Stereotyping And Discrimination

(The Bee has received for publication the following open letter to the Board of Education.)

 

To the Board of Education:

I am a 6th grader at the Newtown Middle School.  I also enjoy rollerblading.  My letter concerns the fact that rollerblading and skateboarding are prohibited on the elementary school grounds because of an incident involving skateboarders setting a fire behind Hawley Elementary School.  I think that the fact that you prohibit all skateboarders and rollerbladers from skateboarding and rollerblading is stereotypical and discriminating.

You have all of the teachers in all of the grades teach us how wrong stereotyping people because of race, religion, color, or beliefs is, and then you turn around and stereotype rollerbladers and skateboarders from skateboarding and rollerblading.  When you do that it is stereotyping all rollerbladers and skateboarders.  It is just as bad as telling them that they are like the kids who set the fire behind Hawley Elementary, simply because they have one thing in common with them: they rollerblade or skateboard. 

Furthermore, granted, there are skateboarders and rollerbladers who do bad things when they skateboard around schools. But they also do bad things in other places. So if you ban them from the school grounds, it probably won’t be solving the problem at all,  and it will ban kids who are perfectly well behaved and just want to have a good time with their family or friends from going rollerblading or skateboarding at the school. 

Frankly there are very few places to go rollerblading in Newtown. The elementary schools are actually a few of the only places that my family can go rollerblading without scraping ourselves up after slipping on a lot of gravel.  I have to say, there are only three places I can think of off of the top of my head that are good for rollerblading on without safety hazards.

So I guess what I am really saying is this: those signs offend me. I believe that they are stereotypical.  I think that if you truly believed in what you are having the curriculum teach, those signs would not be up.  I would like them to be taken down.

I understand your position, but I truly do not think that having those signs up on the schools will accomplish a thing, I really don’t.

I don’t know if I will need to have a petition shown to you to convince you to have those signs taken down, but I would not mind circulating one, because I know many people who would sign it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my letter.

Sincerely,

Katie Rose Crevier

6th grader at NMS

Queen Street, Newtown                                         March 12, 2000