Muir-Bashing

[first published: Sunday, February 17, 2008]

ok, let me get this straight. An 18-year old boy - not just any boy, but one of the most talented athletes in our city - was dragged from his classroom at John Muir High School, thrown into jail without possibility of bail, charged with "assault with a deadly weapon" (his hands), for a fight that had happened months ago?

He spends 2 days in jail and then is released (thank God) and all charges are dropped??

First of all (I am sorry to make a "personal attack" which I know is not appreciated by many here) but Deputy District Attorney Daniel O'Connell needs serious examination by his superiors!

Secondly, this is what happens when a city has a "gang media overload/extreme fear reaction" on the scale of which our local media has been stirring up the fires of hate with.

John Muir has been bashed so many times in our papers (for years!), and on the blogs too. Why Dormitas (make that "Paul"), in the excerpt reprinted below (see: example of hate speech post)

- blasts:
"PUSD won't succeed until they root out the incompetents at district HQ, impose discipline in the schools and really teach junior high and high school students.

Closing Muir would be a wake up call."

This ugly, verbal violence has been repeated time and again in our city's media, all directed at John Muir High - and by association EVERY child housed within it!

The Star News came out recently with the bash-headline "Muir Mustang Spirit Lost" for an article that tore Muir apart. When they got complaints, Todd Ruiz sought to justify the article on his blog Under the Dome in September 20, 2007 post entitled "Discussing the un-discussables" in which he laments:

"Instead of debating the role of journalism here and the need to report what's going on fearlessly in the face of those who would prefer not to know"

As I have said before, it is no small irony that John Muir is the alma-matter of Jackie Robinson himself and that Jackie's legacy is being so viciously (and I mean that literally) trampled on here, right here, in Pasadena, California, year 2008.

Muir students have literally taken it upon themselves to try and defend themselves against the overwhelming onslaught. In a beautiful editorial titled "Talent From Within", reprinted below, Muir student Christian Kooshian tells what it is like to live under this media siege.

excerpt:
"If you tell someone over and over again that he is a failure, it won't be long until he believes that a failure is all he is supposed to be, and failure is all that is expected from him.

http://my.highschooljournalism.org/ca/pasadena/muir/article.cfm?eid=9312&aid=143113

"Talent From Within"

By Christian Kooshian

I am a senior at John Muir High school. Your articles last week, "Back to School" and "Troubled Times at Muir High," caused quite a stir at my school, and it certainly wasn't the positive energy and motivation my schoolmates desperately needed.

If you tell someone over and over again that he is a failure, it won't be long until he believes that a failure is all he is supposed to be, and failure is all that is expected from him.

For three years I've been reading articles in your newspaper lambasting and badmouthing Muir High.

What do you expect the students do when it seems like the entire city is ashamed of them?

The API score on which a school's success is rated is a gross misrepresentation of reality. I've seen students who have no interest in the Pythagorean Theorem or the American transcendentalist literature.

Anyone who hasn't spent weeks or months or years at Muir can't begin to appreciate the level of dedication of the majority of our teachers, some of whom have been at Muir for decades.

If we are as awful as your newspaper consistently makes us to be, what would be keeping them there?

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this is really sad.