This A Little Scary Especially...

...when we have a 16 year old in serious condition in hospital after suffering an injury while playing Rugby and it appear like no one took the time to check to see whether he was medically able to be involved in school sports and of course the Ministry is playing the blame game.

Big Brother is watching (and Big Principal, Big Homeroom Teacher, even Big Bus Driver)

Posted: May 03, 2010, 3:02 PM by Lorne Gunter

Last June, the Ontario Legislature passed Bill 157, an amendment to the Education Act innocuously subtitled the Keeping Our Kids Safe at School act. The chances that this legislation -- which came into effect on February 1 of this year -- will make Ontario students safer is minimal. But it will keep teachers, adminstrators, custodians and even school bus drivers busy filling out forms and counselling students and parents about the evils of anti-social behaviour. Under the new law, all staff at Ontario schools are required to report every incident of "inappropriate, disrespectful behavior among students." Every one. They must fill out an incident report and file it with the school principal. He or she is then required to inform the parents of all students involved -- perpetrators, victims and witnesses -- and report to the school board what action he or she took to correct the behaviour. Sure, some of the behaviours listed in the act are serious and should be addressed, No one wants weapons and drugs in schools, for instance. But the Ontario education ministry is telling school employees that they must now report every threat of violence and incidence of homophobia or discrimination. A school employee recently wrote me after he had completed his Bill 157 training to say he was told that if he overhead students calling one another "retards," he was to file an incident report. He had heard a student tell a boy from her class that she was going to kill him later in, what he described as the playful, giggling tone that teens use when they want to express their "like" for a schoolmate but can't bring themselves to come right out and say it. When asked if he had to report an incident like that, the bureaucrats conducting his training said absolutely. That's the problem with such zero-tolerance policies, the remove all context, reason and discretion. They are unthinking. They lump the good in with the bad, the jocular in with the truly threatening. In making no distinction among behaviours, these laws and policies insult the good judgment of professional educators, but more importantly, they distract principals and school officials with busywork while real threats to student safety go unnoticed. You may recall how three years ago a gunman entered C. W. Jeffreys Collegiate, a high school in NW Toronto, and shot to death 15-year-old Jordan Manners. The city was scandalized. How could this happen? Community leaders met with police and city officials; even federal and provincial representatives were present. They wanted to make sure the incident was never repeated. Bills such as 157 come out of incidents like that. But the problem is they can't stop the real baddies, like the ones who shot Jordan Manners (whoever they are; a mistrial was declared earlier this spring in the trial of the two accused killers). All such legislation succeeds in doing is giving records to good kids using typical teen language and behaviours. This law makes it look as if something is being done while the real violent behaviour is too tough to deal with and so gets ignored.