Chris Powell: More discipline would mean less racism in schools

Harper's Weekly cover from 1898 shows a caricature of school discipline.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Cromwell, Conn., lately has been convulsing over a student's at-first anonymous public complaints about racist or abusive conduct by other students in school. 

What was the first action taken in response by the school administration and the town's Board of Education? Of course it was to hire a consultant -- an expert in "diversity, equity, and inclusion."

Cromwell's school officials may have been surprised to discover that children can be bratty and even vicious quite apart from anything related to "diversity, equity, and inclusion." Any personal characteristics can be targeted by childish brattiness and viciousness. Race is just one of many such opportunities. 

Nobody who has spent time with children needs a "diversity, equity, and inclusion" consultant to know that. But such a consultant will just help school officials look sincere.

If school officials were ever really sincere about misbehavior by students, instead of hiring a consultant they might make it a practice to have every student interviewed confidentially every month by a teacher, administrator, or guidance counselor and asked about any problems they were having in school. At these interviews students would be instructed in or reminded of the necessity of decent behavior and the penalties for misconduct.

Each meeting would be summarized in writing by the interviewer and the student would be invited to add his own comment before both acknowledged the summary in writing and the summary was placed in the student's file. Specific complaints by a student would be promptly investigated. Due process would be provided and formal judgment issued, and upon any finding of misconduct, punishment imposed on the perpetrator.

Schools in Connecticut have a miserable reputation on their response to bullying, perhaps because discipline in school has become politically incorrect, which may be the precursor to much of the racism and misconduct being complained about lately.

But the problem of bratty and vicious kids and ineffective school administration is an old one, and the General Assembly may be even more oblivious to it than Cromwell seems to be. 

After testimony from parents, teachers, psychiatrists, and others about hateful conduct among school children, the legislature's Committee on Children recently proposed legislation to appoint a "task force" to study it. Apparently the need for more discipline in school has not occurred to the committee.

Some Democratic legislators have soared beyond obliviousness on the issue. They have proposed legislation to prohibit colleges and universities from questioning applicants about any criminal records and discipline for misconduct in high school. That's the Democratic Party's approach to crime generally these days: to conceal it in support of claims that crime is down as society disintegrates. 

One hardly needs to consult an expert in "diversity, equity, and inclusion" to figure out what will happen when word reaches high school students about the law forbidding colleges and universities from questioning applicants about their misconduct. Misconduct will be liberated.

It's still early in the legislative session and craziness like the college legislation may be weeded out. But given the legislature's far-left Democratic majority, it's just as likely that the college legislation will be amended to impose fines and prison time on any admissions officer who asks an applicant if he has murdered anyone lately.

MORE HIDDEN FEES: Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has a great idea. He wants the General Assembly to pass legislation to prohibit hidden fees on event tickets, hotel and short-term rental bills, and food and beverage sale and delivery services, "fees that are tacked on at the end of a consumer's transaction."

But why stop there? For the biggest perpetrator of hidden fees in Connecticut is state government itself. 

It's not just the "public benefits" charges concealed in electricity bills -- transferring to paying customers the cost of electricity used by customers who don't pay, along with charges for government undertakings irrelevant to electrical generation.

It's also the wholesale tax imposed on fuels and the cost of state mandates on medical insurance, health care, and municipal government, costs passed along discreetly to customers and taxpayers.

Concert tickets are the least of the scam.   

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).  

Llewellyn King: Ireland's pain was America's gain

There will be the “wearing of the green” all over the world come St. Patrick’s Day on March 17. Nowhere more so than in Boston, Chicago and New York. That’s right, not even in Ireland; although they’ve gotten the hang of their own saint’s festival in recent years.

For centuries, until the Americans showed their cousins in Ireland how to party on St. Patrick’s Day, it was a somber, religious feast day.

St. Patrick was what was known as a “Romano-British” missionary, who went to Ireland in the 5th century, probably in the latter half of the century. We know this from fragments of his own writing. He settled around Armagh, in the north of Ireland, and became the first bishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland. He described the Irish as “heathen men.”

Myth tells of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. But myth has many faces in Ireland, and is part of the charm of the Irish – a charm that has affected the whole world, and stirs people far removed from that small and at times very troubled island to wear something green, drink and pay homage.

Not the least of the celebrations this year, as in recent years, will be in London, where so many of the agonies of Ireland had their genesis. The English — and I was born into the British Empire — have treated Ireland savagely down through the centuries. Oliver Cromwell, the English reformer, wrote of his incursion into Ireland, “God made them as stubble to our swords.” At the battle of Drogheda in 1641, about which Cromwell was writing, the English killed some 3,500 Irish patriots. Hard work with broad swords.

William of Orange, the Dutch Protestant ruler who became William III of England, Scotland and Ireland, invaded Ireland on July 1, 1690 to fight massed Catholic forces, led by James II, the deposed Catholic king of England. The two armies faced each other across the River Boyne, just to the north of Dublin. William won the battle, but his victory left a divide between Irish Protestants and Catholics which exists in modified form to this day.

The “wearing of the green” most likely dates from the uprising of 1798, when the Irish tried to throw off the English yoke with French help, and were soundly defeated by Gen. Charles Cornwallis, who was seething from his defeat in the American Revolution. The Irish, who were rounded up and hanged in groups of 20 a day by some of the English general’s officers, showed their defiance by wearing something green — often a shamrock in their hats. The English considered that an offense: sedition.

Cornwallis also oversaw the formal incorporation of Ireland into Britain. But to his credit, he fought with George III (remember him?) over Catholic emancipation, and for a while resigned his commission.

More horror from England was on the way — and persisted essentially until Irish independence in 1922. During the potato famine (1845-49), England refused to let relief ships with grain land in the belief that the famine was part of a natural order, as laid out by the philosopher Thomas Robert Malthus. One million people died as potatoes were their only sustenance.

In this case Ireland’s pain was America’s gain. Hundreds of thousands of Irish fled starvation for a new life in America. This diaspora changed Ireland and America, forever. It is how 50 million Americans claim Irish ancestry.

The Irish in America began to celebrate the national saint of their motherland in their new land — and so was born the St. Patrick’s Day joyous celebration.

To my mind, the final Irish reprisal against England is not the world recognition but that Irish writers, writing in English, not the Irish language, have had such an incalculable impact on English literature. To take a few names at random Beckett, Behan, Goldsmith, Joyce, Shaw, Synge, Swift, Wilde and Yeats.

In Ireland, there is an endless flow of wonderful language. The Irish will never say “yes” or “no” when they can give you a sentence with a flourish, which makes the mundane poetic.

Once in Dingle, my wife asked a waiter: “Is the fish fresh?”

He answered, “If it were any fresher, it would be swimming, and you wouldn’t want that would you?”

Also in Dingle, when I asked an elderly man whether the pub he was sitting outside of was open, he replied, “He would hardly be open now.”

The English occupied their land, but the Irish occupied their language and added to it with their genius. Erin go bragh!

Llewellyn King is a long-time publisher, columnist and international business consultant. This first ran on InsideSources.