I remember how it was -- JR
Maryland School District Permits Students to Carry Narcan on Campus Amid Shocking Rise in Youth Fentanyl Overdoses
In a decisive response to the escalating opioid crisis affecting the young population, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland have sanctioned the carriage of Narcan, a life-saving opioid antagonist, on school premises.
This new regulation, signed into effect on May 1, permits students to possess “personally obtained” Narcan, an emergency medication that reverses the deadly effects of an opioid overdose.
During this year alone, there have been 15 instances where Narcan was dispensed to students in Montgomery County. This grim statistic sheds light on the urgent necessity for such a policy.
The Community Engagement Officer, Captain Jordan Satinsky, in conversation with WTOP News, a Maryland and DC-based news service, highlighted the perilous trend of fentanyl’s increased presence in drugs.
The youth, he stated, are not oblivious to this fact. However, they might underestimate its lethal potential. “They just don’t understand that it’s almost like Russian roulette.”, he said.
In a press conference held the previous month, Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones pointed out a worrying trend. While adult overdoses in the region are witnessing a decline, a stark contrast is visible in the rising numbers of juvenile overdoses.
The Montgomery County Public Safety Committee was presented with startling data in February. According to the committee’s report, adolescent overdoses (under age 21) rose by a shocking 77% in 2022.
Montgomery County witnessed 48 adolescent overdoses in 2022, a significant leap from the 27 cases recorded in 2021.
Battalion Chief Benjamin Kaufman with the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue revealed to WTOP News that the response teams are tackling approximately 60 opiate overdoses monthly. This figure encompasses all ages and locations, not merely schools.
In an effort to alleviate fears about carrying Narcan at school, Dr. Patricia Kapunan, medical officer, issued a message. “If they are carrying Narcan in school, we want to let them know that they’re not going to get in trouble for that,” Dr. Kapunan said.
Elena Suarez, a grieving mother whose 19-year-old daughter succumbed to an overdose, issued a potent warning about the omnipresence of fentanyl in today’s drugs. She stated, “What you leave behind is a web of grief, and a life sentence for your families and your loved ones.”
Despite repeated attempts, Montgomery County Public Schools have yet to respond to requests for comments from the Daily Caller News Foundation, thus leaving some questions unanswered about the policy’s broader implications.
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British universities are beyond redemption
There’s no doubt that the government has the best of intentions when it comes to clearing up the Augean stables of UK higher education: witness its setting up of the Office for Students to protect students’ interests against ever-more monolithic university management, and more recently this year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act aimed at safeguarding the interests of both students and staff.
However, all this leaves a much more awkward issue: what are we actually promoting? True, it’s the done thing for middle-class 18-year-olds to be sent away to university. True too that you still need a degree to obtain certain kinds of well-paid jobs. But these aside, why should anyone want to go to a UK university – or if they do choose higher education, to go here rather than somewhere else? It’s a question worth taking seriously.
Up to about thirty years ago, the spirit of the post-war years was still recognisable in most UK universities. If you were seriously interested in a subject, you got contact ad lib with a community of seriously keen and well-informed scholars. You also had the opportunity to learn for yourself (and a realisation that this was up to you; if you didn’t make the effort you’d do badly), and the prospect that, in contrast to the world outside, intellectual prowess and cleverness would be nurtured and recognised.
In addition, you got a reasonable social life. If you were lucky, there would be glimmerings of social graces (useful if you came from a background where they were regarded as unimportant) and an atmosphere where you could say, to all intents and purposes, what you liked and a realisation that others would give as good as they got.
There is a strong argument that a good number of our universities should be gently allowed to die
Some of this you may still get, at least at Oxbridge and a few other elite institutions. There is also, to be fair, some advantage in later earnings (the so-called graduate premium), though this has gone down markedly in the last ten years and depends very much on your subject: medicine at Cambridge or law at Bristol are very different matters from fashion studies or journalism at some provincial ex-polytechnic.
But this aside, the atmosphere facing most modern students is pretty uninspiring. A recent Twitter thread from a final year student at the University of Edinburgh put into perspective the sorry state of many UK universities: ‘This week I was told that due to industrial action, my 10k word dissertation will probably not be marked…ever.’ This is due to disruption caused by ongoing strikes by the UCU, and the university’s response that ‘to allow us to graduate on time, work submitted during the boycott will just not be marked’. In words that ought to disconcert any vice-chancellor, he wondered what he had got out of a course that would give him a degree, but where he was saddled with upwards of £37,000 in debt and where a dissertation he had put his heart into – and taken six months to write – might stand for nothing.
