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Stuck In Traffic
"Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories"
Issue #20 - November, 1996
Contents:
Dancing, Knives, and Kisses:
Crazy things happen when schools rely on law enforcement agencies
instead of parents.
The War Against Pond Scum
A true story about how a good person was cheated just because he
wasn't native to the United States.
Why Worry About The Millennium?
Is Fox Television's new show, The Millennium just a more intense
version of the X-Files?
===================================
Current Events
Dancing, Knives, and Kisses
Item: A local county school board has forbidden Physical Education
teachers from teaching a popular dance, "The Macarena," in
government schools because it is "too suggestive."
Item: A little girl enrolled in a government elementary school
brings a steak knife to school in her lunch box. Not because she
is mad and wants to hurt anyone, but because she wants to use it
to cut up her lunch. When her teacher discovers the little girl
cutting up her lunch with a steak knife she is taken to the
principal's office, expelled from school, and the school files
police charges against her for bringing a dangerous weapon to
school. The little girl, an honors student, misses weeks from
school and is forced to appear in front of a county judge and the
local school board to answer for her crimes. She has to beg to be
allowed to return to school. She has to promise never to bring
another dangerous weapon to school again.
Item: A little boy enrolled in a government elementary school
kisses a little girl, one of his classmates, on the cheek during a
classroom party. His teacher publicly humiliates the child in
front of the class, yelling at him. The little boy is marched to
the principal's office. His parents are called. The little boy
is threatened with expulsion from school. Harassment charges are
filed against him. And perhaps most importantly to this little
boy, he is denied participation from his class party. There have
been no reports as to whether the little girl objected.
The only word I can think of to describe these events is hysteria.
And they are becoming more and more the norm in government
education.
Media institutions across the country have jumped on these stories
and waged a campaign of feigned indignation that these things
could have happened. And it has generated a groundswell of public
sympathy for the child victims of this hysteria. Callers to local
talk show have called for the teachers' resignation. Editorial
writers have called these events poor judgement. Politicians,
have used these events to score points with voters. It is an
election season after all.
The outrage is justified of course. Any reasonable person can see
that in each of these incidents, more harm than good is being done
to the child victims of these school policies.
These incidents are not isolated or unrelated. They are
reflections of some fundamental problems in the mind set of
government education and deserve to be analyzed in detail.
The easiest of these incidents to dissect is the banning of "The
Macarena" from government schools. There are two aspects of
teaching "Physical Education" to school age children. First there
is the lesson that exercise is good for you and can be enjoyable.
Even painful strenuous exercise is good for the body and can be
fun.. "No pain, no gain" and all that. This is not very
controversial. But the other aspect of "physical education" is
that we can express ourselves through movement, dance, and other
sorts of physical activities. Not only is exercise good for the
body, it can be good for the soul. Learning balance and grace and
rhythm is just as beneficial as strength and speed and endurance.
And nothing teaches these things better than dancing. But
expression is impossible without interpretation and that's where
the controversies arise. A dance may be interpreted as a
beautiful expression through movement by some and interpreted as
lewd and crude by others. It is the school boards' job to balance
the interests and interpretations of the parents. By banning "the
Macarena" from government schools' P.E. classes, the school
boards are abdicating their responsibility to balance the
interests of all the parents and are unrealistically attempting to
insulate children from learning about the expressive aspect of
physical education.
In the same spirit, one can't mature into an adult without
learning how to use a sharp knife safely. A proper parent teaches
children at an early age that sharp knives are not toys, but tools
that must be carefully handled. The parent first teaches the
child how to hold a knife safely. How to carry a knife so that if
the child trips or has an accident, they won't poke out an eye or
cut themselves. Then as the child develops a mastery of these
basic skills, the parent moves on to teaching the child how to
safely and properly use knives without causing danger to
themselves or others. Any parent that tries to insulate their
children from ever coming into contact with a sharp knife is out
of touch with reality and denying their child an important lesson.
