By Carey Wedler
In response to last week’s shooting at a Florida high school, the state’s governor recently released his plans to make schools safer. Many of his proposals will indisputably serve to further turn schools into prisons, a trend that has been on the rise for years.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Governor Rick Scott’s proposals include:
— $450 million to put a law enforcement officer in every public school, and 1 officer for every 1,000 students by 2018 school year…
— Increased Safe Schools funding to provide metal detectors, bulletproof glass, steel doors. Safety plans would be required before money would be spent…
— Mandatory active shooter drills in all Florida schools by the fall 2018 semester.
— New ‘See Something, Say Something’ hotline, website and mobile app.
While other proposals include increasing mental health services, banning bump stocks, and some restrictions on gun purchases (as well as an explicit refusal to arm teachers), the push toward the heavy policing of schools is evident (Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel now says qualifying deputies will soon carry rifles on school grounds), and it is a natural progression from an ongoing nationwide shift.
From a 2012 paper published in the UCLA Law Review:
Schools are increasingly allocating funds to become ‘well-policed fortresses,’ hiring police officers to conduct suspicionless searches of student belongings, instituting harsh disciplinary policies resulting in suspensions for relatively trivial offenses like dress code violations and profanity, and using extreme practices like mass strip searches and lock-down drills. While enhanced security measures—including the presence of school police officers—may potentially curb school crime and improve school culture if adequately implemented, these beneficial measures are not the ones that appear to be on the rise.
Rather, it is the draconian measures used to target minor rule violations that are expanding,” the paper explained, ultimately “making the education system and the criminal justice system increasingly difficult to distinguish in low-income, nonwhite communities.
The schools themselves also resemble prisons, with students fenced in behind walls and increased surveillance pervading education institutions around the country, particularly among minority populations.
Unsurprisingly, there are numerous examples of violent, regimented tactics within schools, from the viral video of a police officer aggressively slamming a student in a desk for unruly behavior to a Pennsylvania school officer beating up a student and knocking out his teeth over the suspicion of stealing a phone.
The UCLA Law Review notes another example in which “police officers ….arrested six-year-old Desre’e for having a tantrum in her kindergarten class. Police arrested Desre’e and took her to the county jail, where they photographed her for a mug shot and charged her with one felony and two misdemeanors.”
Other examples include officers arresting a “five-year-old girl for misbehaving in kindergarten, a ten-year-old girl for carrying scissors in her school backpack, and twenty-five middle-school children for participating in a ‘food fight.’”
In San Bernardino, CA, the ACLU of Northern California noted,
[b]etween 2005 and 2014, San Bernardino Unified School District police arrested over 30,000 students—mostly for minor violations such as graffiti and failure to abide by daytime curfews. In one incident, an officer choked, pepper sprayed, and beat a teen for hugging his girlfriend on campus.
Considering the widespread trend of police officers using excessive force and pulling their guns and tasers on unarmed individuals, it is undoubtedly dangerous to propose “solutions” that require placing them increasingly in control of children.
Further, it is evident that the increased criminalization of schools has a particularly harmful effect on minority students — both psychologically and physically — ultimately strengthening the school-to-prison pipeline and fostering crime in other areas aside from highly-sensationalized mass shootings. As the ACLU pointed out, “[n]ational data revealed that an arrest doubles a high school student’s likelihood to drop out and subsequent court involvement further doubles that risk,” and this probability is all the more increased when police are ever-more present in schools.
Even aside from the blatant transformation of schools to prisons, between the rise in police officers and the imposition of metal detectors and random searches, the school system itself is highly regimented across all demographics.
Compulsory behavior from the pledge of allegiance to asking permission to use the restroom has long created a culture of submission that makes the addition of police officers and increased authoritarian measures seem like a natural progression. This is further reflected in the standardized curriculum, which for years has promoted blind nationalism in the image of the historical Prussian school system, which relied heavily on instilling “patriotism” and love of country in students. This patriotism in the United States characteristically demands obedience, whether in the form of “supporting the troops” and police or standing for the national anthem.
