The bureaucratic mind

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Dec 22

RE: Students must submit form to opt out of masking.  News item by Ritika Dubey The Hamilton Spectator 9 Dec 22.

RE: Negotiations don’t always lead to peace.  Op-ed by Steve Delag, and English teacher living in Dundas, ON.

You have to admire the bureaucratic mind.  Students have a right not to wear masks in school, but they have to fill out a form to exercise that right.  The form may be a little hard to obtain.  Next comes the line that asks the reason why you want to exercise this right.  And the step after that is the determination of whether that reason is good enough.  So, sure you can exercise your right, but you have to fill out the form and give a reason that we find satisfactory.

This progression almost sounds like the evolution of gun control in Canada.

What happens if a student who hasn’t submitted a form shows up at school without a mask?  He forgot it.  Will he be suspended or expelled for not wearing a mask when sitting at the next desk is a maskless student who had filled out his form?

Bureaucrats can be the blandest form of life on earth, but violate one of their rules and you won’t know what hit you.  Or understand the severity.  Or understand why there’s no emotion in administering the punishment.

Steve Delag is right.  There’s no point in negotiating away your defenses to appease a bad-faith interlocutor.  It is true for students, Canadian gun owners, and for Carthage.

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