ÿ ================================================================= 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. 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