What is Correct in the School Environment?

 Analysis 1: Bullying and School Safety

            There are many aspects and viewpoints to the question, “What is correct in the school environment?”.  One very big aspect of the school environment, that will be analyzed today, is bullying and overall school safety.  These characteristics of the school environment have always been there, but in the past 20 years or so, and especially these past few years, have become big topics of concern and exploration.

            In this article, “Bullying and Anti-Bullying Legislature” (http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/bullying.html), Ken (Kenneth) Trump, analyzes bullying and school safety.  His purpose was to inform the general public, and specifically parents with a child in school, about what is considered bullying, how that affects school safety and students, official studies on the subject, and how to prevent bullying and how to keep schools safe (main idea).  I know this piece is to inform for many reasons, and for connotation throughout the piece.  For example, on the second page, he uses information from the legislation.  This lets me know that he is not trying to force any opinion, bias, or slant on the readers, because the Legislation only presents fact, so that the people can form their own opinions on the subject, that is how our government works.  He states, a number of state legislatures have proposed laws requiring schools to have anti-bullying policies.”.  Also, he uses quotes from various researches and credible conductors of those researches, and in science, the point of a study or an experiment is to make a conclusion based on fact from the studies.  In other words, there is no bias in the studies, therefore informing the audience on the subject.  Some places he got studies from are “The Menninger Clinic”, in Houston, and from “Dr. Ronald Pitner, Ph.D. at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri”.  Now, since he has these official sources of information, that are each very credible, I can conclude that all of this information is accurate, quality information.  This conclusion can be reached through comparison with information from a very prestigious website, the White House website.  On this website, linkhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/03/10/president-obama-first-lady-address-bullying, there is a video of the President and the First Lady, making a presentation on bullying, and the information makes a very close match in the two sources.  Since the information in both sources match, it leads me to believe that Ken Trump’s Article and the website it is on itself, is a reliable source.  Another reason I believe that it is reliable is because it is a “.org” website, that gives the option of being contacted by citizens, puts themselves in the media, gives a background of their work, and gives a biography of the author.   All of these aspects of the website show that they rely on their author, and shows his credibility, as well as shows that they want to get their purpose and information out to the public.  If this was an unreliable source, they would not want to let their information go public, just simply because it is not real or reliable.  After analyzing and coming to the conclusion that this is a reliable source, I can determine Ken’s viewpoint.  I believe his viewpoint is that bullying is a big problem in the school environment, and that it affects the student’s safety in school, which is incorrect for the school environment, and it needs to be stopped.  I say this because in the article it says “We believe that bullying to a serious issue and worthy of reasonable attention and action.”, and “We believe that bullying should be, and typically already is, addressed in school student behavior codes.”, which leads me to believe that if he is going to fix behavior codes, then it should be done to stop bullying, because it is such a serious issue, that is worthy of attention.  Now, this opinion may be biased, to slant the readers thinking, and make us as the readers think that bullying is a very big problem as well, and to join his side of the argument.  But the conflicting evidence of the article degrades the emphasis of the bias.  It does this because in the article it says “bullying has been focused upon to a point which some believe it has become overkill”, and “When discussing ‘bullying’, the focus should be on the inappropriate behaviors rather than a generic, undefined label of ‘bullying’”, because “an over-emphasis on ‘bullying’ is, in our opinion, an extreme and inappropriate approach to school safety.”.  These pieces of text evidence tell me that if the problem is continually being referred to as “bullying”, rather than separating the categories of bullying, confusion could start to spread among the kids, and there would be no line separating good and bad behaviors, therefore making the term “bullying”, and “bullying” itself, to become over kill.  So, this conflicting evidence lowers the emphasis of his bias and intent of creating slant, but based on the other evidence of the text, I know that he still believes strongly that “bullying is a serious issue worthy of reasonable attention, awareness, and action.

