National Youth Rights Association

Following widespread national media attention, outrage continues to grow surrounding the controversial suspension of a 16-year-old Florida student who reportedly helped disarm a gunman on a school bus, potentially saving at least one life. School officials dispute those reports. Now, however, a national youth-rights organization has officially become involved in the case to advocate on behalf of the suspended teen and have his permanent record cleared. Members of the local community have also rallied to the cause.

The student in question, whose name is being withheld by The New American and other media outlets for safety reasons, was supposedly disciplined for failing to cooperate with school officials and the investigation after the incident, an amended document from the school obtained by TNA shows. The original reason cited for the suspension was being “involved” in an incident in which a “weapon was present.” It appears to critics of the school decision, though, that suspending the teen after such a reportedly heroic act was a display of poor judgment at the very least, and that officials are now trying to rationalize the move.

After originally reporting the news on March 4, The New American obtained e-mail correspondence from the school principal indicating that the narrative as portrayed in the press was inaccurate and that there was more to the story. Local media outlets were the first to report the controversial suspension, which quickly resulted in national and even international attention. Based on the information available at the time, critics of the decision were outraged and quickly rallied to the student’s cause.

The school principal, however, was clearly upset by the negative attention directed at her and Cypress Lake High School in Ft. Myers. “I just wish people would use common sense and realize there is MUCH more to the story,” Principal Tracy Perkins stated in an e-mail to an individual who criticized the suspension, adding that, by law, she was not allowed to disclose all the details of what transpired. “I agree that it would be ABSOLUTELY ABSURD to punish a student for doing something heroic.”

In a phone interview with The New American, she echoed those remarks. “As per school law, I’m not allowed to discuss information related to student behavior and discipline, but … there is more to the story,” she said. “The media took some students’ information to be 100 percent factual, but they do not have the entire story. If you read between the lines, you’ll see there is a lot more involved.”

Documents obtained by The New American, including referral slips suspending the student and police reports, however, appear to confirm the general outlines of the story as reported by the press. Lee County Sheriff’s Office records state, citing statements by witnesses and the victim, that the 15-year-old suspected gunman had a pistol on his lap before “pointing the gun directly at [the intended victim] and threatening to shoot him.”

The intended victim, according to the police report, told investigators that “several other students grabbed a hold of [the suspect] and wrestled the gun away from him.” The victim’s sister issued a similar statement to authorities after meeting her brother at the bus stop and helping him get out of the fray. A video camera on the bus, however, was apparently not working at the time of the incident, detectives said in the report.

After arriving home, the student who had the gun pointed at him told his mother about what had transpired, and she promptly informed the Fort Meyers Police Department, according to the report. The next day, the county sheriff’s office arrested the suspect and searched his home, where investigators found and seized a loaded .22 caliber handgun.

The 15-year-old suspect, a football player whose name is being withheld by TNA because he is a minor, was taken to a juvenile detention facility. Based on available evidence, he was charged with possession of a firearm on school property and assault with a deadly weapon “without intent to kill,” according to official documents.

At least one of the students who reportedly helped disarm the suspect, according to witnesses and news reports, was suspended from school the next day. As The New American reported on March 4, however, the suspended student in question — who has been dubbed a hero, a Good Samaritan, and more — apparently refused to cooperate with the investigation.

The original referral slip suspending the student, which was obtained by TNA this week, cites only the fact that he “was involved in an incident on the bus in which a weapon was present.” A subsequent referral slip — apparently a modified version of the original, also obtained by TNA — adds that the student was “uncooperative” and “lied repeatedly” to school administrators and law enforcement.

As TNA reported in the previous article, the youth subculture frequently views any cooperation with police or government authorities under any circumstances as an absolute non-starter, hence the common saying “snitches get stitches.” The student may have feared for his own safety, too — after all, helping law enforcement build a case against somebody could potentially result in retaliation from the suspect or his comrades.

“Perhaps the most important aspect of the story to understand when considering the school’s justifications is the matter of the referral slips,” said President Jeffrey Nadel with the National Youth Rights Association, the non-profit organization that has taken up the suspended student’s cause. “The student was interrogated for nearly four hours against his will.”

Nadel told The New American that the student in question was denied access to an attorney and to his mother. He was also never read his rights, according to Nadel, and was apparently told that he had to “answer all questions and cooperate fully.” Following the interrogation, when the boy’s mother was finally able to pick up her son from school, the assistant principal issued the original referral slip implementing the three-day suspension.

“After the local media caught wind of the story and after the first local TV news report aired, the school sent the mother an ‘updated’ referral slip,” Nadel told TNA. “This was a photocopy of the first slip with additional reasons added in different handwriting with a different pen. The added information states that the student was insubordinate, was uncooperative, and that he lied.”

On the first referral there was no “incident category” circled to indicate what offense the student had allegedly committed meriting a suspension. “This makes sense, as the reason the student was punished is an absurd reason to punish a student,” Nadel said. The second version of the referral, though, has “insubordination / disrespect” circled as the cause for discipline.

“What is important to understand is that the student’s involvement in the incident on the bus — in which, of course, he disarmed a gunman who was wielding a loaded firearm and saved the lives of other students — was sufficient in the minds of the school administrators to justify the suspension,” Nadel said. “That was the single reason for which the student was suspended. When the school realized that the reasoning was indefensible, administrators altered the original referral to add more defensible reasons that are not grounded in fact.”

Since the news sparked a national outcry earlier this month, the intended victim has called the suspended student a hero, telling reporters that there was no question the boy had saved his life. The gunman’s mother, who consented to the search that eventually revealed her son’s firearm to authorities as described in official documents, has also claimed the suspended student got “a raw deal,” as Nadel put it.

“The school is very quick to dole out blame to the heroic student who saved lives, yet they are so quick to jump to the defense of their own employee — the bus driver — who is charged with keeping the students safe,” Nadel continued. “They suspended the student for his heroism. After failing to report the incident or do anything to stop it, was the bus driver suspended? Did they fire him? We do not know.”

Responding to claims by school authorities that the issue was more complicated than it seems, Nadel disagreed. “They are trying to muddy the waters so that the story is less attractive to the media,” he said. “It may very well be more complicated insofar as other students are concerned. As far as the student we are representing is concerned, however, the issue is quite simple: they suspended him because of his involvement in the incident, and they are now trying to rationalize and justify their decision.”

Nadel’s youth-led non-profit organization, which describes itself as the “nation’s premier youth rights organization” that fights for “the civil rights and liberties of young people,” has opened an ongoing dialogue with the school district on behalf of the suspended student. But so far, Nadel said, officials “have yet to make the just decision.”

“We want nothing more than to sit down with the district and rectify this issue in a reasonable way,” he concluded, echoing widely expressed sentiments among community members and commentators who spoke with TNA and other media outlets. “All we want is for the suspension to be removed from the student’s record. We very much hope to resolve this issue amicably, but we will not be going away until this student sees justice. If we are forced by the district to retain counsel and pursue this issue in the courts, we will do so.”

The school principal, however, suggested she would welcome a court challenge because it would put all of the facts into the public record. “There is a reason that the referral slip was amended,” Principal Perkins told TNA, pointing out multiple times that law enforcement did not discover the gun or arrest the suspect until the next day, strongly implying that this was a significant detail in the story that would vindicate the school’s decision. “I just have to implore people with common, rational sense to assume something doesn’t add up. There is more to this story, and I wish I could stand up on a rooftop and tell everyone in America…. I know all the facts, I made disciplinary action based on that; America does not have all the facts.”

If the case does end up in court, the public may eventually find out more about what happened. For now, though, it appears that both sides intend to hold their ground, with each insisting that it is in the right. The suspended student reportedly returned to school on Monday but, unless something changes, will have a permanent disciplinary record following the suspension.

 

13 March 2013
The New American

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/14767-outcry-grows-over-suspension-of-student-who-disarmed-suspect

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CAPE CORAL, Fla. – A national youth rights group is prepared to sue the Lee County School District, not for money, but to expunge the suspension given to a teen many are calling a hero.

