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In An Age Of Universal Deceit, Telling The Truth Is A Revolutionary Act.......George Orwell

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Do Students Belong In Duffle Bags?

Of all the insane outrageousness! Just when I though I had nearly heard it all, too! A "teacher" in Kentucky, for special needs children, decided that since a nine year old boy named Christopher Baker smirked at her and threw a basketball across the room, she'd stuff him in a duffle bag and pull the drawstring shut! She then put the duffle bag out in the hallway before calling the boy's mom. When Christpher's mom arrived, she did not know, at first, that her son was inside of a duffle bag, and was stunned to hear the bag say, "Mommy, is that you?"

Ya know......Christopher's mom must be a saint, because I am not sure, exactly, what I would have done if that were my child. Everything about this, from the risk of suffocation, to the humiliation, is simply abusive. I don't care how many times the little boy smirked. I also don't care how difficult of a day this special ed teacher was having, there is simply no excuse for something like that! I don't know this teacher personally, but I am forced to ponder if she took the job with special needs children because they have a more difficult time speaking up about abuse issues within their schools than normal children. If that's the case, she needs to go. But guess what....she's not going anywhere. Kentucky schools, and her principal, think this is an okay way to educate any child with aspergers or any other disability on the autism spectrum. Here's what the principal, Dennis Davis, had to say, quoting from the above referenced Yahoo article: "The employees of the Mercer County Public Schools are qualified professionals who treat students with respect and dignity while providing a safe and nurturing learning environment," Davis said in a statement."

Okay, now that we know that schools in Kentucky consider the inside of a duffle bag a safe and dignified place to learn, and that the "qualified professional" teaching in Kentucky will have an assortment of duffel bags in various sizes in which students can learn, a woman named Lydia Brown has put together a petition and a letter to sign, because Kentucky sees no problem with stuffing children into duffle bags. The Yahoo article did not include a link to the petition, so I will. Here it is. http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-board-of-education-of-mercer-county-kentucky

Another very serious consideration about this is the fact that if this child had died in the duffle bag, what on earth would have happened? Would someone have hidden the duffle bag for the teacher and would this have been another missing child case? Or, suppose someone had entered the school, picked up the duffel bag, Christopher still inside, and put it into the trunk of his car and departed? School camaras would not have recorded Christopher's image, the camaras would have recorded a person walking with a duffle bag. This is dangerous, folks. And very, very wrong. Please sign Lydia Brown's petition.

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