by JG Vibes

There has been an unfortunate trend developing in the entire western world, where the public school system is becoming integrated with the growing police state.  Police are being posted up in schools, students are being arrested, drug dog searches and random shakedowns are now commonplace.

Just this past week a 13-year-old Canadian boy was arrested after posting a video of two girls fighting off of school grounds.

According to The Star:

“A Mississauga mother said her 13-year-old son is scarred for life after he was arrested at his middle school and brought to a police station in handcuffs over a video he posted to Facebook.  The Tomken Road Middle School student is alleged to have recorded a cellphone video of a scrap between two female classmates off school property on Dec. 17 and then posted it to his online profile.  The boy’s mother said her son was called to the school’s office on Dec. 19, where he was arrested by police, handcuffed and taken from the building to a police cruiser as other students looked on.”

“How is an adult or an educator going to justify this situation — traumatizing a child and handcuffing him? Who’s the bigger bully?” the mother said.

The video has since been taken down but The Star was able to give a description of what it contained:

“In the video, viewed by the Star, two girls can be seen arguing as a small group, including the filmmaker, approaches.  As the two trade insults, one girl walks away before the second girl grabs her by her lime green backpack, hurling her to the pavement. As the girl on the ground retaliates with a kick, the second girl grabs her by her ankle and drags her a short distance before nearly straddling her and unleashing a barrage of no less than eight punches to the face. As the punches connect, several people can be heard laughing.”

Although this seemed to be a violent exchange of mutual teenage angst and stupidity, one of the girls is being charged with assault, but has still not been treated with the same sort of severity as the boy who filmed it.  The reason why he is being treated so harshly is because of the “zero tolerance” culture that has developed around “cyber bullying”.  While this is definetly an issue, it is no reason to implement online censorship, and the fact that children are bullying each other says more about the forced environment of public schools, not children’s ability to say and do as they wish online.