This comes more than a week after a Cypress Lake High School student was suspended after he wrestled a loaded .22 caliber revolver away from a would be gunman threatening to shoot another student.

“He was going to shoot him point blank,” said the 16-year-old teen who wrestled the loaded gun away.

Fox 4 is not identifying him because he fears for his safety. He believes he prevented a tragedy.

“If you didn’t tackle him what do you think would have happened?,” asked Fox 4 reporter Matt Grant.

“More of us would have been dead,” the teen said. “Not just one.”

“This student deserves to be praised,” said Jeffrey Nadel, the president of the National Youth Rights Association, “not punished.”

The Washington D.C.-based group advocates for young people nationwide and is now representing the teen’s family.

“This student should be hailed as a life-saving hero,” said Nadel. “And, instead, school officials have mindlessly adhered to a circumstance blind school policy instead of looking this young man in the eye and saying ‘thank you.’”

According to the original referral, the teen was suspended for three days because he was involved in an incident where a weapon was present.

The school later altered the document, sending the family a new referral to say it was because he was “uncooperative” with the investigation and “lied repeatedly” to law enforcement.

The teen admits withholding information but says it was because he feared for his life.

“You don’t talk around here,” said Nadel.

“Cause then what,” asked Grant, “you get a bad reputation?”

“That,” said the teen, “or you get killed.”

“I think we need to look at the circumstances holistically,” said Nadel. “Again, he was just involved in an incredibly traumatic incident.”

Nadel says he was under no obligation to answer questions. He objects to the teen’s description of his treatment, saying he was never offered counseling and was subjected to a lengthy interrogation.

“This young man was interrogated for four hours against his will by school and law enforcement officials,” said Nadel. “And he was consistently denied access to his mother or to an attorney.”

Nadel says he just wants the suspension expunged from the teen’s record. And he’s prepared to fight for that.

“He should not have a suspension on his record for his heroism,” said Nadel. “If the district signals to us clearly that they are unwilling to do the right thing than a lawsuit is definitely in the cards.”

Nadel says if they go forward with a lawsuit it would be to cover attorney fees and force the school to remove the suspension from the teen’s record.

Since the incident happened on the school’s bus, Nadel questions if the bus driver was suspended and what he did, if anything, during the incident.

Fox 4 reached out to the school district for comment but did not hear back.

 

Mar. 7, 2013
WFTX-TV
http://www.fox4now.com/news/local/196200551.html

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A Florida high school student is alleging school officials violated her rights when they banned her from participating in an anti-bullying observance and then suspended her from school.

In April of last year, DeSoto County school student Amber Hatcher, then 15, was making plans to participate in the National Day of Silence. The event is a student-led day sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that encourages students across the country to remain silent in order to call attention to the silencing effect anti-LGBT bullying — and, indeed, all bullying — has on kids.

Hatcher claims she asked for permission from her principal, Mrs. Shannon Fusco, nearly a month in advance of the event. She also provided information from GLSEN and Lambda Legal about students’ rights to participate in such actions per First Amendment protections, and the limits to those rights (you do not have a right to remain silent while in class, for instance, and this is why discussing the event with faculty members is advised before the day itself).

Hatcher asserts that Principal Fusco then threatened her with what the suit terms “ramifications” if she attempted to observe the Day of Silence.

Hatcher went over Fusco’s head to appeal to the DeSoto County School Superintendent, Adrian Cline. The superintendent repeatedly refused to meet with Hatcher. He then allegedly directed Principal Fusco to tell Hatcher her request was “disapproved” [sic] because, he claimed, allowing student participation in the Day of Silence was not allowed — this despite Hatcher having offered evidence that legal precedent was clearly on her side.

Principal Fusco is then said to have repeatedly told Hatcher that she would be barred from participating in the event, and that there “would be consequences” should she make an attempt to observe the Day of Silence. The suit even alleges that Fusco called Hatcher’s parents and suggested Hatcher be kept home from school on that day.

In due course, Lambda Legal got involved and on April 19, 2012, the suit details that Lambda Legal sent a letter to both the principal and superintendent in which it outlined the legal grounds that make it clear Hatcher, and indeed any student, has a right to observe the Day of Silence. The letter also warned that barring Hatcher from participating could be grounds for a lawsuit.

The suit claims the letter was ignored.

On April 20, 2012, the National Day of Silence, Amber came to school wearing a red T-shirt with the message “DOS April 20, 2012: Shhhhh.” As is standard on the Day of Silence, she communicated by dry-erase board with peers and teachers. She was soon called into the dean’s office, whereby she was informed she had been suspended from school for the day.

In the lawsuit, Hatcher v. DeSoto County Board of Education, et al. filed on February 23 against DeSoto County Board of Education, Lambda Legal argues the high school violated Hatcher’s First Amendment rights.

The suit requests a court order to ensure that Hatcher and other DeSoto County High School students are able to observe this year’s Day of Silence on April 19, 2013, without interference.

Lambda Legal Staff Attorney Beth Littrell is quoted as saying, “Amber was respectfully and peacefully calling attention to a real problem: LGBT students at DeSoto County High School feel unwelcome and unsafe. The school should be working to help support LGBT students rather than punishing students who are standing up against bullying. By threatening, censoring and punishing Amber for her efforts to simply raise awareness, school officials disregarded her rights as well as the Constitution.”

The school is yet to comment on the suit.

 

March 1, 2013
Care2
http://www.care2.com/causes/lesbian-kid-suspended-for-standing-up-to-anti-gay-bullying-sues.html

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Terrifying teens by making them lie in coffins, forcing them to spend a night on a frigid street or a bare prison cell— these harsh measures are used in reality shows in an attempt to put delinquents back on the straight and narrow. But the strategies may make for better TV than treatment.

On A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight and Lifetime’s Teen Trouble, producers document some extreme methods to address adolescents who act out. The shows intend to educate while entertaining, and some of the tough love strategies certainly make for riveting TV. But unfortunately, decades of research show that such extreme measures are at best ineffective and at worst, harmful.

Take Scared Straight, a strategy that is supposed to deter juvenile delinquents from a life of crime by briefly placing them in adult prisons, where hardened prisoners confront them with the brutal realities of incarceration. A documentary on the original initiative, founded at Rahway Prison in New Jersey, won an Oscar in 1978. A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight, now in its third season, follows teens through such programs, zooming in as inmates literally get in the teens’ faces and attempt to break them emotionally.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of data or any scientific controversy over Scared Straight’s actual results. In fact, a Cochrane review — the gold standard for evidence-based medicine — concluded that kids sent to Scared Straight were 68-71% more likely to commit crimes than those randomized to receive no intervention at all.

Teen Trouble’s approach is similarly problematic. Most of the adolescents who appear on the show have drug problems and some have mental illnesses like depression, but are not given treatment proven to work for these conditions. Instead, Teen Trouble relies on inducing fear through confrontation, supposedly to show teens the potential consequences of their actions: disfigurement, disability, homelessness, death.

In one episode, for example, a girl is forced to lie down in a coffin and touch dead bodies; in another, a boy is put in casts and a wheelchair. A third episode includes a “make over” where a teen girl’s face appears covered with scabs and sores; another sees a young woman spend a winter night on the streets with the homeless. Afterward, many of the teens are sent to tough wilderness or “emotional growth” boarding schools.

“Time and time again, research finds these approaches to be innocuous at best and traumatizing at worst,” says John Norcross, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton who studies the effectiveness of psychological treatments.

A 2007 review [PDF] of the literature on tough-love or confrontational strategies to deal with drug problems concluded “Four decades of research have failed to yield a single clinical trial showing efficacy of confrontational counseling, whereas a number have documented harmful effects, particularly for more vulnerable populations.” Teens are one such susceptible group.

Studies on virtually all of the tactics seen on Beyond Scared Straight — from getting in people’s faces and screaming at them, to forcing them to view videos of themselves filmed when they were intoxicated— showed that these tactics have either no effects or negative ones on teens’ behavior. One study revealed that the more a counselor confronts an alcoholic, the more he or she later drinks.

