Education

Ethics Quiz: Developing A School Anti-Violence No-Tolerance Insanity Scale

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
More deadly than a spit-ball? Less threatening than a pizza?

More deadly than a spit-ball? Less threatening than a pizza?

The latest example of mind-numbing school no-tolerance hysteria comes from rural Pennsylvania, where a kindergarten student has been suspended for threatening to shoot another student with a pink Hello Kitty bubble gun. I confess that I have nothing new to say about this idiotic and cruel incident that I haven’t said before about, say, the school principal who attempted to punish a 4th grader in 2010 for playing with a LEGO figure who was carrying a two-inch LEGO “gun”:

“The ethical duty being violated here, along with the ethical values of fairness, prudence, proportion and respect, is competence. A school administrator who does something like this is not competent, and any school system that gives such a person responsibility for the education of young children is also incompetent.”

…Or about the school administrators that punished a 10-year-old who had bitten a slice of pizza into the shape of a gun, an incident that admittedly sent me over the edge when I wrote:

“This is the Apocalypse, the bottom of the barrel. This disgraces teachers, schools, administrators, the U.S. educational system, America and the human race. Incompetence, unfairness, abuse of power, irresponsible behavior and stupidity, all flowing from a system that has lost its way and is in despair. We are officially in the Twilight Zone, Bizarro World, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and Oz, all to the detriment of our poor students, needing an education, and encountering only rigidity, cowardice and foolishness.”

In the wake of Newtown, however, with supposedly responsible elected officials running around making absurd statements about how we have to choose between the Second Amendment and “saving our children,” the entrenched no-tolerance fanaticism in the schools has become more virulent and widespread, though it could not have become more damaging, irresponsible or stupid than the pizza episode. Continue reading →

The FIRE To The Rescue Again: But How Can This Keep Happening In U.S. Schools?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

MontclaireThe FIRE, admirable campus First Amendment watchdog and champion that it is, is once again charging to the rescue of an innocent student being subjected to censorship, oppression and mind-control by a Stalinist state university…in new Jersey. Its victory is pre-ordained, as you will shortly see. The troubling questions are: Why are there schools in a democracy that act like Montclair State, presuming to tell students how to speak to each others and what views they can communicate in public? How do administrators that make and enforce such manifestly unethical and unconstitutional rules get hired in higher education—indeed, how are they bred at all? Finally, what vile and totalitarian principles does a school run by such dictators teach its students?

The facts of the case warrant little debate. Montclair State, in northeastern New Jersey, suspended Joseph Aziz, a 26-year-old graduate student, for comparing another student’s legs to “a pair of bleached hams” in a YouTube comment and defying a resulting ban on his internet speech. After his YouTube comments came to the attention of the school, Montclair State Coordinator of Student Conduct Jerry S. Collins  barred Aziz from all physical, verbal, and electronic contact with the student he had referred to in his YouTube comments. He also issued a virtual gag order, forbidding Aziz from posting on “any social media regarding” the student in question. Continue reading →

At Last! The Ultimate Naked Teacher Principle Episode, Otherwise Known As “Hey, Isn’t This A Photo Of Miss…HOLY CRAP!!!”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Stacy and Tiffany, together again.

Stacie and Tiffany Six, together again.

I’ve been writing about various manifestations of what I dubbed years ago “the Naked Teacher Principal” for a long time. The principle, based in accountability and responsibility, holds that once a teacher has allowed naked or otherwise sexually provocative photographs of herself or himself to become available over the internet, that teacher will be unable to properly maintain the respect of and proper professional relationship to students, serve as a role model, or be trusted to meet professional standards. Such a teacher will have no ethical defense when he or she is fired.

Variations and near-variations have ranged from the teacher whose room mate posted household photos of the teacher doing household chores in the nude, to the teacher who wrote sexually-explicit novels about werewolves, to the art teacher whose avocation of painting pictures with his genitals was revealed in an online sequence showing him doing so with a paper bag over his head.

Now at last we have a former porn star variation, and the NTP has been upheld. Continue reading →

From Curmudgeon Central: The 2012 Curmie Results and “Legally Blonde” Redux

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

and-the-winner-is

The Curmie votes are in. This is Rick Jones’ annual prize awarded to educators who embarrass their (and his ) profession. Go to his blog, Curmudgeon Central, to see the winner and the vote totals. I don’t want to spoil the suspense.  Check out the nominations here if you haven’t already. A couple of observations, though: Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Trayvon

Welcome to the Fourth  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards

Recognizing the Best and Worst of Ethics in 2012!

