As various school districts throughout Arkansas report trouble on campus, there's no need for panic. Or even for the flurry of course corrections that is always proposed when an old challenge is presented as a new one. While the just-as-old solution is ignored.
Leave it to the Holy Mother Church to have seen through all this fuss-and-feathers long ago; the Church even devised a name for the principle that should guide us all safely through to the light of day after this month's trumped-up election. The church named it Subsidiarity, which is a 25-cent word for leaving every problem to the smallest unit capable of handling it.
In this case, Subsidiarity means trusting every school district, its administrators and teachers alike, to deal with scattered reports of trouble in the schools. And all should turn out well once again. An election like this month's will always leave the winners elated and the losers dejected. That isn't news, it's just par for the political course.
But by the time this anti-climactic climax is revealed, a lot of stormy weather has to be navigated, and even some violence dispelled. Without discounting the real pain of any all too real victims, let us take comfort in the knowledge that there are more than ample resources available to handle these challenges. There are, in ascending order, good classroom teachers, school safety officers, the local police, and the National Guard, and finally the entire armed forces of the United States of America, so there's no need to worry about any lack of good people to handle the bad ones.
And yet adolescents of all ages, their hormones out of control, will insist on raging. As is only fitting. For what would this world be if all of us acted like seasoned, mature adults? Answer: The world would be deprived of what is today termed "age-appropriate behavior." Let the old folks be old, the young and all in between take it in stride.
Last week, the epicenter of the state's school troubles was poor Star City in Lincoln County, where a couple of students had been taken out of class and arrested, accused of things like third-degree battery, disorderly conduct, and terroristic threatening. Tyniquia Brown, a senior at Star City High, reported: "First they were going around saying 'Trump train' and then they started saying we need to leave if we had a problem with our president." So what? Since when have schoolboy taunts become some kind of deep psychological problem? Probably since school psychologists have become invested in finding new names for old behaviors.
Of the 60 or so school districts in this small, wonderfully interconnected state, your daily Democrat-Gazette could find few besides Star City's to experience anything more troublesome than the usual gossip on Facebook that night be called harassment. And even that might be a stretch.
At dear old Conway High, all the buzz prompted Principal Jason Lawrence to flip on the public-address system to say a few assuring words: "I have debated whether or not I should get on and say anything about this election, but I now feel that I need to make a statement in order to protect our school, our time and our education. This week half of America is upset, confused, worried and scared. The other half is excited, optimistic and proud. One hundred percent of us are on this rock together." Amen, God bless America and well said.
Over in Fayetteville's school district, Superintendent Matthew Wendt toted up a grand total of eight "inappropriate remarks" made by students in all the district's secondary schools since last Tuesday. One kid wore a Trump shirt to school, which led to a face-off with others of the opposite persuasion, all of which sounds like much ado about little or nothing.
In the Bauxite School District, some students were said to be making jokes about those in the racial minority, according to a spokesperson for the district, "with regard to things the president-elect said--with regards to deporting people. The situation was handled swiftly, and we're doing our best to make sure nothing happens again."
Most of the state's school districts have no specific policy about how teachers and staff should discuss the election or present their views about it. Which is just as well. Why provide troublemakers with a target to tear apart clause by clause and nitpick every word? Silence can be golden in these circumstances. Why not just avoid arguments instead of provoking them?
Meanwhile, Halloween came a little early in one district where a Trump mask showed up on a kid in school, as if that were something strange when it was really one more part of the pageantry. Could we all just settle down now and let the grand show continue? For the curtain's about to go up again, there's no admission charge, and anything still goes.
Editorial on 11/17/2016