But it is also true that these lessons have to be closely
monitored by a caring adult during the early stages. And so it is
not unreasonable for a school to forbid children from bringing
sharp knives to school. Lunchtime in even the most disciplined
government schools are wildly chaotic and unstructured. Teachers
simply can't keep an eye on so many kids at one time, especially
if they are going to get any lunch for themselves. But to expel a
child from school for this simple rule infraction and to charge
her with "possession of a dangerous weapon," and to publicly
humiliate her in front of the local school board for simply
exercising one of life's basic skills that she apparently had
successfully learned, is nothing short of cruelty.
But the challenges associated with learning to use a knife are
nothing compared to the difficulty of teaching children about the
appropriateness of public displays of affection. When is it O.K.
for a boy to kiss a girl? It's a very slippery concept because
the situations are highly dependent on the context of the
situation and the cultural background of the people involved. You
can't write down a set of rules for these sorts of interactions
because they go far beyond mere etiquette. At some level,
children have to absorb these lessons by watching the adults
around them and learning by example about what behaviors are
appropriate in different situations. They have to learn through
trial and error how to recognize when a simple act of affection
will be welcomed by the recipient and when it won't. Mistakes are
going to happen. And learning how to deal with those mistakes and
repair the damage is just as much a part of growing up as anything
else. If the little boy in questions kisses a girl when she
doesn't welcome it, then he needs to learn to communicate that his
intentions were sincere if misguided. Likewise, growing children
need to learn how to avoid "sending the wrong signals" and to
handle unwanted advances when they occur. Yes, it was probably
inappropriate for such a young boy to kiss his classmate in that
particular situation. But by punishing that little boy so
severely for kissing his classmate on the cheek, the government
school runs the risk of frightening the little boy from ever
taking a chance at affection again and stunting his emotional
growth, denying him one of life's most important lessons.
The bottom line is that government schools can't insulate children
from the real world and they shouldn't try. Can you expect that
children will never learn that dancing can "be suggestive"? Can
you expect children to grow up without ever learning to use a
sharp knife? Can you expect people not to kiss each other? Nope.
No way. Not on your life.
The fundamental problem with these events is that the heavy hand
of the state is inappropriately being used to try to teach kids
these lessons. The state, even in the form of local county
government, is simply not delicate enough to deal with these
situations. It is too brutal. The state is set up to deal with
criminals, not to raise children. The state can neither prevent
children from learning about the expressive powers of their bodies
nor teach them the difference between beautiful and lewd dancing.
The state can neither prevent children from coming into contact
from sharp knives nor teach them how to use one properly. They
state can neither prevent children from learning about personal
relationships and affection nor teach them the social rules
governing these relationships. These lessons can and must be
taught by parents and other caring adults.
It is a grave mistake for government schools to be turning to the
state to teach these lessons to children instead of turning to the
parents.
==================================
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already
earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord would suffice." - Mark Twain
==================================
True Story
The War Against Pond Scum
Talk about a slap in the face. You never think much about crime
and dishonesty and fraud until you become a victim of it. You
_say_ you are against crime. You _say_ you are sympathetic to the
plights of the victims of crime. You vote for the politicians
that convince you that they are the most "tough on crime." But it
never quite sinks in. You never quite believe that there are
people in this world laying in wait to prey on others until you
see it first hand.
The shocking revelation to me was that these people who would take
advantage of others aren't necessarily just wild-eyed, violent
criminals like those you see on TV cop shows. They are just petty
frauds. Scam artists. Again. Intellectually I was aware of
these folks but having never really been victimized by that sort,
it's hard to become emotionally aware of the problem.
But I became aware of a petty fraud taking advantage of someone a
few weeks ago and it really opened my eyes to how low some people
can really sink.
