Story Archive

Obedience, Obeisance

A grade-school girl told her mother “she has to drop down on one knee with her hands at her side, wait for the principal to come out, lift his arms and tell them to go to class,” said one mother. Calimesa Elementary School’s new principal, Dana Carter, had announced the policy at a morning assembly, explaining that it would make the students “calm down” before class. “The worst thing was that when we asked the kids to show us how they kneel at school, they looked so ashamed,” said Kerri Williams, who led a parent movement against the practice. When Cali Binks, the new superintendent of California’s Yucaipa-Calimesa School District, learned of the rule, it was changed: students will now have to “freeze” in place before being dismissed. “The freeze will work,” Williams said. “Adults know that kneeling is being submissive and is more of a ritual.” (AC/Yucaipa News Mirror, KCAL Los Angeles) ...Now that you’ve killed the ritual, will you challenge the values it symbolized?