There has to be somebody, some agency
and, ultimately, some person that is responsible. We have to show schools
we are serious about this. ~ Minnesota
Governor Mark Dayton
Just as President Johnson vowed to eradicate poverty, Mark
Dayton has vowed to eradicate bullying.
He means to do this through the work completed by the Anti-Bullying
Task-Force, along with Anti-bullying legislation that was introduced in last
year’s legislative session and will be re-introduced at the next one.
According to
Walter Hudson and Katherine Kersten this
anti-bullying legislation will institutionalize bullying by creating a new
bureaucracy that all students, teachers, staff, parents and anyone serving in
the education system, public or private, would have to answer to.
It would create mandates that would divert
resources away from academics, while also forcing teachers into the role of
thought police by requiring them to remediate children’s undefined
“inappropriate” behavior and belief systems. These behaviors will be reported
in a climate report that will follow students for the rest of their lives.
Imagine, your child, who was accused of a
bullying incident in the third grade, unable to follow their chosen career path
because of this report.
According
to legislative testimony by Ms. Kersten, One
of the bill’s most chilling aspects is that students who dissent from certain
state-approved cultural/political attitudes—who maintain, for example, that
children do best when they have a parent of both sexes, a mom and a dad—could
potentially be referred to “counseling” by school authorities for failing to
sufficiently “value diversity.”
She
went on to say that H.F. 826 would send a message to students—at
least those who belong to so-called protected classes—that they have an
absolute right not to have their feelings hurt or their ideas challenged; and
that authorities will intervene if this occurs.
Furthermore,
the state would compel the educational system to investigate every reported
incident of bullying, including anonymous accusations, which withholds due
process of law, where the accused is allowed to confront their accuser. It would also permit students to harass one
another by making unsubstantiated charges of misconduct without accountability.
It is ironic to note, that every school district has a
written
Code of Conduct that in no area allows any kind of bullying,
harassment, intimidation, etc. that all students must abide by.
These locally controlled
Codes of Conduct
are developed and enforced by teachers, school administrators and our elected
school board members.
Why would an
additional layer of intrusive enforcement be required?
Is it because the schools are not properly
enforcing their own policies or is it there something more nefarious going on?
Woodbury resident, Doug Ballinger was recently quoted in the Woodbury
Bulletin saying that he was horribly bullied when he was growing up. Looking at bullying today, he reports that “This is a problem that is not being fixed.”
Ballinger’s thought process leads him to
believe that adequate progress has not been made in the eradication of
bullying. He also believes that “Each one of us has a range of tolerance to
certain things, so that tolerance could be something as thick as a tree
branch…or it could be a piece of spaghetti...however, one thing that cannot be
argued is how a person feels.”
To do his part in “fixing this problem” he has helped to
create the "Bully Behavior Incident Reporting Tool" ("
BBIRT") app, which he eventually
intends to have on all Minnesota students’ phones…surely he is doing this out
of the kindness of his heart not from the depth of the school districts’
pockets, right?
Ballinger’s vision for the tool includes:
A timely, accessible, and accurate bullying incident report
to relevant offices/agencies with oversight of such incidents – and maybe
parents, too…
While providing the schools usable data and platform for
ensuring the right supports are provided for both school bully victim and bully
alike.
His goals for the app are to establish a safe environment
where kids can learn and grow mentally and physically, while not having to deal
with his definition of bullying as “social distractions” while also helping the
“bullying” student learn to cope and eliminate bullying behavior.
Mr. Ballinger believes that his app will help eradicate
bullying behavior. However, it would
seem that a long list of abuses could occur with this technology in the hands
of teenagers or adults. If there is no
set definition of bullying but instead a reliance on the tolerance level of the
supposed victim, the number of bullying behavior incident reports will
skyrocket. Furthermore, when the
incident can be anonymously reported, intent is left to be determined by the
victim and may not accurately reflect the situation in which the incidence
occurred. Also, the possibilities of
students, teachers and administrators abusing this tool, either through
intimidation – fear of being reported – or false reports are extremely high.
This app also indoctrinates children into the idea of
“reporting” on their fellow-classmates.
If there are no consequences for a false report, than who is to stop
those reports from happening? Or eventually, reporting anyone who speaks
against the overriding political/societal ideology of the time?
Apparently, South Washington County District 833 thinks that
this is a fantastic idea.
They have
partnered with BBIRT to pilot this app with the ERHS freshmen this year.
Incidentally, SWC833 schools is also asking for
a
levy referendum that among other things, asks for money for
improvement/additional of mental health staff; improved safety and security in
the schools along with improving technology in the district under their
T3Initiative: Transforming Thinking Through Technology.
It would seem that the
District 833administration is all on board with this latest anti-bullying, thought police
technology and legislation.
Perhaps we
should ask our current
school board members how and why this app is being allowed
in this school district?
We should also
research to see if any of our erstwhile Representatives and Senators, who also
sit on the Legislative Education committees, are in support of the intrusion
into
civil liberties that this technology and anti-bullying legislation
represents.
