School Superintendent, Frau Doctor Kehoe-Wood
Earlier today, I posted an article about drug companies making up illnesses to sell drugs. Last night, I turned on the network news, but it was showing a drug ad. Flipped to another where a different drug ad was on. Flipped again. All three major networks had drug ads. The ads following were also drug ads.
I’d hate to be a kid today whipsawed between these constant ads telling them to be good consumers and ‘buy our drugs’ while being hit with idiotic punishments for non-dangerous drugs which only breeds contempt for authority.
Advil in School Leads to Suspension
Many Rochester-area school districts are sticking to tough policies when it comes to students having any unauthorized drugs in school. Ignorance is not an excuse as students and their parents discover that the penalty often means automatic suspension.
Last week, a student at Greece Arcadia High School got an Advil, an over-the-counter pain medication, from his girlfriend during school; both were suspended.
A spokesperson for the district said Greece is concerned about students abusing prescription or over-the-counter drugs.
Ibuprofen? Tell these people you can’t get high from it. But then comes the REAL reason for the policy. Surprise! It’s not about the student.
If a student has a bottle of ibuprofen in class, the teacher would have no idea if there is more than just ibuprofen in the bottle.
Yeah. Sure. Put a black mark on a student’s record that could affect him the rest of his life so the teacher has an easier time of it. As Dvorak would say, Cripes!
Here’s a recent article about a school system that is at least debating the issue. To me, exempting asprin and related should be a no brainer. And examining each incident on a case by case basis? How obvious a solution is that?
Lesley “You have a headache? Too bad chump!” Flick, principal
Related links:
School District Homepage
Arcadia HS Homepage — Principal: Lesley Flick
My brother popped an analgesic at a school dance in 1984 and got yelled at by the principal. This generation of educators are just a little lazier.
Yet at the same time, public schools have been pushing ritalin on kids for years now.
I was almost suspended for talking about taking a vivarin – that caffeine pill – during a science class in middle school. Thank God for Lawyer Mom who came through for me with the Administration.
Answer to get away from this all? Homeschool.
There are school shootings , rapes , murders , drugs , and unprotected sex. I’m sure there is more. The public school’s don’t give a damn about the kids. It’s all about making sure the parent’s aren’t upset that they are allowing kids to take tylonel. Meanwhile the kids are using drugs right in the school behind everyone’s back.
I am not an antidrug freak but if the public schools really hate drugs then they should be enforcing it and not having a double standard.
Homeschool provides kids with one on one teacher time. That’s important. They will learn a lot more with no distractions and the ability to ask as many questions as they want.
I’m sure a lot of the anti-religion , anti-homeschool people will reply to me and say that the religious right uses homeschool. That’s bullshit. There are so many secular kids doing it, they just don’t get on the news. Why don’t you stop listening to CNN’s hyprocisy?
No wonder kids flip out and start shooting up the place.
Thomas,
I’m not going to say alot of the religious right uses homeschooling. Homeschoolers are mostly people that choose to permanantly screw their kids up without even involving the church. It’s an awesome combination of inexperienced teaching, stunting of social skills, and marking them with the scarlet letters “H.S.ed.”
The world still a dangerous place in college, and it’s even MORE dangerous if you have been kept in a protective bubble your whole life instead of learning how to navigate the trials and tribulations.
On another note, the vast majority of parents that homeschool their children do not have formal training in teaching, and while they may be quite fluent in some subjects, they will greatly hinder the child in others.
Hey. we home school and I know a lot about it.
Cottrell you are completely full of crap on the subject. First of all kids have to be constantly tested by the state or you cannot continue to home school. And most kids who are home schooled do better than kids going through your government “mills.”
You are just spouting the kind of propaganda Home Schoolers hear all the time.
And it’s not about the religious right. The religious right takes credit for it but in fact the Muslims use it just as much as do the Jewish. If you have time to home school I recommend it. You can take the kids to Europe when you want and actually show them places. How is that a “protective bubble?” Most school districts will not allow extended real trips like that because they lose government money in the deal. The classroom is the “protective bubble” you decry.
What’s interesting is that there is a huge support infrastructure for home schoolers that you wouldn’t know about unless you did it.
That said, there is a process called “unschooling” that is indeed dubious.
The advantage of a public school in my opinion is not the teachers. Lets face facts, not all public school teachers should be there. The big advantage is the other students. Having a group of peers to talk to about the topics to offer different points of view is probably the best thing to happen to learning. That said, there are ways of offering that to homeschooled children. Homeschooling isn’t bad, but it is a lot of work.
Again, I never said the religious right is responsible for home schooling.
I guess I see your point though, it’s really hard to find the time to show kids the world when you they only have 4 months off of school. And the “protective bubble” I speak of has nothing to do with global exploration. I was refering to the “school shootings , rapes , murders , drugs , and unprotected sex….” These things are horrible. These things are real. These things will be there when they get to college… And while being told/taught how to deal with them is absolutely crucial, so to is the experience of ACTUALLY dealing with lifes risks.
I sure can’t tell what your experiences were but, for me, going from High School to College was a huge cultural difference and hardly an extension of kids smoking dope in the bathrooms and beating each other up after school. And there certainly weren’t Nazi’s busting people for carrying a bottle of aspirin.
