Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison is sending a welcome tough message to kids who threaten teachers: Prepare to be in serious trouble. His office recently filed felony charges against five middle school students at Trailridge Middle School in Lenexa, a Kansas City suburb, for allegedly making criminal threats against teachers, including posting death threats on the Internet and putting an unspecified liquid into one teacher’s coffee pot.
Is Morrison (who is running for attorney general) overreacting? Not when you consider that some teachers work in hostile atmospheres and actually fear for their safety. “We’re trying to make a statement,” Morrison told the Associated Press. “Teachers have a right to feel safe in their classrooms.”
Agreed.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- Pleefer on Open thread 11/23
- Monkeyhawk on Too many exemptions
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- CapnAmerica on Too many exemptions
- Heckler on Open thread 11/23
- Blaidd_Drwg69 on Too many exemptions
- sursum on Open thread 11/23
- Raptor on Too many exemptions
26 Comments
Oh the joys of diversity and desegregation! Public education is child abuse!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
I can’t say Morrison is over reacting, but I can say what he is doing is as fruitless as putting a bandaid on a broken arm.The problem stems directly from our business communities desire to attract undesirable elements that work for next to nothing, instead of paying a fair wage with reasonable benefits.Nothing is going to take an area down more quickly than subsidised housing, importation transportation and the neglect established residential areas. To correct the problem, one has to find the cause and correct it. It does nothing to try and fix the result.
I knew Paul Morrison in Johnson County when he became county prosecutor. He is an honest hard working LAW AND ORDER public servant. He richly deserves to be elected Kansas Attorney General in the coming November general election. He was a Republican and switched to the Democratic party in order to challenge Phill Kline in the general election.
As an occasional substitute teacher, I agree teachers are often on the front lines resisting mischief and mayhem in public schools. Its important that law enforcement provide the additional legal enforcement needed to insure a decent learning environment in all of our schools.
Seems like the choices for AG in November are clear. One candidate wants to put the force of law on regulating teen sex, the other wants to help protect teachers and improve safety in schools.
Hmmmmm…purty easy choice for me.
It’s time to take back the schools and demand respect for school officials, the education of our kids depends on it. I agree, the choice looks pretty clear.
Except no tasers though… right Damoon?
We will just sit them down in a timeout when they are being so violent as to be a threat to themselves or other students?
I don’t know how effective I think his step (or stunt) will be. However, parents, teachers, and, yes, police officers and the courts do need to take “children”’s threats seriously. Teach them that their words do have meaning and there are inappropriate things to say, even if they are “only joking.” Middle schoolers really aren’t too young to learn about responsibility, and high school may be too late.
It’s amazing, Nathan. The schools my kids attended were very much in control, and there were no security guards, corporal punishment, or tasers. Gee, I wonder how they did that? Nothing is impossible if you use your creativity and imagination. I suppose your solution would be to arm all the teachers, then they could just shoot the kids if they were being threatened.
That would be a start yes.
Although, I don’t think we need to arm ALL the teachers. Just those who desire to do so and recieve proper training.
Of course we need tasers and armed security in schools. Parents today don’t know how to raise their kids to have respect for adults in general never mind teachers.
I couldn’t agree more, k, problem kids are the result of problem parents. Whatever happened to Darwinism?? I’m serious, the world would be so better off if some people just would never procreate…
I’m betting my house on the Eagle endorsing Morrison for AG. Anyone wanna take the other side?Chortle.
I hope you are right BlowJo. Morrison going after violent crime will be much better for Kansas than voyeur Kline going after kids playing doctor.
Maybe the problem is, society is using wrong fundamental ideas. Suppose that we made high school totally elective–if you don’t want to go, either find a job, or let your parents take total responsibility for your adolescent upbringing. Only people who want to come here will be admitted and educated.
We used to have compulsory education up to 6th grade. Then eighth grade. Then age 18.
These were EXPERIMENTS. Smart scientists learn from experiments: this works, this doesn’t. Compulsory high school attendance to the age of 18 is less than 50 years old. Did anyone say, “We’ve found a permanent solution for the rest of human history?” If they did, they were ignorant fools, or fraud artists looking out to advance their own personal interests.