In the office where I work there is a oriental fellow, I'll call
him Mike just to protect his privacy. The area I work in has lots
of people and I've never had the opportunity to work with Mike and
I can't say I know him personally. In fact I'm not even sure
where he is from originally. English is definitely not his
primary language. He knows English well enough to get by at work,
but he clearly struggles with it. And although he's not "fresh
off the boat" by any means, I discovered that he just doesn't know
that much about American culture and how things are done in the
United States.
The shocking thing I discovered is that there are people just
waiting to take advantage of people like Mike. OK. Call me
naive. Like I said, intellectually I knew there were people like
that. But it wasn't until I heard about a recent experience that
Mike had that it really sunk in with me.
I had stopped by Mike's office to talk to his officemate, Jay,
about a technical problem but when I got there, the two of them
were discussing Mike's legal options and I got drawn into the
story.
It seems that Mike had been doing some moving over the previous
weekend and had gone to rent a truck from one of the local truck
rental agencies. The typical deal from one of these agencies, in
my area at least, is that you can rent a small moving truck for an
afternoon for about 20 or 30 dollars. Which was about the price
that Mike had been quoted when he showed up at the rental place to
rent a truck for the day. However, the so-called "person" (I
think of him more like pond scum) had told Mike that he had to put
down a deposit on the truck in the neighborhood of $100.00
dollars. Now I have never had to do this when renting a truck but
I suppose it's not totally out of the question. But what this
person did was go ahead and charge Mike's credit card for both the
rental fee and the "deposit." Furthermore, the truck that Mike was
given had no gas in it and he had to fill up the gas tank as soon
as he left the rental place. When Mike returned the truck, the
rental place person directed Mike to the gas station next door to
fill up the tank before coming into the rental place. Mike,
thinking this was standard practice paid for the tank of gas
thinking he would get reimbursed for the gas. But as it turned
out the rental place owner informed Mike that the rules were that
you had to return the truck with a full tank of gas.
Not being as proficient in English as he would like, Mike had a
difficult time explaining to the owner that the truck's tank was
not full when he received the truck. Or at least the rental place
owner pretended he didn't understand what Mike was saying.
But it gets worse. No where in Mike's paperwork for the rental
transaction does it show that the "deposit" was credited back to
his credit card account. Apparently that's what had started the
whole discussion. Mike had asked Jay about how rental
transactions were supposed to be handled. From what he could
tell, his $30 rental had cost him close to $150 dollars by the
time he added up the "deposit", the rental fee, and the full gas
tank.
Well, this is insane of course. And Mike had a pretty good idea
that he had been cheated but he wasn't sure just how it had
happened and he most certainly wasn't sure how to handle the
situation.
So we explained to him that a "deposit" is something you get back
when you return the equipment in the same condition that you got
it. Normally, rental places don't even charge it to your credit
card. They just take your credit card number, but they don't
charge the deposit to your account unless they re actually going
to collect it. We can only guess why the rental place person had
charged the account that $100.00 deposit. And the other thing we
explained to Mike was that the standard practice when renting
vehicles is that you are required to pay for your own gas. But
you are supposed to receive a full tank of gas when you receive
the truck and you return it with a full tank of gas. That way you
only pay for the gas you use. Clearly, the rental company had
managed to get Mike to pay for a tank of gas that he hadn't used.
Mike has been given the shaft. Pure and simple. And I feel
certain that it was for no other reason than the fact that Mike's
English was less than perfect, he simply didn't know what to
expect in business around here, and he's very polite and
non-confrontational.
But Mike's biggest surprise in the whole affair came when we
started to tell him what to do about it. We told him that the
first thing he needed to do was call his credit card company and
tell them not to pay the disputed bill. We explained that he
would then need to write a letter to the credit card company
explaining the transaction in detail and ask them to resolve the
dispute. Mike was amazed. He had no idea that this is one of the
functions of a credit card company. He had no idea that this was
even an option to him. Then we told him he needs to make 2 copies
of the letter and all the paperwork and send copies to both the
rental company and the Attorney General's office? The Attorney
General? Mike didn't even know that he could report these folks
for fraud. Or I suppose he knew, but he simply had no idea how to
go about pursuing legal action.
