Apparently we live in a country where you can’t even play make believe anymore. Nine-year-old Aiden Steward of Kermit, Texas, has been suspended for making “terrorist threats” against a kid after watching The Hobbit and telling another student he had a ring that could make the kid disappear. Steward’s father is understandably perplexed:
“Kids act out movies that they see. When I watched Superman as a kid, I went outside and tried to fly,” he said. “I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend’s existence,” he added. “If he did, I’m sure he’d bring him right back.”
Not exactly sure how this is connected to terrorism, but that’s one of many of our questions in this matter.
Team Blackness also discussed a Power Ranger who killed his roommate with a sword, a teacher fired for teaching too much black history, and how people not vaccinating their kids is leading to a measles outbreak.
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Luthe
Um, this somehow hit the front page FOUR times. We can haz delete?
Violet
Wow. How many versions of this post were there? Four? Impressive!
Belafon
He’s been suspended two other times for:
Violet
@Belafon:
That is crazy. Does the school have a policy of students not mentioning the racial background of other students? Or a policy of not using the term “black” and instead using another term? If so, that’s odd. Could he have used it in a derogatory way? If that’s the case, I guess it might make sense.
And a book has an illustration of a pregnant woman so it’s not allowed? I guess it is west Texas.
Doug r
@Belafon: Solar System and pregnant ladies? I can see why it’s the kids favorite
dedc79
Turning Tolkien’s wonderful book into three awful films, now THAT was terrorism.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon: Heaven forfend that children should learn about human biology. It might inspire them to conciously do it on their own. Like their hormones won’t do it first.
The uptight need to keep outtasight.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon:
Let me guess…the term he should have used for a black student is “ni*CLANG*”.
Violet
From a different article on it, Jason, the kid’s dad, is having other problems with the school:
If that’s true, that is also ridiculous. What kind of school is this?
Laertes
Sounds like a decent kid. Damn shame that he landed at a school full of Dolores Umbridge types.
jl
” telling another student he had a ring that could make the kid disappear ”
Child terrorists have that now? Is DARPA on this?
I look forward to a presser by McCain questioning why Obama has been asleep at the wheel.
Some super secret government security research agency should recruit this kid. I saw something like that in an old TV series. Forget the name.
On other hand, this stuff seems to be going on in Odessa TX. Not much to do there, and looks like they have not heard about this solar system thing or how babies get made yet. Both are dangerous esoteric pieces of knowledge, but some of the grown-ups should know about it. (Edit: though, if they do know, they are probably witches and warlocks, already burned. I sense a dilemma for the good folks in Odessa)
Villago Delenda Est
@Laertes: In that case, the black student should have been called a mudblood.
daveNYC
And now I know what today’s Penny Arcade was all about.
Laertes
Also: The staff involved should be fired immediately. We need a zero-tolerance policy for stupid bullshit from adults who are trusted to care for children.
Tree With Water
I once told my then 5 year old godson that I could turn him into a chicken if I felt like it. He challenged me, so I agra-cadabrad’d and said, “Zap, you’re a chicken”! I then immediately feigned shock and in a distressed voice cried out, “Oh no, it worked! He’s a chicken! I turned him into a chicken”! He couldn’t stop laughing..
Gindy51
Obviously the idiots at the school have never seen the movies or read the book. The ring isn’t a weapon, it doesn’t zap someone and they are gone forever. It is a device that allows the wearer to disappear in times of danger. How this is supposed to be terrorism is way beyond the pale. Maybe making those dopes read the books or watch the films might be a way to start to educate the idiots.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gindy51: This of course assumes these twits can read.
