It seems that Antigrammargrinch has recently brought up a point that I have been meaning to bring up myself for a long time: That Lee's charge of child abuse against the administration is hypocritical. She claims that while the administration accused Steve Kemp of child abuse, the administrators were actually the abusers because they put mentally retarded children in a room filled with junk. As Antigrammargrinch said, was Kemp not complicit in the abuse as well? If Lee defines abuse as leaving mentally retarded children in a junk room, did Kemp not do that very exact thing? Kemp justifies his actions by saying that the administrators were "highly trained" and that he was not. This claim has no standing whatsoever. One does not need "training" to recognize child abuse. If a situation with a child in it looks dangerous, then one uses common sense to deduce what is happening. For instance, a parent cannot abuse a child and then defend themselves by saying that they had no training in child-rearing. It doesn't work that way. Lee claims that that Kemp spent the six days trying to prevent the children from pulling down the junk. If that is true, then that proves that he was cognizant of the fact that the children were in danger. And if he knew that they were in danger, then that proves that one need not training to recognize such things. Thus, Kemp was complicit in the crime. The way I see it, the case is a stalemate. Neither side can report the other because both have wrongdoings. That is why the administration has given up: They know they are responsible for placing the children in a junk-filled room, and Kemp knows that he didn't tell anybody about it.
Concerning the whole dispute of Lee not having "standing" to file charges, I would like to offer some insight. I think the problem is that one cannot file a professional standards charge against someone by simply stating so in an email. Linda Cobbe said: "You have no standing to file charges. An email from you with allegations about employees would not generate a Professional Standards investigation." Of course Lee is too senile to understand this, and only focuses on the part that says, "You have no standing to file charges." Cobbe then goes on to say, "People who work in schools are obligated by law to report possible abuse. Child Protective Investigations is obligated to investigate and they call in law enforcement. When CPI and law enforcement investigate an employee, Professional Standards gets involved." So if one wants to files charges, one must go through the proper channels. Apparently Lee has no working knowledge of the law even when it is presented to her on a silver platter. Well either that or she just simply completely ignored what was said (as she often does) so that she can conjure up some absurd claim that the administration and board are restricting her democratic rights.
How hypocritical is Lee De Cesare?
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26 comments:
Here is my reply: Thrown Under the Buss
Ziggy, would you elucidate on this statement?
"Neither side can report the other because both have wrongdoings."
thanks,
Richard L. Hancock
Well, the administration did report Kemp and it was thrown out, but if they wanted to pursue it more they would have. They stopped though because they realized that by pursuing the case even further, they would only be opening the wound because then it would be found out that they placed the children in the junk-filled room. Kemp, on the other hand, cannot files ethics charges against the administrators because he knows he will be held accountable for never reporting the fact that the mentally challenged children were in danger.
Do you have any idea of why the administration would place the children in the junk-filled room?
Richard, would you elucidate on your definition of "junk-filled"? I'm still squinting at the postage stamp sized photo on Casting Room Couch.
Some of this discussion has featured the line "doing as I was told". If the three administrators had been told by a higher power to place the children in the junk-filled room, their culpability would be reduced, yes?
John_D - I did not define "junk-filled". I responded to Ziggy's statement in which he/she used the term.
I am still processing Ziggy's premise that placing students in a junk-filled classroom is equivalent to felony child abuse charges. I am a bit slow on logic sometimes, but it seems to me that there was a lot of time and premeditation to make the determination of where to place the kids as opposed to the amount of time spent on Mr. Kemps act. Trying to equate the two acts is a challenge to me.
I like how you are thinking about the "doing as I was told" issue. If the administrators had been told by a higher power to place the children in the junk-filled room and their culpability is reduced, where does the culpability rest?
Richard
The junk filled room is not the abuse, rather it is the possible injury from the junk in the room that represents potential abuse. The students are severely mental handicapped and so are unaware of the danger the junk poses. The students should have been in a room with wide open spaces and few obstacles.
People who are commenting that the situation was not child abuse may be correct, and as I have stated on Goader's blog, I think the "abuse" was more of child endangerment. Either way, one should not shrug off the seriousness of the situation based on a technicality. Was it actual child abuse? No (although Lee seems to think that it is). Were the children still at risk of being injured? Yes.
When the word "abuse" is used, that doesn't necessarily mean that the children were being abused in the sense that we often think of. For instance, it is common to say that that a teacher has been "abused" by an administrator, but we know that this isn't actual physical abuse. The term "abuse" can have a variety of meanings. Just because this wasn't actual physical abuse doesn't mean that the students weren't being abused in the sense that they were in danger of being harmed.
It sickens me that someone would try to cover up such an atrocity based simply on the fact that the endangerment of the children didn't constitute a dictionary definition of child abuse.
>No (although Lee seems to think that it is).<
Incorrect, Ziggy. Lee maintains that she KNOWS that abuse occurred.
Ziggy, my question must have been lost in the shuffle.
Do you have any idea why the administration would place the students in the room that they were in?
^I have no idea why the administration chose to place the students into a room filled with junk. I never said that they were right; their actions were wrong as well. But just because they "did it first" doesn't mean that Kemp isn't guilty. For instance, a teacher who has a student in a class who is all bruised up and suspects abuse is obligated to report it. You don't just shrug it off and say, "Oh, the parents should have never abused them in the first place, so it's not my problem."