Nonetheless, Josh Shipp, the host of Teen Trouble— who has no credentials in psychology or addiction treatment and relies on an unnamed group of experts to approve his extreme interventions — continuously relies on such confrontational tactics. The show also sends teens to programs with questionable oversight that use unproven techniques.

In one episode, for instance, he ships off a 16-year-old girl with a drinking problem to a program called Axios Youth Community. Several weeks after the show was taped, the program was shuttered following allegations that an employee had sexually molested a 13-year-old girl. In another episode, a 16-year-old girl who was injecting heroin was sent to a “therapeutic boarding school,” Copper Canyon Academy, which claims to help troubled girls but is not a specialized center for treating teens with the most serious addictions.

The mother of a former student at Copper Canyon recently told the New York Post that while she’d expected a “top notch boarding school,” instead the program turned out to be a “Nazi concentration camp.” Former students interviewed by the Post describe confrontational and humiliating tactics, such as being made to re-enact traumatic experiences, including rape, in front of their classmates.

The program at Copper Canyon, which costs $6,000 to $8000 a month, waives its tuition for Teen Trouble participants in order to be promoted by Shipp. For licensed professionals, such an arrangement might be barred by ethical guidelines, which warn against “dual relationships” that could lead to a referral that is not in the best interest of the patient (in this case the teen), but in the interests of the contracting parties (the show and the treatment program).

Copper Canyon has denied the abuse allegations in a statement to the Post, saying “The reality is that our students come to us dealing with a variety of behavioral health and addiction issues, at varying levels of severity… We offer them a structured and nurturing treatment environment with professional staff who specialize in working with adolescent girls.”

Copper Canyon is part of a network of teen programs run by Aspen Education, which also operated a school known as Mount Bachelor Academy in Oregon. TIME reported on Mount Bachelor’s use of similar tactics in 2009: they included forcing girls who had survived rape or sexual abuse to do lap dances and participate in other sexualized role play. The exposé helped spur a state investigation ultimately resulting in the school’s closure. Aspen maintains that there was no wrongdoing but Oregon’s investigators said that they had “reasonable cause to believe that abuse or neglect had occurred.”

Now, teens and parents who say they were harmed by these programs are protesting Teen Trouble, creating an online petition to have it taken off the air and a website devoted to detailing problems with the show and with the programs in which Shipp enrolls adolescents.

Says Norcross, “The real process of psychotherapy tends to be slow, laborious and uninteresting to the external observer. It would be such boring TV, I appreciate that. While [producers] may protest, ‘No, we care about the kids,’ their behavior belies those public statements.” If they really cared, he says, “they would only select treatments for which we have scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness. Instead they do the exact opposite and focus on highly dramatic and largely discredited practices.”

TIME tried to reach A&E for comment, but did not receive a response. Of the 19 teens who appeared on Beyond Scared Straight and are not still in restricted environments like military school, the show’s website reports that at least 9 continued in sustained misbehavior, which mainly involved frequent marijuana use but also includes a teen who is in prison for robbery, one who was arrested for gun possession and another who was hospitalized for an overdose.

While dramatic confrontation may be entertaining, it is not therapeutic. Experts say shows like these that rely on discredited or questionable therapies legitimizes those who sell outdated and harmful treatments and could ultimately undermine the progress of evidence-based care to help teens with substance abuse or behavior problems get better.

Jan. 25, 2013
Time
http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/25/how-effective-are-tactics-used-on-tv-shows-to-treat-troubled-teens/

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Inspired by a 2010 study that found that students’ feedback about their teachers helped predict how well the teachers’ students performed on state tests, New York City asked some schools last year to test out a student survey that could become part of new teacher evaluations.

But if the city and its teachers union agree on a new evaluation system this year, student surveys are unlikely to play a role, according to people on both sides of the negotiating table.

The Gates Foundation-funded Measures of Effective Teaching study found that student feedback and teacher observations combined were more closely correlated with teacher effectiveness than observations alone, or any number of other attributes of teachers.

The city participated in that study and adapted the survey used in it, called Tripod, for use last year in 10 of the 108 schools in the Teacher Effectiveness Pilot, meant to test possible components of overhauled teacher evaluations.

Under the state’s new evaluation law, 60 percent of teachers’ ratings must come from subjective measures such as principal observations and peer reviews. The State Education Department has said student surveys can play a role, too, if districts and their unions agree.

The head of the state’s teachers union says student feedback could be a useful element of evaluations. But city union officials say they are staunchly opposed to incorporating student feedback in teacher evaluations.

UFT Secretary Michael Mendel said the union’s position is that it is inappropriate to ask students to make high-stakes decisions about their teachers, because it puts the students under pressure and also could encourage teachers to put student approval ahead of student learning.

“Could you imagine if you were a teacher and you were ineffective by a point or two because you were rated ineffective by the children?” Mendel asked.

Even though city Department of Education officials say they would like to see student surveys play a role in evaluations in the future, they dropped the surveys from the pilot program this year.

“I think it’s something that we have to introduce into the process, initially with low stakes, so that teachers can see what the data looks like and see what they think of it and begin to trust it,” said Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky.

The Tripod survey, which the state has approved for use in evaluations, asks students to mark how much they agree with statements about their teacher and classroom. Items are broken down under “seven C’s”: care, control (of the classroom), clarify, challenge, captivate, confer, and consolidate. Statements include “Student behavior in this class is under control”; “My teacher knows when the class understands, and when we do not”; and “My teacher really tries to understand how students feel about things.”

Issues like those are ones that only students can speak to, said Kara Kreisberg, a Spanish teacher at West Bronx Academy for the Future.

“They’re the ones that are in the room,” she said. “As many walkthroughs [by administrators] as you have, the students are the ones who see it all.”

But students don’t understand other important components of what it means to be a good teacher, such as planning lessons or using feedback to improve, according to Joseph Vincente, a chemistry teacher at East Side Community High School.

“Student feedback is important but it’s also limited,” he said. “They don’t get to see the behind-the-scenes work.”

So far, Syracuse is the only large district in New York State that has agreed to use surves in new evaluations. The district’s chief academic officer, Laura Kelley, said Syracuse schools will use surveys at all grade levels.

“We just felt the student perspective would be a valuable perspective,” Kelley said.

Dick Ianuzzi, the president of the state teachers union, said he supported evaluation plans that included multiple measures. Validated student surveys such as those used in the Tripod Project, he said, could be one measure.

“Student surveys, just like self-reflection, are all pieces that when you add them together you get the multiple measures that give you a sound evaluation,” Ianuzzi said.
November 28, 2012
GothamSchools
http://gothamschools.org/2012/11/28/student-surveys-seen-as-unlikely-addition-to-evaluations-for-now/

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Forest Lake Area High School senior Max Hall was awarded the 2012 Excellence in Youth Volunteerism award from the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration (MAVA) on Nov. 8.

The annual award recognizes one young Minnesota volunteer who has distinguished accomplishments and has shown extraordinary interest in the area of volunteerism. Hall, who has documented more than 700 hours of community and volunteer service in the Forest Lake Area, received the award at the annual MAVA meeting. His mother, Nancy Ann Hall, nominated him for the award.

“MAVA was delighted to award Max Hall the Excellence in Youth Volunteerism Award,” said MAVA Executive Director Mary Quirk. “Max’s accomplishments by age 17 show a strong commitment to service and ability to lead others in service.”

Hall is an active member of several human rights organizations including the Human Rights Defense Organization, Free the Slaves and Youth for Human Rights.

He is also a volunteer for the city of Forest Lake, a member of the Forest Lake Community Emergency Response Team, and founder and president of the National Youth Rights Association Chapter of Washington County.

His guest editorial “High schoolers deserve the right to vote” was published in the Forest Lake Times in the Sept. 20 issue.

At Forest Lake High, Hall is a member of the National Society of High School Scholars due to his outstanding academic achievement. The announcement was made Aug. 8 by NSHSS Founder and Chairman Claes Nobel, a member of the family that established the Nobel Prizes.