Laertes
It’s really, really disgusting that these creeps want to feel like they’re a part of the war on terror and are willing to victimize innocent children to indulge their fantasies. Firing them out to be only the start of their punishment. This is child abuse.
boatboy_srq
That’s easy. The Reichwing (especially the Xtian Reichwing) is unable to distinguish between Science (using observation, repeatable experimentation and known components to arrive at a verifiable and replicable conclusion) and Magic (using spells and arcane items of presumed paranormal power to produce an effect with repeatability only relative to the operator’s skill as a wizard). They’re unable to distinguish Fact, or Scientific Theory (Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, for example), from Fiction (the works of J.R.R. Tolkien). And they’re unable to distinguish News (the reporting of actual events) from Cinema (the creation of a scene for use as entertainment). So if the kid saw it on the big screen (or read it somewhere in print), it had to be real, and if he had a ring, it had to be able to make people invisible, because Big Screen plus Eyeballs minus Suspension of Disbelief equals REAL.
Witchcraft is a very real thing to Xtian wingnuts, and being confronted with spells or curses is no different from being confronted with an IED, suicide bomber or loaded AK-47. Remember Christine O’Donnell from Delaware, who lost her election in part from having to deny events in her history (“I am not a witch”)? Texas seems to be run by Xtian wingnuts.
It’s no wonder wingnuts want to ban evolution, AGCC, Shakespeare and sex-ed from classrooms when their Source of Ultimate Truth is a twelve-times-translated work of pre-Classical writers trying to make sense of a universe interpretable only through the human eye and then only with very rudimentary measuring tools – and they’re unable to identify a meaningful difference between that one Book and all the others.
Scott S.
I’ve got suspicions that the teacher and principal don’t really object to Tolkien or pregnancy or anything other than this one little kid. It looks very much to me like they’ve got it in for this kid, for some damn reason, and they’re just going to do everything they can to make his life hell.
boatboy_srq
@Belafon:
So, since it showed Material Inappropriate For Children (as defined by an overzealous prude) in one section, the entire book had to be thrown back because We Cain’t Have Kids Larnin’ These Thangs. Got it.
What rank is Texas among the states for education? Because this kind of behavior would put them 51st in my book.
The Ancient Randonneur
Speaking of terrorists:
More confirmation that Fox News is a media arm for a terrorist organization.
beth
@The Ancient Randonneur: Oh for fuck’s sake – if you tell me you locked someone in a cage and set them on fire I can imagine how horrible it would be. I do not need to see it to know the barbarity of it.
Belafon
@boatboy_srq: I live around Dallas, and all of my kids at one time or another have taken an anatomy book to school. Luckily Dallas isn’t quite as backwards as West Texas (disclaimer, I grew up in Abilene), because not only would they have gotten in trouble for that, but my kids have done taken books like “Picture of Dorian Grey” and “A Clockwork Orange” to school.
boatboy_srq
@Belafon: I have friends from Midland, and from Dallas and Houston. West Texas really is its own special place.
SatanicPanic
@Violet: seriously? Deoderant doesn’t help a 9 year old who smells. jeesuz, these people are full-on committed to being stupid.
stibbert
@Gindy51: The ‘One Ring’ was most definitely a weapon, forged w/ the power to enslave enslave the possessors of the other Rings of Power. It had ‘creative’ powers, Barad-dur was built w/ its aid. Also too, it was inherently evil!
The invisibility it gave to the wearer was its most accessible & most benign ability.
boatboy_srq
@Gindy51: @stibbert: Gindy51’s version is the Hobbit version, not the LOTR one. In the first book it really was a (mostly) invisibility ring.
Peale
I don’t know yet if I’m going to rally to the cause just yet. How do we know that he kid wasn’t a terrorist? I don’t want to gloss over that and be eating crow later.
It really isn’t up to this kid to decide when the other students in his class learn about invisibility or pregnancy. If the parents want their kids to believe that babies come from pea pods to keep them innocent until they are ready to have their own kids, who are these parents and teachers to tell them otherwise? Knowledge is dangerous like that. That’s why it is important that the children stay to the guided curriculum at all times, or spend their days spelling. Children need to learn how to be controlled. It really is for their own good. This kid may be getting off too lightly.
ranchandsyrup
Since Ayn Rand weaponized her fever dreams of Soviet Russia?
