Justice Tempered With Star Trek

The Uncommon Wife is an uncommonly big fan of almost everything Star Trek, which is how The Common Man got roped into watching four episodes of The Next Generation last night. Much of the time, The Common Man tunes out, but last night The Common Man got some wisdom from one Jean-Luc Picard (who The Uncommon Wife often refers to as "a total panty-dropper;" seriously, sometimes all The Common Man has to say is "engage" and he's, well, engaged).

Picard and his Enterprise buddies find themselves orbiting a Eden-esque planet where all the people wear flimsy, satiny outfits that cover only their naughty bits (there's an uncomfortable amount of guy-nipple in this episode) and make love "at the drop of a hat...any hat." They play all day and freaking do it all night, basically. Nice life. Anyway, there is a downside to this existence (didn't you just know there would be?), and that's that the penalty for any infraction is death. Texans would love this place. Anyway, Wesley (perhaps the most annoying character in Star Trek history, with his whining and penchant for trouble) violates the law and is all set to be executed when Picard saves him with a soliloquy:

Picard: "The question of justice has concerned me greatly of late, and I say to any creature who may be listening, there can no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."

Riker: "When has justice ever been as simple as a rulebook?"

First of all, shut up Riker. Trying to upstage your captain. Not cool, dude. Grow a beard or something. Second, Picard's speech came to mind again today, when The Common Man heard about young Marie Morrow, a member of the Douglas County Young Marines, who has been suspended from school and faces possible expulsion because some idiot in her school's parking lot can't tell the difference between this:


a drill team rifle that is "made of wood, with duct tape, to resemble a real rifle," and this:

you know, a real rifle.

It's not really the school's fault. State law mandates that "a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, or a firearm facsimile that could reasonably be mistaken for an actual firearm" mandates the suspension and possible expulsion. It's a tough policy, but one that makes sense in the wake of the Columbine tragedy. What's missing from the law, as Morrow points out, is the opportunity to allow trained educators who work with kids every day to use their own discretion in determining which threats constitute real threats to the school (for instance, if Morrow wasn't on her local drill team and had fake rifles in the back seat of her car) and what does not.

What makes this worse, in The Common Man's opinion, is how measured and responsible Morrow's being about the whole thing. She tells reporters, "I take responsibility, it was my mistake," and "I understand exactly why the policy is there," and only wants to "go back to school and graduate with my class and take my AP tests and all that." She's clearly not the student this policy was intended to catch and handle. And she's in it now.

There may not be anything that can be done for Marie, under current laws and regulations. And this should not become an excuse for gun nuts to lobby for loosening the restrictions on guns and schools around the country. But it should be an opportunity to add some common sense to the lawbook, to remember that there can be no justice in absolutes, and to help the next Marie Morrow who comes along.

Tangents

The bane of The Common Man's existence in elementary and middle school were the Presidential Physical Fitness Award. The award was created by Lyndon Johnson in 1966, who used the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (established by Eisenhower in 1956) to promote it and the tests by which the awards were won. So, every year, The Common Man and his classmates had to spend a full week of gym doing the shuttle run, pull-ups, sit-ups, the 100 yard dash, and other events designed to make The Common Man realize just how slow he really was. It's not that The Common Man was out of shape, mind you (that's what college was for), rather that he was just very unathletic. What little success he did have as an athlete was achieved largely on guile, aggressiveness, and dumb luck. But during these tests that actually measured physical ability, The Common Man was left in the dust by the Jeremy Beaulieus and the Jason Youngs of the world who were gifted with phenomenal speed, strength, and flexibility.

Despite his hatred of these tests, however, The Common Man appreciates their ability to help us understand what is happening to America's school children. According to a report released by the California Department of Education, the athletic prowess of their students is decreasing. The Sacramento Bee reports that "roughly a third of California students met all standards measured on the state's annual physical fitness test last school year. Elementary kids were even less fit; only 28.5 percent measured up. In Sacramento County, 29.1 percent of elementary students tested met fitness standards." This is in part, the D.o.E. believes, because recently constructed schools tend to have no actual gymnasium. Rather, they have multi-purpose rooms that double as assembly rooms or cafeterias. On many winter days, then, when it rains, California students are forced indoors, but without a place to play. And in several schools, the breakfast and lunch programs offered by the school leave the room available for only an hour anyway.