He is also a three-year member of the Forest Lake Senior High School Debate Team and team captain this year.

In February 2013 Hall will attend the National Youth Leadership Forum on National Security, where the topic will be “Exploring American Diplomacy, Intelligence, and Defense.”

 

November 27, 2012
The Forest Lake Times
http://forestlaketimes.com/2012/11/27/flhs-senior-honored-for-volunteer-work/

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A Forest Lake High School senior recently received a state award for volunteerism.

Max Hall was awarded the 2012 Excellence in Youth Volunteerism from the Minnesota Association for Volunteer Administration.

Hall has documented more than 700 hours of community and volunteer service in the Forest Lake area, according to the school district. He is a member of the Human Rights Defense Organization, Free the Slaves, and Youth for Human Rights. He also volunteers with the Forest Lake Emergency Response Team and founded the National Youth Rights Association Chapter of Washington County.

At school, Hall is a member of the National Society of High School Scholars and a team captain of the Forest Lake Senior High School Debate Team.

 

11/27/2012
KSTP-TV
http://kstp.com/article/stories/s2847252.shtml

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What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they’ll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. Whoa.

The One Laptop Per Child project started as a way of delivering technology and resources to schools in countries with little or no education infrastructure, using inexpensive computers to improve traditional curricula. What the OLPC Project has realized over the last five or six years, though, is that teaching kids stuff is really not that valuable. Yes, knowing all your state capitols how to spell “neighborhood” properly and whatnot isn’t a bad thing, but memorizing facts and procedures isn’t going to inspire kids to go out and learn by teaching themselves, which is the key to a good education. Instead, OLPC is trying to figure out a way to teach kids to learn, which is what this experiment is all about.

Rather than give out laptops (they’re actually Motorola Zoom tablets plus solar chargers running custom software) to kids in schools with teachers, the OLPC Project decided to try something completely different: it delivered some boxes of tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, taped shut, with no instructions whatsoever. Just like, “hey kids, here’s this box, you can open it if you want, see ya!”

Just to give you a sense of what these villages in Ethiopia are like, the kids (and most of the adults) there have never seen a word. No books, no newspapers, no street signs, no labels on packaged foods or goods. Nothing. And these villages aren’t unique in that respect; there are many of them in Africa where the literacy rate is close to zero. So you might think that if you’re going to give out fancy tablet computers, it would be helpful to have someone along to show these people how to use them, right?

But that’s not what OLPC did. They just left the boxes there, sealed up, containing one tablet for every kid in each of the villages (nearly a thousand tablets in total), pre-loaded with a custom English-language operating system and SD cards with tracking software on them to record how the tablets were used. Here’s how it went down, as related by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week:

 

“We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”

This experiment began earlier this year, and what OLPC really want to see is whether these kids can learn to read and write in English. Around the world, there are something like 100,000,000 kids who don’t even make it to first grade, simply because there are not only no schools, but very few literate adults, and if it turns out that for the cost of a tablet all of these kids can simply teach themselves, it has huge implications for education. And it goes beyond the kids, too, since previous OLPC studies have shown that kids will use their computers to teach their parents to read and write as well, which is incredibly amazing and awesome.

If this all reminds you of a certain science fiction book by a certain well-known author, it’s not a coincidence: Nell’s Primer in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age was a direct inspiration for much of the OLPC teaching software, which itself is named Nell. Here’s an example of how Nell uses an evolving, personalized narrative to help kids learn to learn without beating them over the head with standardized lessons and traditional teaching methods:

 

Miles from the nearest school, a young Ethiopian girl named Rahel turns on her new tablet computer. The solar powered machine speaks to her: “Hello! Would you like to hear a story?”She nods and listens to a story about a princess. Later, when the girl has learned a little more, she will tell the machine that the princess is named “Rahel” like she is and that she likes to wear blue–but for now the green book draws pictures of the unnamed Princess for her and asks her to trace shapes on the screen. “R is for Run. Can you trace the R?” As she traces the R, it comes to life and gallops across the screen. “Run starts with R. Roger the R runs across the Red Rug. Roger has a dog named Rover.” Rover barks: “Ruff! Ruff!” The Princess asks, “Can you find something Red?” and Rahel uses the camera to photograph a berry on a nearby bush. “Good work! I see a little red here. Can you find something big and red?”

As Rahel grows, the book asks her to trace not just letters, but whole words. The book’s responses are written on the screen as it speaks them, and eventually she doesn’t need to leave the sound on all the time. Soon Rahel can write complete sentences in her special book, and sometimes the Princess will respond to them. New stories teach her about music (she unlocks a dungeon door by playing certain tunes) and programming with blocks (Princess Rahel helps a not very-bright turtle to draw different shapes).

Rahel writes her own stories about the Princess, which she shares with her friends. The book tells her that she is very good at music, and her lessons begin to encourage her to invent silly songs about what she’s learning. An older Rahel learns that the block language she used to talk with the turtle is also used to write all the software running inside her special book. Rahel uses the blocks to write a new sort of rhythm game. Her younger brother has just received his own green book, and Rahel writes him a story which uses her rhythm game to help him learn to count.

Read more about Nell in this paper, and if you haven’t read The Diamond Age, do so at once.

 

October 30, 2012
DVICE
http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

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Kyle Gilbert was a soldier in the U.S. Army. He was not allowed to join his friends at a local bar for a goodbye drink before he was shipped off because he was only 20 years old. According to ABC News, Kyle was killed in Iraq almost nine years ago while serving for his country.

Vermont Rep. Richard Marron gave his opinion on the federally enforced drinking age.

“It just doesn’t sit right with me that people at the age of 18 have the right to do everything else, including serve their country, but don’t have the right to consume alcohol,” Marron said. “It’s a form of age discrimination.”

The minimum legal drinking age has been an issue since Prohibition, according to the American Medical Association. The drinking age might come under fire again in light of a new report from the De Pere Police.

In the past year, 75 percent of businesses in De Pere sold alcohol to minors. According to WBAY, there were two possible reasons. Either the businesses couldn’t recognize fake IDs or simply didn’t care.

If businesses don’t care about selling alcohol to people under 21, it’s a statement declaring the current MLDA illogical.

Yet nothing will change because if a new law was put in place in Wisconsin lowering the drinking age any lower than 21, the provision of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 would be cut for funding of state highways, according to ABC News.

The federal government takes the drinking age so seriously because of the multitude of studies done by the American Medical Association. According to the AMA, the minimum drinking age saves the lives of an estimated 1,000 youths each year.

While saving lives is a great thing, anyone under 21 can legally find some much more dangerous things than alcohol.

Take smoking, for example. Any 18-year-old can buy cigarettes, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking kills about 443,000 people in the U.S. each year. If the government is so keen on saving lives by restricting harmful substances, this seems to be a more addictive problem worth attacking.

The U.S. deems 18-year-olds mature enough to fight and die for their country, vote, have sex, marry, adopt a child, gamble, buy cigarettes, watch pornography, get a loan and work full time.

If the government can expect 18-year-olds to do all those things responsibly, why does it believe them incapable of having some self-control with a bottle of Miller Light or a glass of wine?

If the government would allow 18-year-olds the right to drink what they wanted, they could prove how maturely they could handle alcohol in moderation.

They wouldn’t need to get into sketchy and possibly dangerous situations just to obtain the thing they’re not allowed to have until they’re older.

With a lowered drinking age, society could work on its view on alcohol. Today, most parents feel fine telling their teenage kids alcohol is liquefied evil just before they sit down and crack open a beer. It’s a confusing message for anyone, regardless of age.

Demonizing alcohol is like telling someone not to push the big red button — their first thought is to push it and see what happens. A larger focus needs to be put on moderation, not alcohol abstinence.

In regards to the 1,000 youths supposedly saved each year from the current drinking age, it accounts mostly for would-be motor vehicle accidents among drunken teenagers, according to the CDC. That is irresponsibility of a few teens, not all of them.

Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights association, wrote about unfair punishment in an article for the New York Times.