SiubhanDuinne
@boatboy_srq:
Back in the late 1960s my dad was music director of the Midland-Odessa Symphony for a few years. He detested everything about it, not least the oil-rich “arts patrons” and members of the boards.*
* The plural is accurate. Although the concert programs were identical (one night in Midland, the next in Odessa) and the musicians were exactly the same personnel, the rivalry and politics of the place was such that there were two entirely separate boards of trustees/directors. You can imagine how much fun that was to negotiate! (I mean, dealing with one board is bad enough….) My father simply hated the entire experience and couldn’t wait to leave.
boatboy_srq
@SiubhanDuinne: Is it bad that my opinion of West Texas is so low that I want to ask how many banjos were in the string section of that symphony?
Another Holocene Human
Seems like the kid’s real crime was to be the new kid in school in a shithole west Texas town.
But as some wags on RS pointed out, this is a place where the adults believe in magic. So it was, like, a credible threat.
WereBear
This is just one more example of Why I Fled the South.
Cacti
Semi-OT, but has anyone ever read the book “The Last Ring Bearer”?
It’s an unofficial sequel to LOTR, but written from the point of view of Mordor. The premise is that LOTR was a propagandistic history written by the victors in the war of the ring. Mordor was supposed to have been a peaceful, multiracial society on the verge of an industrial revolution, and were branded heretics by the racists and theocrats of Gondor and the Elven Kingdoms.
Sounds intriguing.
The author is Russian, and its only releases in English have been unofficial.
stibbert
@SatanicPanic: Really, you gotta wonder what those “educators” are thinking. Kids need to learn basic hygiene, such as bathing, hair-washing, tooth-brushing, hand-washing. Some parents probably aren’t really great at doing that, but a school can help. Advising use of deoderant by 2nd-graders would be near the bottom of a list of good suggestions!
Cluttered Mind
@stibbert: Benign unless a Nazgul happens to be nearby.
SiubhanDuinne
@boatboy_srq:
Banjos might have been an improvement.
JaneE
@Peale: I learned about sex and reproduction from Everywoman’s Medical Handbook. When my mother gave me the talk, I knew more terminology about internal anatomy than she did. When I started asking her if she was talking about ovaries and fallopian tubes and sperm she just asked where I had learned about that. I pulled the book off the bookshelf and showed her the section on pregnancy and gestation. We read the chapter on how to tell your child about sex together.
When I was about 10, I got in trouble for telling a girlfriend that it was necessary for a boy to be involved in order to get pregnant. That was about as much detail as I went into, but my friend was even more ignorant of the facts of life. Her parents read my mother the riot act because they didn’t want her to know about sex yet. Their daughter was terrified that she could become pregnant – all by herself – because she was now menstruating and that meant that she was able to have children. My mother told them what she thought of keeping a girl so ignorant that she was frantic if her period was late, especially when she was so young that an irregular cycle was normal. And she told them how I had learned about sex, long before she had thought I was ready. Kathy’s mother left in a huff, but was back a few days later to borrow the book.
Tim C.
So from reading the linked articles there’s two possibilities:
A) It’s exactly like everyone is assuming, it’s certainly possible that in Texas or anywhere for that matter an administrator overreacts completely to a situation. That kind of thing happens all the time, and the level of idiotic enforcement of “zero tolerance” policies makes the situation worse.
But B, as someone who works in a public school and has seen this kinda thing before… there is a real chance there is way more to the story. Basically, public schools discipline students for lots of reasons and whatever the reason they *can’t* talk about a disputed case to the media. So parents can say whatever they like and the school can do diddly squat about it. Students have a right to not have their discipline issues discussed in public, even if their parents decide to talk as loud as their lungs and a local TV station will allow.
Peale
@Tim C.: I agree actually, although I was being snarky before. I tend to trust schools more than I do parents on a lot of things. “Crazy people are running our schools” is the type of meme we should question. Sometimes crazy people do run schools, but I’m skeptical in this case.
jl
@Tim C.: Could might be option B. But since the dispute seems to be about this kid’s magical powers the school knows about and the parent either is hiding or is covering up, I am skeptical of B.
