personal accounting re: violence issues

[Jeff Kirkpatrick <jeffkirk@CONCENTRIC.NET>]

LM_NET membership:

        Observably the violence concerns recently shared have touched off a
sometimes violent firestorm, of which I know to accept some level of
personal responsibility and accountability.  It may be my role to quell
this storm to some degree.
        Let me first please acknowledge and concur with the kind and just
assessment of one member who noted the tone in my earlier message was too
bombastic for me to achieve my desired and intended effect.  He's quite
correct, and I am grateful.  I was too angry--and afraid for the victimized
kids--and I have little doubt my anger and my fear incited fear and anger
in others, rather than preferable contemplation of the true issues involved
here.
        I apologize.  I can, and therefore will, hold myself to a higher
accounting.
        That said, many red herrings have been introduced and ascribed to
me--suggestions ranging from my supposedly supporting (actual) weapons in
schools to my supposedly challenging school administrations' rights and
needs to establish and sustain policies and/or rules.  This is absurd.
What I challenge is that we craft BAD, abusive, "What if?" policies, then
eschew necessary professional accountability by simply hiding behind those
policies in auspiciously justifying ourselves in abusing others; when
abusing others IN THOSE and not all CASES, can be seen to be
elective--unnecessary--and thus wrong.
        And the argument that we simply expect others to unquestioningly
adhere to OUR policies.
        Slavery is a policy.  It may not be the best one, though.  (And
expecting others to cow to OUR policies without question is enslavement.)
        Physician, do no harm.
        We CAN admit to being wrong when we are wrong, and we can prove
ourselves the better for it.  We can admit that zero tolerance policies are
intolerant of individual circumstances--by their very design and
definition; are then intolerant of humanity, thoughtfulness, compassion,
and reason.  We CAN responsibly admit this, and perhaps we should.
        The issue I meant to raise, and which I sincerely regret having not
yet done as well as I would do for the good of us all, is the same issue
reflected in that Victor Hugo classic, _Les Miserables_.
        Stealing is wrong--in the ideal.
        But do we really want to devastate those children hungrily looking
to us in trust, in those instances--and only those instances--when what
they might do, or might have done, or might NEVER have done, except in our
dark imaginings, equates to their having been starved for something so much
more vital than mere bread, and all they felt themselves left to--BY OUR
HEARTLESS, ACCUSATIVE POLICIES--was to desperately attempt to steal what
was absent, because denied, from their and our hearts?
        I blew it here, before, quite apparently.  Perhaps I have blown it
here, again.  It happens, and will happen again, no doubt.  But I do not
excuse myself from my personal obligation to continue to try to get it
right, when it is our children who suffer while we fail, and but indulge
ourselves in failing.
        What kind of teacher would I be if I indulged myself to punish a
child for a simple prank--or quelled their ability to run, simply because
they, or others MIGHT fall--and justified that constrictive punishment with
my "What if?" fears?  What kind of parent?  What kind of human being?
        I cannot speak for you, but I have to speak for me--and for the
child who wants and even needs to run.
        And we continue.
        Take care, please.

Jeffrey E. Kirkpatrick

*****
        Conscious reasoning is THE gift bestowed to humankind which sets us
apart from other life forms--yet the gift many work so desperately to be
rid of, by means of unimaginative laws, standards, policies, paradigms, and
other such mindless games, inherently designed to proscribe rational
thought in and for the future.  Without doubt, this is the greatest human
tragedy of all.
        Might we at least think about it?  (Or are we truly not allowed?)

        '90s philosophy:
        "You have done, or MAY DO, something of which I am not tolerant.  I
will therefore abuse you."
        It is redundant to note that this is dysfunctional.
        An eye beFORe an eye--no wonder we are blind.


Jeffrey E. Kirkpatrick
Advocate for libraries and education reform, in Aurora, CO
e-mail address: jeffkirk@concentric.net
(previously jeffkirk@sni.net --through 5/22/99)

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