On Wednesday afternoon, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 4247, the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act, by a vote of 242-153. In the final vote count, 238 Democrats and just 24 Republicans voted for the bill, while 8 Democrats and 145 Republicans voted against it.
Angellika Arndt, a 7-year-old Wisconsin girl who died in seclusion as a result of restraint related suffocation, 05/26/06. (photo: Family, Angellika Arndt)
Comments
I'm not talking about political theory and ideological disagreements between parties. I'm talking about the basics of morality, decency, the desire for good to triumph over evil, and the desire to intervene to protect children when adults responsible for them are torturing and abusing them.
That 145 of 169 Republicans voted against this bill tells me one thing loud and clear: Republicans don't think our children are worth being protected from abuse, torture and even death. Mighty Christian of them. They can go to hell.
I can see several reasons off the bat to vote against this, not least of which is that criminal statutes such as these have long been rightly the realm of state, not federal, law. Most states have very detailed policies and laws regarding these issues. Further, the extreme examples given are certainly slanted to sound as ominous and awful as possible... The student who hung himself is a tragedy, but it's probably libelous to imply that the staff supervising him, in effect, killed the boy. And the fact that some boy, somewhere, was mistreated doesn't necessarily justify a new federal law -- it's entirely possible that such mistreatment could be punishable under existing laws... Thick on outrage, thin on journalism.
@bobvan and any who feel the need to agree: This should not be viewed as a political issue, but regardless people have sadly become so jaded and polarized, they will take ANY subject and twist it into a political fight. This is a HUMAN issue. Before spewing hate, one should really ask themselves honestly: what if this happened to my child?
You ignore that there has been other deaths, severe trauma, and punishments inflicted on little children with special needs, some being developmentally disabled in some manner and others with physical or neurological disabilities such as cerebral palsy.
I would suggest that you have an underdeveloped sense of fairness and justice as you don't seem to think the punishment should fit the crime, so to speak. I just hope now that children EVERYWHERE will gleefully blow bubbles in their milk whenever the heck they want.
A simple base line federal law is reasonable in a country where education has been relegated to producing consumers instead of thoughtful citizens.
States Rights are important but not at the expense of caring for our children. There is a line that needs to be drawn. This law does not hurt anyone of good conscience with compassion and intelligence as their guiding principle.
Children are 100 times safer in school than in their own homes.
This paranoid need to depict schools and teachers as villains does great disservice to our common sense. Making scapegoats won't correct the problems in education, and red herrings like this lead us away from the real problems.
So, what you are saying is that disabled children in schools where many nightmares occur for days, months and even years are "safe" in these torture chambers? And that these abusive and demonic special ed teachers are "scapegoats" for blame? And that these so-called "red herrings" are a major distraction from the "real problems?"
Don't make me laugh... because that is some sick and ghetto crap.
By the way, I'm a 16 year old girl writing this stuff.
RSS feed for comments to this post.