14 yr old boy arrested for reciting bill of rights

[Bennyboy]

Run time: 03:38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aPFpCg6XNo   Posted on YouTube: May 27, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 08, 2008 By DU Member: Bennyboy Views on DU: 2797

 
By way of this site:http://www.naturalnews.com/023379.html

It is officially over. Completely over.

[GainesT1958]

1. Whoever arrested him...

Deserves to be haunted by Ben Franklin and George Mason for the rest of their life!:mad:

B-)

[RoyGBiv]

2. Good kid ...

Gives me hope.

[BearSquirrel2]

7. It's good that he's exploring these issues ...

It's good that the boy is exploring these issues. But he has yet to learn that you cannot shout the bill of rights in a crowded theater while someone is trying to conduct a play ;-)

BTW, as much as students deserve to be told shut up at times, this is not something that you should say. "This isn't the time" is better and it explains the situation without communicating to the student that their voice is unwanted.

[democracyindanger]

8. He should start with "in loco parentis"

He doesn't have the first amendment rights he thinks he does when he's at school.

[BearSquirrel2]

9. You're right, he does not ...

There are bounds to our civil rights and in general, they often end when they interfere with those of another. Determining those boundaries is the purpose for the judiciary system.

But specifically, in school, he doesn't have those rights because school personnel are held responsible for his safety and education. Hence an instructor has the responsibility to structure class and determine who can speak when and on what topics they may speak. At the point the student encourages disobedience to school rules, he is inciting a riot and can be removed from school by police.

The instructors were well in their perview, but from the sounds of things, they may have been a little heavy handed with the lad.

[Political Heretic]

11. Yep. While you're technically correct, in practice, the school still comes off looking stupid.

The kids not a hero, but "heavy handed" is a pretty good way to describe how the school handled it.

[BearSquirrel2]

24. As soon as you here "all I did" ...

As soon as you here "all I did" there is usually a confabulation or cover up coming. Students have a an excellent sense about omitting self incriminating details ;-)

[Quantess]

35. You've never been 14 years old in Public School!

I have, have you?

I also, have had the misfortune of having taught High School classes.

[Quantess]

36. Fuck off, he DOESN'T HAVE ISSUES!

What kind of mincing ....he has ISSUES!!!! How Fucking insulting is that? Well, you know that kid. He has issues.

I am the "apparently" nice, blond, very smart, uppity, young 8th grader who is now 37 years old and who finds your attitude about students to be based on ignorance.

:hi:

[PerpetuallyDazed]

39. Sorry, but he kind've scared me

reiterating ad nauseam how we're becoming a police state and how they're all "dictators"... it's great he's informed and passionate. And it sounds like the school handled whatever situation he was in very poorly. Still, I hope this kid has some constructive adults in his life or he WILL have issues...

[RC]

3. Breckenridge MN is a little too close to home

Watching the video, I thought he was from big city, not a small town in Minnesota

[rawtribe]

4. Food for thought!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZfdMy5MthI


:tinfoilhat:

[Bennyboy]

5. HMMMM?

Gotta wonder if this is a set-up or something......

[PerpetuallyDazed]

40. He's snarky but not completely off base... :) n/t

[Quantess]

6. Basically, the school officials have the attitude "Don't talk back, and Don't be a smartass!"

Fine, I'll be a dumbass, then.

I remember being 14 back in 1984, and seeing that the school officials needed the students to behave like sheep, and to not try to do anything independently. I thought it was all SO STUPID. Nothing this egregious ever happened to me, though. The kid is rightfully angry. I hope his parents have something to say to the school officials, in support of their son.

[Echo In Light]

16. Here's hoping more like him stand up to mindless authority. Good for him!

[badgerpup]

10. So the sequence of events is this...

He was trying to assist a kid who'd been assaulted, but since school wasn't 'officially' out, he got told to shut up.
He cites his own rights...and is told to shut up again...and meanwhile nobody is helping the assaulted kid.

Situation escalates with office playing my dick is bigger than yours shut up or we'll call the cops on you for not shutting up.

Kid says fine, go ahead and look stupid...and they do.

Cops come and arrest a 14yr old for trying to assist an assaulted student (who still apparently had received no assistance) and then not shutting up when ordered to do so.

:nuke: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??? :grr::banghead:

[goddess40]

12. Who ever called the police should be ticketed

for false reporting.

[barbtries]

13. he wasn't arrested

he was called to the office and suspended for disrespect. but he's on the money when it comes to what goes one in this country these days. we're going to hell in a handbasket.

