“Everyday children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of education. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased police presence to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence.” Annette Fuentes, investigative journalist
In the American police state you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in speech and action, your life not your own), or a prison bureaucrat (police office, judge, jailer, spy or profiteer).
At a time when we are all viewed as suspects, there are so many ways in which a person can be branded a criminal for violating any number of laws, regulations or policies. Even if you haven’t knowingly violated any laws, there is still a myriad of ways in which you can run afoul of the police state and end up on the wrong side of a jail cell. Unfortunately, when you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse.
From the moment your child enters public school, to the moment they graduate, they will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech, or movement.
If your child is fortunate enough to survive their time in public schools, count yourself fortunate. Most are not so lucky. By the time the average child finishes public school education, nearly one of three will have been arrested. More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from school every year, often for minor misbehavior.
For instance, a Virginia sixth grader, a member of the school’s gifted program, the son of two school teachers was suspended for a year after school officials found a leaf in his backpack they suspected was marijuana. And despite the fact that it wasn’t, a fact officials knew almost immediately, the 11-year-old was still kicked out of school, charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court, enrolled in an alternative school away from his friends, subjected to twice-daily searches for drugs, and forced to be evaluated for substance abuse problems.
And it’s not just look-alike drugs. Look alike weapons such as toy guns, even lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a threatening manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns can also land a child in detention. Acts of kindness or basic manners can also result in suspensions.
A 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to liability by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemo. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.
School Resource Officers are making matters worse. Infractions that once meant a trip to the principles office are now transformed into punishments such as misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, taser and even prison terms. For instance, one SRO was accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting the cafeteria line. Later that year the same cop put another student in a chokehold causing a brain injury.
What it boils down to is: If you want a nation of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals. If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons. But if you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters, who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then run the schools like freedom forums. Remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, reassign the cops and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state.
Source: Public School Students Are the New Inmates in the American Police State, by John W. Whitehead, the Rutherford Institution. You can read the article in full at this link.
