A good friend of Beth's is the host of a great military group blog called A Soldiers Perspective. C.J. is an career soldier in the Army with years of combat experience in SO; as a result of his (some horrific, as any combat veteran can attest !) experiences, he suffers from PTSD (who WOULDN'T?)... The fact that he is dealing with this condition should be NOBODIES business but his own and his immediate family; if he discusses it with anyone else in the spirit of attempting to educate them about this condition; it should be lauded as an honorably unselfish act of educating that person above and beyond the call of duty.

The Army has come a long way of de-stigmatizing this condition in it's members, treating it as a reasonable and TREATABLE mental response to the extremely unreasonable and traumatizing events that occur on an almost daily in combat situations. HOWEVER, it seems that some segments of our society have become so pacifistic that they recoil in horror to think that anyone might have to cope with such a condition; imagining that people suffering from the condition are all open powder-kegs just waiting to be set off with the merest hint of anxiety.

Here are the basic facts:

1) The school district where C.J. sends his children go to school recently decided that they were going to institute a uniform dress policy in their district.

2) The authorities of the district held a Parents meeting to "get input from the parents on the new policy.

3) Said meeting, it turned out, was NOT to "gather input", but rather an authoritarian statement that:

A. the new policy would be instituted at the start of the next semester.

B. that the policy wasn't merely a set guideline policy, ( I.E. "students would be required to wear blue slacks and white shirts") but a policy that the students would be required to wear a school uniform only available at a certain supplier (at a cost of somewhere in the neighborhood of $300.00 per student for a couple of complete sets of uniforms).

Now C.J. is NOT adverse to the idea of a uniform policy, he wears his own uniform proudly every single working day of his life; what he objected to was being told that, with less than 40 days notice, he would be obligated to lay out $600 to $700 in clothing to equip all of his children with said uniforms to meet the new criteria. Believing the meeting to be a two way exchange of information; he spoke up, requesting that the implementation of the policy be delayed until the start of the next school year so as to allow the many military families with children attendant at the school the time to budget for the new expense. He was told that that "just wasn't feasible", and of course he wanted to know WHY that it wasn't -- loudly the second or third time he was rebuffed from being given an answer. His objections were supported by a large portion of the parents present and the meeting ended in somewhat of a tense atmosphere, to say the least...
If only that was the end of the story... the next day C.J.'s children were called out of class and questioned about "that man that had made such a fuss" and it was discovered that C.J. wrote for a blog; the officials read the blog and discovered that C.J. had been diagnosed with P.T.S.D., whereupon said officials grew mightily afraid, and have started proceedings to have C.J. legally barred from entering the school without having security escort him, and called his commanding officer to inform him that they consider him a "danger", possibly even to his own children...a great fuss to make because he reasonably objected to being dictated to by an unelected bunch of bureaucratic "education experts" issuing their DIKTATS to the unwashed minions over which they feel they have authority.

The fact that they contacted C.J.'s military commanders and informed them that "he has P.T.S.D. and therefore is unstable/dangerous" is just so far beyond the pale in intruding on C.J's privacy as to be in the stratosphere. To possibly try to threaten his career or even his parenting role over a school policy disagreement is out to the orbit of Saturn in it's ignorance and pettiness.

That, in this case, these ultra metro-sexual, "sheepdog" fearing, patchouli smelling, (presumably)Democrat voting assholes are members of the so-called "professional educators" cadre (who are presumably highly educated to know better) makes that attitude even more offensive to any correct thinking human being.

C.J. is contacting a lawyer to see what options he might have, but it's too bad he has to go to that extent, and I hope there are enough of us out there that, like me, will be willing to help support him in whatever manner we can in this tempest in a school teapot. The issues involved are a microcosm of what is wrong in our nation today; overreaching mini-tsars trying to dictate our freedom to dissent and our privacy...always "for our own good" of course, and in a "WE'RE the PROFESSIONALS, so we know what's best" manner.

Posted by: Delftsman3 at 01:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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