Spotted an article on NY Times the other day about how schools across the country are quietly buying and implementing breathalyzer equipment for use on students who they suspect are drunk during the school day. This, to me, is just another step down the slippery slope of the total militarization of our schools.

I know, I know what you’re going to say: “Well, should kids be drunk during at school!?” Obviously the answer is no. But then, neither do I think that kids should even be in a state-run educational system to begin with. Check out some of John Taylor Gatto’s work to find out more about why I think that.

Kids today already have to go through metal detectors at a lot of schools. Kids are getting arrested for making drawings, or being branded as terrorists for writing stories about zombies taking over their schools. And those are just two examples of many.

My big problem with importing breathalyzers into schools is that it further acclimates kids to being part of a police state. As long as we train kids into thinking they don’t have any rights in the first place, it will be even easier to take them all away in just a few short years.

Further, using breathalyzers in schools is just another way for decisions to be taken out of the hands of teachers, administrators and parents, and put in the hands of machines. Is that what we really need? A machine that determines the type of discipline that one of our children needs? It’s not only ludicrous, but it’s ngerous.

And don’t get me started on the fact that the educational system is so fucking inane that some kids might actually be learning more by being drunk or high during the school day than they ever would by the whitewashed corporate-written bullshit textbooks they are being taught from.

Anyway, here’s a link to the NY Times article. Here’s a link to a site that can get you around the registration requirement. Or you could also try my saved Furl archive of this page.