It is also worth noting that, according to the national Parent Teacher Association, 40 percent of elementary schools have eliminated recess entirely, and many more have cut it back. The pressures on educators to increase test scores in order to secure funding and save jobs, and the need to save money on school construction, has severely limited the exercise that America's children are getting. No wonder, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 17 percent of schoolchildren are obese in America. Bring back recess and gym!



It's remarkable what power three little letters have. Consider: Recess, that disappearing hour of awesome in the middle of the school day, was awesome. This fixture of elementary school life for The Common Man allowed hours of freeze tag, kickball, and touch football for The Common Man as he grew up. It promoted social and physical growth and made Mrs. Seifert's fourth-grade math class somewhat bearable. The Common Man has only good memories of recess, except for the one time he got in a fight with Jason Magnuson in third grade and both participants ended up crying and holding their groins in the aftermath.

However, recession generally sucks. And according to the National Bureau of Economic Statistics, America is mired within one. Spawned by an unholy alliance of risky debt, high oil prices, and unsustainable growth, the recession has already dramatically altered the course of this nation by providing Barak Obama an easy victory over John McCain. And as it either drags on or is abated by new stimulus packages, the strength of the economy will have real effects on the U.S.'s ability to wage war in the Middle East, protect and support its allies, and counter the increasing economic strength of China and India (not to mention the military aggression of growingly fascist Russia). So it is fair to say that, like the worldwide Depression of the 1930s, the current economic crisis has a similar potential to change and fundamentally reorder the global powers.

By global powers, of course, The Common Man means the Disney Corporation. According to NPR, Disney's profits have slipped sharply as American families are taking fewer and less expensive vacations. Orlando, in particular, has seen a 10 percent drop in hotel reservations, and Florida has seen about a million fewer tourists this year. In response Disney has been offering free nights at its hotels and free food vouchers for its attractions. Disney is close to The Common Man's heart. It is, after all, where he and The Uncommon Wife fell madly in love after they snuck away from a dry wedding party to get liquored up at the House of Blues. But even so, The Common Man anticipates that Disney's bottom line will continue to suffer as more Americans cut back on extravagances, and the company continues to charge an arm and a leg to get close to Mickey.

Failing a Test

Well, The Common Man loves The Simpsons, even though good new episodes are few and far between these days, and he's seen the best that the mid- to late-nineties had to offer at least half a dozen times over the years. Even though, as time passes, he gradually turns into Homer, The Common Man particularly loves Bart and the youthful pranks and shenanigans the scamp gets into (who doesn't love Bart and Milhouse finding $20, getting squishy-drunk, and accidentally becoming Boy Scouts?). You see, The Common Man can take a joke.

Which is why The Common Man chuckled yesterday when, while watching The Simpsons and making dinner for The Boy, he saw the following ad for John McCain and Sarah Palin:



That's hilarious, The Common Man thought, that a candidate who has been thoroughly vetted would have somehow advocated sex-ed for kindergardeners and no one had noticed. Good one, John McCain! You, sir, are a man of great humor.

Then, of course, The Common Man realized that McCain wasn't joking. McCain's ad was seriously putting forth the idea that Barak Obama, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, wanted kids "learning about sex before learning to read." This is elevating the national dialogue about politics, suggesting that Barak Obama is the inappropriate uncle you don't invite to parties anymore?

Obviously, McCain's assertion is not true. According to FactCheck.org, the legislation McCain's ad discusses "does not support explicit sex education for kindergarteners. And the bill...would have allowed only "age appropriate" material and a no-questions-asked opt-out policy for parents." The primary purpose of the clause addressing kindergardeners, according to The Washington Post, "was to make them aware of the risk of inappropriate touching and sexual predators." So, if John McCain wants to make a campaign issue out of Barak Obama's attempts to keep kindergardeners safe from child molestors, good luck with that. McCain has no young children, so perhaps that's not a concern for him.

