The morning coffee and the minty danger
January 6th, 2010
A ten year old girl in Commack, NY has been suspended from school for “bringing, and then distributing bottled peppermint oil to other students.” Apparently school authorities there believe that peppermint oil, being used in this case to make water taste minty, is a drug.
(by Brian Dettmer)
Discover asks: What happened to the hominids who might have been smarter than humans?
We all know that Bono is a twat. And when he goes on record in the New York Times, naively suggesting that America could emulate China in tracking content online and eliminating piracy in the process, you could hear the BoingBoing reaction coming. Unfortunately, with Mr. Doctorow on vacation, we will have to wait for the full reaction.
Related articles:
Peppermint oil being seized as a drug… I have to admit this is pretty sad, the stuff might have a label saying keep away from children but it is hardly due to the addictive, destructiveness of the drug. On the otherhand, it seems almost predictable considering how US education has trended for the last few decades. The downward trend has to occur for some reason and the educators themselves being moronic or immutable seems like a pretty good reason. The girl should not have brought the oil to school but the reaction by the school is too extreme and automatic under the circumstances.
I’m still trying to figure out why the girl should not have brought it to school — the school cites the possibility of a mint allergy in another child. Do they suspend children for having gum? Candy? Tic-tacs?
The kid brought something harmless that she liked to school, and shared it with other kids. I say “bravo”.
As far as schools and downward trends go, I attribute it to there being four distinct styles of approach:
The Expert: Taking experts in a subject matter and putting them in the same room as students. The hope is that some of that expertise rubs off on the students. This is quite commonly the approach used at Universities. The goal is for the student to learn specific things.
The Teacher: Expertise in a subject is less important to delivery, and the art/science of connecting with students. The goal becomes to educate, in a broad sense.
The Efficiency Expert: Scores on standardized tests, rates of University admission, etc, become measuring sticks. Those in charge attempt to maximize these results while minimizing their costs.
The Beaurocrat: The running of a school stops being about the subjects being taught, education, or the meeting of specific goals. Instead, it is about administering policies and navigating the political/institutional landscape.
(All this is loosely stolen from Seth Godin and modified for the subject at hand)
When we were kids, it seems as though the administration of education was slipping from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on efficiency. Now, having passed firmly through efficiency, the American system is slipping into bureaucracy.
That’s a bad place to be.
It will take someone with some serious political capital, who cares a lot about either teaching or a specific subject to pull it back into one of the first two categories, I think.