Paterson, back when the great American poet William Carlos Williams was writing about it, was a nice suburb where pediatricians like him made house calls. If Paterson is now a wasteland of poverty and crime, there is likely more than one factor at work, which makes blaming one political party for Paterson’s decline (and illegals and Benghazi and Putin and) an act of disingenuous malice.
Eric H – read or reread Wealth of Nations. Then layer on organized crime.
ANA- When you are old enough please spend some time with a drill sergeant.
Cameras in the classroom are the only way to protect our kids from racist Teachers!
#thechildrunsisourfuture