I think that room was chosen because no one thought through the condition of the room and severity of the students' disabilities.
I think they knew, but they just thought that they could get away with it. And they did. Too bad no one noticed what was going on it...they could have stopped it...
Forgive me if I am posing an obvious question, but how can anyone explain that "they just thought they could could get away with it"?
(???)...It means exactly what it says...(???)
By the ommision of "that" and the repetition of "could" in the quote, I'd explain it as lack of attention to detail or double vision!
Your reply box does not allow me to paste text into it. Therefore, you can read my reply here, since I have no intention of retyping it. You will need Microsoft Word to read it. You can also use this viewer if you don't have MS Word. Download and install it and it should work.
Thanks, 9:20.
I reckon a claim of stuttering would not garner any sympathy.
Richard
^^So what you're saying is that the administration has an excuse for putting the children in the room because you claim the administrator "has no idea what he or she has done by choosing such a room." You say that they have "forgotten 80% of what it was like to be in the classroom" and that it would happen if "you and me were promoted."
So then the administration did nothing wrong? They are innocent because "it's a fact of work" that as you move up, you become ignorant of those below you?
How can they be blamed if they did the same exact thing that you would do in that position?
You selectively pull out text that matches some preconceived scenario you wish to put forth. It is intellectually dishonest to pick and choose words and phrases to support your argument when you are cognizant of a greater meaning. Your logical arguments are flawed for this reason. Additionally, you are creating hypothetical conclusions that do not take into account the comprehensive meaning of what was written. You can either continue playing a game of selectively supporting your arguments using written text or you can acknowledge the greater meaning that is implied.
Yes, I chose certain quotes to use, but I did not distort their meaning in any way. They are not taken out of context and anyone who reads the document and is able to pass the reading section of the FCAT can clearly see that.
>You selectively pull out text that matches some preconceived scenario you wish to put forth. It is intellectually dishonest to pick and choose words and phrases to support your argument when you are cognizant of a greater meaning.<
Tell it to Lee de Cesare.
(I cut and pasted that text.)
>Within six months of a new administrator's journey, he or she has forgotten 80% of what it was like to be in the classroom. This happens with any promotion in business or public service. It would happen with you and me if we were promoted. It's a fact of work. The person is wrapped up in their new position plus the fact that "out of sight out of mind." Eventually, they forget virtually all memories of what it was like being in the classroom.
It is even more pronounced when it comes to empathizing with a teacher of severely mentally handicapped students. The administrator forgets how severely handicapped these students are. I know from the questions I received from for administrators. For example, "can they go to the restroom on their own?" To the teacher and aide for these students that question is ridiculously out of touch with the reality in the room. The answer is "no" because these students are in diapers and can do virtually nothing on their own. Sometimes it's hard to put together in one's mind the six-foot tall fully-grown man with the mental capacity of one-year old child.
With this in mind, one can see the administrator choosing the room with various desks, tables, filing cabinets, and chairs stored for the summer and not make a link between that and hazard it would pose for severely mentally handicapped students occupying the room. It takes more than a cursory thought to realize that those fully-grown one-year old students can reach everything in storage.
When they grab something they have no concern for what might happen to it, rather they just grab and pull. They are in no way responsible when the filing cabinet tumbles down and hits the teacher on the head. They have no idea what they have done.
Likewise, the administrator has no idea what he or she has done by choosing such a room for these severely mentally handicapped students. Their lack of concern is for different reasons though then lack of capacity to understand. The reason the administrator chooses that room is mostly that he or she has long forgotten the experience of being in the classroom.<
Difficult stuff.
I'm sorry, Goader, Ziggy is right. You have written that it is a fact of promotion that one forgets ones roots.
>Likewise, the administrator has no idea what he or she has done by choosing such a room for these severely mentally handicapped students. Their lack of concern is for different reasons though then lack of capacity to understand.<
Is this anything like a teacher aide having no idea what he or she has done by restraining a mentally handicapped student? Of course, if a teacher aide HAD the capacity to understand but didn't bother to, it would be perplexing.
I meant "one's".
That was a typo - not a march to the swamps of illiteracy by a Stanford Binet lower-quartile achiever.
You certainly did take it out of context by virtue of selectively singling it out of its position within the written piece. You stripped away most of the text that influenced its meaning. How can you claim you preserved the context and therefore the meaning when all you excluded was context?
For example, you say, "So then the administration did nothing wrong? They are innocent because "it's a fact of work" that as you move up, you become ignorant of those below you? [sic]
I did not say the administration did nothing wrong. I did not say they were innocent because as they move up they become ignorant of those below them.
I did imply when someone is promoted to a new position that the person forgets what it was like when he or she was in the lower position. I implied that empathy for the lower position is lost on the person newly promoted. Losing empathy does not equate with ignorance and therefore innocence. Forgetting what something was like is not the same as being ignorant of that something. Ignorance means something was never learned in the first place and therefore not present in mind to be forgotten.
As you can see, you did strip away the context and replaced it with your own context and therefore altered the meaning of the writing.
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