the delinquency that is creative writing

Main Entry: knee-jerk
Pronunciation: 'nE-"j&rk, -'j&rk
Function: adjective
: readily predictable : AUTOMATIC <knee-jerk reactions>;
also : reacting in a readily predictable way <knee-jerk liberals>

Just thought I'd get that definition out of the way before yelling about it a bit.

I am furious! No, that doesn't quite capture it. Incredulous? Closer. Those will do for the time being anyway.

There's a little town just north and a wee bit west of here called Cary. On a typical day I'd have great difficulty restraining myself from disparaging it due to its sexually ambiguous name. I mean really, why would one give an otherwise perfectly normal town a unisex human name? It just doesn't make sense to me. It's like calling a town Frankie, or Pat, or Bora (masculine in Turkish and feminine in Albanian). But I digress.

Cary was in the paper this morning. At Cary-Grove High School there's a straight-A, Chinese-American senior named Allen Lee. By all accounts an excellent student. Lee, like so many other high school students in this country, is in a creative writing class. For the latest assignment this class was given, the teacher (who has not been named) instructed the students to 'communicate ideas and emotions through writing.' Great. Sounds like the makings of a decent creative writing class assignment.

So Lee did his homework, brought it to class, and turned it in. Then, on his way home later, HE WAS ARRESTED!! Was this bastard dealing drugs out of his locker? Did this asshole beat up some poor kid from the nearby middle school? Did this moral degenerate hold up the local minority-owned convenience store with an assault rifle while reading the Qur'an and raping a 9-year-old Tibetan child (male or female)? Oh no. If only that were it. This son of a bitch emoted.

This emotional essay – while containing absolutely ZERO threats against anyone - apparently was still disturbing enough to cause the teacher to report it to a supervisor and the principal. Fine, that's what you do. But then they called the god-damned cops on this kid, who in turn CHARGED HIM with disorderly conduct, despite the fact that the essay was not published or posted for public viewing. How does that even work?? According to Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio, disorderly conduct can apply when someone's writings disturb an individual. When the fuck did it become illegal in this country to fucking disturb someone?? And in an essay that was assigned in a high school class??

I understand if this kid had been tossing threats around. When something like the massacre at Virginia Tech occurs, we can't help but try to ensure something similar doesn't happen in the future. That's normal. That's human. But lacking threats, it is so unbelievably inappropriate to involve the police and give this kid a record for writing a paper he was told to write. It's a knee-jerk reaction based on current events, and school officials owe their students more personal consideration than that.

I'm not suggesting that it should have been ignored. Certainly warning signs for a possibly dangerous mindset should be watched for. But are we so damn terrified of our kids that the possibility of just talking to them is out of the question? What about their parents? What ever became of the parent-teacher conference? There are so many other avenues that should have been taken before charging this kid with a crime, which is probably the most counter-productive of them all. We want our kids expressing themselves. We want them telling us what they're thinking and feeling. No, it's not always going to be pleasant, but it's better than kids bottling everying up, not letting us in until it's too late.

Now, because of this panicked response, future students will wonder what is acceptable to be creative about, and what will get them cuffed and booked after school. What a terrible thing to have to consider when working on an essay ...

When did we turn into a country where we arrest and charge high school students with crimes for writing emotionally-charged essays that their teachers find upsetting?

I would love to hear your comments if you have any thoughts you'd like to post. Especially from anybody working with kids or in schools.