“If your neighbor robs a bank, should you go to jail? No,” Koroknay-Palicz said. “If your classmate gets in an accident, should your driver’s license be taken away? Of course not.”

If a few 18-year-olds drink recklessly, should it be made illegal for all 18-year-olds to drink alcohol? No, it shouldn’t.

 

October 23, 2012
Fourth Estate
http://www.fourthestatenewspaper.com/top-stories/2012/10/23/current-drinking-age-unfair-to-todays-youth/

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The oft-maligned teenage brain is getting some reputation rehab. When offered the incentive of a modest reward in a recent experiment, teens took more time than adults to make a thoughtful, reasoned decision.

That surprising result, presented October 14 at the annual meeting for the Society for Neuroscience, counters the image of a flaky, impulsive adolescent brain, and shows that incentives may be a powerful way to curb reckless behavior.

“Teenagers are quite capable of waiting, as opposed to reacting impulsively,” said study coauthor BJ Casey of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City at a press briefing.  The result “really flies in the face of some of my previous research and research by other investigators,” she said.

Casey and her colleague Theresa Teslovich spotted the contemplative teenage brain as participants had to decide which way a cloud of dots was moving across a computer screen. Random jitters of individual dots made it hard to detect the direction of overall motion. When playing for a reward—in this case, five arbitrary points—teenagers took longer than adults to decide. This delay, the researchers think, allowed teenagers to accumulate more information before making up their minds.

“Here’s an example in which we’re seeing adolescents being not impulsive at all, but in fact, incredibly thoughtful before making a decision,” Casey said.

Brain scans helped the researchers pinpoint the neural origins of this teenage thoughtfulness. When points were on the line, both adults and teenagers had a boost of brain activity in the ventral striatum, a region that handles rewards. But there was a big difference between the teen brains and adult brains in other regions that deal with decision making. Compared with adults, teenagers showed much higher brain activity in the prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex, perhaps reflecting the buildup of evidence.

Finding evidence that teens can be measured in their decision making is surprising, said neuroscientist Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. “It doesn’t fit the stereotype,” he said.

The results may be context-dependent, Giedd said. Other studies (and no doubt centuries of personal observation) argue that teenagers are more impulsive than adults. Teenagers have trouble keeping their eyes on a target when a distraction hovers nearby, for instance. But the new results are encouraging because they show that this impulsivity, in certain situations, can be managed, Giedd said. “It’s there, but it’s not something that’s insurmountable.”

 

October 15, 2012
ScienceNews
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345773/description/Teens_can_keep_their_cool_to_win_rewards

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Scottish 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds can vote in the upcoming referendum on Scotland disbanding from the United Kingdom. The Scottish nationalist leader, Alex Salmond, secured this option, believing 16 and 17-year-olds favor independence. Reuters news reports England considered this a large concession. There were other compromises as well, such as England demanding a single yes/no vote rather than a second question about partial independence, requested by Scotland leaders.

Regardless of the outcome, hopefully the new voters retain their voting rights in future referendums and elections. It appears there’s already a movement to give them this freedom.

In Washington, DC, activists recently demanded a lower voting age and abolishing voter ID laws. At the event, National Youth Rights Association Executive Director Bill Bystricky said, “While no nation has ever been perfect in honoring that democratic ideal, America has a proud history of always moving closer to that goal, enfranchising new groups of Americans and expanding democracy. Today we are here to help move America another step forward.” He means another step closer to Scotland, a new role model for the US.

In the US, things may move in the wrong direction, as President Obama wants to force 16 and 17-year-old to remain in government “schools” until they’re 18 or they graduate.  Maybe he’s upset young voters are leaning libertarian.

The Libertarian Party’s platform doesn’t mention the voting age…yet.

 

October 15, 2012
Libertarian Rock
http://libertarianrock.com/2012/10/scottish-teenagers-to-vote-in-independence-referendum/

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Charlie Fuqua, a Republican candidate for the state House in Arkansas, who faced harsh criticism last week for calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the U.S., is back under the microscope for appearing to support the death penalty for “rebellious children.”

Fuqua’s call for disrespectful children to be “permanently removed from society” in his 2012 book “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution.” It is the same book in which the would-be lawmaker promoted that Muslims be removed from America in order to solve the nation’s “Muslim problem.”

Fuqua’s book website describes him as a conservative Christian lawyer. His controversial statements were first reported by the Arkansas Times.

 Here’s what Fuqua wrote in the book:

“The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children. I cannot think of one instance in the Scripture where parents had their child put to death. Why is this so? Other than the love Christ has for us, there is no greater love then [sic] that of a parent for their child. The last people who would want to see a child put to death would be the parents of the child. Even so, the Scripture provides a safe guard to protect children from parents who would wrongly exercise the death penalty against them. Parents are required to bring their children to the gate of the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders of the city met and made judicial pronouncements. In other words, the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case before the proper judicial authority, and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they would have taken their child to a court of law and asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.”

A request to Fuqua for a comment, via telephone and email, has not been answered yet.

Fuqua, who served in the Arkansas House once before, from 1996 to 1998, is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. James McLean in House District 63.

However, with the presidential election less than a month away and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney leading President Barack Obama in some polls, Republicans have been distancing themselves from party extremists such as Fuqua and Arkansas Rep. Jon Hubbard, who wrote that slavery was a “blessing in disguise” for black people.
 

U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, a Republican from Arkansas, told the Associated Press that “statements of Hubbard and Fuqua are ridiculous, outrageous and have no place in the civil discourse of either party.”

Fuqua told the news organization over the weekend that he wasn’t aware he was targeted by his own party.

“I think my views are fairly well-accepted by most people,” he said.

 

October 09, 2012
The International Business Times
http://www.ibtimes.com/death-p…..-it-843523

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Weeks after Northside Independent School District in San Antonio rolled out its new “smart” IDs that tracks students’ geographic locations, the community is still at odds with the program.

The “Student Locator Project,” which is slated to eventually reach 112 Texas schools and close to 100,000 students, is in trial stages in two Northside district schools. In an effort to reduce truancy, the district has issued new student IDs with an embedded radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip that tracks the location of a student at all times.

The program officially launched October 1 at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School. Without the badges — required to be worn around the neck — students cannot access common areas like the cafeteria or library, and cannot purchase tickets to extracurricular activities. WND reports that the district has threatened to suspend, fine or involuntarily transfer students who fail to comply and officials have noted that “there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card as we begin to move forward with full implementation.”

Parents and students from the schools spoke out against the project last month. But now, WND is reporting that schools are taking the restrictions one step further.

John Jay High School sophomore Andrea Hernandez refuses to use the new IDs, citing religious beliefs and instead sticking with her old badge from previous years, calling the tracking devices the “mark of the beast.” She tells Salon that the new badges make her uncomfortable and are an invasion of her privacy.

But to add to her restricted school grounds access, the teen says she was barred from voting for homecoming king and queen.

“I had a teacher tell me I would not be allowed to vote because I did not have the proper voter ID,” she told WND. “I had my old student ID card which they originally told us would be good for the entire four years we were in school. He said I needed the new ID with the chip in order to vote.”

If successful, the tracking program could save the district as much as $175,000 lost daily to low attendance figures, which in part determine school funding. Higher attendance could lead to more state funding in the neighborhood of $1.7 million. A statement on the school district’s website lays out the program’s goals: to increase student safety and security, increase attendance and offer a multi-purpose “smart” student ID card that streamlines grounds access and purchasing power.

While uncommon, RFID chips are not new to school IDs, according to Wired. Schools in Houston launched a monitoring program as early as 2004, and a federally funded preschool in California started placing RFID chips in children’s clothes two years ago. Numerous districts have also considered similar programs, but without making them mandatory.

In California, the Anaheim Union High School District is also in the midst of testing a GPS tracking program. From Salon:

Each school day, the delinquent students get an automated “wake-up” phone call reminding them that they need to get to school on time. In addition, five times a day they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations: as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8pm. These students are also assigned an adult “coach” who calls them at least three times a week to see how they are doing and help them find effective ways to make sure they get to school.

