school administrators

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Liz Sloan, Ellen Browning Scripps Elementary School Principal (San Diego)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“This morning we told the students that there will be no romance in 5th grade.”

–—Principal Liz Sloan, in a letter to the parents of fifth graders at the Ellen Browning Scripps Elementary School in San Diego.

"You're a bully, Charlie Brown..."

“You’re a bully, Charlie Brown…”

When exactly was it that the public schools began believing that they had unlimited power over the private lives of students? That they could encroach upon the authority of parents, as well as the natural autonomy of children themselves? is this a byproduct of the increasingly arrogant micromanagement of our lives by the government, and those who believe that liberty, even as it is expressed in the once sacrosanct realms of the family home or the recreation of children, should be subordinate to what government “experts,” bureaucrats and autocrats believe is “best” for us? I don’t know when, but I do know that I thank the fates every time I reflect on our choice to home school my son, not merely because of its effect on him, but because I fear that it would have taken just a couple of encounters with people like Liz Sloan to give me a police record that would have been a serious occupational handicap.

Here is the rest of her letter: Continue reading →

Cautionary Tales: When The Law Protects Unethical Creeps

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Chaney_Chelsea

Two recent court rulings demonstrate how the law often cannot punish purely unethical conduct if it falls in the cracks of legal language and definitions. When that happens, however, it is incumbent upon the rest of the culture not to allow an Ethics Dunce, or worse,to escape without proper identification and condemnation.

Case A: Curtis Cearley

Director of technology services for the Fayette County (GA) school district.

Fayette County high school student Chelsea Chaney used her Facebook page to post a photo of herself wearing a bikini and standing next to a life-size cardboard cut-out of rapper Snoop Dogg holding a can of Blast, the caffeinated alcoholic beverage he promotes. Although it was posted for the student’s friends, Cearley saw it, and used the comely photo in a  presentation at a public forum on the risks of sharing potentially embarrassing personal information on social media. He also used her name, identifying Chaney at the forum which was attended by parents, faculty and  students who attended school with her. He never alerted her, or asked her permission to use her photo as a “Don’t be like Chelsea!” example. The forum was titled “Once It’s There, It’s There to Stay.”

Horrible. This is a pure Golden Rule violation by Cearley, unfair, cruel, thoughtless, mean and intentionally  harmful to a minor, no less: Continue reading →

The Truth Behind School Anti-Gun Madness: In The Battle of the Razors, Occam’s Beats Hanlon’s

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"GUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

“GUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

My parents once gave me a tie clip with a tiny derringer on it, which I wore to school frequently. Occasionally, I loaded it…you see, the gun took a miniscule cap, and when you pulled the trigger, the report was shockingly loud. Had this been the kind of itsy-bitsy gun that 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos had on his key chain (his gun was slightly larger than a quarter; mine was slightly smaller than a nickel), then his school might have had a valid reason to object. But it wasn’t. His gun was a decoration only, but it didn’t stop the school from suspending him for three days.

I’ve been pretty dense about these cases, I must admit. I used to think it was just no-tolerance idiocy, merged with post-Sandy Hook paranoia, that was behind all of the silly news stories. It finally dawned on me that it is far more sinister than that: this is a deliberate and relentless process of state indoctrination. The schools, teachers and administrators are determined to make  future generations of Americans just as fearful and negatively disposed toward guns, and thus toward self-sufficiency and the Second Amendment, while pushing them to embrace complete dependence on a government that cannot be depended upon, and trust in a government that has proven progressively more untrustworthy. Continue reading →

Rejecting Mob Justice Even When The Mob Is Right: Ethical And Necessary

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
The Taco Bell employee-to-be,

The Taco Bell employee-to-be,

Prediction: Those who don’t comprehend the George Zimmerman verdict will never understand this one. Yet it is absolutely right and necessary in every way.

Summary: The Montana Supreme Court blocked an incompetent judge from changing an offensive and inexcusably inadequate sentence for a serious crime, because he was trying to do so as the result of public criticism.

Background: Judge G. Todd Baugh, an elected district judge in Montana’s Yellowstone County, sentenced  former high school teacher Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison with all but 31 days suspended—that’s one lousy month, friends— for having sexual intercourse without consent, also known as rape, with a 14-year-old female student (the teacher was 49 at the time) who later committed suicide while the case was pending. The judge, who appears to be an idiot (he later said that he can’t imagine what came over him) explained his decision at the time by saying that the underaged victim of the statutory rape was “older than her chronological age” and had “as much control of the situation” as the teacher.

Beginning with the late student’s mother, who reacted to the absurd sentence by screaming “You suck!” at the judge (Excellent diagnosis, by the way) and storming out of the courtroom, the ridiculous verdict caused an overwhelming backlash of negative public sentiment that spread nationwide. There was so much wrong with the sentence and the way it was arrived at that the mind, and conscience, boggles: Continue reading →

This Is The Way It’s Done, Ethics Warriors….Well, ALMOST

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
Quit being distracting, Triana...

