Tag: children

The Damage Done

In his Washington Post op-ed, “The dangerous myth of the ‘missing black father,’” Mychal Denzel Smith argues that “responsible fatherhood only goes so far in a world plagued by institutionalized oppression.”

He asks:

If black children were raised in an environment that focused not on bemoaning their lack of fathers but on filling their lives with the nurturing love we all need to thrive, what difference would an absent father make? If they woke up in homes where electricity, running water and food were never scarce, went to schools with teachers and counselors who provided everything they needed to learn, then went home to caretakers of any gender who weren’t too exhausted to sit and talk and do homework with them, and no one ever said their lives were incomplete because they didn’t have a father, would they hold on to the pain of lack well into adulthood?”

Hmmm. The first question answers itself. If all children get everything they “need to thrive,” it is assumed they’ll thrive. The second question is impossible to know . . . at least until the creation of that perfect utopia with universal material abundance, a flawless education system and indefatigable single-parents.

Fatherlessness is not just a black problem. And let’s agree there are great single-parent (or no-parent) homes as well as terrible two-parent homes.

Still, fathers are nice. Oftentimes they help children thrive, in part by providing “electricity, running water and food” as well as “love” — both tough and nurturing. Proclaiming that fathers would not matter in a society where everything’s automatically supplied is . . . simple-minded.

Often called socialism.

Smith raises the issues of “racist drug laws, prosecutorial protection of police officers who kill, mass school closures . . . the poisoning of their water.” He’s right: having a father won’t magically solve those.

But it would solve the problem of not having a father.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original photo by Sunil Soundarapandian on Flickr

Tags black, children, father, race, racism

Accountability education and schooling general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Parents in Context

education, parents, children, Virginia, freedom

Consider the intersection of freedom and decontextualized fragments.

The specific “decontextualized fragments” in question appear in great and not-so-great works of literature, assigned in public schools for young adults to read: a graphic rape scene in Toni Morrison’s Beloved; racial slurs in Huckleberry Finn; sex, violence.

“Virginia regulators are drafting rules that would require school districts to red-flag objectionable teaching material and make it easier for parents to control what books their children see in the classroom,” reports the Washington Post.

Those regulations won’t be finalized for a year or more (because government bureaucracies are painfully slow). Yet an “earlier version of the language released on a state website drew hundreds of comments from the public,” the Post informs.

“Most parents were supportive of the change. . . .”

Teachers? Against.

Stafford County Public Schools literacy coordinator Sarah Crain worries about literature being wrongly labeled “sexually explicit.” To “reduce a book or a work down to something that is a mere decontextualized fragment of the work,” she argues, “actually impedes the ability for teachers and parents to have informed conversations.”

What about freedom?

Well, public schools aren’t primarily about freedom.

Teachers have a job to do; students follow instruction.

And it is pretty easy to see one reason for the opposition by “the professionals”: the new rules would entail more work.

Nonetheless, parents and their kids deserve as much choice as can be provided. And in every context.

Here, freedom means acknowledging the right of parents to decide. Not experts. Parents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original photo credit: wealhtheow on Flickr

Tags children, education, freedom, parents, Virginia

crime and punishment folly ideological culture responsibility too much government

Pincher, Pinchee

police, crime, law, rights, pinch, juvenile, illustration

Limited government sports several rationales. The need for it pertains on many levels. One such level we don’t think about enough? This: Not every rights violation warrants calling in the law.

Take the strange case of Breana Evans, 12-year-old assailant, charged with misdemeanor battery.

What did she do?

She pinched the gluteal posterior of a boy she did not know.

Now, pinching the butt-end of strangers is a breach not only of decorum (to the extent that this standard we call “decorum” even exists any more), but of a pinchee’s rights.

Yet it was a mere pinch.

And the boy did not press charges.

The school’s “resource deputy” did not arrest her; she was merely suspended from school.

It would have remained a minor matter (so to speak) had not the boy’s mother “insisted to police that he was the victim of battery, and so they had no choice but to arrest Breana,” as Robby Soave explained over at Reason. “She was Mirandized and put in a patrol car. They took her mugshot and booked her into juvenile detention.”