[lostnfound]

14. The first job of Factory schools is to instill a sense of subservience and submission

From an adult's perspective, the need to maintain order in the classroom, provide structure and ensure that 'education is happening' is a reasonable perspective, and suppression of a young person's 'freedom of speech' during those hours is a necessary part of it. Teachers are understandably stressed by those wild horses pulling at their reins, and there are zero options for letting them run free. Teachers aren't the problem.
But from the point of view of a young person trapped in the system, the majority of their day for 12 years of their lives -- covering the entire period while they are awakening to or forming their own identity -- they are stripped of autonomy and have no opportunity for self-governance, no way to exercise increasing independence. Twelve repetitive years where, structurally speaking, nothing ever changes. This is saturation schooling, intended to crowd out all other opportunities for maturing outside of the Skinner box of the classroom.

"The primary purpose of education is to instill a sense of subservience in the young."

From The Underground History of American Education:

Here in a brief progression is one window on the problem of modern schooling. It set out to build a new social order at the beginning of the twentieth century (and by 1970 had succeeded beyond all expectations), but in the process it crippled the democratic experiment of America, disenfranchising ordinary people, dividing families, creating wholesale dependencies, grotesquely extending childhoods. It emptied people of full humanity in order to convert them into human resources.

If you have a hard time believing that this revolution in the contract ordinary Americans had with their political state was intentionally provoked, it’s time for you to meet William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906. No one, other than Cubberley, who rose out of the ranks of professional pedagogues ever had as much influence as Harris. Harris both standardized and Germanized our schools. Listen to his voice from The Philosophy of Education, published in1906:

Ninety-nine out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
–The Philosphy of Education (1906)

Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to the parent
— Ellwood P. Cubberley, Conceptions of Education (1909)

[TalkingDog]

21. THANK YOU!!!! I've tried explaining this to people, including teachers

And they look at me like I've got 2 (possibly more) heads.

Then, they get indignant: "I would never do that to a child."

Uh...yeah....right.

The problem is YOU DON'T REALIZE THAT IT WAS DONE TO YOU! It all seems perfectly normal. It's the "way it's done". So you have no problem doing it to someone else.

Oh, well, at least they are all good little sheeple.

[lostnfound]

28. Increasing freedom and increasing responsibility

It seems absent in the typical school structure. Yet isn't this the goal of childhood -- to help them become independent? Doesn't seem to be working very well if a 15 year old can't be trusted to get up and go to the restroom without permission.

Kids have basically the same amount of freedom at school when they are 15 as they do when they are 6.

In my kid's (excellently run) Montessori age 3-5 class, he had some sense of increasing responsbility and a certain amount of freedom to choose when and what he worked on.

Now in a traditional school setting, he tires of 'being told what to do' all day long, every day. People will respond to such observations by assuming that he is a 'bad kid' etc. No, he is a kid with a mind of his own, as most do. He doesn't actually rebel against being told what to do all day long, but will he after 4 years of it? Or 7 years? Or after 10 years? I see why so many do.

[Zachstar]

15. I hate to rain on the parade kid but you made serious mistakes

#1 You have the right to free speech but not INSIDE the school building. You have to be on the sidewalk I believe.

#2 The school is responsible for safety. Therefore they do have the authority to ask you to "Shut up" If you feel other rights have been violated you need to ask your parents to remove you from that school and perhaps contact a lawyer if needed.

#3 Don't say police state. Just don't you aren't helping anyone when you repeat Alex Jones. Again if you feel there is an issue then protest in nonschool hours in accordance with the law.

[Th1onein]

18. I disagree with you.

Simply because a law says you have no rights while you are within a school building doesn't mean that you don't have them. As long as he was not disrupting a classroom or causing danger to other students, he was well within his rights to speak.

[Zachstar]

19. He is well within his rights to speek if he gets his parents to take him home.

But while he is under supervision as required by law he does not have those rights.

Don't like it? That's why the .gov allows private and home schooling.

The moment he gets on that sidewalk he can protest.

[Th1onein]

23. I'm sorry, but you are quoting law.

I am talking about an inalienable right,which is not necessarily given to us by our laws, but by birth.

[Zachstar]

26. Take a few steps into the sidewalk and you can have free speech all you like!

What makes you think that this birthright spreads into the classroom?

"Oh sorry I didn't realize you were talking about the .gov during a math test while other students are trying to test and not talking about the latest car wreck john doe was in."


Sorry it does not fly. If a student thinks rights are being violated he can ask his parents to remove him from that school and switch him to home school.