Peale
I do like the idea that we live in a society where invisibility is treated as a serious problem but asking people to wash their hands is considered such a dehumanizing violation of free choice that it is assumed that workers would forego increases in their wages to have the right to spread hepatitis.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
To answer the question in the title, imagination has been a threat for a long time. I’m old enough to remember the moral panic over D&D.
Cacti
@Peale:
“Crazy people are running our schools” is the type of meme we should question. Sometimes crazy people do run schools, but I’m skeptical in this case.
Crazy people? Not really.
But I’ve met more than a few school administrators who thought they were apprentice dictators.
Cacti
@jl:
Could might be option B. But since the dispute seems to be about this kid’s magical powers the school knows about and the parent either is hiding or is covering up, I am skeptical of B.
Given that the young trouble maker has already been suspended for the offense of bringing “The Big Book of Knowledge” to school, I’m inclined to go with option A.
Elizabelle
@Laertes:
I suspect Aidan’s problem is some kind of zero tolerance program gone awry.
Zero tolerance tells kids: we imposed these policies because your administrators are too g-damn stoopid to figure out things on their own.
You always need to carve out a sphere for discretion and an intelligent response. Children are individuals.
It’s never good when your elementary school hits the blogosphere. I look forward to hearing more about Principal Roxanne Greer and this unnamed teacher.
Another Holocene Human
@Peale: please Google Maps Kermit, TX and get back to us.
jl
@Cacti: Another argument against option B is if the school can’t talk, why don’t they just not talk and explain why, rather than say things that appear to be completely absurd.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Elizabelle:
I suspect a combination of new kid at school (not from around here) with crazy teachers/administrators and/or crazy parents of the other children.
From the original Odessa American article:
He undoubtedly upset another kid, and the teachers and admin know better than to tell the upset kid that Aiden doesn’t have magical powers.
Citizen_X
Now, if the kid were a young member of the Bush clan, and he said “My family has a secret prison in Cuba they can make you disappear to,” they would have been alright with that, right?
Citizen_X
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
See? He “religiously practices” magic! He’s a witch, people! Burn him!
boatboy_srq
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: D&D. Rock music (I actually had a classmate who was dead serious about the backwards messaging in rock: he even had a reverse-rigged turntable with which to “prove” it). Midwifery. Women acting on stage. The list is endless.
boatboy_srq
@Citizen_X: Of course – but only because the person being disappeared was the terrorist.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
It isn’t stupidity that zero tolerance was set up to prevent; it was deliberate bias. Administrators can and often do show bias in favor of star athletes, popular students, and the children of well connected parents, and plenty of them show bias against minorities and unpopular students. Too much discretion is often worse than too little.
Laertes
I’m all for Zero Tolerance in schools, implemented appropriately.
Kids are kids. Obviously it’s not appropriate for them to be subject to zero-tolerance policies, but adults trusted with their care obviously should be. There should be zero tolerance for physical or emotional abuse of children. Zero tolerance for stupid, destructive, self-aggrandizing victimization of their charges.
I want to ask the administrators: “Kids are kids. What zero-tolerance policies apply to the grown-ups in this school?”
Laertes
@Roger Moore:
There’s no substitute for good judgment. If you try to build an idiot-proof system, someone will just make a better idiot.
Take this case, for instance: Had this been a star athlete, popular student, or the child of a well-connected parent, this incident simply would not have been recognized as one to which the zero-tolerance policy applies. The bias is still there. The zero-tolerance policy just makes the bias even stupider.
Cluttered Mind
The biggest problem with zero-tolerance policies is that in practice it turns into zero-tolerance for victims. The bullied are suspended and removed from schools with such policies far more often than the bullies.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@boatboy_srq: Al Bouchard of Blue Öyster Cult did a “backwards-masked” bit in one of his songs.
The Lord’s Prayer.
I’d have loved to see your classmate when he tried that record.
gelfling545
@Cacti: Working along these lines ? http://www.amazon.com/True-Story-Three-Little-Pigs/dp/0140544518
boatboy_srq
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: ROFL. He wouldn’t have played that forwards.
Just One More Canuck
@Citizen_X: does he weigh the same as a duck?