 

10/08/2012
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/texas-school-district-rep_n_1949415.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

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After watching the White Oak Roughnecks crush the Ore City Rebels on Friday, Dalton LaFerny reveled in the victory, driving with friends and members of the Roughneck team to a Longview restaurant.

It was 1 a.m. before he got home — a typical Friday night for the 17-year-old high school student who works a part-time job. But if LaFerny lived in Gladewater or Kilgore, his Friday night routine would have him on the wrong side of the law — breaking curfew.

Curfews, aimed at reducing juvenile crime, are common ordinances across East Texas.

“That’s very oppressive to the social life of teens,” LaFerny said.

Like Kilgore and Gladewater, Daingerfield has a juvenile curfew, which Police Chief Tracy Climer said is strictly enforced. There, no one under the age of 17 can be outside between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from midnight to 6 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

“Citations will be issued for juveniles breaking the curfew,” Climer said. “Officers will notify the parents and have the juvenile picked up.”

Not far away, the Pittsburg City Council took the opposite approach, recently voting not to pass a curfew. In voting no on the proposal, council members agreed curfews are difficult to enforce, can result in teen profiling and are considered by many to be ineffective at curtailing crime.

“Are you trying to reduce juvenile crime, or are you trying to reduce juvenile victimization?” Police Chief Richard Penn said. “Studies have shown that juvenile crime after the prohibited curfew hour drops, but what they found out was that the juveniles commit the crime while they can be out.”

Who has a curfew?

More than half the towns in Gregg and surrounding counties have enacted juvenile curfews.

Kilgore adopted one in 2010.

“Our curfew has worked,” said Kilgore police Lt. Roman Roberson. “Initially those with concerns came forward. We haven’t had any complaints about our curfew, and it’s been very sound with repeat offenders. It’s another tool in our toolbox to keep those kids at home.”

Other towns, like Gilmer, have had curfews for more than two decades.

“I have been here for 17 years, and it has been in place since I got here,” Assistant Chief T.J. Harris said of Gilmer’s curfew.

The curfews in Overton, Tatum, Gladewater and Kilgore apply to anyone younger than 18, while curfews in Tyler, Big Sandy, Daingerfield and Mount Pleasant are aimed at children 16 and younger.

Several cities, including Longview and Marshall, have chosen not to establish a teen curfew.

“It hasn’t been an item of discussion in recent years,” said Longview spokesman Shawn Hara. “In 1994 it was an item of discussion. They haven’t expressed a desire to implement a juvenile curfew … If there was a community concern, if it was something they wanted, they could discuss it.”

Other cities without a teen curfew include White Oak, Carthage, Jefferson, Pittsburg and Henderson.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, an organization of cities with populations 30,000 or more, reported in a survey of its members that four out of five cities surveyed had a teen curfew.

Why a curfew?

The survey also revealed that 93 percent of the cities with a curfew consider it — as did Roberson — to be effective in preventing crime committed by minors, and crimes against minors.

“The city officials commented that curfews help to reduce the incidence of juveniles becoming victims by preventing “gathering,” which also means more calls for the police. They said that a curfew compels parents to be more responsible and gives them a specific reason to tell their children they cannot be out after a certain time, and they said that curfews are a good prevention tool, keeping the good kids good and keeping the at-risk kids from becoming victims or victimizers,” according to the survey results from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Roberson said in Kilgore, although preventing teen crime was the first reason for implementing a curfew, another was to help parents who were not responsible for their children.

“The reasons cities have curfews are for bad parenting. Most parents are responsible for their children. But for some, if we were to take these kids home, an hour later they’d be right back out on the street,” Roberson said. “It’s not going to affect the folks that have good parents.”

Cpt. Clayton Taylor of the Overton Police Department said curfews give police a reason to make contact with juveniles.

“We have had this for several years. It gives us a reason to stop them, identify them in case something has happened,” Taylor said.

Enforcement

In most situations, juvenile curfews are enforced through warnings, and then tickets on a second offence.

Taylor said Overton has written two tickets this year.

Kilgore police Lt. Johnathan Gage said the system of enforcement includes checking on the teens’ family life as often as writing a citation.

“Yes, we actually write warning tickets on first offenses to the parents of these children that we find, and then if there are additional instances, we have other options. We can write an actual citation for it or we can forward that to an appropriate agency, CPS, if we believe the child is being neglected, and the needs of a child aren’t being met,” Gage said.

Leif Bales, 18, grew up in Big Sandy, which has a curfew. But, the teen said it was not strictly enforced.

“We just kind of walked around, and never got caught,” Bales said.

Mount Pleasant police Lt. Kyle Holcombe said tickets for juvenile curfew offenses have dropped off significantly the longer the system has been in place.

“It’s officer discretion. We have only had it about three years,” Holcombe said. “We did write a lot at first, but as the juveniles have become aware of the curfew we have had less and less citations.”

Growing up under curfew

Bales, like most teens, said he just wanted to hang out with his friends when he was underage in Big Sandy, which had one of the areas’ earliest curfews, at 10 p.m.

“That was a really big thing. It was debated whether or not to change it. We all talked about it,” Bales said.

He said he had no intention of doing anything criminal – he just wanted to be with friends.

Nancy Case, President of Big Sandy IDS’s Parent Teacher Organization said she never heard any complaints about the curfew.

“I think most people in the community are fine with it because it keeps kids with less supervision at home off the street,” Case said.

Kendra Pierce, who is on the board of Gilmer ISD’s parent teacher organization, said she believes it is a parents responsibility to govern their children, but the police can help.

“I think it’s a good thing because there is no reason for young teens to be out that late,” Pierce said.

Curfew questions

Still, the effectiveness of curfews is a long-standing debate among criminologists.

George Franks, the coordinator of criminal justice program at Stephen F. Austin State University, is not compelled by the evidence for juvenile curfews.

“There is a huge mixed bag in the research, arguments on both sides,” Franks said. “Its effectiveness is sure hard to prove, which usually means you can’t.”

Franks, who spent 26 year in law enforcement, said the only way curfews have proved effective is in thwarting early gang activity.

“If a city begins to have a problem with young gangs and institutes a curfew quickly, it will help limit the growth of the gangs,” Franks said.

More than it not being effective, Franks is concerned about the effects a curfew can have on a teenager.

“I think there are negatives in that you create a negative persona of the police with the teens, for its use,” he said. “The little town where I grew up, strolling around at night, looking at the stars and moon was about all there was to do. If the cops are the one who take that away, you resent them.”

Jeffery Nadel, President of the National Youth Rights Association, not only agrees with Franks – he thinks curfews actually make cities less safe because students and parents have an antagonistic relationship with the police.

Nadel also argues such ordinances are unconstitutional.

“To stop any one group of people from being outside, simply because of their age, is to take away their rights,” Nadel said.

“Study after study consistently have shown us that youth curfews are completely and utterly ineffective both at reducing crime perpetuated by young people and by reducing the victimization of young people,” Nadel said. “It is absolutely unconstitutional. It is fundamentally wrong to suggest that a group of people should be limited in their rights because of their age. Young people’s rights to associate are protected.”

Nadel encourages students in areas with curfews to voice opposition and works with his association to prevent new cities from implementing curfews.

Dalton LaFerny said he is relieved to know he lives in an area without a curfew.

“I know the saying, ‘Nothing good happens after midnight’, but everyone has a busy schedule and this is when we can get together,” LaFerny said.

 

September 23, 2012
Longview News-Journal (Longview, TX)
http://www.news-journal.com/news/local/some-area-cities-enforce-juvenile-curfews-to-curb-crime/article_54225778-7747-546d-ba61-d1ad4b69c3b5.html

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The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) is the largest youth-led organization within the United States that fights for youth rights. NYRA focuses on issues such as voting age, emancipation, and drinking age.

With the upcoming elections on Nov. 6, NYRA has made the right to vote its top priority. Because they work and pay taxes, youth need the right to vote in governmental elections.