So anyway, we helped him look up the Attorney General's office in
the phone book so he could get the address of where to send the
complaint. And we told him what to say in the letter to the
credit card company and stuff like that. I'm not sure that we got
it all exactly right, But we gave him a good start.
The sad thing, as I told him, was that even if he got his deposit
back and got reimbursed for the gas. It would cost him much more
that than his loss simply in the time he would be spending on the
phone and writing letters.
But we urged him to do it anyway. That's the only way to see that
justice is done. That's the only way to make sure that scum like
that rental place owner won't cheat someone else in the future.
Mike said he would.
I know good and well that if I had rented a truck from the same
man, I wouldn't have had the problem. Since I could communicate
in English and I had obviously grown up in the United States, he
knew that I knew what to expect. I guess one of the advantages of
being a native born American is that you aren't quite as easy a
target for petty thieves.
The whole incident made me want to go volunteer in some sort of
organization. Some organization that would help teach newcomers
to the country how things are done in the United States. Some
organization that could tell immigrants where to go for help, how
to report crimes and fraud to government agencies, and that sort
of thing.
Even though I wasn't directly involved in the incident, it made me
want to wage a holy war against the pond scum
==================================
L'Ouverture
The Black Marketplace of Ideas
P.O.Box 8565, Atlanta, Georgia, 30306
e-mail: cudjoe@leveller.org (404) 572-9141
Sample issue: $2
==================================
Cultural Phenomena
Why Worry About The Millenium
I first heard about Fox Television's new show, "Millennium" at the
1996 World Science Fiction convention. Planes were flying
overhead carrying long banners that had nothing but the name of
the show on them. No one knew much of anything about the show
except that it was created by Chris Carter, the same man that
brought us the X-Files. But that was enough to get people
interested. Since the X-Files is one of the most popular shows on
TV, having spawned a whole genre of copycat television shows on
other networks, people wondered what Carter was going to do to
stay ahead of the pack.
As the October 26th premiere drew nearer more information started
coming out about the show. Lance Henrikson was the lead
character, playing Frank Black, an ex-FBI agent whose ability to
track down serial killers is helped by his paranormal "gift" of
being able to see inside the mind of the killer and see what the
killer sees. While most science fiction fans were pleased with
the choice of Henrikson, there were many concerns that Millennium
was going to be just another X-Files show turned up a notch.
And in some sense the criticism is accurate. The lead character
is essentially a cop/detective. He no longer works for the FBI,
but is employed by a shadowy organization called The Millennium
Group. His job is to solve murders and other crimes that the
normal police aren't able to solve, generally because the crime is
tinged by some element of the paranormal or the unknown.
But Millennium turns loose of the X-Files moorings of science and
rationality and takes a flying leap into the unknown. In
Millennium, there is no Dana Scully to play the calm,
dispassionate voice of science in opposition to Fox Mulder's
theories of paranormal activity and government cover-ups.
The premise of Millennium is that the end of the world is coming,
as foretold by ancient prohecies. Maybe not the literal end of
the world but the end as we all know it. And as part of the
coming Millennium, evil forces are being unleashed on the world,
causing fear and chaos. These forces manifest themselves by
taking over people, turning them into evil minded killers
hell-bent on fulfilling the evil prohesy. So far these evil
forces haven't been explained in any more detail than that. Most
of the world in the show is unaware that of any connection between
the crazy serial killers that are slowly becoming more and more
common. Frank Black, even though he has had more than his fair
share of encounters with "the mind of the killer" is himself
unsure of just what's going on. When asked by a local policeman
if he "really believes" in all that prophecy stuff, simply
replies, "there are those of us who can't just stand by and let
this happen." The point being whether or not the evil being
unleashed on the world is due to the fulfillment of prohesy or
just a product of the crazy times we live in, they have to do
something about it.
