Pubdate: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 Source: Globe and Mail (Canada) Copyright: 2007, The Globe and Mail Company Contact: http://www.globeandmail.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168 Cited: Wawota Parkland School http://www.cornerstonesd.ca/~wawota/ Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Kieran+King Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Marijuana - Canada) MARIJUANA AND THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY When a 15-year-old Saskatchewan boy expressed doubts to his friends that marijuana is as harmful as his high school portrayed it to be, the school responded with a memorable lesson: Being skeptical of authority can be dangerous. The boy was suspended, the RCMP were called in and at one point the boy's entire school was locked down. The events were a terrific real-life example of the power of questions to unsettle. Something more important than the risks of marijuana is at stake here. Schools in a democracy need to teach democratic values. Anything they teach about - sex education, the dangers of drugs, even democracy itself - should fit within the democratic framework. Schools are not doing that if they're trying to snuff out the spirit of inquiry. This was not a case of a teenager who wishes merely to disrupt, and there is no evidence that he was trying to sell drugs. Kieran King seems to have come by his doubts honestly. Nineteen years ago, his mother's husband and a daughter were killed by a drunk driver. Skeptical about the classroom lesson on the dangers of cannabis, he began looking at the risks of alcohol and tobacco, and told his peers that cannabis was the least dangerous of the three. A fellow student at Wawota Parkland School in Wawota, Sask., complained to principal Susan Wilson, who called Kieran's mother and expressed concern that he was advocating drug use. She threatened to call the police if it happened again. At this point Kieran took a provocative step. With the help of the Saskatchewan Marijuana Party, he planned an 11 a.m. walkout by the students in support of free speech. A civil-liberties group would have been a better choice; the presence of the pro-marijuana party might have made people wonder if he was more interested in the drug than in free speech. But while Wawota had the right to punish students who walked out, its pre-emptive approach was heavy-handed. It first tried to bar the doors, and when Kieran and a handful of others slipped out, it ordered the school locked down and called in the RCMP. It asked the RCMP to help it assess the threat posed by Kieran to the student body. This is ridiculous stuff. Wawota forgot its pedagogical purpose; it acted the way a tyranny acts when challenged. While it has a duty to protect its students, they do not seem to have been at any risk. Lockdowns, a useful post-Columbine innovation in schools, are excessive when applied to 15-year-olds trying to express a point of view in a safe and peaceful way. Violating students' rights is a poor way to teach them respect for rules. The school was not finished. It suspended Kieran and his brother for three days, a suspension that cost Kieran a chance to write the early exams he had arranged for. (He was finishing the school year early to head to study Mandarin in China.) The zeros he received on his exams bring his marks down from A's to D's. The penalty is too harsh for the offence. A school that believes in a student's right to ask honestly held questions would have addressed those questions. The classroom session that followed might have been far more penetrating and memorable than the initial lesson on drugs the students had received. Instead, Wawota wound up inadvertently providing its students with a lesson in the risks of dissent. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake