-Caveat Lector-
Dear Eric,
Maybe you can forward this email to Sean & his dad.
I took my younger son out of public school after 4th
grade. I did not like the way they were handling him - he
was kind of hard to handle - a good kid but mischevious, a
bit of a trouble-maker, popular, in with a group of older
kids, also trouble-makers - I felt the way the school was
handling him, it was giving him a trouble-maker/bad ass
sense of who he was & I didn't want that ( for grades 1 &2
he'd been in a private school that handled the whole thing
much more sensitively ans wisely).
So I home schooled him (very leniently) for the rest of
his school career. He learned computer programming on his
own, started working full time as webmaster at 16, has
been fully self-supporting since 17. I have always been
glad I took him out of public school.
molli
-Caveat Lector-
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/17/2132249&mode=thread
Sean In The Middle
Posted by JonKatz on Thursday April 19, @10:30AM
from the SOS-from-a-geek-dad-and-kid dept.
Last week Sean, a 16-year-old computer geek and gamer who
has never been in serious trouble, was thrown out of a
Texas school and ordered into "alternative education" for
responding to a year's worth of bullying and harassment,
some verbal, some physical. His crime was to fantasize out
loud about revenge. He got as much due process as Chinese
dissidents get. His father, a Slashdot reader and graphic
designer, has pulled his son out of the system and into
home schooling. He asks for help and advice. This is a
story about life in America's schools these days for people
who are "different," who live at the mercy of jerks and
cover-your-butt administrators. (Read more.)
Last week, Sean Sheeley -- computer geek, gamer, and
high-school junior in the McKinney Independent School
District north of Dallas -- was confronted by a group of
students in one of his classes. They'd been tormenting
Sheeley for much of the school year, he says. He'd been
jabbed, ridiculed, baited, had disks stoken from his
computer.
Sheely's father Patrick, a graphic designer, says the
incident unfolded this way: one of the kids in his class
came up to Sean while others were taunting him and said
aloud with others present, "One of these days, he's going
to bring a gun to school and shoot us."
Patrick Sheeley, a Slashdot regular, says that "my son,
being a little sarcastic, took out a small case that he
carries his keys in and pretended to be loading a gun. The
same student then said, 'Look, he's loading his gun.'
At some point, says Patrick, one of the other students
joined in with some additional comments, further upsetting
Sean, who then responded:
"If this had been a real gun,you'd be dead now." One of the
kids turned him in.
Sean was called into the principal's office where he got
suspended for three days and sent home. School officials
then notified his parents that Sean was being removed from
the high school and sent to an alternative school for kids
with learning and other problems. He was no longer fit for
mainstream education, the school had decided.
The decision was "unappealable" to school administrators,
Patrick was told. He could appeal to the school district,
but not until May, when the school year was virtually over.
None of the other students involved have been disciplined,
nor, to the Sheeleys' knowledge, even questioned. Patrick
says officials told him that the school has a statement
from a single student who overheard the remark and reported
it.
Sean says that he'd like to forget the whole day, but
here's what he remembers:
"There was much of the usual taunting, mocking my
intelligence, mocking things I hold interest in, etc. Then
one of them said, 'You know, one of these days he's going
to bring a gun to school and kill us all.' And that is, so
to speak, what knocked over the first domino. I also
remember one of them trying to take the computer disks out
of my backpack... the same person who went through my
backpack accused me of being gay."
Sean said he'd prefer the high school to an alternative
school. Othwerwise, he says, "why would I want to go back
to a school that lies, breaks state laws, and gets rid of
bright students who finally snap, merely to 'make the
school feel safer?' All the school is doing is satisfying a
few parents' false sense of insecurity, brought on by the
intense media attention to the recent school shootings, by
giving them a false sense of security, at the expense of
students like myself. The ONLY reason I'd want to go back
is to see my few friends again, and I can keep in contact
with them without going to school."
Sean's comment was foolish, his father says, especially in
the post-Columbine environment where candid speech about
schools is dangerous. And he isn't averse to some milder
form of punishment.
I wonder if Sean deserves anything more than a useful
speech on sensible responses to morons. Perhaps he should
be called into an office and told that one of an
individual's noblest callings is to make fools reveal
themselves. There appear to be mitigating circumstances, to
say the least, and Sean was defending himself, reflexively
and verbally, if not wisely. Patrick is surprised by the
profoundly anti-democratic, Banana Republic policies that
govern public schools in America, where there is no
Constitution, protected speech, or due process for citizens
under 18. Thousands of kids like Sean won't be the least
bit surprised.
In fact, school officials across the country may be chasing
the wrong kids out of school. The U.S. Center for Disease
Control (CDC) reports that more than 2,000 school age
children 19 or younger take their lives each year in the
United States, many citing depression, social cruelty and
bullying and other forms of harassment. That means that
many more kids harm themselves as the result of social
cruelty than harm other kids.
"I just don't know what to do," says Patrick, who can't
afford a lawyer, and who wants to protect his kid. Sheeley
is aware that this kind of record could have implications
for Sean down the line. "...I would appreciate any
suggestions as to what recourse we may have, or where we
might find some help."
In the meantime, he and his wife have pulled Sean out of
the district rather than submit to his being shunted to an
altenative school. The Sheeleys are home-schooling him, an
increasingly popular alternative for individualistic kids
facing creative suffociation or social isolation and
persecution in larger schools. "What's the lesson for him?"
his father asks. "This wasn't a fair process. The kids who
provoked him were not disciplined equally, or at all. It
could have been me," Patrick says, of the incident. "I felt
the same way when I was in school. I probably even said the
same thing." It could have been lot of people.
Even though administrators have deemed Sean too dangerous
to stay in high school -- perhaps he triggered one of their
dangerous-kid-profiles -- the junior has never been in
trouble of any sort, his father says, inside or out of
school: never been arrested, disciplined, suspended, or
even involved in a fight.
I called the school district to ask if there was any
comment. A secretary in the administrators' office asked me
if I was kidding. "No," she said. We don't have any. And
what is a Slashdot?"
Sean provides a nearly classic example of kids in the
middle of an increasingly insane social situation. We know
this story. Sean and his father are both self-professed
computer geeks. Sean has a few friends who are into
computers and gaming, and who generally feel isolated and
excluded at school. Sean finds many of his classes boring,
although he has met academic requirements, and spends most
of his time in his creative other life, building computers,
programming, networking, writing games, especially RPG's.
His experience shows that a culture of harassment remains
tolerated in many educational institutions; where kids can
be taunted and bullied at will, sometimes into retaliatory
statements or actions.
Patrick Sheeley has some decisions to make and could use
some help. Should he try to get Sean back into school or
walk away? Should he take legal action to force due
process? (Many Slashdot community members are familiar with
home schooling, judging from my e-mail). He would
appreciate hearing from lawyers with expertise in cases
like this. He's contacted the ACLU, but isn't sure whether
it can or will represent Sean. He knows that irrational
policies and the post-Columbine hysteria are all closing in
on his kid, and he wants to do something about it.
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