Many years ago, during my time as a
junior petty officer in the Navy, our division got a new senior
chief, and almost immediately, everyone in the division hated him.
Yet, by the time I left there, he was my favorite chief. To this
day, he still is, because of the many leadership lessons he instilled
in me, mostly by example.
The base we were at had an absurd rule
regarding when and where command baseball caps vs traditional naval
white hats could be worn. I don't know how long the rule had actually
been in place, but from at least before I got there. For the most
part, the sailors most affected by the rule ignored it, as did those
who should have enforced it. Everyone was happy.
Until this senior chief showed up.
Almost immediately, he began requiring strict enforcement of all the
rules in his division, including this absurd one. Most of us in the
division were pretty understanding of the enforcement of most of the
other rules, but the one about the baseball caps really, really
rankled us. It didn't take long for us to hate our new senior chief
over it.
After some time – probably only a
couple of weeks, but it seemed like months at the time – he
confessed to us that he, too, thought the rule was absurd. “Then
why are you enforcing it!?!”, we practically screamed at him.
His answer was enlightening. Because
sometimes the best way to deal with an absurd rule is not to complain
about how absurd it is while ignoring it, but to show how absurd it
is while enforcing it. That
was the gist of his explanation. And with that explanation, the
rest of the division got on board, and the rule began being enforced
outside our division as well, to the point that no one liked our new
senior chief. Not too long after that, the base commander changed
the rule to a more realistic one we could all live with.
That lesson has stuck with me. I've
rarely had need to use that method since, but when the story of the
schoolboy disciplined for chewing his pop tart into a gun shape came
about, I realized it's another great place to apply that lesson.
In case you hadn't heard the story, a 7
yr old in Maryland was suspended from school when a teacher
overreacted to him chewing his pop tart into a gun shape. There has
been a lot of various outraged reaction to it in the media, but it
got me to thinking about how I would react if it were to happen to
any of the children at my kid's school.
I've decided that my old senior chief's
example is the best way to proceed. Let the school have their way,
with the only response from me being “you realize you're setting a
precedent with this absurdity, don't you? I will use that precedent
against you in the future, and you will not like it.”
Then wait for the opportunity to arise,
and because it's a school, it surely will. The teacher sends home an
assignment with a map of Florida or Oklahoma on it? There's an
opportunity (because those two states are as obviously as gun shaped
as a pop tart can be) to storm into the school and demand that they
apply equivalent disciplinary procedures to the teacher as they did
to the child for sending home “images of guns.” Or show outrage
at a student assignment or teacher handout that shows an image of the
flag of West Virginia (which has guns upon it), or the Virginia state
flag, (which could be considered worse, because it has a man standing
with one foot upon the chest of a fallen (slain?) foe.)
The cool thing about being educated or just knowing how to do a little research is that you can find these
things within their curriculum pretty easily. Things that should be
right under a teacher's nose, that they should be aware of, but
never, ever consider when they become a little too overzealous.
Situations like this highlight the
problem with zero-tolerance policies, and over-zealous political
correctness. But it can almost always be used against the very people
applying the policies, if someone can remain calm enough to realize
it. And frequently, until it's used against them, most of these
types of people won't ever realize when they've crossed the line into
absurdity. Indignant outrage rarely moves them, but a decent helping
of common sense and critical thinking applied against them in the
same manner they used almost always gets their attention.Or the attention of someone in a position to do something about them.
Never be afraid to fight absurdity with
well-reasoned absurdity.
A quick footnote:
I'd like to make it clear that I'm not
ranting against teachers, or school administrators here. In my
experience, for every teacher or school administrator who does this,
there are a hundred more whom are reasonable people, have common
sense, and are good people. But given the multitude of educators that
a child comes in contact with through out their school years, it's
inevitable that most parents will encounter at least one like this.
In most cases, another adult within the school will already be on
your side, but just in case – remember, you can fight absurdity by
taking it to the next level!
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