suboptimal information

The absurdity of an over-abundance of caution

Allen Lee is told to write anything, without consideration of appropriate or even inappropriate censorship, as part of a creative writing assignment. For his troubles he’s arrested for two counts of disturbing the peace, effectively expelled (the action taken isn’t expulsion, but the result is the same - he’s no longer going to that school, it’s a disciplinary action, and against his will), and has been released from his chosen future - the United States Marine Corps.

What would people - parents of students - do if the teacher had given them an assignment under the pretext of writing in a thought crime society where every possible thought crime contrary to the interests of the the greater good is prosecuted. What would they have done if the teacher instructed the students to write a paper under this premise and insisted that they not identify themselves, gave every student a copy of every essay, and then told them all that they would get a failing grade on the assignment unless they found a plausible neo-conservative, ultra fundamentalist, or otherwise extremist reason for prosecuting the writer of every essay.

They’d have the teacher fired.

Then you have the geniuses who decided to stage a hoax shooting incident with young grade school students, to the point of having them hide under furniture and having one of the teachers attempt to enter a locked door. What would they have done if one of the students panicked and gave the fake shooter a full throttle punch to the groin. I’m guessing the student would have wound up in mandatory counseling.

When we deny children the legal right to refuse the instructions of educators, we should not punish those students for following the instructions of their educators.