A 17 year old senior of the Life Learning Academy charter school, in San Francisco, expresses herself through poetry. A teacher found her private notebook of poems and read some entries. One caught the teachers attention and promoted the teacher to turn it in to the administration. The poem showed empathy for the shooter in Connecticut shooting. Because of this poem the student has been suspended from her school. Here is the excerpt of the poem that caused this suspension:
They wanna hold me back
I run but still they attack
My innocence, I won’t get back
I used to smile
They took my kindness for weakness
The silence the world will never get
I understand the killing in Connecticut
I know why he pulled the trigger
The government is a shame
Society never wants to take the blame
Society puts these thoughts in our head
Misery loves company
If I can’t be loved no one can.
This case falls under the freedom of speech and that people can express themselves, even though the content might be sensitive. This can also send a message to kids that if they go to officials and share their feelings on their high school experiences they will be scarred that they will be suspended rather than helped. Is this the message we want to send? The article on CBLDF’s site ends appropriately:
As psychiatrist Ronald Pies pointed out in a blog post at PsychCentral, “[w]e would be fortunate, as a society, if more lonely and alienated young people expressed their feelings in poetry, and fewer, through acts of violence.”
You can click on the link below for the full article on Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s website:
http://cbldf.org/2013/01/california-student-suspended-for-newtown-poem/