Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Anti-Drug Hysteria and School Vouchers

It seems to me that proponents of school vouchers could make some hay with stories like this one, on an upcoming Supreme Court case:
Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”
It's not clear to me why public schools feel the need to be so vigilant against the dangerous scourge of ibuprofen (a drug that isn't particularly toxic and doesn't get people high).

In any event, here's a new ad that voucher proponents could be running: "Tired of public schools that reserve the right to strip search your 13-year-old daughter, or to suspend and expel innocent children who happen to have a pocketknife? You deserve to be able to choose a school run by sane adults. Vote for school vouchers."

1 Comments:

Blogger Malcolm Kirkpatrick said...

We deserve a country run by sane adults. Forty years past the advent of wide-scale public-sector unionization, there aren't enough of those to staff schools, banks, and government agencies.

12:02 PM  

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