There is a lot more than compulsory book-learning in life. I have a 3000-book personal library. I love books. I’m totally in favor of the Google initiative to put the NY Library, Stanford and U Michigan libraries on line.
But most Americans don’t love books. If they did, then they would force Congress to shorten book-copyright protection to 5 years, as the Constitution authorizes Congress to enact. The Congress could alternatively grant authors, but not money-grubbing middleman publishers, a 20 year or perhaps lifetime-of-the-author royalty privilege.
Would the publishers go out of business? Not at all.
Laura Ingalls Wilder died five decades ago. Her “Little House on the Prairie” series’ copyright-protected profit-making privileges are held not by her descendants (much less enjoyed by her), but by people who never knew her, and aren’t even related to her. This is not what our Founding Fathers envisioned in creating constitutional patent/copyright privileges for inventors, authors and artists. Not even close. Explain to me how this modern complete corruption of the framers’ intent benefits Americans.
If an author was paid $5 per Google download of his/her less-than-one-year-old book, $3 for a >1 but 3 but 5 year-old books, how many authors wouldn’t say, “That’s fair to me. I’ll take it.”
If Wal-Mart can eliminate middleman distributors and deal directly with product makers, why can’t this be done in publishing? It can, which is why obsolete publishers are useless, parasitic appendages.
Back to schools, some kids need to be apprentice-trained and be paid in the non-book-based economy, perhaps as early as age 12. This would not imply education-system failure it would imply societal wisdom.
Frank McCourt’s 1999 book “‘Tis” explored vocational students’ complete disinterest in studying English literature. It wasn’t that they were lazy, unproductive students. It was that they were very productive in other areas, but the school system tried to force them to study things they were not good at, and created nonproductivity and blatant antipathy. Very bright kids figured out how to block a teacher from “teaching” things they didn’t want to learn.
Wake up, and get real.
I meant to write
$3 for a >1 but 5 year-old books, how many authors wouldn’t say, “That’s fair to me. I’ll take it.”
Somebody’s software isn’t working here. What I intended to write, and did write using copy and paste, then revivision for the above comment
$3 for >a 1 year old but a 5 year old book, how many authors wouldn’t say, “That’s fair to me. I’ll take it.
Still not working:
$3 for 1-5 year old book, $2 for >5 year old book
Heartlander,I like your idea of vocational training. I don’t know that I would personally let a 12 year old decide, maybe 15 or 16. And if they didn’t want to “finish” high school then they would/could be emancipated from their parents and support themselves in whatever fashion they could. (I’m not gonna let my kids mooch off me while being a bum – that’s just me).Anyway – apart from my mini-rant I think you have a very valid idea here.
I agree with julie. Just as we can have college prep in high school we can have “vo-prep”. Back when I was in high school we had both options; of ocurse that was in the backwards deep south (Georgia)
I think what most of you are saying in this thread is something I am thinking also. That is the mission of high schools must change to train some students for college and other professional directions. But other students must be funnelled into technical training, union craft training, or even no training at a lower age.
The fact is there is a large pool of high school students who don’t want to take U.S./World history, Algebra II, chemistry, biology. But the way things are now, they are reducing and even blocking the ability of upward bound students to get a competitive education.
Heartlander,
As an author, I can say it sounds good. The problem is, it isn’t going to happen. Books are already downloadable from many publishers. The rate paid to authors is laughable, especially since the production costs for the publishers are so much lower than print books. However, some e-book publishers (electronic format in either CD or download) do pay as much as 50%, but those authors aren’t selling the tens to hundreds of thousand books that print authors do. Most authors don’t even make $5 a copy on a print book, and for mass market paperback fiction (meaning genre such as murder/suspense, sci-fi, romance, etc., royalties are less than 10% of the cover price. Sure, it’s different for King and Grisham and Rowling and that bunch, but not for the normal, everyday author.
