Menace To Society

"I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record."

—Violent Femmes, Kiss Off


Ninety years ago this year, an American journalist named Henry Mencken said the purpose of American education is "to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States."

A perfect example of that agenda can be found in the vindictive and petty actions of officials at the Park Elementary School in Baltimore, in The People's Republic of Maryland.

You might recall that school, and the student involved, Joshua Welch, from news reports a year ago. The then 7-year-old menace to society had committed the heinous act of...chewing his pastry into the shape of a gun.

Insert shudder here.

School officials were understandably mortified. In a "progressive" paradise like Baltimore, no doubt they'd assumed that such socially unacceptable and, let's face it, boy-like behavior (insert second shudder here) had been successfully eradicated from the minds of their many little captives.

But like Cool Hand Luke, this malcontent insisted on doing his own thing — you know, acting like a kid. And just like The Captain, school administrators thought that since he wants it that way, well, he gets it.

We can, of course, rest assured that they didn't like it any more than he did — but some kids you just can't reach.

First they suspended young Joshua. That's right, they suspended him. For eating his Pop Tart the wrong way.

Seven years old, and already part of the system, with this, uh, "incident", now a part of his permanent record — which will follow him through all the years he's blessed with the burden of this morbid regime.

Joshua's parents, to their credit, asked his warders to be reasonable, but according to this story on FoxNews.com (insert third shudder), "School official[s] have denied the family's attempts to have the suspension removed from Joshua's school record."

On paper, Joshua Welch, now 9-years-old, remains a problem child.

Worse, when his parents hired a lawyer and forced an "appeal" — just having to write that word reveals the despicable face of school bureaucrats and their sinister need to vilify ordinary acts of play as those of a malefactor — suddenly administrators declared that Joshua's suspension was justified due to his "ongoing classroom disruption".

Strangely, this wasn't mentioned at the time of his suspension.

It is, however, an act of CYA all-too-typical of those who draw their paychecks from taxpayers, when scrambling to justify their actions after having victimized one of the mundanes they supposedly "serve".

Blame the victim, even if he's a kid.

Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that Joshua does have a history of "disruptive" behavior.

First of all, we've seen what Park Elementary School officials consider "disruptive". That's cause enough for skepticism.

But forget that; say he likes to pick his nose and wipe it on a neighbor, or scream obscenities at the teacher. What does that have to do with chewing a pastry into the shape of a gun?

Robin Ficker, the family's attorney, says the school first insisted that it had suspended Joshua only for the "gun" (fourth shudder, please) incident. No mention of other, er, "offenses".

With their backs to the wall, these selfless public servants (please note the sarcasm) now want to "demonize" Joshua in any way they can.

"For some reason [the school system] doesn't want to let go of Joshua Welch," Ficker told the Baltimore Sun.

That reason isn't hard to discern: this is about creating a standardized citizenry, terrified and compliant, while protecting the system's apparatchiks at all costs. 

I saw a great bumper sticker once. It read, "I home school because I don't believe in the mass production of human beings."

Let's hope Joshua's parents have a similar epiphany, and soon.