This is the first installment of the Worst. (Part 2 is here, the Best is here.)

2012 inspired over 1000 posts, and Ethics Alarms still missed a lot. And the last week of 2012 was sufficiently ethics packed that the Awards are late this year. My apologies.

In a depressingly unethical year, these were the low points:

Ethics Train Wreck of the Year

Was there ever any doubt? The Trayvon Martin- George Zimmerman fiasco, naturally, which is far from over. This year’s winner may be the worst ethics train wreck since Monica and Bill were dominating the news.  So far it has involved dubious, unprofessional or clearly unethical conduct by, among others, Martin’s parents, their lawyer, Zimmerman, his wife, the police, Zimmerman’s first set of lawyers, the prosecutor, the Congressional Black Caucus, NBC (which repeatedly broadcast an “accidentally” truncated tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call that made him sound racist), the rest of the broadcast media, conservative talk radio and bloggers (who decided their contribution would be to try to show that Martin deserved to be shot), Spike Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, the New Black Panthers, and President Obama, who ratcheted up the hate being focused on Zimmerman by implying that the killing as racially motivated, and by connecting himself to the victim. Runner-up: The 2012 Presidential campaign.

“Incompetent Elected Officials of the Year” Division Continue reading →

The East Harlem Lockdown Drill: Is Stupid Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

paris-puppet-show-children

I was tempted to make this jaw-dropping incident an Ethics Quiz, but my mind is unalterably made up. While mistakes are not unethical, staggering stupidity on the part of professionals is, even if one of the consequences of that stupidity is the good faith belief that a cruel and irresponsible act is the right thing to do.

Less than a week after the Sandy Hook shootings, Greer Phillips, the principal in East Harlem’s P.S. 79 decided that this was the perfect time to conduct an unscheduled, unannounced lockdown drill. Not a fire drill. A “a stranger with a gun who might kill everybody is in the school!” drill.

Brilliant!

Thus at 10 am on December 18, a woman’s voice came over the Horan School’s loudspeaker and announced in shaky tones that there was a “shooter” or “intruder” in the building, and that teachers needed to “get out, get out, lockdown!”

Did I mention that the school serves students with special needs like autism, severe emotional disabilities, cerebral palsy and other disorders? Boy, I bet they were fooled! What a great drill! I mean, it scared the piss out of the teachers; imagine how those students must have felt! Continue reading →

Update: Six-Year-Old Deadly Finger-Shooter Exonerated! (But It Doesn’t Matter)

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

 

Montgomery County school officials really think this picture is relevant to this story!

Montgomery County school officials really think this picture is relevant to this story!

Responding to community and media pressure, not to mention internet, radio talk show and cable TV ridicule, school officials in Montgomery County rescinded the suspension of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy who they said had endangered the school when he pointed his finger like a gun.  I think the harm is done, and the fact of the suspension is signature significance that the administrators lack judgment, reason and proportion.

We learn some new facts in the Post story. The boy had apparently been reprimanded for using objects as imaginary guns in class, so there was an element of legitimate discipline in his punishment. There is some controversy over whether he may have said “Pow!” when he pointed his finger. If anyone thinks that should make any difference whatsoever, please sit in the back of the class with the silly Montgomery County administrators. Sure…saying “Pow!” makes that finger-gun even more realistic.

Idiots. Continue reading →

The Montgomery County Finger-Gun Massacre of 2013: Who Didn’t See THIS Coming?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

And speaking of the Curmies…

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if finger's that can be be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can't be right...

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if fingers that can be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can’t be right…Stop me when we made our kids dumb enough…

Take post-Sandy Hook hysteria, add school no-tolerance idiocy, mix well in one of the most knee-jerk liberal communities in the nation, and what do you get?

A six-year-old in Maryland’s Montgomery County suspended from school for making a finger and thumb gun gesture, of course.

The NBC story concentrates on  “whether the boy understands the implications of the gesture.” What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.

