PUT KIERAN ON A POSTER

What fascinates me about the case of Kieran King, the Saskatchewan
high school student who was threatened, punished and slandered by
various officials over the past three weeks for talking with some
pals about the health effects of marijuana, is that it explodes
almost every single utopian cliche about public schools that has been
ever propounded by their employees and admirers. It's almost
glorious, in a way. Ever heard an educator say "We're not here to
teach students what to think -- we're here to teach them how to
think"? BLAMMO! "We encourage children to make learning a lifelong
process." KAPOW! Poor Kieran didn't even make it to age 16 before
someone called the cops.

"Diversity is one of our most cherished values." But express a
factually true opinion that diverges from what you've been taught and
- -- WHOOMP! "Public schools aren't crude instruments of social
control, they're places where we lay the foundation for an informed
citizenry." BOOM!

I could go on, but I'm running out of sound effects and I really
don't have time to fire up an old Batman episode on You-Tube to gather more.

King, who is in Grade 10 at a high school in tiny Wawota, Sask.,
started researching marijuana after he and his fellow students were
given an audiovisual presentation about drugs earlier in the year.
The presentation, from his entirely believable description, was
typical of its kind: short on background facts and long on horror stories.

He's never smoked or even seen marijuana, so he was naturally curious
about what's really known about its effects. "Naturally curious" --
say, there's another favourite trope of the pedagogical establishment
that's been blown away with the Prairie wind.

On May 30, Kieran, who is described as "research-obsessed" by his
mother, was chatting with friends around the school lunch table and
telling them about what he'd discovered, largely from scholarly and
government sources. He argued that marijuana carries a near-zero risk
of overdose, that it has been approved by Health Canada for medical
use and that it kills an infinitesimal fraction of the people that
alcohol and tobacco do every week -- claims so uncontroversial you'd
have to be high on something much stronger than pot to dispute them.

He also suggested that it doesn't make much sense for marijuana to be
illegal in a world where booze and smokes are freely available in shops.

In other words, what we have here is a kid who fits the picture of
the model student so perfectly that the South East Cornerstone School
Division should probably be putting him on a poster, not on
suspension. He is an honour student -- a real one, by all accounts,
not some mediocre kid who wriggled in under a line lowered by grade
inflation. (His mother, let it be noted, is a teacher who lost a
husband to a drunk driver before he was born.) Presented with a
highly emotional after school special-style argument in the
classroom, he did solid research to see if it held up. He applied
critical thinking, shared what he had discovered with his friends and
invited more criticism. It encapsulates almost everything that we
want children to be capable of when they graduate from our schools.

But one of the students who'd witnessed the conversation apparently
finked to the warden. (From this day forward I'm going to avoid the
use of the term "principal." If schools are going to be run like
prisons, let's adopt the appropriate lingo.) Boss bull Susan Wilson
ordered Kieran to stop talking about marijuana on school premises --
even though he had been outside the classroom, where school officials
have to meet a justifiably high standard before interfering with a
student's freedom of speech -- and later she called his mother to
warn her that "promoting drug use" would not be tolerated. According
to the education director of the school division, she was also told
"if there were any drugs brought into the school, the police could be
involved." One can almost hear the truncheon slapping against the
open palm. Later on, when Kieran organized a brief free speech
protest outside the school with the help of a few "cannabis culture"
types, Wilson reacted by ordering a lockdown (remember, they're not
prisons!). When he walked out anyway to join supporters, he was
suspended from school and a "threat assessment" was ordered
(definitely not prisons!).

Meanwhile, protesters interviewed district superintendent Velda
Weatherald and caught her on tape saying that "there was an
accusation" that Kieran may have been involved in selling drugs at
the school. Innuendo and bullying are, as ever, what people Kieran's
age call "BFFs" nowadays. Best friends forever.

Right now Kieran is in Beijing, where he is taking classes in
Mandarin. No doubt Superintendent Weatherald will soon be offering
this as clear evidence that he intends to take up the opium-smuggling
trade. When Kieran gets back, I'm thinking of calling him up and
asking him what it's like to live in a free country.