A 17-year-old student has been expelled from his Brampton, Ont., high school for a fictional essay he submitted in a creative writing class about a disgruntled student who murders one of her teachers.From here, via Bread and Roses. If this fucks up his life, I hope he spends a lot of time panhandling in the superintendent's neighbourhood.Brendan Jones, a Grade 12 student at Heart Lake Secondary School northwest of Toronto, was expelled last week, leaving him facing an uncertain future. Brendan is just three credits shy of graduating from high school and was hoping to study criminology at university next fall. But it is not at all clear whether he will be able to transfer to another high school in the province.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Ontario teen expelled for fiction-writing exercise
This sounds like something that might happen in the US, but it happened in fucking Brampton. Crazy:
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3 comments:
Man, if you really want to screw yourself in high school, take a creative writing class. Well, I kind of think that everyone in this situation is wrong. As Ernst Zundel would remind us, free speech is a tricky thing. [Although he would probably quote Hitler or some other Kraut political philosopher while making his point.]
I am absolutely certain that if I were *shudder* still in high school that something like this would happen to me. Then again, maybe not, because I understand that threatening someone, even in the guise of fiction, can really piss people off or freak them out. The youthful author, assuming that he is not a complete imbecile, is probably old enough to remember Columbine or Taber [if even vaugely] or any of the others. On the bright side, I'm assuming that the boy isn't a sociopath because he only wrote about killing his teacher and didn't actually go ahead with it. The Superintendent of the school board is overacting but he has to attempt to keep the teachers and parents from rioting over his perceived impotence.
It has gone from the good old days when people wondered why Johnny couldn't read and write to wondering why Johnny is allowed to utter threats against his teachers with impunity.
I know what you mean, but it seems to me to be a bit of a stretch to automatically assume that a work of fiction constitutes a threat. That said, it's possible that there is another side to the story (e.g. if the kid had made overt threats before and been warned, it might not be out of line to interpret this as another threat). In the absence of something like this, it seems like a clear overreaction (although a talk with the guidance counsellor might be in order, if only to assess whether the kid has an unhealthy obsession with this sort of thing).
Yeah, there are a lot of unknowns in this sordid little tale of woe.
If the boy was a solid student who was able to provide a reasonable explanation as to why he felt the story was appropriate, that would be one thing.
If he was a slavering fuck-up who was just testing the boundaries because he knew that he was close to leaving, that would be another.
I think the immediate and draconian response was designed to establish the Superintendent's authority in the school and prevent a recurrence of this kind of naughtiness in future.
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