WELL, WE live in nervous times.
The terrorists arrive that awful Sept. 11 morning, and the nation spends the past two years trying to cope. The government investigates shadowy places where it never previously stuck its nose, and the civil libertarians shudder. Is Big Brother getting too snoopy? A 12-year-old kid at [Baltimore's] Boys' Latin researches a paper on the Bay Bridge, and suddenly the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force shows up in the headmaster's office.
You could laugh if you didn't know the jangled nerves that set off such a reaction.
This fall, Dorsey Boyle, a middle-school teacher at Boys' Latin, the venerable Lake Avenue private school, assigned his classes a series of research papers. The first, on some famous individual. Seventh-grader John McLean picked Abner Doubleday, the baseball legend. The second, on some famous structure. McLean picked the Bay Bridge. . . .
Can you say Big Brother? Maryland's SunSpot.net has the story here.