As the gun control debate rages on and much of the country argues over propositions to restrict gun rights, the school policy proposals coming about will undoubtedly work to restrict far broader freedoms — both in mind and body — clamping down on childhood and adolescence with the ever-encroaching police state while ignoring and simultaneously feeding into the United States’ deeply ingrained fetish for violence.
Homeschool is a Option—-Think about This : What is the Whole Purpose of Public Schools –To learn Reading , Writing, and Arithmetic & Some Social Skills — Basic Functions, So, One Can Operate as a Human Being & Live Life , but, Do We Actually Need Public Schools in order to Accomplish This ? NO , We Do Not—-If One has a Caring Family Support Unit , This Can Be Accomplished at Home or Place of Residence —-Does Public Schooling Want People Doing This ? No, they Do Not , Because at the End of the Day , Its a Job , & People who Teach have Bills , like Everyone Else , but, The Higher Ups , have a Primary Agenda that is Not Good for People, they Want Trained , Obedient, Automatons , who Dont Question & Ask Critical Questions about Life & the World Around Us all—-True Freedom is Freedom to Live Life , aslong as One does not Infringe on Other People Lives—-In the USA , We have a Choice to Be Great in Life or Fail Miserably , but, We Want & Need this Choice—-
Yes, but home students also must pass all the kakistocracy mandated ‘tests’. But, yes, children can be taught what exactly those tests are for and why. And to learn reality not narrative propaganda.
The big problem with homeschooling is that a large majority of the population has been conditioned to the point where they actually believe that the narrative propaganda IS reality.
Homeschooling will break the spell and end the trance.
Sad but true.
America will not be free until we abolish mandatory, tax financed public schools.
I am in agreement DavidMacko. The centralized power called government in DC didn’t even want public schooling at first. Until rationality hit them and: “Oh yeah! Indoctrination. Let’s do this!”.
The Federal Government created public schools to indoctrinate the young. Public schools have always been prisons. Wise parents home school.
Listen to this: https://youtu.be/TDZVHaqEFWE
Right on.
Actually, that’s not true. Though you are correct as respects their current operation and function. Public schools were first established here when this country was under colonial rule in Massachusetts, and again in the state of Massachusetts in 1852. Compulsory education spread somewhat slowly across the country state by state, becoming pretty much universal about 1910. The federal government did not become involved in any significant way until the mid 1930s, though the office of Commissioner of Education was created in 1890. (for the purpose, incidentally, of creating a supply of obedient workers for the industrial corporations of the time) During the Great Depression and the advent of the New Deal, the federal government began its involvement with WPA construction of schools and school additions. The school boards apparently felt that they were obligated to help spread New Deal propaganda, and later, war propaganda, in return for the construction help. The federal government really got involved some time after the entirely unconstitutional Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was put in place. None of the three subjects of that department are among the powers delegated to the federal government by the constitution. However, from that time on, your comment on the purpose of schools is dead on; and education is dead as a door knob.
The USSA is one big prison, I feel so secure, please pass the GMO corn dogs…
lol, too funny there Patrick Wise.
It would be funny if there was not a significant danger that we may die laughing.
This is true. People laugh because it is funny and the laugh because it is true. People, even kids, are starting to awaken, but is it, will it, be enough and in time?
Rock on Patrick ?
More correctly, it is a big slave labor camp that has a huge rest camp for the terminally unemployed. Possibly a glorified hospice until a convenient means to terminate the “useless eaters” is found.
The only solution is to arm ourselves. For our protection from assault from our ‘protectors’. Just look up the word kakistocracy and awareness will begin to set in.
Abolish the Federal Government(kakistocracy) and affiliates and then go from there.
Absolutely. https://youtu.be/TDZVHaqEFWE
Have you seen the interview series of John Taylor Gatto on Tragedy & Hope YouTube channel? I’m gonna come back with a link to the playlist just so everyone perusing the comments can access it. I was blown away by this guy, was the first time I had heard of him when I watched him.
