Because I Said So!
Legend has it that, at one time, when a child asked the question “why,“Because I said so,” was all the answer that was needed. I am not at all sure that is true, and, even if it is, I am even less sure that it was a good idea.
Several local school boards in and around Atlanta are currently having discussions concerning cell phones and the problems they cause in schools. Interestingly, none of them seem to be considering a total ban on students bringing them to school. The discussions are about guidelines on when and how they can be used. This is done in the face of research done by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt which he has reported in his book ‘The Anxious Generation.” This book documents the emotional and social damage being done to young people by the way they are using these devices (as well as tablets and laptop computers), especially concerning social media, emails, and texts.
There are a few states considering, or already have, a total ban on students bringing cell phones to school, including Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and California. That just makes sense. If cell phones are that much of a problem in schools, then why take halfway measures? There is no compelling reason for allowing students to bring them at all, other than possibly a reluctance to upset some parents and/or their children.
Another issue is what is to be done when students bring them anyway, in the face of a rule against them. Suspension seems a little harsh. Why not just take the phone away from them and make their parents come to the school to retrieve it? Then, in the event of second infraction, maybe a suspension doesn’t seem so harsh.
This is actually just part of a wider problem, that being limitations on what authority teachers and administrators have to maintain order and discipline for students and to deal with them when they step outside the boundaries of expected behavior. The way I like to put it is teachers are afraid of principals, principals are afraid of superintendents, superintendents are afraid of school boards, school boards are afraid of parents, parents are afraid of kids, and the kids aren’t afraid of anyone.
The point is, we all need well defined boundaries, especially kids. When boundaries are set in the form of rules and laws there must be an appropriate penalty attached, enforcement of the penalty must be in proportion to the seriousness of the infraction, and it must be carried out without fear of favor. Without this the rule of law becomes just a suggestion.
We seem to be in a time in America today when respect for authority is at an all time low. Many people, including youngsters, want to be able to demand whatever they deem to be their right. Sadly, they have never had it impressed upon them that most rights carry a concurrent responsibility, and therein lies the rub. People demand the right to own an assault weapon based on a faulty interpretation of the second amendment to our constitution, but they don’t accept the responsibility to secure that weapon and keep it out of the wrong hands. They scream about their first amendment right to free speech, but they don’t accept the responsibility to only speak what is true. They demand their first amendment right to freedom of religion but are not interested in protecting that right for others who don’t believe as they do, up to the point of making a law requiring that the ten commandments be posted in every public school classroom in the state of Louisiana and not only the ten commandments but their particular version. They want to deprive women of the right to medical care in the form of abortion and even birth control, yet, once the child the women is forced to bear comes into the world, those same people lose interest.
There are many forms and sources of authority. There is parental authority, religious authority, police authority, and legal authority to name a few. People submit to authority out of fear of or respect for the authority itself or for the person or people responsible for wielding the authority, because their sense of decency and fairness leads them to the conclusion that it is the right thing to do, or because their particular religion dictates it.
Other than altruistic respect, most other forms of authority require a leader or leaders to administer and enforce submission to that authority. The thing about real leadership is that the responsibilities usually far outweigh the privileges. When leaders try to require a higher standard of behavior from others than they are willing to accept for themselves the whole system disintegrates. When religious leaders abuse those under their leadership, especially women and children, and hold fast to doctrines and beliefs that have long been proven to not be true or reasonable, they lose the respect of their followers and, as a result, participation and membership in churches diminishes to alarming levels. When elected political leaders only want to serve the voters who agree with them, and to withhold the right to vote from those they don’t believe will vote for them and their particular political party, voters lose faith in the system and apathetically just don’t participate in self government at the ballot box. When educational leaders and political officials who supervise the work of teachers withhold the latitude and funding necessary for teachers to be effective, then cave in to demanding parents who make unreasonable demands, things deteriorate in public education and they point a finger at the teachers who are often the only ones who are busting their butts for kids. As a result, parents flee the public schools in record numbers to private schools and home schooling. Next, legislators want to provide “school vouchers” for parents who want to send their kids to private schools.
You have a Supreme Court Justice who accepts over $4,000,000,000 in luxury vacations, tuition for his nephew, a house for his mother-in-law, and free air travel on luxurious private planes from Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire who is likely to have business before the court at some point, without reporting it as is expected of him. Another Justice hangs an American flag upside down in his yard (saying his wife did it is as ridiculous as Flip Wilson saying “the devil made me do it). The court as a whole overturns years of accepted law (Roe v. Wade) either to placate White Evangelical Christians or to satisfy their own religious beliefs. A relatively inexperienced District Judge (Aileen Cannon) twists and distorts the legal process almost out of recognition just to keep a former president, who stole classified government documents and refused to surrender them when asked, from coming to trial. All this and many other blatant breeches of legal standards besmirches faith in the entire Judicial branch of the federal government to where faith in those courts is at an all-time low.
We have reached the point where there are voters who would vote for a convicted felon who lies to them and threatens the entire fabric of American democracy, has raped at least one women, had sex with a porn star while his wife du jour was pregnant, taken sides with a Russian oligarch against his own country, and incited rioters to attempt to overthrow the government just because he lost an election.
The question is not how we got to this point, but how we could have expected it to turn out any other way. We will be damn lucky to get out with our system of self government in one piece.