A Terrifying Way to Discipline Children (New York Times)

When we routinely cage adults for trivial matters like owning bits of outlawed plants, when we routinely use chemical and electrical torture devices on people who dare to question police authority, how can we act surprised when this brutality trickles down to how we treat our children?

Legend has is that Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization, and he replied that it would be a good idea. It still would be. No society that treats children like this can lay claim be being civilized.

A Terrifying Way to Discipline Children

Among the recent instances that have attracted attention: Children in Middletown, Conn., told their parents that there was a “scream room” in their school where they could hear other children who had been locked away; last December, Sandra Baker of Harrodsburg, Ky., found her fourth-grade son, Christopher, who had misbehaved, stuffed inside a duffel bag, its drawstrings pulled tight, and left outside his classroom. He was “thrown in the hall like trash,” she told me. And in April, Corey Foster, a 16-year-old with learning disabilities, died on a school basketball court in Yonkers, N.Y., as four staff members restrained him following a confrontation during a game. The medical examiner ruled early last month that the death was from cardiac arrest resulting from the student’s having an enlarged heart, and no charges were filed.