do you know who is driving your child's school bus?

I heard on the news last night and read in the paper this morning that there is a concern that "extremists" are driving our nation's children to and from school. Neighborhood car pool gone wrong? Nope. According to the Associated Press, the FBI has reported that they are licensed school bus drivers.

Even with eye-catching headlines like FBI: Foreign extremists sign up to drive school buses or Some extremists driving school buses, officials warn, the text of all the articles I've found repeatedly say "parents and children have nothing to fear", "there is no reason for concern", "the government has no credible information to suggest terrorists are 'involved in buying school buses or seeking licenses to drive them" and that there was "no indication of any immediate threat to the country". The articles also vacillate between calling the bus drivers 'extremists' or sometimes, 'foreigners' or 'foreign nationals'.

I tried to find more information about this and after I couldn't find anything on the FBI website, ironically my googling led me to an article from one year ago today that reports on a program started by Homeland Security called School Bus Watch, where they train school bus drivers to fight terrorism. Maybe this is a product of that program?

This may be the kind of thing we should be informed of... maybe I can be especially blase' about it because I don't have children. But it makes me wonder about language like 'extremist' and 'foreigner' - I suppose in some circles, like among the fundamental Christians I grew up with, I could be considered an extremist, right? And foreigners? I heard on the news last night that there are a suspected 50,000 - 70,000 illegal Irish immigrants in the US. There are stereotypically some pretty extreme Irish folk... is this who is driving the school buses? I just don't know, since the article is so vague it almost seems like it's not news - this is what we've found out, but don't worry about it - it's like when what a witness says during testimony is stricken off the record and the jury is supposed to pretend it wasn't said.

It also makes me wonder about this 'culture of fear' - that will make people hole themselves up in their home out of fear of extremists lurking about. Or make people preemptively lash out at suspected extremists, using violence to make them feel safer. Like my Latino friend who was beat-up on September 12, 2001 because he was perceived to be of middle eastern descent.

If you're concerned about the person driving your child's school bus, talk to your school about what kinds of background checks they do or start a neighborhood car pool. If you can't trust your neighbors, who can you trust? Oh wait... trust is foreign in many neighborhoods. Damn. I guess we'll just have to home school. I better start practicing, luckily watching tv the other night made me realize that I am smarter than a fifth grader, it also made me realize that John Taylor Gatto was right about our schools.