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  • THOSE SAFE SCHOOLS

    Filed at 9:00 am under by dcobranchi

    From the NYPost:

    A dozen teenage boys were arrested yesterday after a massive brawl — possibly sparked by gang rivalry — at a Midtown high school, officials and witnesses said.
    One school safety agent was injured trying to break up the melee at Norman Thomas HS when she took a shot of pepper spray in the eyes, school and police officials said.

    …Dozens of police and safety officers oversaw dismissal of the school at East 33rd Street and Park Avenue yesterday afternoon.

    But remember, schools are the safest place for kids. After all, homeschool riots requiring dozens of police are an everday occurrence.

    9 Responses to “THOSE SAFE SCHOOLS”


    Comment by
    Sheilaz
    December 9th, 2004
    at 9:29 am

    And the bus is safer than parents transporting also: wagt.c...6.html

    It turns out the injured girl started the fight. The school says that the bus door was faulty but no other buses have faulty doors.
    I find it all a bit suspicious. Of course the driver did nothing wrong even thought the bus was in motion when it should not have been.


    Comment by
    carpeicthus
    December 9th, 2004
    at 10:09 am

    Plural of anecdote ? data.

    No one argues that schools are safer than the average kid locked in their room, but thanks for the straw man. The argument is over whether kids are much safer there than a) most other places in their neighborhood and b) than the if-it-bleeds-it-leads media portrays. And the answers are pretty clearly yes and yes.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    December 9th, 2004
    at 10:15 am

    No one argues that schools are safer than the average kid locked in their room, but thanks for the straw man.

    The Akron Beacon-Journal made precisely this claim during their homeschooling series. Sorry to burst your self-righteous bubble.


    Comment by
    Rikki
    December 9th, 2004
    at 10:39 am

    So that’s what I’m doing wrong! I keep forgetting to lock them in their rooms, so the rest of the house will stay clean! Doh!


    Comment by
    Roy W. Wright
    December 9th, 2004
    at 12:27 pm

    Woo, we’ve got a deluded one. Of course the media are sensationalist, but the hard statistical facts very amply lean in favor of homeschooling when it comes to safety issues. There may be other arguments against homeschooling, but the safety issue isn’t going to fly.


    Comment by
    Roy W. Wright
    December 9th, 2004
    at 12:45 pm

    And speaking of straw men:

    The argument is over whether kids are much safer there than most other places in their neighborhood…

    I don’t know many kids who sit out on the corner with their moms and the local crack dealer to learn algebra, nor do I think that forcing them to travel to their local school every day keeps them away from the dangers of their neighborhoods.


    Comment by
    Chris
    December 9th, 2004
    at 2:58 pm

    So that gang of Crips camped out in my basement isn’t a good thing? I’m so confused…


    Comment by
    Eric Holcombe
    December 9th, 2004
    at 3:49 pm

    Chris, just make sure you aim the pepper spray AWAY from you… ;O)


    Comment by
    carpeicthus
    December 10th, 2004
    at 4:07 pm

    I sincerely hope some of these commenters weren’t home-schooled, because they are not strong arguments for the value it has in literacy education. I’m sorry I don’t keep up with all the newspapers in Akron; if they made that claim, they were stupid. That is simply not the main argument when we describe schools as “safe,” though. Schools are safe in ways similar to how airplanes are safe — though there will always be some incidents in a system that involves thousands of schools and millions of students, they are among the safest public places in a given neighborhood, often by an order of magnitude. But, for both, any incidents will always be overplayed by the media because any incident of danger is in some ways a big story, so the argument is to move away from sensationalism and look at the facts.

    Roy, you deeply misunderstood me. The safety issue has nothing to do with an argument against homeschooling; I’m in favor of homeschooling. But to the degree that you think that homeschooling will with for ALL students and ALL families is the precise degree to which I cease to take you seriously. So we’re going to be left with something, and I think that something should be a good public school system. You complain — and rightly so — about how the media misunderstands the various issues around homeschooling, but you feel free to pile on the sensationalism, with no good effects on the understanding of the issues and policy. How does that help?