Thumbs Up !
Draconian….no…more like freedom subverting, jack booted policies on Steroids! Let teachers who are trained and have CCWs , conceal carry at school. Our schools will be less of a soft target when a shooter knows he will be faced with armed resistance from unidentified and unknown responders. Visible armed police and guards will be the first taken out…..geeshs… these demented liberals need a wake up call and some education on the true realities, not the propaganda spewed forth by the progressive liberal left whose primary goal is utter, ruthless maniacal control of all aspects of every person and they way life is lived.
These shootings are to continue these agendas and remove all guns from all private citizens
The long term agenda is to facilitate the implementation of what was originally called< "Agenda 21". It has, largely because of the continuing adverse reaction it produced, been morphed into, "sustainable existence", but the agenda language is unchanged. Disarming the population always makes subjugation less challenging.
A society where only soldiers or cops have firearms is, by definition, a police state. To see how that worked out study the history of the Soviet Union (over 60 million mostly White Christians dead), Red China (80 million and counting), National Socialist Germany (15 to 20 million) and dozens of other hideous examples in the last 125 years. Anyone who wants to disarm you is either an abysmally ignorant fool or someone who wants to enslave or kill you. There is no other explanation.
Conservative republican Rick Scott is the one pushing this shit
Any cop touches any of my kids with out my before hand knowledge will get his teeth kicked in by thier Dad. Children have rights remember that parents don’t use the school has a daycare center school them at home
Protect your kids. Look how many teenagers are killed by police each year.
The sheep in this country do not realize these shootings are Agenda driven
So, this is why there have been so many school shootings, to justify increasing social repression. As usual, the mainstream media puts the cart before the horse.
What Media the government controlled one’s
Public schools ARE prisons….they just let them out regularly on “Family Release”, commonly known in adult prisons as ‘work release’ programs. Don’t be fooled, people. The government is NOT your friend and neither is the Public Education System. If you are going to have a child, take FULL responsibility for raising them. Don’t leave it up to someone else. That includes their education. There’s a saying of ‘garbage in, garbage out’….what you put in, whether it be food you eat or effort you exert, you get back out of it what you put in. If you want well educated, unindoctrinated children who are capable of thinking for themselves, you DO NOT hand them over to the government.
I’m so hopping mad that I can’t see straight, even with my glasses! If this article doesn’t shock Americans to their core, I don’t know what will. Too many people have lost their sensibilities… or never had any to begin with. FOLKS, we have kids that are five and six years old getting arrested for non-existent “crimes”. Most of these police strong-arm tactics are for behavior problems… you know, situations that a rational person would consider a CIVIL issue, not a CRIMINAL issue! Snap out of it, America. If YOUR kids are attending one of these heavily policed (i.e., OVER-policed) public schools, march over there and “read them the riot act”! Show some gumption!
The real purpose for placing police in schools is to intimidate, not protect, the children imprisoned there. Parkland should have made that quite clear. The officer who was there did just what he was supposed to do; stay out of the shooter’s way. After all, all three police agencies, FBI, State Police, and Sheriff, ignored the written social media comments by the shooter that were sent them by relatives and by others who saw them and that he could be a problem. coincidence, I think not.
Right, I agree. The police are there to enforce the children’s obedience to external “authorities”… so that the kids can’t differentiate between proper authority (e.g., parents) and false authority (e.g., rogue police and criminal bureaucrats). Bottom line: Parkland situation was a STAND-DOWN in which police at every level were instructed to allow the gun attack to proceed, congruent with the cabal’s agenda!
The gun attack that was set up by UNlaw Enforcement.
I am a 72 year old Army Veteran and when I went to School and if I got in any trouble the teacher told my Dad and he issued the punishment Not the Swat teams we have today in my day the Parents spanked the kids and it was lawful today its against the Law only the useless Government so called Child services’ our the police officers Judges Exct,are aloud to drug or arrest our Kidnap your Child and Call it lawful also in my Day it was Kidnaping if the Children were locked in a room But today its ok to Lock down the Entire School Creating a Mass Kidnaping Where in the He– is the Freedom gone in this Country.
