But I thought a pair of handcuffs would be even harder to shove up a brown person's ass...

All lending further support for my contention that public school be abolished. If kindergarten did not exist, how could he be arrested for misbehaving in it?

I'll gladly help fund anyone interested in writing a musical of that title: “The Road to Abu Ghraib.”

Ease on down, ease on down the road.

it's disgusting. I wonder if any studies have been done about these increasingly common incidents, possibly correlating race and class.

For example, possibly measuring if kids on free lunch programs were statistically more likely to be subjected to these indignities, presumably because knowledge of their participation by faculty and staff would indicate the presumption that there would be less legal peril for the persons subjecting the kids to such abuses.

They must all be trained to someday take the role of Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo.

it's disgusting. I wonder if any studies have been done about these increasingly common incidents, possibly correlating race and class.

For example, possibly measuring if kids on free lunch programs were statistically more likely to be subjected to these indignities, presumably because knowledge of their participation by faculty and staff would indicate the presumption that there would be less legal peril for the persons subjecting the kids to such abuses.

Posted by Jonathan Versen at January 27, 2008 10:19 PM

Judas Priest, Jonathan. I had also concluded your race/class pov in the first paragraph, but had also assumed much of this racist behavior is largely subconscious (though no less despicable). But even cynical I didn't think it through to your second graph description. That position on their part takes thought and predictive action. Jesus

This is a very touchy subject, but...

I witnessed and participated in similar events here in Texas with a child who was explosively violent. The child, now grown, was brilliant but violent episodes happened frequently. On several occasions I assisted in restraining the child because I knew him well and was friends with the family.

Adults in a conventional elementary education setting are not well equipped to deal with situations like I saw. Very few people are. The child I dealt with was smaller than the child in the story. I am 6'3" and weigh over 200 pounds and it typically took about 30 minutes of serious effort on my part to wear him out.

The child was eventually expelled from the school system in the 4th grade after a particularly violent episode that ended very similarly to this event.

The school staff I dealt with were very competent. But there was not a lot that they could do in a very difficult situation.

It is entirely possible that this NYC event was poorly handled. It is also entirely possible that the school was not well equipped with adults large enough and comfortable enough with handling a violent situation to manage it gracefully. It is also possible the school made the best of a very frightening situation. Having experienced a situation with some similarities I find it very difficult to judge who is right and who is wrong.

I don't want to beat this into the ground Catherine, but I don't think a sociological study that attempts to correlate awareness of a student's class background inherently indicates [carefully calculated]"thought and predictive action". In the heat of a moment that awareness is part of the background of processing at best.

You misconstrue my meaning, and maybe I didn't flesh it out sufficiently-- I was using an example of an objective measurement that could be tracked to indicate whether students who received this sort of treatment were statistically more likely
to be of moderate means compared to their peers in the particular classroom settings where such incidents occurred.

I also note that Nat brings up some salient points-- which is part of the reason I think some formal studies of large numbers of these incidents are/would be useful, as opposed to trying to account for every unknown variable in a specific incident.