Quote of note:
And here we sit wondering how we would have controlled a 5-year-old child instead of asking ourselves how we can reconnect the disaffected among us -- even how we might mend the potentially tragic relationship between this child and her 31-year-old single mother.
...Can't we let this 5-year-old be our miner's canary -- a warning to us about the growing toxicity of our society?
We could do these things, of course. But we probably won't. We'll use this sad case to spur our own hobby horses: to extend civil liberties to children, to promote charter schools or vouchers, to argue that the police are racists, and to claim that teachers are either unprepared or underpaid.
And -- oh, yes -- for money. The mother whose child seems so obviously headed for trouble found herself a lawyer.
Society's Toxins, Caught on Tape
By William Raspberry
Monday, May 2, 2005; Page A17
It's funny how the videotapes have divided us. Some of us saw the footage of the 5-year-old girl gone berserk in her St. Petersburg, Fla., classroom and decided we'd been too harsh in our judgment of the school officials for calling the police. Others saw the cops handcuffing the tiny child and decided it was the grown-ups who had gone nuts.
I look at the tape and tremble for fear that I'm looking at a fledgling outlaw whose path, if uninterrupted, could land her in jail -- or worse. And it can't be a 5-year-old's fault.