Analysis 2: Discrimination in the School Environment

            Another huge aspect of the question, “What is correct in the school environment?” that will be analyzed today are the terms of racial discrimination in the school environment.  By terms of racial discrimination, I mean what is considered racial discrimination, and how it commonly transpires in school environments, and all environments.

            In the article “Racial Discrimination / Hostile Environment”, from http://www.maricopa.edu/legal/dp/inbrief/hostilenviron.htm, the Maricopa Community Colleges Legal Services Department analyzes a case of alleged Racial Discrimination that created a “hostile” school environment.  In this article, a high school, McClintock High School, in Tempe, Arizona, assigns freshman to read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, and “A Rose for Emily” in the freshman English class.  But, both of these books contained “repeated use of what were alleged to be ‘profane, insulting and racially derogatory’ terms.”, according to the mother of an African-American daughter that attended McClintock High.  She claimed that because of the racist evidence in the books and the discussions following the assignments, that her daughter was a “victim of racial slurs by white classmates, and that insults had been scrawled about the school walls.”.  She took this case to court and described it as a violation of the 14^th amendment and that the materials were inappropriate for the school environment.  I believe that The Maricopa Community Colleges Legal Services Department wrote this article to inform the people of the United States that the line that determines discrimination can be and is very strict.  There is some connotation in the article that supports my hypothesis about the purpose of this piece.  This connotation is the word “however”, in the context of this sentence, “When a local high school required that its students read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, however, the result was a lawsuit alleging hostile environment racial discrimination.”.  This allegedly led to Kathy Monteiro’s daughter experiencing “psychological injuries and lost educational opportunities” which she stated that it “violated both the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”.  This demonstrates the thin line that separates discrimination and non discrimination because “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is an otherwise classic book, but if it is interpreted the wrong way, it can be taken as racial discriminating, even as a school assignment.  Also, the behavior in the book can be transferred into real life behavior, and the slurs could be passed around the school easily as well.  So this “however” leads me to believe that even though this interpretation is unlikely, it can still be taken the wrong way, therefore demonstrating the thin line that determines discrimination.  Based on the purpose and main idea of this article, I can determine the author’s viewpoint.  I believe that the Maricopa Community Colleges Legal Services Department’s viewpoint in writing this article is that discrimination can be and is a big issue, and that people need to watch what they say, do, write, etc. in order to minimize racial, and all types of discrimination.  I say this is their view point because in the article it said “following discussions of the assigned readings, her daughter had been the victim of racial slurs by white classmates, and that insults had been scrawled about the school walls”, and that “white students harassed Ms. Monteiro’s daughter”.  I say this supports their viewpoint because the actions of spreading racial slurs, writing insults on walls, and harassing, are all related to speaking, writing, and making irresponsible actions.  All of these aspects led to this law suit of discrimination in the school place, that otherwise could have potentially never happened, therefore adding on to the importance of decreasing racial discrimination and creating a safer, more correct school environment, and overall living environment for all people, because racial slurs affect all people as well.  This directly supports the hypothesized author’s viewpoint.  Since this is such a huge topic of great importance, I had to pick a good source with credible, accurate information.  For this reason, I chose a .edu website, which only educational organizations can own, therefore making the information accurate.  This makes the information accurate because an educational system wants you to join their system, therefore they need to present accurate, quality information to gain your full trust.  In this case, they presented pure fact, and quotes from this Monteiro vs. Tempe Union High School District to portray their policies on Racial Discrimination, which was published by their legal services department.  This shows that they want to provide the best education possible through honesty and fact, which adds to their credibility.  Since this whole article was based on facts and quotes from this case and trial, I can conclude that there is no bias, but there may be intent of creating slant in the reader’s minds, because they portrayed themselves and their policies through fact to intrigue scholars.  Finally, I can determine that this information is accurate because it is all presented in logical order, and if anyone searches “Monteiro vs. Tempe Union High School District” on the internet, there are multiple web pages that describe the same events in this article.  So overall, this article is very reliable and has great intent of lowering racial discrimination in the school environment, and all environments.