Duct Tape--The Public School Teachers' New Weapon of Choice by Al Benson Jr.

Only a couple days ago I wrote an article about an incident in a Monroe, Louisiana government (public) school where a teacher had duct-taped a six year-old special needs student to his seat in the classroom because he had committed the unpardonable sin of getting up to get a Kleenex to blow his nose. The teacher yelled at him, then asked him if he was mad, and when he did not reply she grabbled the duct tape and went to work. I thought this was a horriric incident. I'd never heard of this kind of thing before. Shows that, at my advanced age, I can still learn something. A friend in West Virginia that I had sent a copy of this article to emailed me back and said the article encouraged him to do a little research. Within an hour he had emailed me back with a whole list of news articles from all over the country to check out regarding this exact same type of public school event. Apparently the public school systems in this country have started keeping their teachers well supplied with duct tape, because, if these articles can be believed, they are certainly using it on their students. Permit me to cite a few examples (and these are only a few). From Florida, an article by Barbara Hijek appeared on http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com about a teacher who took a hyperactive student out of his classroom into the hall where she "...bound the boy's lower legs, thighs, and shoulders and arms, according to the report. Then she carried the boy and the chair back into the classroom. After the kid said he'd stay in his chair, she removed the tape and resumed class. Someone called the Child Abuse Hotline to report the incident...Typical Flirida educa-shun?" In Athens, Georgia a school aide was accused of covering a kindergarten student's mouth with duct tape to keep the student quiet. It seems, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she now no longer works for the school district. Gee, I wonder why. The parents were informed of the "alleged duct taping" after the school principal found out. You have to wonder if this was only an "alleged" incident, why this school aide is now history. And then there was an article from http://arkansasnews.com from back in 2009 about an elementary school teacher in Rison who was accused of taping students to chairs. He was finally terminated after a six-hour Cleveland County School Board meeting. You mean it took them six hours to fire this guy after this kind of behavior? Then one from Montana, where a teacher resigned after disciplining a student by taping his mouth shut with duct tape.Admittedly the kid and four of his friends were being disruptive, but whatever happened to sending kids like this to the principal's office? Is that now outdated? Are the principals now afraid to discipline? I remember when I was in the ninth grade, in an English class, we had one kid in the back row that just couldn't keep his mouth shut, The teacher had warned him, to no avail. As the teacher attempted to continue the lesson this kid kept talking. About halfway through the class the teacher took a blackboard eraser, and with dead aim, threw it at the talking kid and it hit him squarely in the forehead. It left a big chalk mark on his face. It did him no harm--it was a soft eraser, but it sure got his attention. He was quiet for the rest of the class period. And a report from Mishawaka, Indiana in October of 2010 written by Christina Chew stated that: "A teacher duct-taped the mouth of a third garde student with Asperger's Syndrome shut at Battell Elementary School in Mishawaka, Indiana last Thursday. The child's mother reported the incident to police the following day. The report says Burnett claims the teacher made the child put duct tape on his own mouth, but Burnett said Tuesday that she told police her son indicated that the teacher applied the duct tape...There are certainly many creative things that people do with duct tape. But using it on a child's mouth, and on the mouth of a child on the autism spectrum , is (serious understatement) not one of them." I have several more of these little gems I could go into, but you get the idea. Now I am not suggesting that unruly kids not be disciplined. They should be, but there have got to be more conventional ways of doing it. Notice that some of these public school systems seem anxious to straighten the problem out--after the police have been called or the parents threaten lawsuits. Unfortunately, this is getting to be more and more the kind of thing happening in public schools. And now it's even getting to the point where the "news" media are picking up on it and not trying to suppress it like they did in West Virginia in 1974, which tells you that public education (if you can call it that) is getting even worse. This type of activity will continue as long as people are willing to put up with it. When enough people decide they've had it and start pulling their kids out of public schools things will start to change, but even if they do, there is no real reason that Christians should be putting their kids in these brain laundries (because that's what they really are). Christians need to start setting the trend in taking their kids out of public schools and finding a Christian way to educate them. Let's be honest, folks, when it comes to the Christian faith, the public school system is the enemy and if you check back into our history in this country you will find that it always has been.