Once again, I’m relatively glad I never finished my education degree. A boy’s creative writing bothered his teacher enough that he wound up suspended. But that’s not all:
David was suspended on Jan. 24, 2005. The next night, three men — a Cook County deputy sheriff, a state trooper and a social worker — showed up at Colleen Riehm’s home on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation with a court order to seize her son and commit him to a psychiatric ward 150 miles away in Duluth. (David’s stepfather is Native American, but David is not enrolled in any tribe.)
With no room at the juvenile facility, David was temporarily placed in the adult unit.
“He was scared to death,” David’s attorney told Courttv.com. “He didn’t know what was going to happen from one minute to the next.”
A physician later determined David was neither mentally ill nor dangerous, and more than 100 letters of support, written by classmates, faculty and parents, were presented at a court hearing, his attorney said.
David was ordered released from the hospital 72 hours after he had been taken into custody. His mother received $6,000 in medical bills.
The article lists similiar cases where creative assignments led to criminal assumptions.
I can get why a school would be wary if a student is handing in projects that cross some arbitrary “appropriate” line, but part of me thinks the student himself should use some sense when writing assignments for grading. It’s one thing to get gross and crass and destructive in private fiction that you may try and get published one day and make a few bucks on, but really, is it a plot device or concept that should be explored for an assignment? Sure, like the boy says, “life isn’t G rated” but still. Creativity is all well and good, boys and girls, but I say be sensible about it.
