The Marxist Gorilla

I see that Obama has taken to calling it H1N1.  No doubt as this unfolded and continues to unfold the pork producers and marketers have gone on a PR blitz to get the important people to stop calling it swine flu, lest the legions of morons stop eating "the other white meat" because they think that ingesting bacon is somehow a way to contract influenza.  So I'm going to call it H1N1 too.

The matter before the court is easily resolved.

To begin with, minors represent a special case of personhood.  The reason for this is age and maturity level and the kinds of decisions that minors are likely to make.  This is why the courts allow for the rights of minors to be abridged—or protected—in ways that do not compare with the rights of adults.

The fundamental principle at stake with respect to public schools and the rights of students is that of in loco parentis.  In loco parentis means that when a student is in the custody of the school that the school can and should operate as the functional equivalent of a parent; thus it follows that the school has the right, if not the duty, to regulate behavior, speech, and interaction in ways that would normally fall far outside the jurisdiction of the government.  

In addition, the goal of the public school is education.  That which prevents achieving that goal can be restricted.  Tinker, Barnette, and Keyishian have all affirmed that curtailing the rights of students is acceptable insofar as a lack of curtailment might threaten the educational mission and the curtailment itself is not objectively unreasonable, excessively intrusive, or only tangentially related to the facts of the matter under question or investigation.  

The courts have consistently affirmed in loco parentis.  There is no question that students in public schools do not possess the same rights as adults in an alternative public setting.  This is established case law, including Morse, Cohen, and New Rider.

On the question of search and seizure, the relevant case law is New Jersey and Acton.  

In New Jersey the court affirmed in loco parentis and highlighted reasonableness, intrusiveness, and the specificity of the investigation.  

In Acton the court affirmed in loco parentis while pointing out and emphasizing the lowered degree of expectation of privacy and privacy rights in the public school setting with respect to drugs and the custodial responsibilities of schools toward enrolled students, including both on and off campus settings.

In most states it is a felony to carry prescription drugs without a valid description or outside their original containers, with the crimes often felonies.  

The school possessed testimony of student crime.  

In the absence of evidence contra-indicating student on student testimonial incrimination, the hindsight veracity of the student testimony is not relevant, nor is the drug type or any previous offenses (or lack thereof) of the students involved.

The principle of in loco parentis requires that schools and school officials take all necessary actions to protect the material and physical well being of students.  This includes drug possession, drug use, and drug distribution.  The school possessed eye witness testimony of a threat to the student body in the form of a prescription drug.  

The court rules in favor of the school: school administrators are not pharmacologically trained to assess drug potency or drug interaction and the possible effects and side effects of drugs with school or outside food, nor are they prepared to handle the possible medical complications of drug overdose or drug allergy.  With witness testimony in hand, a school facilitated body search, with eyes only, by a staff member of the same sex as the student is neither excessively intrusive, objectively unreasonable, nor materially unrelated to the facts at hand.  

Visible nakedness alone cannot constitute excessive intrusion of privacy with respect to students suspected of secreting illegal and possibly dangerous drugs.  Further, failure to search the student would have constituted a breach of in loco parentis presenting civil liability claims outside the interests of this court.

The court rules in favor of the school.

 Per Curiam.

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So there's my legal decision.  I doubt the opinion will be Per Curiam.  I suspect that the SCOTUS will give us a bright line rule, coming down 7-2 or 5-4 in favor of the school.  

RBG and Souter will likely dissent.  Or maybe the court will declare that in these types of cases—a public school student suspected of harboring drugs while on campus—that “time is not of the essence” and thus parents and law enforcement should become involved.  

Who knows.

For sure though, the school officials acted bizarrely.  What is legal is not always ethical.  

In terms of how this will impact me at my job, I don't think it will at all.  Unless I am asked to watch as a witness when a young man is strip searched, to which I'd likely decline, which may or may not have consequences for my teaching career.