Most 16- and 17-year-olds (80 percent, according to one survey) work at some point before they graduate.  This means they pay income taxes.

Paying taxes without a say in how the money is spent is a gross injustice. The Revolutionary War was fought on the premise that people should not be taxed if they are not fairly represented in government.

Teenagers under 18 also pay significant sales tax. IRS data show that youth pay an estimated $9.7 billion in taxes on items purchased.

Through their employers, 16-year-olds pay into the Social Security system. Yet they have no say in possible Social Security reforms.

Youth are treated like adults in many respects. In 48 states, 16-year-olds are allowed to drive. In many states, youth 16 or even younger are tried as adults for serious crimes.

If youth can be punished like adults, they should also be given the rights of adults.

High school students are more than qualified to vote. The Federal Voting Rights Acts of 1965 states that “any person who has not been adjudged an incompetent and who has completed the sixth grade . . . possesses sufficient literacy, comprehension, and intelligence to vote in any election.” If a sixth-grade education is adequate for voting purposes, certainly the 10th grade education most 16-year-olds possess is more than adequate.

Students who took the comprehensive We the People constitutional law program scored better than adults ages 18 to 80 in knowledge of government and politics.

Almost all of the students (96 percent) could name the Vice President, compared to 74 percent of adults 18 to 80. More students than adults understood judicial review, party ideology, and the two-thirds veto override requirement.

In her 1991 testimony before a Minnesota House subcommittee, 14-year-old Rebecca Tilsen had this to say: “If 16-year-olds are old enough to drink water polluted by the industries that you regulate, to breathe the air ruined by garbage burners that government built, to walk on the streets made unsafe by terrible drugs and crime policies, to live in poverty in the richest country in the world, to get sick in a country with the worst public health-care programs in the world, and to attend school districts that you underfund, then 16-year-olds are old enough to play a part in making them better.”

The just power of government comes from the consent of the governed.  As it stands now, youth are governed but are not able to consent. This is un-American. Like all tax-paying, law-abiding Americans, youth must be given the right to vote.

Maxwell C. Hall, Forest Lake, is a senior at Forest Lake High School. He is president of the Washington County chapter of the National Youth Rights Association

 

Maxwell C. Hall
The Forest Lake Times
September 19, 2012
http://forestlaketimes.com/2012/09/19/high-schoolers-deserve-the-right-to-vote/

 

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If there’s one belief that unites Americans, it’s that First Amendment freedom of speech is a good thing.  Everybody should have it: cigarette companies, SuperPACs, hate groups, Todd Akin, Cher, and Nichole Ritchie.

Teenagers, not so much. They might say something wrong. Better to shut them up.

The last time the issue of impudent teen speech came up in this column, my comments page was swamped with suggestions that the problem wasn’t free speech, it was rudeness. Teens, you see, can’t be allowed to be rude. The saucy-teen issue has surfaced again, this time in the person of a high-school valedictorian in a small Oklahoma town who used the phrase “what the hell” in a graduation speech and has been punished with the withholding of her diploma.

What the hell?

Is this really how a free country treats its young adults? And will the “good manners” brigade rally around this latest episode of petty grown-up bullying?

Kaitlin Nootbaar topped her class at Prague High School in Prague, Oklahoma.  She has won a full scholarship to Southwest Oklahoma State University, where she hopes to study biology. Any sane school would be boasting about her.

But Prague High Principal David Smith has apparently decided to punish Kaitlin because in her valedictory address she said that, when people ask her what she wants to be, she responds, “How the hell should I know? I’ve changed my mind so many times.” According to Kaitlin and her father, Smith said there will be no diploma until she tenders a written apology. Kaitlin, bless her spunky heartland heart, has refused.

The manners brigade is sure to point out that Kaitlin was required to submit her speech in advance, and that the text she submitted used the word “heck.”  She has told reporters that in the excitement of the moment, she used “hell” instead — in part because it echoes the graduation speech in Twilight: Eclipse.

If that’s true, she’s guilty of nothing more than bad taste in entertainment, and Principal Smith should be apologizing to her for the poor education she received.  But what if this saucy miss actually intended all along to say “hell,” and submitted the bowdlerized text to prevent the Principal from stopping her? Surely that makes her the offender, and Principal Smith the victim?

The hell, you say.

Remember, we are dealing with a student who has done everything our system asks of her — excelled in school, won college admission and a scholarship. In exchange, she is offered a brief moment to say what she thinks. But there’s a catch: The censor must approve every thought and every word. She is free to say anything the principal wants her to say.

Every free citizen should know how to outwit a censor, and applaud others who do the same.

If Kaitlin was sneaking “what the hell?” past the censor, it did little injury to the Class of 2012 at PHS — a school whose official mascot is the Red Devil. There’s no call for revolution, violence, free love, or atheism. Any of those might cause a ruckus and bring genuine offense. (Just to be clear, I think a school valedictorian has a right to talk about those things, too, and I wish more did — but Kaitlin didn’t.) If the audience at Prague’s graduation is like the ones at graduations I attend, most of them probably didn’t even notice the word fly by. And if some people didn’t like it, they had every right to criticize Kaitlin. They don’t have the right to shut her up.

From the outside, this seems like the age-old battle between a grown-up bully and stubborn kid.

I have huge respect for many people who teach and administer high school. When they do it well, they make everyone’s lives better.

But anyone who’s ever been in high school knows that some people are drawn to education because they enjoy petty power over people who can’t fight back.

Note the disproportion in Kaitlin’s punishment: because of a one-word transgression, she loses something she worked four years to get. Note the lack of process here: the decision was apparently made by one man. Note the desire to humiliate: the principal wants a letter apologizing.

The larger question is this: In a society that operates on the free exchange of ideas, why do we tolerate an educational system that teaches children to keep safe by keeping silent?

“Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously, unless you keep in practice,” says the Fat Man in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. A democratic society thrives when its people are willing and able to talk back to authority. Elections, legislatures, newspapers — none of them mean anything if people are afraid of deviating from the official line.

Principal Smith’s superior, Prague School Superintendent Rick Martin, has backed him up. In a statement, Martin said Smith’s “request was both reasonable and in keeping with established federal case law interpreting the First Amendment.”

Unfortunately, he may be right about the “federal case law.” The Supreme Court falls all over itself to protect the speech of anonymous political-action committees, millionaire political candidates, and mammoth drug corporations. “Where the First Amendment is implicated,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the Court in 2007, “the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.”

But that was in a case about a well-funded anti-abortion group. On the very same day, Roberts wrote another opinion upholding the silencing of a high-school student who unfurled a banner reading “BONG HITS 4 JESUS.” In that case, tie goes to the school — because someone somewhere might have somehow decided that the banner meant the school endorsed drug use.

It’s hornbook law that the First Amendment requires dialogue that is “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” But that’s for people like Karl Rove, not like Kaitlin Nootbaar. Young people must prepare for their role as citizens by submitting their remarks in advance and kissing the ground when they transgress.

The hell with that.

 

Aug. 24, 2012
Garrett Epps
The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/terrifying-teen-speech-in-the-news-again/261534/#.UDkCBhcc9VM.facebook

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Young drivers in New Jersey must continue to display controversial red decals on their license plates after the state’s high court Monday found the law constitutionally sound.

In a unanimous decision, the court ruled the requirement, known as Kyleigh’s Law, does not violate privacy laws or constitute unreasonable search and seizure, the same conclusions previously reached by the state appellate court.

The decision has not ended the controversy, as a North Jersey lawyer vowed to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, insisting that the decals make young drivers vulnerable to prowling pedophiles. Those who lobbied for the legislation maintain that the decals help police enforce laws that keep teens safe.

“I intend to keep pushing” to repeal the decal provision through legislative means, said Assemblyman Sean Kean (R., Monmouth). “It’s one of those examples of big brother telling parents how to keep their kids safe and how to run their lives.”

Kean was an initial supporter of the decals but said he had received an overwhelmingly negative response from constituents.

Pam Fischer, former director of the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety who now works for the Teen Safe Driving Coalition, said her organization was pleased with the court’s decision.

