When Schools Are the Police 725
First time accepted submitter Is Any Nickname Left writes "The Washington Post has an article on school systems with their own police forces. It focuses on Texas, which has the highest number of 'School Police Departments,' of which there are so many they have their own trade association. Highlights: 1) Houston fourth-grader stood on a stool so he could see the judge. He pleaded guilty. To a scuffle on a school bus. 2) 275,000 juvenile tickets in fiscal 2009, to students as young as 5. 3) Austin middle school student ticketed after she sprayed herself with perfume when classmates said she smelled. 4) a 17-year-old was in court after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other. 'She was mad at me because I broke up with her,' he said. I waiting for the Alamo Heights Special Airborne Brigade and SEAL TEAM CROCKETT."
Fuck the police (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck the police
Result of Truancy Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
You cannot teach someone when they are not willing to learn. If a child doesn't want to learn they should be expelled from school and given working papers. Why punish those that are there to learn with disruptive people?
What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have (rightly or wrongly) taken from the schools a lot of their powers in regards to disciplining students. So where the school can not, the parents must. Except, the parents are not fulfilling their obligations in this regard, and the schools can not hold parents thusly responsible.
But the courts can.
Therefore, the school will begin referring your unique snowflake to the courts when their behavior exceeds what little remedies you have left available to the schools.
Did nobody see this coming?
The point of the public schools is not learning (Score:3, Insightful)
It is indoctrination, the inculcation of the reflex to knuckle under to petty authority. Pedagogy takes a distant second to this primary urge.
Re:obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Police State training. When our generation are dead and gone, you will have this younger population come after us, raised in this invisible cage.
Go watch Brazil, again.
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
One reason would be that someone who is disruptive at age 13 might still be able to become a productive member of society if given a little guidance and education.
If the anarchist tendencies among us said "hey if they don't want to go to school, don't make 'em" we're going to end up with half filled schools, and an even greater dependency class than we already have in society - because of course, the fact that you have achieved less or worked less doesn't mean you should receive less, the government should rob from the rich to help you.
The social harm done could hardly be underestimated.
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sure.
Then kids see athletic students in universities getting grades just for being present (or even for not being present) as long as they are on the team. And then they see these athletes earning more than underemployed engineers.
Sure, that's going to show them the importance of education!
Re:obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
Blame the helicopter parents and their ravenous lawyers. Grab a kid to break up a fight? Law suit. Yell at a kid to break up a fight? Law suit. Make a kid feel sad for any reason (little johnny just wanted to stab someone, is that so bad?)? Law suit.
Law (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a serious lack of law in a state where a school needs to run their own police force.
There's a serious lack of public moral in a state where voters allow the previous two issues to exist.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The real trouble is going to come when zero tolerance policies and cops mix. When I was in school (and it's still happening to day, a couple decades later) they had a 0-tolerance policy about fighting. If you got in a fight, you got suspended. Even if you got attacked, and stood there letting the guy punch you, and didn't throw a punch back, you got suspended.
Carry that forward to a school-police situation, and I can see you being booked on disorderly conduct, if not battery charges.
The whole idea is absurd.
As for taking away schools' ability to discipline our kids, that's bull. We've removed their ability to paddle them. That's pretty much it. They can still suspend, expel, detain, and in many other ways punish the troublemakers.
It's the *schools* that have failed in the discipline department, by applying these ridiculous zero-tolerance policies that are guaranteed to only be a punishment to the innocent victims, while granting a free 3-day vacation to the little shits that start the problem in the first place.
The answer lies not in sending the Brute Squad into the schools, but in schools being intelligent with their discipline. Habitual troublemakers are easy to spot. So quit giving them 20 thousand detentions and suspensions, and start expelling them. And, of course, get rid of the zero tolerance policies, which are really just an excuse for school administrators to not have to do any thinking when dealing with students.
Re:No wonder private schools are booming... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. Stop talking hogwash. It strikes me that your lack of rational powers may in fact be a sign that you are a victim of a terrible education, or possibly terrible genes, or possibly, you're just a self-important moron.
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
You cannot teach someone when they are not willing to learn.
Bullshit. You just have to find the right way. Give them the right support.
If a child doesn't want to learn they should be expelled from school and given working papers.
Oh brilliant. Kids act out for a variety of reasons, none of which deserves to get them expelled. Expelling them shows them that you, and hence the world, has given up on them. You may as well just wait until they are old enough and their disruptions are bad enough that you can lock them up and throw away the key!
Why punish those that are there to learn with disruptive people?
Because they're kids. Everybody needs to learn how to deal with assholes. And assholes need to learn how to deal with people.
WTF -- Students are supposed to make mistakes (Score:2, Insightful)
What is this? (Up until recently) Libya? North Korea?
