Schools prepare pupils to accept a police state

[jack]

by Beverly Eakman
April 8, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

Somehow I missed this news item, and maybe you did, too. Then again, perhaps the mainstream media took pains to keep this one quiet, hoping the fire wouldn’t hit the fan.

It seems that in 2003 an honor student in Arizona at Safford Middle School named Savana Redding, an eighth-grader with no disciplinary record, was strip-searched — and I mean really strip-searched, down to the crotch of her panties — in pursuit of nonprescription ibuprofen tablets. Ibuprofen is the equivalent of the pain-relieving ingredient in Advil, Motrin, etc…, and never known to provide a “high” or to be addictive. Two such pills (the typical dosage) supposedly equal “prescription strength” — providing school authorities just enough wiggle room to go to extremes.

Today, under the absurd “no tolerance” drug policies in schools, no type of medication, from aspirin to Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol, is allowed unless it is given to the school nurse by a parent, and then dispensed by the nurse to the student. In other words, it is easier for a child to secure an abortion referral from a K-12 educational facility than it is to relieve a headache. Like the aggravations suffered by law-abiding passengers at airports in the name of terrorism, schoolchildren are deemed automatically guilty until proven innocent, and “probable cause” does not apply.

The strip-search story might have ended there, but for the fact that Savana’s case went to court (Redding v. Safford Unified School District) and two of the three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles (the same “circus court” that ruled against California homeschoolers in March) decided that the degrading search did not violate the girl’s Fourth Amendment rights — even though Savana’s mother was not alerted, the pupil had a stellar record and the U.S. Supreme Court had already held that searching any student’s person is constitutional only if “justified at its inception” and “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference….”

All the school had in this case was a flimsy allegation from another girl caught with such pills in her pocket (not her panties).

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But here’s the clincher: The principal said he “didn’t think the strip search was a big deal”—because “they didn’t find anything.”

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What they are learning, however, is to accept and even endorse a police state. When individuals feel they must display their private parts for fear of incurring the wrath of government officials (including school administrators), a police state is already in the offing.

Schools disseminate intimate questionnaires with the expectation that pupils will divulge disparaging tidbits about their relatives. Some schools, as happened in Pennsylvania, give sixth-grade girls pro-forma genital exams in an effort to drum up “evidence” of pervasive sexual abuse by parents.

Whereas schools used to discourage “tattling,” today they encourage students to report on each other, even while denigrating the individual in favor of the collective. Surreptitious identification methods ensure that youngsters’ opinions are tracked and monitored over time for political correctness, then linked with other potentially damaging family information, should an occasion arise down the road when it becomes “necessary” to demean a troublesome individual once he or she reaches adulthood.

full story
http://www.newswithviews.com/Eakman/beverly44.htm