MySpace photo costs student teacher her degree

Some extraordinary smallmindedness here. How can they prove what was in the cup? Apparently the photo bore the caption "Drunken Pirate" but play-acting at parties is common. And in any case drinking alcohol IS legal

A woman denied a teaching degree on the eve of graduation because of a MySpace photo has sued the university. Millersville University instead granted Stacy Snyder a degree in English last year after learning of the web-published picture of her, which bore the caption Drunken Pirate. Snyder received "superior" or "competent" ratings on her final student-teacher evaluation in all areas except "professionalism," in which she was labeled "unsatisfactory," according to the suit filed last week. "I dreamed about being a teacher for a long time," said Snyder, 27, of Strasburg, who has two young sons. She now works as a nanny.

The photo, taken at a 2005 Halloween party, shows Snyder wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic Mr Goodbar cup. It was posted on her own MySpace site. "There were errors in judgment that relate to Pennsylvania's Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators," wrote professor J. Barry Girvin, who supervised Snyder's work, according to the suit.

Snyder did her student-teaching at Conestoga Valley High School in 2006. Conestoga Valley officials told the college they would stop accepting student-teachers from Millersville if she went unpunished, the lawsuit said. Although Snyder apologised, she learned on May 12 - the day before graduation - that she would not be awarded an education degree or teaching certificate. Jane S. Bray, dean of the School of Education, in a meeting that day accused Snyder of promoting underage drinking, the suit states.

The federal lawsuit - filed against the university, Bray, Girvin and Provost Vilas A. Prabhu - seeks at least $75,000 in damages. Millersville spokeswoman Janet Kacskos referred questions to a state System of Higher Education spokesman, who declined comment. "The bottom line is we want the college to bestow the degree and teaching certificate that Stacy earned during four years of hard work and sacrifice," said Snyder's lawyer, Mark W. Voigt.

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Swimming with Barracudas

The dangers of discipline-free schools

After the horrific Virginia Tech massacre, Americans are once again focusing on the distressing topic of school violence, which is most prevalent not on college campuses but in the nation's high schools. In New York, critics disagree about whether school crime is going up or down. Mayor Bloomberg announced in February that crime had fallen significantly at certain schools as a result of his "school safety initiative"; the very next day, however, the New York Times countered with an article claiming that major crime in New York City schools had risen 21 percent in the first third of the fiscal year.

But few dispute the existence of a violent subculture among some students. A rash of gang-related stabbings has shaken New York City schools. Following a fight at Franklin K. Lane High School, assailants plunged a knife into a student's chest on the subway. At a "second opportunity school" for students with prior violent offenses, one student used scissors to stab another student on school grounds; the perpetrator had been scheduled to return to a mainstream setting the following month. Equally troubling is a new Clockwork Orange-style game called "Knockout," which has become all the rage in some New York high schools. To win, kids must select an unsuspecting student and knock him unconscious with one sucker punch.

Nor is the problem confined to the five boroughs. Buffalo schools superintendent James A. Williams prompted a media outcry in February by allowing a group of students who had assaulted another student and a teacher to return to school. It wasn't long before three of the students were overheard plotting a follow-up attack.

The violence has prompted some predictable responses from legislators and school administrators. New York State Assembly members Jose Peralta and Peter Rivera have called for the passing of stalled antigang legislation, which would mete out stiff penalties for gangbangers caught recruiting new members on school grounds. In Buffalo, Williams has proposed a range of solutions: expansion of after-school activities, including athletics; a code of discipline modeled on the Catholic schools'; and undoing job cuts that have left students with no music, art, and athletics teachers, and with a shortage of guidance counselors and social workers. Getting at the "root causes" of student violence could take years, Williams suggested. Similarly, other school administrators have proposed more guidance intervention, peer mediation, and counseling; "student contracts" that carry no provisions for enforcement; and mandatory school uniforms, which would prevent kids from wearing gang colors! . And as a last resort, there are always metal detectors, closed-circuit cameras, and an increased police presence.

What's missing from all of these measures is an old-fashioned idea: the expulsion of incorrigible students who interfere with learning and present a threat to the safety of others. For all practical purposes, expulsion no longer exists in New York City schools, which have expelled fewer than ten students over the past five years. Worse still, school advocates--who often seem to advocate only for hoodlums--want incarcerated students to finish their sentences and return to mainstream classrooms as quickly as possible. Their efforts have established a revolving door between prison and New York high schools.

Those who attended New York public schools at a time when kids actually respected school authority can remember the dread of winding up in a notorious "600 School" for troubled children. The dramatic expansion of students' rights and due process, which began with the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Tinker v. Des Moines and Goss v. Lopez, has been furthered by consent decrees and changes in state education law that make expelling a student younger than 21 all but impossible. Today, the hoodlum class that menaces our schools fears nothing. The only civics lesson these so-called students have learned is how to manipulate the convoluted due-process system that provides them with endless opportunities for deviant behavior.

Placing these students among kids who just want to get an education safely is a disastrous idea. Metal detectors, cameras, guidance intervention, student contracts, and the like may lead to marginal improvements, but if the schools want to get serious about safety, they need to start removing the barracudas from the goldfish tank.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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