At one time, I set out to be a high school teacher. For four years, I was primarily a middle school math teacher. During those four years,1959-1963, it became more obvious with each passing year that enabling our young people to become educated was the exact opposite of the direction in which government was forcing school administrations and, eventually the teachers, to take. It was also very apparent that the “dumbing down” process had been increasing more rapidly as the teachers who were born in the 19th century retired. Being born in 1933, I am well beyond the age where I have children in public schools. However, if I did have young children, I would not allow them to walk by a public school anywhere in this country out of fear that the programmed stupidity embedded in those places would be transmitted to them by extra sensory perception, or some convoluted form of mental telepathy. Understand, I am not faulting the people there that we call teachers. I suspect that almost all of them have the best of intentions toward the children, as as the case when I was one of them. Now, they are neither trained nor allowed to pursue any course of action other than to avoid any conduct that could permit a child to become educated. Children MUST: 1. Obey orders. 2. Get permission. 3. Trust and believe authority without question. 4. Submit without protest to any indignity imposed by authorities. What this does is the true purpose of compulsory schooling; a process that is wrongfully referred to as education, but is in fact indoctrination into accepting a condition of servitude. (otherwise known as slavery)
Interesting timeline. I was 15 in 9th grade flunking algebra in ’63. Hated public school and was labeled as a troublemaker. So I was glad to go off to military school from 63-66 graduating with a high B average, and off to college.
Education in military school was amazingly “liberal” in the classical sense, lots of questions, discussions, and personal help with algebra!
Outside of class, it was your #1, 2,& 4. that almost all of #1, 2, & 4 came from ranking cadets and not adults made it more palatable in a strange way. Then of course I became a ranking cadet at last and learned how to use authority, yet elicit co-operation.
College was 6 years of drunkenness and debauchery while avoiding Vietnam. (I had learned enough from my regular army instructors teaching JROTC military classes that I didn’t want them ordering me in combat.) I was a Libtard by this time.
Education majors in college that were going to teach were not the brightest or best by ’66-72. I got a non-teaching History degree??? WTF. Then had a Sales Career!
Still a rebel today, just not a Libtard anymore since Reagan was president.
How about you, What else did you do, or did you stay in teaching?
I became a catastrophe insurance claim adjuster, and was self employed as a licensed builder/contractor. I still do home repair and remodeling, but more at the handyman level now. I was a volunteer fireman, including being chief for a couple of terms, during the 26 years on the department. I still help out at fires occasionally when they’re short handed. Since I will be 85 in seven months (assuming all goes well) I try to avoid any part of that which is too strenuous.
I need a home makeover myself, but need and get is two different topics. I’m finally out of debt after a lifetime so now I pay as I go, no borrowing for instant gratification anymore. LOL.
All the best, keep writing!
Why would the Left have a problem with this? Public schools are Liberal factories now. With few exceptions, kids are on lock down 6 hours a day. Do these idiots want secure schools or do the just want to keep playing the game. Hmmmmmmmm maybe their agenda isn’t safety , it’s taking guns……
Use local Veterans instead of cops or “security officers” to patrol schools. They are trained, competent with firearms, local so they know the school and the neighborhood and they are not politicized as cops are becoming – meaning, they are not in cahoots with the feds.
The God given, Constitutionally guaranteed right of all citizens to keep and bear arms, including in schools, should be restored. Sufficiently mature students, with the consent of their parents and school administrators, also have the right to defend themselves.
I attended the Cleveland, Ohio, public i.e. government schools before 1960. During that dozen years I never saw a cop in any of the schools. I never saw a Black in elementary school. That area is now overwhelmingly Black and the crime rate has risen accordingly.
We were much freer then.
I live in a small white Town, now through section 8 and “low” income housing that was forced on us, we see trouble moving in, then they’ll tell two friends etc.
http://thehill.com/regulation/244620-obamas-bid-to-diversify-wealthy-neighborhoods