[Th1onein]

29. It is, like many things, not so black and white......

Your rights end where another's begin. The purpose of a school is to be a place where people learn. If this kid was not disrupting that process, then he has every right to free speech. No matter what the law says, in terms of being on school property.

[Zachstar]

31. Only if he was forced to take public schooling

You arent. At any time you can go to home school.

[Th1onein]

33. You know, you are talking more like a conservative lawyer

than a progressive.

Your argument is bullshit. WE HAVE INALIENABLE RIGHTS. And we have those rights as long as they don't infringe on others' rights. PERIOD.

[Zachstar]

34. Ah insults fly eh?

Sorry but this is not some fantasy. The moment students are FORCED by the .gov to attend public schooling I will say that the rights follow. But as long as Schools are little more than daycare centers they do not.

Sorry it isn't happening. The kid is wrong and needs to get to home schooling ASAP.

[Th1onein]

37. I don't see how YOU see an insult.

I disagree with you. Simple as that. You are quoting law. I am saying that there is a natural law, as agreed upon by our founders: we have the right to free speech.

[PerpetuallyDazed]

41. I credit my homeschooling to NOT being a little authoritarian...

It might be a good option for this kid if he has supportive enough parents to facilitate his education :)

[BearSquirrel2]

25. No he is not ...

You do not have a right to speak during Tests or Silent Sustained Reading. I once busted a kid for talking during the exam. I KNEW that they weren't trying to cheat but if talking is allowed in general there is no way to prevent cheating.

It's the teachers job to structure the classroom environment in a way to facilitate the education and safety of the students. If they feel it is appropriate to not talk, then that is the law of the classroom.

Having said that, saying "shut up" is not the best way to communicate this to the child as it implicitly tells them that their voice is not valued. Nor does it explain why you are silencing their voice. "Not now" is much better and a instruction on the BEHAVIOR activity is warranted.

[Zachstar]

17. My above comment was why the kid made mistakes in my view but this post is a general comment.

Public Schooling Sucks Sucks Sucks!

There is a reason there is a very few good teachers and that is THE TEACHERS HAVE NO FREEDOM!

The mountains of paperwork and rules and schedules these schools have to do is insane. These children are getting worthless education with only life experiences of the teacher giving them ANYTHING they can use outside the classroom.

[Asgaya Dihi]

20. While I sympathyze with the kid

and fully agree that schools in general are just places to suck the independence and life out of our kids, the way this issue has been approached strikes me as too extreme to endorse. Censorship and police State aren't exactly the problem and juveniles especially in school or other places of the sort don't have the same "rights" as an adult.

The same story approached as a case of an administrator who acted like an ass, handled it badly, or who went too far I'd have been behind but exaggerating it into a police state case is a bit much and as someone else pointed out it Alex Jones like discredits others who do have legitimate complaints of the sort to make. We've got enough real police state issues out there without confusing people and offering them another reason to just ignore us and take a "oh, another one of those people" attitude with us.

[FredStembottom]

22. The boy is amazingly intelligent and prodigious........

.....and brimming with that entire-world-figured-out-at-14 confidence that comes from having very little actual experience in the world.

I really enjoyed this. He's one in a million. But I bet there's a whole lot more to this story that the "other side" could tell.

[MonkeyFunk]

27. Without watching the video or reading the thread...

I'm going to guess he was NOT actually arrested for reciting the Bill of Rights.

[alphafemale]

30. Good Intuition! He wasn't arrested at all,

He was told to shut up and wouldn't.

Was he being disruptive?

Hard to say.

Quite possibly.

He has some fire but he needs some maturity.

[Zachstar]

32. Indeed. Which is what completely ruins the OPs point.

[blogslut]

38. Pretty good little video

The editing, the soundtrack. Looks like he's got a future in film production.

As for his experience, he blew it up for the drama, obviously. Regardless, it's good to see a kid that's willing to set off the "independent thought alarms".

:)

[McCamy Taylor]

42. Good video. My son is in an urban integrated school for a reason.

There are too many suburban, rural conformist schools who see their mission as being to force kids to shut up. Even within the Fort Worth ISD where my son goes there are a spectrum of schools and I chose the neighborhood where we live (and the schools he has attended( because it is one of the few progressive, Democratic, integrated, culturally up to date ones in the area. Most people in America do not have this choice. Their kids go to public schools that are little better than indoctrination camps.

The knee jerk "kid mentions his rights so lets call the cops" reminds me of the union busting activity btw. In my son's school, if someone was being disruptive and then talked about his 1st amendment rights this would be a signal for a faculty member to talk about how free speech does not preempt the rights of others to conduct business in a tranquil environment. Police are called when someone has a gun or drugs.