Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 03:47:02 -0400 From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) Subject: Bringing the Cops Down on Kids? To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
[Note from Matthew Gaylor: Ed's a professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College who teaches Ethics and Harold Levy is on the NYC Board of Education.]
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 09:49:37 -0700 From: Edward Kent <ekent@brooklyn.cuny.edu> Organization: Brooklyn College, CUNY To: Harold Levy <hlevy@nycboe.net> Subject: Bringing the Cops Down on Kids?
Harold, I am worried, as were some of the Council members querying you the other day, about the rush to bring police down on kids accused of sexually abusing their classmates.
Yes, there are pedophiles teaching not only in our NYC public schools, but in the best of the privates as well. And, yes, they often don't get reported by their colleagues who know full well what is going on. And we have the same problem with sexual predator faculty in our colleges -- CUNY and wherever. I hear reports of these in too great numbers and am aware from conversations with psychiatrists and others doing counseling that incidents are more likely not to be reported than otherwise. Often the reason such things are not made public is because the victims do not want publicity -- an additional trauma compounding the initial one. I would agree that teachers should be reported when they abuse. But I am worried when only kids are involved -- and that those who do not report such things directly to the police be criminalized!???!!
Were this law to be in effect for college teachers as well, I would be guilty as charged. I have learned from long experience that it is the victims who must be placed first in such circumstances, not the perpetrators. I always try to take the lead of the victim as to what she (ordinarily it is a she) wants to do.
And, then, the further problem that I fear you have not anticipated is the potential abuse of such a law to 'get' this or that person by charging him/her with not reporting such an incident.
To be perfectly honest, I think you are being a bit elitist about this in your assumptions, which strike me both as being disrespectful of teachers and unimaginative as to the harms to kids of being dragged off by the police in handcuffs who have not exactly committed rape at one extreme and may have been set up at the other.
Beware seeing punishment as the panacea for any and all social ills. It is a current and deeply misguided American fad. I am sure that you mean well here, but I think you have jumped too rapidly in seeking a quick fix for a complicated problem that requires more deliberation and exercise of discretion than you are allowing.
I am hearing many reports of kids being arrested for 'threatening' violence in response to the media hype on Columbine et al. What follows is one such; I hope that we will not see the equivalent developing in our NYC schools, if this law is passed. -- http://www.sptimes.com/News/051101/TampaBay/Student_removed_from_.shtml
Student removed from class because of drawings By ED QUIOCO and JULIE CHURCH St. Petersburg Times, published May 11, 2001
The principal at Oldsmar Elementary says the 11-year-old probably won't return for the rest of the year. OLDSMAR -- A fifth-grader was taken from Oldsmar Elementary School in handcuffs Wednesday after a teacher found drawings he had made of weapons, school officials said.
The 11-year-old, who is not being named because of his age, was not charged with a crime. The boy was taken to meet wit his parents and counselors after classmates told school officials about the drawings.
"There were some drawings that were confiscated by the teacher," principal David Schmitt said. "The children were in no danger at all. It involved no real weapons."
The boy has received a discipline that Schmitt said he couldn't discuss. But he said the boy probably won't return for the rest of the year and probably would be moved to another school.
The boy was handcuffed by campus police for his safety and not because the student was violent or out of control, said school district spokesman Ron Stone.
"That's normal procedure in a situation like this," Stone said. "The primary concern was to make sure we get appropriate services for the child." [snip] The classmates who turned in the student after seeing his drawings should be commended because that was the right thing to do, Schmitt said.
"All I can tell you is it was a threat . . . against students," he said. "Nobody in particular, but students in general."
Schmitt planned to send a letter home to parents Thursday letting them know generally what had happened.
"We just need to get it through kids' heads that there are certain things you don't say and there are certain things you don't draw," he said. -- Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies sent widely] Email: CollegeConversation-subscribe@Yahoogroups.com Web: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
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