When you have to put police in the school permanently then that's not the foundation for a civil society. It's a symptom of a serious societal problem. If children are taught that all disputes are solved by calling in the police and sitting in front of a judiciary, then how the hell are they going to learn their own negotiation skills, or that all disputes don't have to be solved with police / lawyers? It's like a fricking indoctrination into a 100% litigious and incarcerated society of the future. Oh, look, we see from your record that when little Jimmy was 6 he used the word "poop" in class, and when 12 he broke a bottle in the school yard. Oh, and then when 16 he failed to put a milk carton in the proper waste bin. When 17 he gave someone a wedgie. By 18 he drove the wrong way down a one-way street, and his life of crime only worsened from there. It's a shame. He had such a bright future when he was 5. So few of our kids today manage to keep a clean record. What is the world coming to?
Get a clue. Kids make mistakes. They make stupid decisions. They sort them out. *Sometimes* adults have to be involved because the events are serious, but for the vast majority it's innocent, stupid mistakes from which kids eventually learn better. Hand-holding them through a formal legal process of resolving disputes does not help them learn, especially when that legal process doesn't always get things right (it isn't perfect).
(10 years later) Don't like the fact that your neighbor's tree branch happens to dangle over your lawn? Don't bother, oh, actually talking to them. Just talk to your lawyer and send a letter demanding they remove the tree branch overhanging your property, and threaten to sue if they don't. After that, if they don't comply, call in the police. Never mind the insane costs to all taxpayers to settle everyone's petty little personal disputes. Never mind the lack of simple courtesy to try to solve problems. Just lawyer up and solve it that way, all the while paying the lawyers their cut and letting the costs of justice and police forces expand exponentially.
Yes, real violence happens in schools. Yes, real crime happens in schools. But for god's sake restrict the police and justice system's dealings to those matters, not fricking perfume spraying or intentionally spilled milk! Empower teachers and administrators to be able to do something without getting the legal and policing system involved. Police have better things to do, like catching real criminals and bringing them justice. I suppose you could justify this effort as a kind of education in civics, but in the real world you don't manage every dispute with formalities, otherwise government would have to be HUGE. I mean, look at this:
"documented 275,000 juvenile tickets in fiscal 2009"
275000 tickets in one year? How much did that cost? Is the state trying to make revenue on this? Or what? It's ridiculous. It's like a big tax on student mistakes, which is unavoidable. Students are *supposed* to make mistakes. They're not adults. Not to mention that I would guarantee that all the police officers and politicians currently in power would probably have a lengthy "school crime record" if something as insane as this was implemented in their day. And how comfortable would they be with that information being somewhere in a government database today? Probably not.
What a foundation for future generations the people making these decisions are building. It's appalling.
Re:obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
And at the other extreme, I have heard news stories about: A kid gets arrested for having a butter knife in his lunch box. A kid gets busted for possession of Tylenol. Another kid gets in trouble for sharing cupcakes. Kids getting sanctioned for holding hands in the hallway. The schools crack down so hard on these miniscule infringments that they MAKE THE NEWS. With schools worrying about all this crap, we wonder why they're not learning to read and write??
Re:No wonder private schools are booming... (Score:4, Insightful)
The best indicator we have of success is education. You will either provide decent education (note, this isn't warehousing, baby sitting, crowd management, or child processing, but education) or you will pay for a significant percentage of your population being incarcerated, and your economy being in shambles.
Time and time again, the very same children failing in public school environments, have excelled when placed in legitimate institutions committed to providing a safe, comprehensive, committed environments for children to learn. The failure is not in the children, it is in the public schools. The list of failures is nearly endless. Providing so little funding that schools resort to having fast food on their campuses leading to unhealthy diets high in sugar and fat, leading to poor physical and therefore mental performance (exacerbating attention disorders and chronic sleepiness in classes.) Insufficient funds for meaningful PE, art instruction, music instruction, computer science instruction and extracurricular activities make students less interested in their course work and curricula, provides them with insufficient opportunities to develop healthy social behavior, and in poorer communities where both parents work to feed their families, leaves children vulnerable to gangs and negative influences (those drugs mentioned above.)
Children are naturally curious and want to know. It takes an environment of trying to force kids into being the little automatons that governments and businesses so desperately want in their workforces and electorates to kill off the desire to learn. The state isn't interested in intellectually developed, informed and empowered civilians. Such people are a nightmare for Government. They have opinions and know how to voice them, they see trends and make informed conclusions and demand that their representatives tow the line. Government hates that. Much better to create an ignorant, superstitious public who get's their truth out of the little black corporate box in their living rooms and does what Fox news tells them to.
I agree there is a small percentage of special needs children, children acting out because they are being raised by monsters, children with medical conditions which make it hard or impossible for them to function normally in a class room. These children for the most part need special education to succeed, but significant information now available says that they indeed can lead productive, happy, contributing lives giving to society rather than simply taking. Until we're willing to spend as much on our children (as a society) as we do on pets, none of this should be a surprise. Over the last 3 years we secretly gave 1.2 trillion dollars to banks (half of them in other countries.) We've lined the pockets of wealthy and greedy men, and continue to do so. Our representatives refuse to tax the wealthy, while Rupert Murdoch stood up in public and said "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, TAX ME ALREADY!!!" Our schools just look like the rest of the train wreck, that's all.
