Chickin Wings

mohandasgandhi:

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

If this was protocol while you were in school, how many of you would have been arrested? I would have been arrested about every other day. This is an amazing story.

This article describes many of the feelings I’ve started to have towards the way today’s youth is being treated.

Apparently everything that can be viewed as negative by even one crazy person is now a huge deal. What I mean by this is that it seems we are edging closer and closer to the point where one psycho parent will be able to ruin the fun for everyone. If a kid falls off the jungle gym and breaks an arm, it’s the playground’s and the school’s fault for being such a dangerous environment for a small child. With all of today’s frustrations (economic, legal, etc), people are deflecting responsibility to the authorities and complaining when they can’t come up with perfection. The result is a system designed to avoid lawsuits, not one designed to educate. That’s the thing about lawsuits; one person can cause irreparable damage that affects everyone.

The point I’m trying to make is that shit happens. Kids will play outside, they’ll tease, they’ll get dirty, they’ll get hurt and hurt each other. It’s part of growing up in the real world. There are exceptions, of course, for severe cases, but it doesn’t mean every kid that name-calls or clowns around in class should be criminalized. It’s no wonder schoolchildren are engaging in real criminal activity earlier and earlier; the punishment for class disruption is not so far off from the consequences of a drug misdemeanor, so in their minds the severity of each transgression is near equal. Going to court can’t be that bad as an adult if you’ve already been half a dozen times as a minor.

(via swim-again)