Fred
Wouldn’t be surprised if the real issue is about witchcraft. Fundamentalists seem to really get their panties in a wad about fictional stories of witchcraft, sorcery, dragons and such. I think it’s OK if it’s by Disney but otherwise it’s Satanic.
Anyway this kid is a three time loser so I think he get’s life without parole. Or maybe they just give him the chair. They keep it down in the basement next to the boiler.
But really the kid sounds like just the kind of intelligent, imaginative, well meaning nerd podunk rednecks must abuse. If he were the class bully or an arsonist he would have a bright future but he’s into all that “knowledge” stuff.
Tim C.
Again, I’m *not* saying the school is right. But the rawstory article refers to an Odessa American Article and they say slightly different things.
Rawstory Quote: According to Kermit Elementary School officials, 9-year-old Aiden Steward told a classmate that he possessed a magic ring forged in Mount Doom — a fictional location from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series.
Odessa American Quote: Principal Roxanne Greer declined to comment on the matter.
“All student stuff is confidential,” Greer said. She referred a call from the Odessa American to Kermit ISD Superintendent Bill Boyd, who did not return a phone call.
I’m just saying it looks like rawstory did a typical clickbait writeup of an article in a different news organization, and then omitted to say that this was the parent’s version and not the schools. In fact if an Elementary school is talking *at all* about a student’s discipline, that’s a pretty big breach of rules in my neck of the woods. (Oregon)
Mary
I checked back in on this thread from this morning, and I cannot believe I have to de-lurk to ask when any regular Balloon Juicer is going to follow the links back to the dad’s right wing nutjob facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/jason.steward.560
Violet posted a link to syracuse.com that included the facebook link.
My best guess from what the dad (Jason Steward) has posted is that he and the kid have gone out of their way to be troublemakers at this school, and the dad is an attention whore and liar about the reasons the kid has been suspended. (FWIW, I don’t think that misbehavior can possibly be a young child’s fault when the parent pretty obviously encourages it.)
After trying to raise money for Herman Cain and FreedomWorks (“supported by Glenn Back & Rand Paul” to take our country back) and “showing off [his] new Hummer,” the guy uses his facebook page to highlight how he’s “been critical of the teaching methods here so [he] guess[es] they’re taking it out on” the kid. But the reason the other child was scared may not have been just little Aiden’s magic tricks. The father has Aiden in mixed martial arts training and UFC tournaments. YouTube links to the kid’s last fight included.
And the father is pretty sure that the school objected to the picture of the fetus not because the kid was being disruptive but because the school “wouldn’t want children to learn that a ‘fetus’ is actually a real person on the inside of the mommie. That goes against the liberal principles government school are working so hard to program them with. Public schools can’t have kids grow up without supporting the Democrat Party their teacher’s union dues are devoted to.”
Honestly, what were the chances that there is a sane person for whom Odessa, Texas, is just too goddamned liberal and politically correct?
The upshot is that the school cannot comment on a child’s discipline, and the dad’s self-serving version is deeply suspect. If you want to hear more from old Jason Steward, he’s posted links to all the interviews he’s getting to do since he claimed his kid was suspended for liking The Hobbit. Seems pretty proud of himself. Poor Aiden.
Steeplejack
@Mary:
Wow. Very interesting.
chris y
@boatboy_srq: How do you know he was a terrorist? Well, the disappearing trick worked OK, didn’t it?
Paul in KY
@Gindy51: It allows entities who can not use it as it was intended, to disappear. That is actually a commentary on their power, or lack of it.
If you can use the ring, as it was intended, you do not disappear when you put it on.
Paul in KY
@stibbert: The invisibility is a default setting for those who cannot wield it.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: I have read it. If you are a Tolkien nut, you should read it.
Certainly not written as well as LOTR.
HeartlandLiberal
This is Texas. I am now wondering what will happen the next time kids play cowboys with their cap guns, which $DEITY knows we did all the time as 6 – 10 year olds. Who could have known we were budding terrorists. And in Alabama, too, where I grew up!
Tim C.
@Mary:
Yup…
I never thought about trying to find more info that way though.