Re: Reliability of Education Statistics

[Victor Steinbok <Victor.Steinbok@VERIZON.NET>]

At 11:43 PM -0500 3/8/02, Juanita Doyon wrote:
> In a message dated 3/8/2002 7:19:21 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> gsheridan@BOMUSD.K12.CA.US writes:
>
> > Two of the deadly weapons were pencils
>
>
> Well then the kid who turned around and punched my son in the nose
> in 5th grade, for tapping him on the shoulder with a pencil, was
> completely justified.  Who knew?

Now consider, in this light, how meaningful the new air traffic
security regulations really are. When the talk of banning all
cutlery, no matter how small or dull, started, the first comment out
of my mouth was, "But you can kill someone with a pencil." Think of
the scene with the fountain pen in Grosse Point Blank or of similar
ones in spy movies (some are actually based on real incidents). Then,
there is the ceramic cutlery, which would not light up on the
scanners (or even a sharpened letter opener made from the same
material). It all boils down to a simple issue--the same one I've
brought up before in connection with testing, zero-tolerance rules,
anti-cheating regulations, mandatory sentencing, etc. By making too
many rules and removing decision power from those who should know and
be able to decide, we reduce ourselves to a collection of rules and
regulations that weaken their own impact. What is not expressly
prohibited becomes, in fact, permitted. The only deviation from this
recently has been the drug testing and subsequent bans at the
Olympics--the drugs for which the athletes were banned were not yet
on any banned substance list. They were banned for clear attempts to
temper with their bodies at a disadvantage to others, not for taking
the specific substance--this never would have happened under the
school-style zero-tolerance rules.

       VS-)

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