Texas does lead the way in stupid however. Their government has been hijacked by the profoundly ignorant, and they're demonstrating what the decent into a police state looks like. Don't deal with the underlying causes long enough, keep addressing the symptoms, keep using magical thinking as your foundation for making decisions, all the while hoping the messiah will magic all your problems away, and you get Texas. The real problem is that a very large number of poorly educated people in this country think Texas is the model for the nation, and it scares me to bottom of my soul.
Re:obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. I used to do and think exactly that way as a kid. Once you've been punished a few times, it loses a lot of its power and instead of being avoidance therapy, all it does it give you a very granular lesson on risk vs reward.
Plus, the minute you get labeled as one of those kids, you end up getting punished without offense fairly easily, so there's definitely a mindset of "If I'm going to do the time, might as well do and enjoy the crime."
Apart form letting parents abdicate any and all responsibility for their children, the worst mistake we've ever made in this regard is treating kids like retards and cattle. Just because you're 10 doesn't mean it doesn't affect you and change you like it would an adult treated the same way.
Re:welcome to the bottom of the slippery slope. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is NOT lazy teachers, you self righteous asshole.
It is parents like yourself who do not raise their kids to have respect, that are a problem. When parents sue the school for disciplining their kids, when parents refuse to discipline their kids, and when parents refuse to support teachers; then what do you expect to happen.
Re:The point of the public schools is not learning (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe you are very disconnected from the school system. When you went through school, did you get the feeling that they were just there to beat you down and make you submit?
I went through the public school system (be it 12 years ago), but I was under the impression that the teachers were there to help students learn. You should go talk with some teachers, I can tell you that most of them love teaching children and watching them learn. They love to see them grow. Many teachers do what they do because they enjoy it.
The public school system is there to make sure everyone has an education available to them. Parents that don't want their kids to go through the system are free to home school their children (except for in California, where you have to have a teacher certificate to home school).
As for the public school system, the people above teachers (administration of the system) are going to be a mix of people that enjoy teaching and people with bureaucrat type personalities. Luckily, most students do not need to interact with the administrator all that often.
And the reason kids need to "knuckle under" to the teacher and administration is because you have 1 teacher to 30+ kids now adays. A teacher cannot easily control every single child in the room. One kid being disruptive is going to ruin the learning experience for the other 29 kinds in the room. If the teacher believes that they cannot deal with the kid themselves, they push it up to the administration to deal with. But with all the lawsuits in the past decade, teachers are scared shitless of being sued themselves so they really can't do much anymore.
Re:No wonder private schools are booming... (Score:2, Insightful)
Rupert Murdoch? Did you mean Warren Buffet, or did I miss some interesting news?
Re:obviously (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes but the police will often get the benefit of the doubt. Or in some areas they are just untouchable. Suing a teacher or a school is much easier.
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:1, Insightful)
The best thing you can do for children is weed out the ones who don't want to learn. Instead of being forced to coddle and care for the troublemakers consuming 90% of attention and being violent and disruptive in class and don't want to be there, ditch them and focus on the kids who want to be there and can benefit from the attention that would otherwise be wasted on daycare for some moron's thug kids.
Let those parents find another place for those kids so they can get something catered to them without impacting the rest of the kids.
class size not an issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it a good thing we have money for the police state but not for a lower student:teacher ratio?
If we herded all the students into one giant room, think of the cost savings, one teacher per room, no need for administrative staff and such. Just cops ready to write tickets (and generate revenue).
Re:obviously (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hard [bbc.co.uk] to understand, [dailymail.co.uk] isn't it? [dailymail.co.uk]
USA! WE ARE THE NUMBER #1!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you being snide? I should kick your ass for that...
As an inhabitant of the USA, I think the biggest problem is the strong individualistic streak that we have. It seems like there are a lot of people who just get caught up in things and don't think of anyone but themselves, and culturally this is being reinforced. They want to be involved in everything, be the center of attention and have the world revolve around them. Short sighted people want immediate gratification and respect, and fuck you if you don't give it to them.
Most people here aren't like this though, just enough to make the rest of the world think we are a bunch of violent, impatient jerks.
Re:obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
A few thoughts: Culture clashes from a melting pot of immigration, anti-socialism sentiment leads to poverty for bottom of society (and hence violence), a culture of accepting violence but not sex/drugs (think in terms of censorship - television, supreme court rulings, can't sell sex toys in Alabama, not enough escapism for some people, etc.).
Probably more... you could write a PhD thesis on this question.
Re:The point of the public schools is not learning (Score:4, Insightful)
You are confusing some of the cogs with the system itself. The current model in use by the US is designed to create soldiers and factory workers and has been abandoned by the people we stole it from. The school system is far behind the times and ultimately is very destructive if it's successful. What it tries to achieve is badly out of step with the modern world.