Everyday Erinyes #58

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can't include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

I'll start with a case in which no one was physically hurt, yet it just gets under my skin.  The parents of a child, now a fifth grader at a different school, but then a fourth grader at Katherine Gallegos Elementary in Los Lunas, NM, are in a legal battle with the District because, they say, a fourth grade teacher humiliated their child so badly they had to home school him.

Last fall, then 9-year-old Diego Ortega did everything he could do to get out of going to class at Katherine Gallegos Elementary.

“He was starting to make excuses, my head hurts, my stomach hurts,” Diego’s mom, Alexandria Lente, said. “Crying in the morning, not wanting to go to school.”

His fourth grade science teacher gave a talk in class about bullying.  At the end of his presentation, he asked each student to write an essay about Diego "being a bully."

There are some quotes from the essays in my linked article.  His own essay says he feels his own teacher is bullying him .  When his mother went to pick him up from school that day, he was in tears.  It doesn't appear he told her the whole story at the time, because he then started to try to avoid school. 

When she did get the story and went to confront the principal, she was told it was a learning assignment and was “OK.”

The current legal issue is less about the actual incident but about the months and legal fees the family spent trying to get copies of the essays legally under a freedom of information request, while the District dug in its heels, in violation of the law.  The teacher is not named in the suit nor in any complaint.

In one of my sources for this story, I left a comment, "I don't care if the kid is an ax murderer, you DO NOT get the rest of the class to write an essay about him/her."  To which someone responded, "Let's all feel sorry for ax murderers." I thought that royally missed the point.  If a kid is a danger to the other kids, on whatever level, you deal with it for the safety of the class.  But if you have other kids write about one kid – well, it's a learning activity all right.  What they learn is that it's perfectly OK to gang up on someone they don't like.  This is destructive and demeaning to the entire class, not just one person.  I find it unacceptable.  What do you think, Megaera?

This next story actually shocked me.  It happened on December 21, but it took over a week and a half for it to get into news sources I see, so I didn't have it last week.  I've been trying to follow up, but there doesn't seem to be much updating happening.  The newest news I could find is that the autopsy took four hours and the results are expected about a week from now.  The investigation is ongoing.

About seven in the evening, the concealed figure you see on the right of the picture entered the convenience store where David Wicks, the gentleman you see on the left, was working.  News reports say that the suspect – I'll call him that – or her – how can you tell? – "sprayed" a flammable liquid around the store and onto Mr. Wicks, but according the the Sheriff's office, "splashed" might be a better description – it appeared to be an open container.  Regardless, the suspect then set fire to Mr. Wicks and the store, and left – on a bicycle.

When authorities arrived, Mr. Wicks was only able to answer one question – "Was this intentional?" – to which he nodded "Yes."  He died en route to the hospital.

This was in a small town – well, not really a town – an unincorporated area, pop. 3154 in 2010 – Burney, CA, in Shasta County. northeast of Redding.  Mr. Wicks was liked by everyone – or so everyone thought.  He was 54, and leaves behind his wife, Sonja, who also worked at the store.

They are calling that hooded figure in the photo "the suspect," but since no one knows who – or what – that figure might be, I don't see that there really is a suspect.  But just on the facts we do have, it looks like vengeful destruction to me.  Tisiphone, maybe you can find something out.

But wait – there's more.  In Texas, the Texas Education Agency's handling of assigning children to receive specialized instruction has come under fire for denial of Special Ed to children with such disabilities as dyslexia, ADHD, and speech impairments.  But at one time, at least, it was fairly automatic to grand Special Ed assistance to Down syndrome children.  Not in Texas.  Not now.

[Melissa Ferrell]'s … son Sam had Down syndrome. He did not always speak in complete sentences. He could not hold a pencil. He had trouble going to the bathroom.

And yet the Austin Independent School District was claiming that he did not qualify for special education services.

"Specialized instruction is not needed," the evaluation report said.

She had expected to be fighting for there to be some inclusion in the regular classroom for Sam, who, like so many Down syndrome patients, is "unreservedly friendly."  She had not expected to need to get a lawyer and spend a year convincing the school district to provide "robust services." 

Other school districts are also denying special services to kids who would appear to obviously need them.  In Fort Bend, Evan Seargeant has binaural moderate-to-severe hearing loss.  What he doesn't have is special ed.  Oh, yeah, and he also doesn't have the good grades he used to have in California, where he was getting special ed assistance.  Sophia Salehi is legally blind.  She cannot read anything more than three inches from her face – and that is with the best glasses she can get.  This time it was the Houston ISD which turned her down for special ed.

The article I link to is one of a series of six numbered and two unnumbered articles, which should suggest that this is part of an unceasing problem.  Good luck, Alecto.

One last reference I am not going to cover in detail comes to us from McCrorystan, where, as the Fartfuhrer and the other Republicans were plotting their coup – well, it sounds like the beginning of a bar joke, doesn't it – "A crying grandmother, a breast-feeding mother, and Santa Claus walked into a" – State House.  Needless to say, they were all arrested, along with an unrevealed number (but, over the course of the week, more than 100) of others.  In an unusual twist, the protesters were all thanked profusely by the administrative personnel who were doing the booking (and of course thanked them profusely in return.)  Most of the charges have been dismissed since.  Thank God.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/4029941