Nor, at most universities, is the intellectual life much to write home about. Academics, once happy to talk to students at most times, are now too busy and post very limited surgery hours on their doors. Some institutions are still providing lectures and seminars online (an unwelcome hangover from the pandemic) giving rise to the quip that UK universities now provide the most expensive streaming service in the world. In teaching, the emphasis is not so much on open-ended discussion of ideas as on ‘learning outcomes’ and gaining ‘transferable skills’: in other words, how to profit best from the education commodity you are buying from an increasingly corporate-minded institution headed by business managers in all but name – who being paid decidedly corporate-minded salaries. And that is before you get to the manic efforts of that same management to push equity, diversity and inclusion, to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum and to make sure reading lists are properly balanced by reference to such intellectually vital matters as the sex and skin colour of the writers.
And outside of academic life? Well, you are increasingly on your own. The ‘student experience’ that institutions assiduously promote largely comes down to garish new buildings, student clubs, gruesome socials and cheap bars. Meanwhile, while the tutorial system, supposedly a copy of the Oxbridge college practice of having an academic keeping a parental eye over every student, is broken, Most academics, who are scandalously underpaid and overworked at the bottom in striking contrast to the prosperous (but largely non-teaching) management at the top, have neither the time nor the ability to arrange for it. This can have disastrous results: there have been a number of well-publicised cases where parents have relied on assurances that universities will look after the interests of their children, only to find little done, with predictable effects on physical and mental health. This has, in far too many cases, led to suicides by students abandoned by a system that should have offered them help.
There is a strong argument that many of our universities are now beyond redemption and that a good number of them should be gently allowed to die. It’s also arguable that if they do, we should replace them with a new kind of slimmed-down institution more typical of much of European practice: one limited to providing libraries, lecture-rooms and scholars for students with a desire to learn. But these could be non-residential campuses which are not claiming to provide advice or welfare, and with none of the other pretensions of the corporate behemoths that too many universities have become.
But that is for the future. At present, the best advice for aspiring 18-year-olds might seem, to some, controversial. If you look closely at a particular department in a university and really want to spend three years there, feel free. Otherwise, remember that most degrees don’t guarantee a decent life at university or a good job after it – and choose to do something else. A year abroad could well be better for you. It will certainly cost you a great deal less, even if you do fly business both ways.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/british-universities-are-beyond-redemption/
*************************************************UK: Sacked Christian primary school teacher taking legal action against council after she was dismissed for refusing to use eight-year-old pupil's trans pronouns
A Christian primary school teacher who was sacked after refusing to use a pupil's trans pronouns is taking legal action against the council for unfair dismissal and religious discrimination.
The teacher told The Telegraph that the school had helped the eight-year-old girl transition into a boy two years earlier, demanding that staff use the child's preferred male pronouns and male name.
The primary-school pupil was also allowed to use the boys' toilets and dressing rooms, according to the now dismissed teacher, which became a significant concern for her.
The teacher, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, said that she raised concerns for the eight-year-old's welfare, in line with the whistleblowing policy, but was rebuffed by the school.
The school advised the teacher in writing that they would be removing the child from her class, 'to safeguard him from any potential harm', according to the teacher's employment tribunal claim.
The Christian teacher, who is now working in a sandwich shop since her dismissal, claimed she was given a warning that acting on her 'personal beliefs' could be a 'direct breach of GDPR and an act of direct discrimination'.
She has now been forced to take legal action against Nottinghamshire County Council, which runs the school, for alleged unfair dismissal.
She added that the school put her on suspension and under disciplinary investigation for her alleged 'ongoing refusal to follow a management instruction'.
After the suspension was lifted, the teacher agreed with the school to limit her encounters with the child and to avoid using any specific pronouns when addressing the eight-year-old, should she have any contact.
But in fear of the child's welfare, the teacher once again raised her concerns, explaining that the gender transition had the risk of causing detrimental effects on the child's health and welfare.
Her concerns were struck down by the school's governors and the local authority.
The teacher claimed that she was sacked for gross misconduct after sharing details that identified the child with her lawyers while preparing for a judicial review claim against the school and the council.
She alleged that the school viewed this as an alleged confidentiality breach, reporting her to the Teacher Regulation Agency, which could result in her facing a lifelong ban from her profession.
The teacher told the Telegraph: 'Teachers are being bullied not to question trans-affirming policies when evidence shows that the actual result of the approach is to put the welfare of children at serious risk'
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting the teacher's case, told the Telegraph: 'This story exposes the confusion and untruths being embedded in primary schools which are developing into a public health crisis.
'The Department for Education must look closely at this case and take appropriate action to protect teachers, who often hold Christian beliefs on these issues, from being hounded out of the profession for opposing or even questioning transgender ideology.'
A Department for Education spokesman said: 'We do not comment on individual cases.
'The Education Secretary is working closely with the Minister for Women and Equalities to provide guidance for schools in this area, based on the overriding principle of the wellbeing and safeguarding of children.
'We expect schools to carefully consider their approach to these matters, to ensure that they take the right decision from the point of view of safeguarding children, accounting for parents' views and those of medical experts where relevant.'
Nottinghamshire County Council did not respond to the Telegraph's request for comment.
The employment tribunal is expected to hear the claim in August.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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