So unlike the X-Files, where the supernatural and the paranormal
is constantly hinted at, but always remains frustratingly just
around the corner. In the world of Millennium, the supernatural
is a given, even if not well understood or believed in by all.
One worries that without the evil force in the world remaining
unknown and elusive, it would destabilize the show, but it
doesn't. It actually lends itself to some continuity between
episodes. Instead of chasing a different paranormal phenomena
each week, the way Mulder and Scully do on the X-Files, Frank
Black is on an endless quest to foil the same evil force.
And evil it is. True to form, Fox Television is pushing the
boundaries of network television to the limits. Each episode
warns viewers of its violent and disturbing content. The warning
are well justified. Each episode, Frank ventures from his perfect
wife and child, in their perfect suburban home into the seedy side
of the world, where the chaos and the evil take the firmest hold.
We see strip joints and drug deals. Gang violence and cold
blooded murder. But it goes beyond the normal tough side of town
stuff. Frank Blacks psychic flashes of insight cause him to see
the world as the deranged killers see the world, full of blood
drenched walls and grotesque half-human figures.
And Millennium manages to show us violence in an intense personal
way without any of the traditional trappings of violence that
censors complain about. Yes you see lots of blood. You see
victims being attacked through Frank's flashes. But they are so
brief and shadowy that you can't say you actually saw the
violence, Just given an impression of it.
But the impressions aren't all. In the premier episode, Frank and
a fellow detective rescue a man that has been buried underground
in a coffin with his eyes and mouth surgically sewn shut while his
deranged attacker is deciding whether to kill him or not. (This
particular killer has a personal mission of ridding the world of
aids victims. So he captures likely suspects and buries them
underground while he has their blood tested.) The scene where this
man is rescued from his tomb is the most intense scene of horror
I've ever seen on television and yet, it's difficult to claim that
it's "violent." Disturbing? Yes. A victim of violence? Yes. Is
the scene violent? Wellllllll, not really.
It seems as if one of the basic hooks built into Millennium is to
see just how intense a show they can create and still remain on
network TV.
But Millennium is more that just a gimmick. It's more than Chris
Carter trying to see how much he can get away with. If that were
the only thing carrying the show, it wouldn't even be worth
mentioning.
The thing that sets Millennium apart from the X-Files, and the
thing that makes Millennium worth watching is that Frank Black has
a personal interest in fighting the evil forces in the world.
While the recent seasons of X-files have given more and more air
time to Fox Mulder's personal motivations, those motivations are
usually secondary to the main plot line. And whereas in the
X-File, the paranormal forces and the government spooks are always
trying to stay hidden, in Millennium, the evil forces are out to
get Frank and most importantly, it is out to get Frank's wife
Catherine (played by Megan Gallagher) and his daughter (played by
Brittany Tiplady). Periodically Frank receives in the mail
polaroids of his family taken by an unknown stalker, as if the
evil forces are threatening Frank, telling him not to get too
close. And so the game between good and evil begins.
================================
Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating
current events, examining cultural phenomena, and relating true
stories.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an
opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the
personal to the global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of
the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now occurring,
the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible
situations, but the best possible situation you could be in.
After all, it's exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so
much trouble to induce...."
Submissions
Submissions to Stuck In Traffic are always welcome. If you have
something on your mind or a personal story you'd like to share,
please do. You don't have to be a great writer to be published
here, just sincere.
Contact Information
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy
Powers preferably via E-mail (powers@interpath.com) or by mail
(2012 Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
Copyright Notice
Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy
Powers who reserves all rights. Individual articles are
copyrighted by their respective authors. Unsigned articles are
authored by Calvin Stacy Powers. Permission is granted to
redistribute and republish Stuck In Traffic for noncommercial
purposes as long as it is redistributed as a whole, in its
entirety, including this copyright notice. For permission to
republish an individual article, contact the author.
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<URL:http://www.eff.org/goldkey.html>
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