Indeed, education as a whole seems to be less of a concern for John McCain. McCain speaks highly of No Child Left Behind, a disappointing program (at best) that has hamstrung school districts and states by not delivering promised funding, cut off student choices, and encouraged an alarming increase in student drop-out rates. Indeed, according to the New York Sun, McCain has "embraced a national effort, led by the New York City schools chancellor, Joel Klein, to expand No Child Left Behind's philosophy of using test scores to zero in on and eliminate


failing schools, principals, and teachers." Yet, as McCain has not proposed any additional federal education funding, one wonders exactly how he will pay for it.

He is also a proponent of allowing students from failing schools to transfer into other available schools in the area. This sounds good in theory, until you keep in mind that schools have a finite amount of space to hold new students and many areas of the country (particularly rural communities that have extremely limited educational opportunities). Choice is not the panacea it seems when there is no real choice to make, after all.


What is most disappointing about this entire fiasco, however, is that McCain's ad comes from someone The Common Man respects. His moral compass is supposed to be truer than that. And the fact that he resorts to such trickery only underscores the notion that John McCain realizes he has nothing substantive to add to the debate on education. Nothing he'd like to say about his own proposals. Nothing worth talking about. He has become the snide child in the back of the class, making fun of the smart guy trying to deliver his book report. And that's...just... It's sad what John McCain has become.

Who's Your Favorite Little Rascal?

It's tough for America's schoolkids these days. With soccer practice and band camp and mandatory achievement testing and no time for gym class. And now, it sounds like American students need to watch their ass. Literally.

According to a new study by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, 223,190 students received corporal punishment in the last year, the majority being either spanked or paddled. Twenty-one states still allow corporal punishment in the United States, and just 13 (all below the Mason-Dixon line) use it regularly. According to Alice Farmer, the author of the report, it's popular because "it doesn't take much time to administer corporal punishment, and you don't have to hire someone to run a detention or an after-school program."

Of course, you'd expect The Common Man to come out in favor of tough love for these youngsters. To say that light corporal punishment is something students should have to endure for their misadventures, and that the embarrassment they face is 95% of the punishment anyway (especially if they cry, wusses). And it's not as though there is any long-term physical injury involved these days. No one is being flogged.

But there are serious concerns that corporal punishment brings up. First and foremost is that it takes away a parent's responsibility to punish their child. According to one parent, her son's school district told her that "most parents like this because it takes care of the punishment. It gets the kids back in class. It doesn't disrupt instruction. It's like the quick and dirty way of dealing with discipline problems." Quick and dirty. Over and done with. It "takes care of the punishment." Shouldn't that be a parent's job. Now, clearly there need to be disciplinary consequences for schools to run properly, but shouldn't the decision to render this "final straw" punishment be up to a responsible parent?

And again, The Common Man believes this is the problem. That many parents do not want that responsibility. They don't want to have to come in for a parent/teacher conference or to hand down meaningful discipline on their progeny. The Common Man says that if anyone is going to lay a hand on The Boy, it's going to be him or The Uncommon Wife (and even then, never in anger or to hurt him). And they promise that their punishments (corporal or not) will cure The Boy of whatever problems he's having. The Common Man (not that he's the be-all and end-all of child-rearing, mind you) just wishes more parents kept track of their kids, what they were doing and were willing to lay down the law when the time came. Then corporal punishment in schools wouldn't even be an issue to discuss.

Anyway, there are other troubling problems with corporal punishment, according to the study. African-American students make up 17.1% of the student population, but 35% of those spanked, paddled, or struck. Black girls are twice as likely to be paddled than their white counterparts. This has troubling implications that suggest that the vestiges of racism have not been eliminated from the educational system, be those vestiges institutional or incidental. Also, students with mental or physical disabilities were more likely to receive corporal punishment than their classmates.

So, in all, it seems like a bad system. It's not that kids shouldn't be disciplined (or even disciplined harshly). It's that the people meting out this discipline are the wrong ones for the job. Real men would step up and take responsibility for their children, both their accomplishments and their shortcomings, and would be proactive in addressing them.