Like you, I failed this last semester.  Don't worry, it wasn't your or my fault.  We were set up to fail.  Everyone who runs the program knew this.  They just didn't want to tell us when they offered the position.  They set us up to fail and knew that they were doing it.  We were set up to fail because of:

Well, thankfully I really like football, because that was way too much football for an analogy that may or may not work so well.  

Here I'll just point out that NCAA football and the NFL are separate institutions.  Each requires significantly different skills from the QB position.  Colleges require foot speed and accuracy, for running when the receivers aren't open and for hitting receivers who are already open. The NFL requires the ability to throw to open receivers before they are open, while using the eyes and body to deceive DBs who have the speed and ability to intercept passes that are not at least thinly disguised.

This is the reason college success does not = NFL success.  Different skills are needed and nurtured.  The former is not a good indicator of success in the latter.  

As for teaching, we know what makes a good teacher.  Classroom management skills, organization, student rapport, and content knowledge, in that order.  

To this end, schools of education should be teaching these skills and winnowing out those students who cannot be successful given their individual psychological, intellectual, moral, and physical make-ups.  Get rid of the lazy, stupid, and socially inept.  And then realize that real and significant classroom experience should come at the beginning of teacher education, not the end.  

Instead schools of ed. take the money (tuition) and run, leaving behind bad books, third and fourth tier minds, idiots who rave about Ruby Payne, and blatantly imperial projects like NCLB. 

Now, the union part.  

The reason unions distrust reform ideas is that there is a long history in this country of capital seeking to improve its relation vis-a-vis labor by casting itself as the sole guarantor of liberty, freedom, human rights, and universal societal improvement.  This is called hegemony.  In the US this hegemony is almost monolithic, with both wings of the property party accepting it as almost sacred writ...

"Ah yes," the economists say, "if only those pesky unions, with workers who refuse to be commodities, would just let the labor markets be flexible, with incentive pay and no barriers to entry, all would be well with American education."

What a crock of complete and total shit.  

Contrary to the claim of the author, that unions resist lowering the standards because it might muck up tenure and pay standards, this is the real reason unions refuse certain reform efforts: labor and capital will necessarily disagree about hours worked, benefits, and conditions of labor, and it is only through collective bargaining that workers can have any semblance of (1) democracy in the workplace and (2) protections against starvation, poverty, and the tyranny of a capital wielding supra-minority, supported by and supporting, of course, by billion dollar textbook and test writing enterprises and governments beholden not to their citizenry but rather their parasitic rentier classes.

So, all in all, yeah, I thought the article was shitty.  Try this instead: 

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_9_6?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=neoliberalism+

Neoliberalism And Education Reform (Critical Education and Ethics) (Paperback) by E. Wayne Ross (Editor), Rich Gibson (Editor)

  (2 customer reviews)

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What I don't understand is how.  

I mean, just between me and you, things have been a little lean in the bedroom lately.  What with my premature ejaculations and ED, coupled with her recurring vaginal yeast infections and whatever that growth is, things have been less than heated.  

But now there's the baby bump. 

At first I accepted her explanation on pure chutzpah alone.  I mean, if she was going to lie, then you'd think that she'd make something up that was believable.  Yet her explanation was so unbelievable that it was believable.  

Like I said, on chutzpah alone I thought she was telling the truth.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that she is just making stuff up.

Come on Liz!  

An immaculate conception!  A virgin birth!!  

Please!!

I mean, come on, the Hellenism alone!

The total rip-off from the mystery religions!  So obvious!!

Paaaa-leeeeaze!!!!

That said, I've decided to “go along” with her story and raise the child as my own.  It'll be our little secret.  I mean, how many guys can say that their boy is the Son of God?  It's not like two thousand years from now people are going to be worshipping him.

I've decided to get my parents and sister and nieces and nephews gift certificates for Christmas.  I might as well just get a card that says, "I'm thoughtless and lazy, but I have a job.  Merry Christmas."

It is hard for me to say that I have one favorite student.