Geek Profiling Upheld by Appeals Court

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Eric Cordian wrote:

>The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has just upheld the right of schools
>to suspend or expel any student who speaks or writes about fictional
>violence, dresses differently, has a "disturbing" background, or "fits the
>profile" of a "homicidal student."

I wonder whether this is a problem brought on by the ideas of students, or
by the students expressing their ideas within the confines of the public
school system. See next.

>The appeals panel said while the poem viewed by itself is protected
>speech, the school district had a right to suspend LaVine on fears he may
>have carried out what he had written.

This would be no problem if the school was private -- fear is good enough a
excuse for expulsion if it is made explicit, beforehand, that explicit
writing is not accepted. But when the student is forced to participate in
the education, punishing for something that hasn't already transpired is
certainly unjust. It clearly limits the breadth of thought the student is
allowed. If one is frightened enough to think of poems written by teenagers
as evidence of imminent violence, one should definitely have the option of
enrolling one's children in a school where provocativeness is forbidden,
stupid if that sort of move would be. But when people have no realistic
choice of how to school their children, it is to be expected that the full
spectrum of human literary talent will be present, too. The result is that
some writings will certaily touch on controversial issues. Like the poem at
issue here. The only problem here is that *all* children are being pressured
to participate in education in an environment (public schools) where
opinions and modes of expression that the more close-minded may perceive as
threatening necessarily manifest.

(BTW, the poem was pretty evocative, as far as I can tell.)

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front