“Quit being so distracting, Triana…”

Deborah Brown Community School in Tulsa, Oklahoma forbids its students from wearing their hair in dreadlocks, afros “and other faddish styles.” Terrence Parker, a barber, challenged the rule by sending his 7-year-old daughter Tiana to class there wearing her hair in dreadlocks. She was told that she could not attend school with her hair in a (stupid and ignorant) rule-violating style. Tiana is now attending another school, while the story, reported on the web in various sources, is holding the school up to well-earned ridicule for a dress code that if not racist in intent, is racist in impact. Eventually, I would think, the school will be shamed into seeing the error of its ways, which is enforcing an inappropriately narrowly-viewed, culturally-biased interpretation of what constitutes a “presentable” hairstyle as opposed to one that might “distract from the respectful and serious atmosphere [the school] strives for.”

This is the way unethical rules get changed. Parker confronted the rule by violating it, and accepted the penalty while publicizing the unjust rule to the greater community, which is making its disapproval known. Continue reading →

For Declo, Idaho Teachers, It’s The Evaluation That Matters, Not The Performance

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"What's the big deal?"

“So what’s the big deal? She’s a great teacher!”*

Ethics Alarms has been light of late on tales of public schools  intimidating, indoctrinating and abusing children, all while teaching them that too often adult authority does not deserve the respect it demands. Of course, there is a reason for the relative dearth of horror stories from that sector: school is out.

Never fear, however: somewhere, some school administrator is embarrassing the education profession…in  Idaho, for instance, where Summer Larsen, a fourth-grade teacher at Declo Elementary School in Declo, Idaho, had the brilliant idea of having students who made their reading proficiency goals punish those who did not by drawing on the their faces with felt-tip markers. Continue reading →

The Teacher, The Ex, and Zero Sum Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 170 Comments
"Carie? Your ex-husband is hear to see you!"

“Carie? Your ex-husband is here to see you!”

Domestic violence victims advocates are outraged over an incident in which second-grade teacher Carie Charlesworth, a teacher at San Diego’s Holy Trinity School, lost her job because of threatening conduct by her ex-husband.  After an incident where the school was placed on lock-down because Charlesworth’s ex, undeterred by a restraining order, came to the school to confront her, the school district decided that her continued employment was a risk to the safety of the school and its students.

In a termination letter, the district informed Charlesworth that her ex-husband’s “threatening and menacing behavior” made it impossible for her to continue teaching at the Holy Trinity School. Predictably, Charlesworth is angry, and suing. “They’ve taken away my ability to care for my kids,” she says.  She has four. “It’s not like I can go out and find a teaching job anywhere.”  Now she is publicizing her dilemma to dramatize the plight of domestic violence victims.

She is focusing her resources and anger on the wrong parties. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

“If we want older kids to not think guns are cool, we need to start early.”

—-Charles Hill, Principal of the Strobridge Elementary School in Hayward, California, advocating his school’s toy gun buy-back program.

Cool!

Cool!

I would also nominate this as the most chilling quote of the week, the month, and perhaps the year. It is an admission that this principal, and this school—and, like cockroaches, there is never just one rogue school—are interested not in education and the conveyance of knowledge, but indoctrination, compelling children how to think and what to believe, regardless of the desires of their parents and the values of the nation. Continue reading →

More Graduation Ethics: The Cap And The Feather

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

eagle feather

In contrast to the Roy Costner saga, we have the graduation conduct of Chelsey Ramer, proud member Poarch Creek Band of Indians and a graduating senior at  Escambia Academy High School in Atmore, Alabama. Four years ago, graduating members of her tribe had worn ceremonial eagle feathers in their caps at the school’s graduation procession and the handing out of  diplomas. The school tool no action then, because it was taken by surprise, but this year, Chelsey’s class was presented with new dress code, as well as a contract seniors had to sign in order to participate in graduation ceremonies.

It forbade any “extraneous items during graduation exercises.” It also said students violating the agreement would not receive their diplomas until appropriate disciplinary actions were taken and students paid a whopping $1,000 fine.

Chelsey says she refused to sign the contract.  She decided that honoring her heritage with an eagle feather on her cap was worth whatever consequences that resulted. She wore the feather, and now the school is demanding that she pay the thousand dollar fine to receive her transcripts and diploma.

Ethics findings: Continue reading →

Indoctrination Ethics: Boy, Do I Ever Hate Thinking Like This, And Curse The Irresponsible Leaders Who Made Me.

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

constitution-burning1

In Huntingtown, Maryland, a school bus driver heard an 11-year-old boy talking about how he wished he had a gun to protect everyone from bad guys. You know—like a normal American kid, or at least like how a normal American kid used to be able to think of himself, until silly, freedom-fearing, anti-violence fanatics and ideologues were allowed to get their hands on the controls of the culture. But this is 2013, and we have an irresponsible President who speaks about justifying any measure “if it will save the life of just one child.” So the bus driver reported this innocent conversation to the principal, who suspended the sixth grader for ten days, telling him that “with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word ‘gun’ in my school you are going to get suspended.”

Fact: This is blatant indoctrination, state-sponsored bullying and attempted mind-control. Continue reading →