Next on the agenda for the politically correct: ensure high school physics teachers avoid the use of water in calculating displacement because, you know, a lot of people have drowned and some of them were schoolchildren.
(Or, maybe David Lapp should just use a football for his experiments.)
h/t BOFA.
Well seeing as American Taliban nitwit John Walker Lindh starting going to a mosque in Mill Valley, perhaps mosques should be banned.
I mean, look what happened to him.
I like the one about cooking a steak between two plates hooked up to houshold electrical service. Talk about “Kids! don’t fry this at home…”
Google “dihydrogen monoxide”: http://tinyurl.com/k2b6f
Political Correctness running amuck everywhere, nowadays. It’s just a damn shame that it’s also infecting schools, which ought to be bastions of reason, intellectual exploration and civility.
I’ll relate another true anecdote of moronic PC behavior in an American school district. This happened earlier this year, somewhere in the midwest, if I recall correctly:
There was a teenage boy and girl, both around 16, who attend the same high school. They both also happen to suffer from severe asthma. Their respective doctors happen to have prescribed the same pocket inhaler for both kids.
One day, the boy and girl were at school, in the hallway between classes, when the girl starts having an asthmatic attack. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten and left her inhaler at home. Naturally, her boyfriend immediately whipped his inhaler out of his pocket and gave it to her. She used the inhaler, per her doctor’s instructions, which fortunately stopped the asthmatic attack.
BUT…
A hallway monitor teacher had watched the incident and the boy was reported for a “drug offense” under the school district’s “Zero Tolerance Policy”. The boy was suspended for 60 days and a drug offense was entered into his otherwise spotless academic record.
The parents appealed to the principle, who had the district’s attorney there when the parents came to school. He refused to reverse the suspension and expunge the black mark from the boy’s record. The school board also refused, on the same reason of the boy having “violated the Zero Tolerance policy…no exceptions can be permitted”.
This is a total CYA approach, IMO; no doubt, strongly encouraged by their attorney. Apparently, the school district would rather have the girl die from the asthmatic attack than get the necessary good samaritan help from her boyfriend. If she died, at least their, um, assets, would be covered.
The parents were forced to hire a lawyer to sue the school district to remove the black mark from his record, which will no doubt keep him from being accepted at many universities, prevent him from serving in the military, getting a ROTC scholarship and God knows whatever other problems for him in the future. (By this time, he’s already served the suspension, thereby screwing up his academic year.)
All in the name of inflexible “Zero Tolerance” PC.
I can think of few better ways to not only teach physics, but to give a real demonstration of the power of a gun. The damage done to a block of wood by the .30 Garand M1 would drive home the fact that weapons should be handled safely, all physics lessons aside. Chidren should know that guns aren’t Hollywood; you’re favorite hero (or schoolmate)will not reappear in the next episode after being shot.
Schools here have parked wrecked cars in schoolyards to give a stern lesson in safe driving. The same logic should apply…Except that cars aren’t evil, but guns are? Stupid.
This teacher is brilliant, and should be commended.
Some pundit, I think it was Barbara Coloroso, said, “Zero tolerance is zero thinking.”
From my own archives: “zero tolerance” in local schools actually means, zero tolerance for any teacher who consistently reports the violent pattern of behaviour of a classroom bully (a girl, BTW) and “safe schools” actually means safe for the bully.
The reasoning goes like this: IF said bully were to seriously harm another student with her slapping, tripping, pushing, and shoving, and the police were called, the principal would be loathe to admit that this behaviour had been going on for a long time and that the school had taken no action to curb this student’s violent and destructive behaviour. What the principal wants to be able to say to the policeperson is “Officer, we knew nothing about this problem. This student has never displayed behaviour that we would have to worry about. This is the first time there has ever been a problem.” Ass covered, no grounds for being sued, end of story.
EXCEPT that these bullies now run our schools. I repeat, “Safe schools” and “zero tolerance” means in practice that schools are safe for bullies and that there is zero tolerance on the part of the administration for any teacher who consistently reports patterns of violent behaviour.
‘Lovely world we live in. Orwell’s 1984 is more than upon us.
Let’s just put our little darlins in plastic bubbles, rather than let them experience anything.
Sounds like a brilliant teacher. And a typical over reaction by anti-gun city folk.
Mike, it’s Marin county. I’m amazed he has done this as long as he has.
Guns, very bad in any circumstances. Iranian nukes, permissible because, God forbid, we wouldn’t want to browbeat a sovereign rabidly deranged and capable of mass destruction state. And so goes the idiocy of that leftist county’s voting.
I wonder if these little spawn of pc wimps are still allowed scissors in art class. Can paper cuts be tolerated?
Great … in the cesspool of modern public education ther is ONE teacher with the intelligence and gumption to do someting interesting and effective.
Of course the LIbcomsimps have cranial meltdowns.
Of all the nerve!
PGP nails it for me.
“The students love it. They ask about it very early on in the year. It’s one of the more exciting demonstrations.”
Gee, hate to think that students are actually having fun. Can’t have that now.
Absolutely nothing wrong with what this teacher did in my book. In fact I belive that mandatory firearms safety training should be taught in all schools.
A few years ago outside Ottawa the parents of a grade shool child complained becasue their child had to spell the word gun on a spelling test. Peple like that and those that condemmed the physics teacher need to be comitted to the loony bin post haste. They are obviously mentally ill.
When Robert A. Heinlein was writing sci-fi stories in the 60’s, he called the times we live in today “The Crazy Years”.
Prescient, indeed!