A comment to our Blog

Over a year ago -- February 2005 to be exact, I wrote about a high-school in Rhode Island. From my entry:

Where to draw the line� From Zero Intelligence:

School suspends 14 over explicit rap CD
14 students at Johnston High School made a rap CD. The lyrics were typical of modern gangsta rap and included topics like binge drinking, drug use and sex. Although they did this on their own and used no school resources the school has decided it has governing power over their private lives and has suspended all of them.

And my comment:

Jeezzz - this particular school administrator is taking over the role of the parents. How did they get hired and what are the parents thinking. The kids did this on their own time and without use of school resources so why should the school step in like this�

I had received two comments to this entry but the third one from today was so over the top that I have to bring it to you. From Steve:

yo i was one of the kids that dropped the CD and yeah i would do it again...I learned nothing from the stupid punishment...Ill realease lyrics on the PTO School Staff it dont matta...there words get ova it!

For fun, I looked up Steve's IP number and he wrote this from a computer located here: Gibbs College - Cranston (in Rhode Island) I can see playing around with the language once you have a good grasp of basic English but Steve's egregious spelling and grammar errors make me wonder how many remedial English classes he is going to have to sit through before he gets any sort of decent job. The other two comments were also worthy of note. The first one was from gianna posting from the Rhode Island branch of Cox Networking. She says:

excuse me i qo to johnston hiqh school and it was SOLD on school qrounds and it hurt a LOT OF PEOPLE...my friend made it and i cant talk to him anymore because of that

Perfect example of what I was talking about -- gianna plays with the UPPERCASE and likes to swap q for g. She missed one comma and apostrophe (punctuation light?) but her comment is grammatically correct and spellled gud two. The penultimate comment was from TJ posting from an East Coast branch of Comcast:

It is words. Not actions, it's words. It is a form of poetry, though vulgar. How dare anyone say they cannot talk bad about someone, they can SAY bad things about anyone. They cannot act on the suggested lyrics, but how dare anyone say what can come out of their mouths and how they can express it (the cd). It may hurt feelings, but noone has the right to govern on feelings alone. It is completely ridiculous. Oh, and gianna, you should stop judging by feelings and still be friends with these kids. They can express themselves anyway they want. Don't complicate matters because so called authority figures told you to.

A on grammar, A- on spelling (runon noone) but D on ethics. The line about:

They can express themselves anyway they want. Don't complicate matters because so called authority figures told you to.

Unnh - TJ You may feel like an adult but you most certainly are not one. The authority figures are there for your own good. Their job is to see that you have the basic mental tool-kit to get by in life, to get the job that you want and to be able to gain additional skills down the road to improve your life. My post was explicit in saying that I think the authorities were out of line in suspending the kids for something that was not done with school resources. I was not aware that the disk was being sold on campus -- that was not cool. Finally, I still ask where the parents were. Their responsibility is to monitor their kids educational progress and to help council them at home. For this system to have produced someone as well educated as Steve shows that that system is not working. Likewise with the free-wheeling TJ. At least we are not in Europe...