Dear Mr Benisch,

While I neither live in your school district nor Colorado in general, I feel it is my duty as an American to write a note to you about your decision to suspend Eathan Harris for sniffing a marker. You are teaching a very dangerous lesson now that it has been reported that the marker was non-toxic.

As the principal of your school you are teaching the children that people in positions of authority are not to be trusted correct errors in judgement. There is no reason to teach this lesson, and every reason to teach the right lesson: when a mistake is made, it is rectified. This is the response of an adult.

There is no reason to bring up drug issues with this incident. The child did not even know what ‘huffing’ is. Now, for sure, he does. You did not take the time to determine that Eathan was only exploring his environment. You’ve now taught him to think about drugs, be afraid to explore his environment and to distrust authority figures.

I hope the next time your contract comes up for review, the BoE will reconsider your employment.

Sincerely,
Ben Harris
Woodstock, Ct.

This kid learned that government employees and Authority Figures are generally stupid and never to be trusted.

They might as well supsend him now; I’d say that’s the most valuable lesson he’ll learn at that school this year.

That said, I have to endorse your point that the schools do indeed teach a dangerous lesson in how power and authority work. I believe that they serve as a recruiting ground which often moves bullies into teaching and police work, since they’ve seen that similar personalities can often operate in those arenas with impunity. They teach too many of the others that “you can’t fight city hall.”

Mark, I think you’re painting with too broad a brush. Often, it’s not stupidity that’s the problem but a culture that rewards (ridiculous) caution, conformity and paternalism. If only the problem were mere stupidity, I’d be a lot happier; then we could perhaps trust the school board, which is often part of the same culture, to fire him if he continued to make bad choices.

Zero Tolerance has struck again: eight-year-old Eathan Harris was recently suspended for the dastardly crime of realizing that Sharpie markers smelled sort of neat.
“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong…….

School administrators nowadays seem to be drawn from a pool of people too stupid to even meet the remarkably low requirements for a teaching certificate.

I’m not concerned with him, Bill. That shitbag is dismissed.

I want reasonable people to know what they’re looking at, in him, in unmistakable terms.

I don’t even mind folks expressing their outrage as http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P3690 ; it just illustrates my point that this guy screwed up, and, frankly, it’s a good read!

But my HOPE is that there is some intelligence there which got him into a leadership role in the first place, even if it was just the intelligence to game the system, and that it might be worthwhile to appeal to that.

When it comes to actually effecting change, we need to either engage people like this in dialogue, or line ‘em up and shoot them. I’m choosing the former for as long as it’s practicable

You’d better think about that again. They’re learning, alright. The question is what they’re learning.

http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P3690

That link is on its way to Benisch and Co.

“However, in the spirit of ‘catching more flies with honey’ I tried to be as respectful and reasonable as I could…”

Nonsense.

“The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat.”

(Winston Churchill)

That asshole didn’t reason himself into that position in the first place, and you’re not going to reason him out of it. Contempt is the only reasonable thing here.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/7331184.stm

Dear Mr. Benisch:

I am sure that you’ve already heard plenty regarding http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=89333 , and much of it not very polite or respectful to you.

We all make mistakes, and at this point, it seems clear that your overreaction to Eathan’s sniffing a Sharpie was one. It won’t be your first, or your last, just like the rest of us, I’m sure.

However, in the face of medical information that fumes from non-toxic markers are harmless, it sounds like you persisted in punishing this young man, and treating his exploration of his environment as a dangerous, evil thing.

I think that teaching young people that those in authority are free to refuse to acknowledge their errors, and inflict punishment on others simply to justify their own mistakes is far more dangerous than smelling even the most “serious” marker.

I hope that you will reconsider your handling of this situation and apologize to the young man. You could be teaching a valuable lesson in humility to one of our future leaders.

Very truly yours,

William H. Everman
Aston, PA

Face to face, I can be a disaster when I get my knickers in a knot. Total incoherence O_o

Good job. I find it rather difficult to be quite so eloquent when dealing with such blinding stupidity.

Good lord, how in the world has our species survived this long?