{"id":477,"date":"2004-05-20T21:33:45","date_gmt":"2004-05-20T21:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=477"},"modified":"2004-05-20T21:33:45","modified_gmt":"2004-05-20T21:33:45","slug":"seen_but_not_he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=477","title":{"rendered":"Seen But Not Heard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American public school system has always excelled at inculcating a herd mentality in the country’s youth. Students are taught to value conformity in everything from wardrobe choices to musical tastes. But in this post-Columbine, post 9\/11 Bizarro world we inhabit, a lot of school administrators are starting to act like petty, anti-intellectual tyrants. Kids are suspended<\/a> for writing fiction and poetry that some adults label as “dark” or “disturbing.” Teachers are getting laid off<\/a> after their students read poetry critical of the Bush administration. The Secret Service gets called in<\/a> when a teacher sees a student’s anti-war drawings. Artistic expression and free speech have become bothersome and inconvenient concepts for many school districts. I’m not worried about the kids; the ones with the creative spark will continue to draw and write and think. But amidst all the propaganda from the White House about exporting freedom, I find it terribly ironic that we allow this kind of behavior in our own institutions of learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American public school system has always excelled at inculcating a herd mentality in the country’s youth. Students are taught to value conformity in everything from wardrobe choices to musical tastes. But in this post-Columbine, post 9\/11 Bizarro world we inhabit, a lot of school administrators are starting to act like petty, anti-intellectual tyrants. Kids […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-7H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}