Contrary to the old joke, a mugging does not automatically transform a liberal into a conservative. Nevertheless, liberals do get mugged and it sometimes even affects their world view.
“I always choose on the side of leniency—always,” Germantown High School Algebra teacher Frank Burd said from above his neck brace in a recent court appearance. “And that’s not always the right choice.”
“We give—whether it’s our children or our students—too many breaks,” Burd concluded. “And one of the things I do tell my students is there’s got to be consequences.” What brought Mr. Burd to this epiphany were the injuries he received at the hands of two students at the Pennsylvania school.
“As Frank Burd sat silently yesterday morning in the front row of juvenile court, the two teenage boys who assaulted him in the hallway of Germantown High School and broke his neck two months ago took turns standing up to apologize,” Martha Woodall reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer on April 27. “Donte Boykin, 18, a senior in Burd’s Algebra class who pushed his teacher for confiscating an iPod, went first.”
“The young man, who had already been accepted to college, wore a navy shirt and orange work pants.” Will college officials look askance at Boykin now, particularly in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre? Don’t count on it.
Back in the courtroom “Later it was James Footman’s turn,” Woodall relates. “The 15-year-old didn’t even know Burd, but he had punched him three times in the face after Boynton’s shove pushed Burd into him.”
He is something of a wayward youth. “Records show that Footman, who was sent to a discipline school after assaulting an administrator at Roosevelt Middle School in 2004, has had problems with anger and dealing with authority figures since he was five,” Woodall writes.
In the Burd case the judge “ordered ninth grader Footman, who turned 15 the day after the attack, to a stay of indeterminate length at one of the state’s secure youth detention centers,” Woodall reveals. What an odd way to get ready for your birthday.
Let’s hope this record does not make him a hot college prospect. “Have we now regressed to where it’s now become sport to hurt our teachers?” the judge who tried the case asked.
“Have we regressed where our school system and the educational structure in Philadelphia has disintegrated to the level that incarceration is next to graduation?” In a word—yes, and not just in the city of Brotherly Love.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
