Blaska Policy Werkes has its werkes cut out for it. 

We are upside down, backwards and inside out here in the Emerald City, Madison WI.

As predicted, Ms. Ali Muldrow and Ms. Ananda Mirilli voted against policing our troubled high schools in a 4-3 vote Monday night, without citizen comment because the Board of Education fears the disruptive powers of the Freedom Inc.-led social justice warriors.

As quoted by Madison’s excellent newspaper of record, the talented Ms. Muldrow had this to say:

“It’s developmentally inappropriate to expose children to incarceration. Police are the only people within our schools who can expose children to incarceration.

“I think arresting kids results in tremendous long-term harm to them.”

She said she’s not against the concept of police in schools, but rather the disproportionate rates at which black students are arrested and cited.

“If we can have the police in schools and eliminate disproportionately in arrests and not subject children to incarceration, then I think there is a role for the police within our schools,” Muldrow said.

Deconstructing the B.S.

Let’s “parse” that verbiage, as the teaching assistants like to say at UW-Madison.

Professeur Blaska would say that it is “developmentally inappropriate” to expose children to the notion that “We don’t have to listen to the police. You can’t touch us.” That’s the infamous refrain from the 15 to 20 middle schoolers who busted up Lakeview library in March. (Read & Weep)

Doubt these kids learned that fallacy at school but neither did the schools unlearn them. Let’s “parse” school board member Ali’s “thinking:”

Ali Muldrow: “Police are the only people within our schools who can expose children to incarceration.”

Blaska: No, each of us are the only ones who can expose ourselves to incarceration by our actions. Shoot up the bus leaving school, attack the teacher, brawl in the cafeteria, bust up the library, rape that girl in the lavatory. Those are some of the ways you can expose yourself to incarceration.

Police didn’t do any of that. 

Muldrow: “Arresting kids results in tremendous long-term harm to them.”

Blaska: Committing crime results in tremendous long-term harm. So does being “truant in school.” So does dissing your teacher. So does ignoring your homework. So does lurching through life a functional illiterate.

Muldrow is not against the concept of police in schools, but rather the disproportionate rates at which black students are arrested and cited.

Muldrow IS against the concept of police in schools. It is Blaska that abhors the disproportionate rates at which black students are arrested and cited. But if you’ve got a case against the police of racial discrimination, bring it! The ACLU and National Lawyers Guild are waiting.  Or, maybe, we need to stop telling children of color that they are victims of history and, instead, writers of their own narrative.

• We have to quit with the excuse-making.
• Stop grievance peddling.
• Stop enabling self-destructive behavior.
• And start demanding personal responsibility.

Quit picking on boys

As Stanford University fellow Thomas Sowell said:

“Is it impossible that black males misbehave in school more often than Asian females? Or Jewish students? Or others?” 

There’s a disproportionality in the discipline of boys: 59% of the suspensions even though the male species accounts for only 49% of the total enrollment. Why the War on Men?

Muldrow: “If we can have the police in schools and eliminate disproportionately in arrests and not subject children to incarceration, then I think there is a role for the police within our schools.” 

Blaska: Ali, my friend, you are telling the most vulnerable kids that you blame the police for enforcing the law. You are telling those kids that they do not have to listen to the police. That the police can’t touch them lest the police be accused of racism most foul.

Are we that upside down?

Blaska’s Almost Bottom Line: Ali, mon cher ami, Our schools can teach but only the students can learn.

Not just in Madison, Sun Prairie, or Verona:

Headline: “Classrooms in Crisis: Verbal, physical, sometimes violent outbursts plaguing [State of] Oregon classrooms.” 

The situation has gotten so dire that the Oregon Education Association – the union that represents 44,000 teachers across the state – plans to release a report this week calling classroom disruptions a “significant and growing problem in Oregon classrooms.”   

Doesn’t help that the State of Oregon passed legislation in 2011 that says a teacher can only physically restrain a student when there is a threat of imminent serious bodily injury to someone. “We don’t have to listen and you can’t touch us.”

Aw shucks!

Thanks so much to Ms. Vicki McKenna and Judge Jim Troupis for the love Monday.

“Truth-teller. … He stood up for the teachers. … [The teachers union, WI State Journal, Sheriff Mahoney] had a chance to make a difference and said nothing.”