Personally, I’d rather have a book in my hands than something else to read on screen. I’m just old fashioned that way. I do believe that someday many of the older, standard fiction and non-fiction will be available via the Internet. Orwell’s 1984 is available to read for free online now.
The publishing world is not at all what you think it is, but keep trying, although I don’t see anything near what you’re envisioning in the near future.
Okay, back to the education issue…
I’ve always thought college is not the answer for all. To me, the first two years are nothing more than an extension of high school. The problem is, there are many people who think that if you don’t have a college degree, but I doubt they care if the guy fixing their BMW does.
Germany has an interesting education system, and one that the U.S. could learn from. Those students whose interests tend toward the more scholarly have the opportunity to go on to schooling which is similar to college. Those whose bent tends toward the more “manual” (for lack of a better word) are free and encourage to attend trade school. If I remember, this happens at about the age of 15 or 16, so younger than our own college bound kids, but still old enough to have the high-school-type experience and a real clue about what they may want for the future.
There have always been disruptive students in schools. It just seems to be getting worse and more serious. The reasons are economic and societal, and won’t be solved in a couple of years by a few school systems. Wish I had some answers, but I won’t put the blame on parents totally.
I think that a lot more kids have ambition to make something of themselves than society gives them credit for. In the old days, kids who had mechanical skills loved woodshop and auto mechanics, and they could have positive self-esteem, even if they didn’t do well in social studies or English.
You could offer culinary classes–the “Naked Chef” has an apprenticeship program in London that is fabulously successful. You could have 3-hour studio art and graphic design classes, a broad range of computer classes ranging from hardware upgrading and repair to computer animation. You could educate kids in landscape design and construction, artisan-level woodcrafting, high-value greenhouse crops cultivation, wind-generator design and construction… The possibilities for kids who like working in practical endeavors with their hands, as well as their heads are endless.
Every once in awhile you hear a story about high schoolers building an airplane. In the “Air Capital of the World” does any Wichita hs offer this kind of class? If some of the builders want to fly, then they must learn algebra and trigonometry. A good incentive to study math.
I just think that some horizons need to be broadened, and some creative re-thinking of education for this new century would be beneficial.
heartlander,You pegged it. There needs to be that “second” choice for kids who want to do something other than go to college. The choices are limited only by imagination.
The Naked Chef ’s (Jamie Oliver) culinary school was on 60 Minutes Sunday. The late-teenage/young adult students are poor with bad parenting (one of them has two brothers, both in prison). Yet they’re working in a world-famous restaurant. It has a very low failure/dropout rate. Its graduates are being snapped up for chef’s jobs.
A lot of literate, middle-class young people would love to get into the school, but Mr. Oliver says, “They have opportunities. My goal is to help talented disadvantaged kids make something of themselves.”
Maybe somebody should invite Mr. Oliver here. New York City has a boat-building program for troubled youth. For all the public money spent on construction projects (Exploration Place, Zoo expansion, WAM renovation, Cowtown Visitors Center), could we cough up say $250,000 to bring in vocational-education innovators to give a presentation lecture every month for the next year, at WSU or CII, and then create public discussion and hopefully support.
That’s the kind of thing that can open up not only locals’ eyes, but potentially executives who are looking to set up new regional headquarters, or even national headquarters. You see, if you can do something different, that transforms “uneducable” kids into enthusiastic, productive kids, it can generate very positive social and economic changes.
I couldn’t agree more, not everyone is cut out for higher education, and we need people with good trade skills. The problem with today’s society is that we want to mold every kid into our view of what a successful life consists of, and for most parents, that means a career that requires a college degree. Many kids go along with that idea, only to graduate with a degree in something that doesn’t make them very marketable. Having a degree is no guarantee of finding a successful career, in fact the people I know who have serious money are not the ones with college degrees, but those who have intelligence, creativity, believe in themselves, and work really, really hard.I think a college degree is good for someone who thinks they can only make a living working for some institution or in a corporate setting, which can also be a pretty precarious way to live and certainly not MY receipe for happiness.Of course it never hurts to have an education, just doen’t count on it to make you rich.