James, I think you put it quite well. And yes, there are ways to offer peer groups to homeschooled children, but it will always be limited compared to public or private school. Peers teach us more than just different viewpoints. They teach us about the different kinds of people that we will HAVE to deal with in life. Some of these types can be seen as positive and supportive, others negative, like bullies and manipulators. I know all any parent wants is what is best for their child, including keeping them safe, but children need to interact with the “not as nice” elements of society as they grow up so they can develop the tools to deal with these people later in life.
I’m definately with you on the Nazi aspirin thing. And don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying schools are perfect BY ANY MEANS. They need work, but getting rid of them is not the answer.
Same policy here in Canada. My daughter suffers from asthma during aerobic exercise (running, lots of walking, etc). Usually stopping and resting fixes it but on occasion she needs her inhalant medication (puffer). When she needs it she needs it immediately, as she can barely get a breath in. Trying to find a teacher who then has to find my daughters teacher(if she’s not gone somewhere for lunch), who then has to go into the school to the stash, find my daughters meds, read the instructions and administer or dispense the proper dose…
To hell with that crap. She carries a puffer with her at school. If the shit’s going to fly, bring it on. No tolerance policies foster stupidity.
So, a teacher couldn’t tell if her student was taking say…speed or ecstacy in class? I think the logic goes the wrong way. Anyone who can’t distinguish the effects of over the counter medications from narcotics has no business being in a classroom.
Meanwhile, everyone skipping out to smoke pot goes unnoticed…
They still scare kids with that nonsense “permenent record” that Uncle Dave alluded to?
Homeschooling: Wasn’t the last spelling bee champion homeschooled, not that it makes a difference.
There does seem to be some laziness here. Rather than deal with each situation on a case by case basis, which is certainly better for the student, administrations have simply decided that NO pills of any kind should be in a school. I suppose that’s pretty convenient. Well, for the administration anyway. It’s a little different for the student getting suspended for trying to relieve a headache.
When I was a senior in High School some weird lung infection went around. The doctors prescribed Codeine cough syrup. Imagine the horror of current school officials if they found Codeine in someone’s possession today!
I truly doubt if banning the legal stuff is doing away with the illegal.
Thanks John for standing up for home schooled.
I was HS…..and I was accepted at Arizona State University on an acedemic scholarship. In January of my sophmore year, I was accepted at Oxford University to read Law. I have had no problems getting along with people of all types, even though we had no rapes, muggings or general mayham in my home while I was being taught. I wasn’t taught the Bible, I was taught classroom stuff. The Bible was taught on Sundays.
All of my brothers were home schooled(3 of them….older than me), 1 is a Doctor(Neurologist, Stanford University). one is PhD in Economics(Harvard) and one is a very successful organic farmer, BS(Texas A.M.)
So…all in all, I’m the dumbest of the bunch, but I think we did ok.
I go back to Oxford in October for my final year in Law(had to take a gap year because I had a brain tumor, my g/f had a cell phone).
Mr. Fusion….those HS kids really weren’t any worse than what comes out of our public schools. Many can’t read or write above an 8th grade level….most have no clue what science or math is….the only difference between the HS and the public school kids is the HS’ers know the Bible.
Isn’t caffeine a drug? What about all those colas for sale in the schools?
I am all in favor of these zero-tolerance, suspend-’em-for -ibuprophen policies. they prepare the kids for the utterly arbitrary exercise of authority they will encounter later on in the workplace.
In case anyone more than a few years out of school has lost track, this kind of crap isn’t at all surprising. Coming from a small school system in TN, I’ve experienced both extremes. I’ve seen girls (angrily!) sent home because their skirts are a mere inch too short. I’ve also seen some very understanding educators- I know of one case where one of my friends in middle school borrowed her mother’s jacket, which had cigarettes in it. She started tweaking out about it so she went to our homeroom teacher who handled the matter by taking the cigarettes and calling the mother to retrieve them, without involving the school’s higher administration at all.
She was a really good teacher.
24, Good point, except for a crucial difference. If you don’t like your job, you have the option of going to another job. Switching schools doesn’t have that option. Sure you could always try a neighboring School Board or private schools, but then you have to pay out of your own pocket so instead of an option, that is a penalty. Then there is Home Schooling, as mentioned above. Yet very few parents are capable of teaching.
22 joshua, while I congratulate you on your achievements, unfortunately you are in the extreme minority. I will make the assumption that your parents are very intelligent and probably possess advanced education themselves. The vast majority of parents don’t have the intelligence, education, skill, or time to become Home Schoolers.
I do disagree with your statement that the majority of students graduating from Secondary Schools are so illiterate. While there are few Hemmingways or Hawkins, they can do just fine.
I actually attend Greece Arcadia High School. It is safe, at this point, to say that Ibuprofen isn’t the only reason kids are getting suspended.
Most of the reasons aren’t even legitimate, and I don’t feel that an issue such as bringing Ibuprofen into school warrants suspension.
Ms. Flick is a power-hungry woman who seems to get off on suspension. I have been victimized by her on more than one occasion, as have many others. Any other school probably would have handled the situation in question in a much different manner. She just can’t see past her own twisted ideals to realize what’s what, because it’s more than the stick up her ass will allow her to know.
As of now, I’m suspended. I didn’t even bring Ibuprofen into school.
zero tolrance is a good idea…. but they (staff) just drawl the line just to far. I have seen reports of students getting jail time for throwing eggs… but one of my teachers (who tried to kill herself) is still allowed to watch over high school students