Sunday, November 23, 2008

Kid Arrested for Farting

Here's a story you can't help but have a little fun with--farting in school. Kids fart a lot, and boys and guys especially seem to enjoy the disruption it can cause. But adults are just as capable of causing an even bigger disruption, because sometimes the illegality imposed onto even natural behaviors of youth is not so much an issue of fining the average chalk drawing on the driveway or upholding a strict 6pm curfew. Sometimes it comes through with just the right mixture of incompetence and abuse of law enforcement.

There's a law saying kids can't have sex or drink, so one can see how such things can be enforced. There's no law against causing a disruption in a school unless you're talking about delinquency. Discipline is normally enforced by the school for minor behavior problems. But what happens when incompetent school authorities, unquestioning coppers, and substandard school lunches collide? Something asinine:

NOVEMBER 21--A 12-year-old Florida student was arrested earlier this month after he deliberately passed gas to disrupt the class," according to police. The child, who was also accused of shutting off the computers of classmates at Stuart's Spectrum Jr./Sr. High School, was busted November 4 for disruption of a school function.

A Martin County Sheriff's Office report, a copy of which you'll find linked, notes that the 4' 11" offender admitted that he "continually disrupted his classroom environment by breaking wind and shutting off several computers." The boy, whose name was redacted from the police report released today, was turned over to his mother following the arrest. The young perp turned 13 on November 15.

Bottom line, this is school misbehavior, no need to call the cops in. Just another example of the school to prison pipeline in action in the age of Zero-Tolerance. The disturbing new way to eat up our law enforcement officers' resources and time in the effort to assume behavioral responsibility for kids who fart too loudly during school. Next time he'll just have to be quieter, seeing as kids currently have no rights to free speech, what other way does he have to voice his dissent?

Too funny, but true.

4 comments:

  1. Just curious, what are your thoughts on Oppositional defiant disorder?

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  2. ODD is one of those things that, thank goodness, the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatrists haven't figured out ways to exploit yet. I think there are probably children who suffer from this disorder, and the ones who truly have it are benefited by this fact, since the system can devote more of its time to treating real cases and not just any old case that comes in off the school playground.

    Unfortunately, just like any disorder, there are probably multitudes of kids diagnosed with it for arbitrary reasons. However, one reason why ODD doesn't seem as prevalent or as publicized at least, might be because (and don't quote me on this) the justice system ends up arresting these kids more and more these days before they even get inside the clutches of the psychological community. To be at-risk in the age of Zero-Tolerance has been a curse for many kids who are now behind bars, with records now and everything, spiraling out of control--and all for blowing off some steam on the school grounds or in the home. Either way, it seems, the youth don't catch a break.

    Now it'd be very easy for me to say ODD is probably caused by poor parental firmness, consistency, or even neglect and abuse, but the psychological literature in recent years has done everything in its scientific power to say that "parents make no difference" as to the outcomes of these kids because they think it's going to show that "no matter what you're background is, anything can be overcome." To me, this kind of rhetorical science is even more disturbing--saying that it is not the parents, but is instead the child's "fate" to poorly behave that is--than just telling a few parents what they don't want to hear.

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  3. But then again, the parents are the ones these scientists and media press releases are catering too, since the kids have no say in the matter. So therefore, it's not so surprising that parents never get told what they don't want to hear.

    "Unfortunately it's the kids that suffer."

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  4. Ha! He should have done a silent but deadly

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