Well, there’s certainly been a lot going on lately down in the Lone Star State…

That’s right, Texas has been in the news recently for a number of reasons – not many of them good…

Last week, many of us watched in horror the video of the fired African American teacher at the Houston charter school beating up an African American boy…

And we’ve also been troubled by the recent textbook controversy in which a conservative slant is being imposed on millions of the state’s public schoolchildren…

Both situations say a lot about the current state of education in Texas… but today, I’m going to focus on the physical assault…

I watched the teacher on Good Morning America after appealing to the media to quote-unquote “give her side of the story”… I couldn’t imagine what that would be given the tape of her beating, dragging, and kicking a terrified 13 year-old …

After the teacher, her attorney, and the host viewed the tape, the teacher correctly acknowledged there was nothing that could ever justify her actions… “Exactly” I thought, before wondering why she’d even come on the show…

And then I knew. After claiming her adrenaline was high because of a prior incident, she got back to her classroom to find the door locked and a group of children circling a recent transfer and special-needs student… She said the children – the boy in particular — were standing around the student in a “threatening” way and that they were all African Americans with prior court issues and that the special needs student was white…

Wow… guess the teacher and her white attorney thought that was a pretty important point… So important, they wanted to say it on international TV although they already admitted there was no justification for assaulting the boy…

I guess it didn’t matter that the teacher wasn’t protecting the student at that point since the boy she was beating was cowering in a corner in fear …

I guess the whole purpose of her interview was to appeal to white America and to show how she was standing up for one of theirs …’

What other purpose could there have been for her TV appearance…? Why mention the race of the students at all?

Is it horrible that any young student can be taunted by others? Definitely.

But when an adult, and a teacher no less, totally loses it, repeatedly assaults a child cowering in front of her, and then appeals to the court of public opinion on the implicit basis that a white child’s trauma at the hands of African Americans is somehow worse than the opposite, that’s beyond belief…

And that teacher should be held accountable in both a court of law and in the court of public opinion…

I leave you with this: “What is done to children, is what they will do to society.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in love and hope and you are listening to the TJMS at its Best.