Youth & Education

• The United States is one of the few countries in the world that puts children in supermax prisons, tries them as adults, incarcerates them for exceptionally long periods of time, defines them as super predators, pepper sprays them for engaging in peaceful protests, and, in an echo of the discourse of the war on terror, describes them as 'teenage time bombs.' 
• 8 New Items including:
  • Gay teens starved, tortured, killed at camp to turn them into ‘men’
  • Pennsylvania judge sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling teens to prisons
  • Exposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids' Public Schools
  • 30 years later, nation remains at educational risk
  • Catholic Church ramps up opposition to Minnesota anti-bullying bill
  • Child poverty in US among the highest in developed world
  • How Schools Are Becoming Prisons
  • A Mother's Plea: Stop Solitary Confinement of Children

David Culver, Ed., Evergreene Digest

Adam Zyglis 

Gay teens starved, tortured, killed at camp to turn them into ‘men’, Joe Morgan, Gay Star News

• Game ranger course 'general' is on trial for murder, child abuse, neglect, and allegedly forcing teen to eat his own faces.
• Honey, we’re praying for you

Pennsylvania judge sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling teens to prisons, Lou Colagiovanni, examiner.com  

During his sentencing Ciavarella was defiant, claiming he had broken no laws and claimed the money he received was a legitimate 'finder's fee.'

Exposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids' Public Schools, Yasha Levine, Not Safe for Work Corporation 

• You won't believe the predatory behavior of this education "reform" outfit, Parent Revolution.
• ALEC: The People Behind the Lawmakers Out to Destroy Public Education 

30 years later, nation remains at educational risk, Philip Elliott, Associated Press  / NPR

• "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war," the commissioners wrote. "As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. ... We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."
• Child poverty in US among the highest in developed world

Catholic Church ramps up opposition to Minnesota anti-bullying bill, Beth Hawkins, MinnPost

• “All we are asking folks to do is to make sure a school setting is safe and allows a child to learn,” Senator [Scott] Dibble" — a Minneapolis DFLer and the chief author of both the same-sex marriage bill and Safe Schools said. “Why should it be so hard to make sure kids are not singled out for harassment?
• “The archdiocese has done nothing to sit down and problem-solve what would be best for kids,” Dibble concluded. “The truth is bullying is a problem we have to solve. It happens every day and it is a real problem.”

Child poverty in US among the highest in developed world, Nick Barrickman, World Socialist Web Site 

Entitled “Child Well-Being in Rich Countries,” the study measures living conditions faced by children in major capitalist countries of North America, Europe, Oceania, and parts of Asia. The countries are ranked by several criteria: material well-being, education, health and safety, behaviors and risks, and housing and environment. 

How Schools Are Becoming Prisons, Chase Madar, Truthdig

• The movement is under way to expel zero tolerance and dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline led by a coalition of legal, educational and youth groups.
• The School Security America Doesn’t Need

A Mother's Plea: Stop Solitary Confinement of Children, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) <https://www.aclu.org>

• In 2005, Vicky Gunderson’s 17-year-old son, Kirk (pictured above), committed suicide while in solitary confinement in a Wisconsin jail. Here's her story.
• "Please join me in calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to ban solitary confinement of youth held by the federal government."
• The School Security America Doesn’t Need
• US DOJ Alleges Mississippi County Jails Kids for School Dress Code Violations

During his sentencing Ciavarella was defiant, claiming he had broken no laws and claimed the money he received was a legitimate 'finder's fee.'

Lou Colagiovanni, examiner.com 

Thanks to Evergreene Digest reader Brigette Menger-Anderson  for this contribution. 

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Credits: ABC.com

April 29, 2013 | Disgraced Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for conspiring with private prisons to sentence juvenile offenders to maximum sentences for bribes and kickbacks which totaled millions of dollars. He was also ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution.

In the private prison industry the more time an inmate spends in a facility, the more of a profit is reaped from the state. Ciavearella was a figurehead in a conspiracy in the state of Pennsylvania which saw thousands of young men and women unjustly punished and penalized in the name of corporate profit.

Full story…