“We want to make sure that teens know we are very, very serious about these provisions, and the law will be enforced,” said Fischer, whose son will test for his driver’s license next week on his 17th birthday. “The number-one thing that is killing our kids are car crashes.”

Last year, 44 people ages 16 through 20 were killed in New Jersey car accidents in which a teenager was driving, compared with 35 fatalities in 2010.

The decal law is named after 16-year-old Kyleigh D’Alessio of Morris County, who died in a 2006 accident involving a car driven by a newly licensed teenage friend. Two other teen passengers also died.

Passed in 2010, the law also requires drivers under 21 who have permits or one-year probationary licenses to observe an 11 p.m. curfew, refrain from using handheld devices, and have no more than one young passenger.

There is a $100 fine for failure to display the Velcro decal, which can be removed by older drivers. Teens cannot get a driver’s license without first obtaining the $4 decal. More than 830,000 decals have been purchased since the law passed.

“There are lots of kids who are doing the right thing,” Fischer said. “This [court decision] helps them do the right thing.”

Andy Drago, 19, of Cherry Hill, recalled getting the decals, and “I took them off pretty quickly.” His friends, he said, did the same; he said he thinks the law is pointless.

Lisanne Petrella of Maple Shade said she would not insist that her 17-year-old son, Matt, display the decals when he gets his license in November.

“There are a lot of sick people out there,” Petrella said. “It’s putting our children at risk.”

Anne Marie Solomon of Swedesboro said she had “no problem” with the law and expected her 16-year-old son to use the decals when he gets his license.

A driver of two months, Megan Lee, 17, of Atco, said that although the decals could make teens a target for ticketing, she did not mind using them.

“It’s safer for teens,” Lee said. “I would keep them on because I know that it would make my mom feel safer.”

According to the state Office of Administrative Courts, 4,657 decal tickets were issued from April 2010 through June, compared with 3,786 for having excess underage passengers, 6,687 for curfew violations, and 385 for phone use.

After the law passed, North Jersey lawyer Gregg D. Trautmann sued the state on behalf of his son, who was then 16. His daughter has just received her license. Trautmann said his son did not use the decals, and neither will his daughter.

“I think girls become targeted by rapists and creeps,” Trautmann said. Boys, he said, are challenged by show-offs and could become victims of road rage.

In his lawsuit, Trautmann contended that being stopped as a result of the decals equated to illegal search and seizure. He also argued that the decals identified the age of drivers even though federal law forbids the release of personal information.

The state Supreme Court, however, ruled that “a driver’s age group” does not constitute restricted personal information and the “decals don’t give rise to unreasonable search and seizure because they are plainly visible and don’t require police officers to stop and search a vehicle.”

“We’re not willing to give up the fight,” Trautmann said. “I do plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as I can get the paperwork done.”

The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office defended the state against the lawsuit. A study last year conducted by that office found one reported instance in which an underage driver with a decal was stopped by someone impersonating a police officer.

Trautmann said he believes there are probably numerous other unreported cases.

Jeffrey Nadel, vice president of the National Youth Rights Association, has been speaking against the law since before it went into effect in 2010.

“When you’re 18, you’re an adult for every purpose under the sun, except for drinking alcohol,” Nadel said. “Yet New Jersey thinks you’re insufficiently prepared as a driver and therefore need to be branded with a scarlet letter.”

 

August 06, 2012
The Philadelphia Inquirer
http://articles.philly.com/2012-08-06/news/33066138_1_kyleigh-s-law-kyleigh-d-alessio-decal-law

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TALLAHASSEE —

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BOSTON—Upset by budget cuts at their high school, a group of teens in the city of Lowell, Mass., wanted to do more than merely complain about it. They wanted to vote.

Now, their initiative to lower the voting age in Lowell municipal elections to 17 from 18 has gained traction at the Massachusetts State House.

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would put the question of whether to lower Lowell’s voting age on the 2013 citywide ballot in the working-class community of 106,000 people northwest of Boston. If ultimately approved, Lowell would become the first city in the country to give under-18 residents the right to vote in a regular municipal election, according to the National Youth Rights Association.

A 1971 U.S. constitutional amendment lowered the national voting age to 18 from 21, although several states allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries and caucuses if they will be 18 by the general election. Many states, including Massachusetts, also have laws requiring voters in all elections to be 18.

After a recent review, the Massachusetts secretary of state said the Lowell initiative would pass muster with the state’s constitution with certain conditions, including describing 17-year-olds as “specially registered” minors—rather than voters. Those under 18 could vote in city elections such as for school committee or City Council, not in regional, state or national elections.

Similar initiatives have been tried in other states and cities in recent years but haven’t passed. But the Lowell “Vote 17″ bill, sponsored by a state representative from that area, has garnered a wave of support.

Among them are Tufts University researchers who say Lowell could serve as a pilot program to look at whether lowering the voting age is one way to improve lackluster youth turnout at national, state, and local elections.

In the 2008 presidential election—which was considered a strong year for participation—fewer than half of those between 18 and 24 turned out to vote.

Researchers say voting is a habit, and that age 18, when a young person may be getting ready to go off to college and change communities, may not be a fertile time to instill that habit.

“It could be that 18 is quite a bad year to be the first year to be eligible to vote,” said Peter Levine, the director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Austria lowered its national voting age to 16 in 2007, becoming the first European Union country to take such a step.

In the U.S., some on the right say initiatives to lower the voting age aim to increase votes for Democrats, noting that President Barack Obama won two-to-one among young people in 2008.

In Massachusetts, however, the Vote 17 bill is co-sponsored by Republican, state Rep. Rich Bastien. He is a former high-school history teacher who said the bill is a “perfect way” to get young people involved in the political process.

Mr. Levine said young people have low party affiliation and that increasing youth turnout isn’t necessarily a partisan issue.

“Seventeen is the perfect age for someone to create the civic habit,” said Carline Kirksey, 17, one of the Lowell teens who has been lobbying at the State House.

“They’re in their community, surrounded by teachers, and learning about the political process.”

The Vote 17 idea first arose in Lowell a few years ago during the economic downturn. After “pretty drastic” budget cuts, Lowell High School lost dozens of teachers and certain “electives disappeared,” said headmaster Ed Rozmiarek.

“I saw a lot of the decisions that the school committee and city council were making affecting me, and I felt powerless,” said Corinne Plaisir, who is 17.

Teens, with the help of United Teen Equality Center, a Lowell community center, approached state Rep. Kevin Murphy, a Democrat who represents the city.

“I thought it made a lot of sense,” said Mr. Murphy, who said the bill will likely be heard by the full House in the coming days.

July 17, 2012
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303612804577533122200067472.html

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11th grader Diane Tran was summoned to court and arrested for truancy on Wednesday after missing school again after receiving a warning from truancy court last month. Tran, who attends Willis High School in Willis, Texas, spent 24 hours in jail and was given a $100 fine by Judge Larry Moriarty, the same judge who issued her previous warning. “If you let one (truant student) run loose, what are you gonna’ do with the rest of ‘em? Let them go too?” the judge asked.

The 17-year-old works a full-time job, a part-time job, and takes Advanced Placement classes as well as college level courses. She told KHOU that when her parents divorced, the both moved away. She lives in Willis with the family her weekend employer, the Vineyard of Waverly Manor. During the week she works full-time at a dry cleaners. She is trying to support an older brother who attends Texas A&M University, and a younger sister who lives with relatives in Houston. Her schedule keeps her up late at night, and she admits she sometimes sleeps through classes the next day.

The truancy laws in Texas state that a student cannot have more than ten unexcused absences in six months, or three absences in one month.

According to Texas truancy law students can have no more than 10 unexcused absences – full days or part days – within six months, and no more than three absences within one month.

Judge Moriarty, said to the who did not know her living situation at sentencing, later told KHOU that he may try to get the arrest erased from her record.

May 26th, 2012
Imperfect Parent
http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2012/05/26/honor-student-working-two-jobs-jailed-for-truancy/