This is, in order of importance,

  1. Child abuse. This young boy is being treated like a wrongdoer because the adults around him are acting like babies. Will they suspend him for making really scary faces next? Biting his pizza slice into threatening shapes?
  2. Proof of incompetence on the part of the school administrators. Why incompetence? They are stupid, that’s why. Only certifiably stupid people would think it is fair, sensible or reasonable to punish a First-grader for making a gesture kids have been making on playgrounds for hundreds of years, without a single casualty.
  3. Why many people lose respect for anti-gun zealots early in life. They forfeit all respect by acting like ninnies.

The dismaying aspect of this is ridiculous episode is that it has happened before in other schools, and clearly the message wasn’t sent clearly enough to the previous offenders–that is, the fools who victimized innocent children for miming, drawing or otherwise suggesting guns—that this kind of conduct is a career-ender. It should be; it has to be. Such irrational fearfulness, bad judgment, panic, disregard for the sensibilities of the young, lack of proportion and brain dysfunction forfeits all right to trust, and such fools must not be allowed to have power over young bodies and minds.

UPDATE: The school rescinded the suspension.

Cast Your Vote For The 2012 Curmie Award, Honoring The Worst In Education!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Teacher, blogger, deep thinker and Ethics Alarms combatant Rick Jones launched his annual Curmie Award last year, bestowed on the person or institution who most embarrasses the profession of education, on his superb blog, Curmudeon Central. Most of Rick’s Curmie nominees would have to be called ethics miscreants, and indeed several of them were featured on Ethics Alarms, so I asked Rick if I could present his nomination to the Ethics Alarms community and invite you to vote on this year’s winner. Here are Rick’s finalists, with his commentary and links to his posts about them. (Note: the link is the same with many of them, as several of the ultimate nominees were first exposed in the same, epic post. And you think I write long blog entries…) Rick writes of his criteria:

“I have tried to weigh a variety of factors: the egregiousness of the offense on its face, the extent to which it might be portentous of further bad things to come, any sense of particular injustice (punishment of the innocent or even of the heroic, for example), the degree to which the Curmie-worthy outrage might have been a spur-of-the-moment outburst rather than a deliberate act, any mitigating circumstances, whether the problem seems to have been appropriately addressed, whether the case looks a lot like a different nominee, etc.”

Now here are his nominees (in Rick’s words): Continue reading →

Professional Discipline For Unethical Law School Deans?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Why not?

What the North Carolina Bar considers a trustworthy lawyer...

What the North Carolina Bar considers a trustworthy lawyer…

Law professor Ben Trachtenberg has caused a stir by suggesting in a law review article for the University of Missouri Law School Journal  that law school administrators responsible for intentional and egregious misrepresentations in advertising for their schools have violated the professional ethics codes and could, and should, face discipline, such as disbarment.

I don’t want to cause Nando a fatal cognitive dissonance attack, really I don’t, but I agree with the professor wholeheartedly. I have long believed that the Model Rules prohibition of dishonesty in Rule 8.4 should be applied to lawyer conduct not related to the practice of law more frequently and stringently than it is. Lawyers, for their own protection, are fond of the fictional Clinton myth that one can be an upright and trustworthy lawyer while displaying deceitful and dishonest conduct in their “personal lives,” as if lawyers are ethically schizophrenic. The proof: John Edwards still has his license.

The law school deans that Trachtenberg targets, however, don’t get the benefit of this pass. They are lawyers who were dishonest in their professional duties that, while not requiring a law license, have a clear impact on the legal profession.  Trachtenberg writes,

“In light of the common application of Rule 8.4(c) to lawyers who engage in dishonesty unconnected with the practice of law, there is little doubt that dishonest law school marketing conducted by members of the bar justifies professional discipline. Paul Pless lied repeatedly, over a period of years, about the quality of incoming students at the University of Illinois College of Law, deceiving the ABA and U.S. News, along with prospective students and others who relied on statistics they compiled.191 Mark Sargent conspired with colleagues to engage in similar conduct at Villanova.192 Can anyone dispute that these men engaged in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”? Surely serial dishonesty—committed with the purpose of gaming the rankings used by prospective students deciding whether and where to spend tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars—is at least as serious a violation as falsifying a resume and transcript.”

Sure it is. As with Edwards, however, the profession is unlikely to be willing to expand the range of activities by lawyers outside of actual practice that will trigger discipline. Continue reading →