The escalation of the dispute over carnal rites and personal rights into a matter fit for the police is, it seems to me, a grave result of a sort of cultural hysteria about all sorts of things. The willingness of some adults to push children through our harsh, bureaucratic, and often ruthless criminal justice system is sad to behold.

It is more indecent than a pinch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags assault, child, children, crime, law, public schools, rights

folly general freedom nannyism

A Spring in Their Step?

The “Free State” — Maryland — just got a little freer.

Deborah Ramelmeier, Social Services Administration head honcho, has laid forth from her mighty public perch in Maryland’s Department of Human Resources an official directive to the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS).

She finally addressed the issues in the Meitiv case.

You’ll recall that Danielle and Alexander Meitiv allowed their 10-year old son and 6-year old daughter to walk home together, without a parent or guardian or attorney present, from a public park a mile away. Silver Spring police snatched the two children off the street last December and so began a Maryland CPS investigation for neglect.

In April, the Meitiv kids were again caught flagrantly walking home from a park. This time they were held for more than five hours by police, then CPS, before their frantic parents were informed and the family reunited.

In the midst of threats, accusations, and fears, the CPS neglected to do the one sensible thing you’d expect: articulate a policy position defining just when or how or even if ever children are allowed out in public without constant and direct adult supervision.

That smidgen of sanity came last week, in Ms. Ramelmeier’s otherwise boring, bureaucratic 23-page directive. “Children playing outside or walking unsupervised does not meet the criteria for a CPS response absent specific information supporting the conclusion that the child has been harmed or is at substantial risk of harm if they continue to be unsupervised.”

Shazam! Just like that, “playing outside” and “walking unsupervised” are once again legal.

The children won’t be arrested! And their parents won’t be investigated or threatened with losing their little ones!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags child, children, CPS, law, police

crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom too much government

Under Their Thumb

What if police grabbed your children off the street and held them for five hours?

Alexander and Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, have been investigated three times. First, when their children were discovered playing by themselves in a park a block from their home. The second time when police picked up the kids walking home from a park about a mile away. The third investigation was launched when the Meitiv’s 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter were arrested and held for five hours for walking home from a different park.

Nothing came of the first investigation. In the second, CPS originally found the couple guilty of “unsubstantiated neglect.” But last week, the Meitivs received a letter from Maryland’s Child Protective Services (CPS) now ruling out neglect in the second investigation.

Gee whiz, it’s good news. But the Meitivs still have investigation No. 3 to contend with. And CPS remains completely mum on whether the agency’s letter means the Meitivs and other parents can now freely allow their kids to walk to and from public parks and other venues.

Or not.

Can we really live in the “Land of the Free” and our children not be free to walk in public? What kind of freedom is that?

If the Constitution isn’t sufficient to stop police and child welfare [sic] agencies from snatching kids off the street, terrifying them, investigating their parents and threatening to take those children, we need to pass new laws granting children the right to walk down the street . . .

. . . as long as it’s okay with their parents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags children, constitution, free range, kids, law

crime and punishment folly general freedom too much government

Police State Blues

No reason anymore to even feign surprise at today’s police state insanities.

At Townhall yesterday, I bemoaned the six-hour kidnapping of a 10-year-old Maryland boy and his 6-year-old sister for the terrible crime of peacefully walking home from a public park. The children were grabbed just a couple blocks from their home . . .

. . . by police, who held them for over two hours before handing them to Montgomery County Child Protective Services.

It was hours before anyone contacted the panicked parents.

There’s no law prohibiting kids from walking down a public street, but bureaucrats are threatening this poor family over just that.

So, I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that when an 11-year-old boy disagrees with what he’s being taught in school about marijuana, and explains that his mother has used cannabis oil to treat her Crohn’s disease and his mother is not a criminal, (a) he’s going to be detained and grilled by authorities and (b) his mother may soon become a criminal.

A raid on Shonda Banda’s home indeed turned up two ounces of cannabis oil. Ms. Banda could be facing felony drug charges in Kansas, where she now lives, but she used to live in Colorado, where her use of cannabis oil would be legal.

The Washington Post’s Radley Balko identifies the absurdity: “a woman could lose her custody of her child for therapeutically using a drug that’s legal for recreational use an hour to the west.”

Today she has a custody hearing over her son.

The state “protection” being afforded the children in both of these cases isn’t protecting them. It’s terrorizing them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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