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."
obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
bag them while they are still young.
Police state? Hell, it's police kindergarten.
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Seriously.
While my HS, and most in the district, had police officers, they were there for only two purposes - control of drugs and weapons (knives, shivs, guns... not milk). Even if a fight broke out, it was the teachers and the administration that handled it, not the cop.
yeah, using police for minor school infractions like that, that's just stupid. If it weren't for the weapons being a real problem, I'd say it was stupid to have the cop in the schools of the district I went to, but honestly, the teachers a
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.
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Citations for any of that? There might be a perceived risk of lawsuit in that situation, but a quick Google search turns up many, many more instances of people suing the school after their kid gets bullied for years on end without the bullies being punished. In fact, the only instances I see on the first page of results are parents suing for wildly inappropriate punishments (locked in a broom closet for 8 hours or tasered in the class room). The only instance that I wouldn't agree with the parents' actio
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Try googling "teacher sued for breaking up fight", you won't have to type the whole thing, by the time you get to sued it will be the second option.
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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:obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah.. There's actually video footage of teachers in kindergarten-2nd grade classes that have out-of-control kids doing physically violent or destructive things in their classroom; the teachers actually hold their arms out at a distance just so it's really clear that they're not touching the kid.
It's beautiful, isn't it?
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Talk to ten teachers and see what they say about getting sued for laying a hand on a kid.
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??
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I still find it odd that the USA has a culture that's so much more violent than any other western country I know.
If someone tried to station police officers at any school in my country, they would be laughed at. I think that would be true nearly everywhere in Europe.
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
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It's hard [bbc.co.uk] to understand, [dailymail.co.uk] isn't it? [dailymail.co.uk]
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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.
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Short sighted people want immediate gratification and respect, and fuck you if you don't give it to them.
Robert E. Howard, a writer of serial pulp fantasy and creator of Conan the Barbarian, once said, "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." The irony of course is that by limiting the exposure of our school age children to fights, bullies and other hard knocks learning experiences we are actually creating a ruder, cruder and less civilized society.
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: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:obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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You single out the most prophetic / insightful line of the entire film.
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POLICE SCHOOL!
Fuck the police (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck the police
Re:Fuck the police (Score:5, Funny)
Comin' straight from da playground
lyric fail (Score:2)
12?
Re:Fuck the police (Score:5, Funny)
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?
so having a can of coke in class is disruptive? (Score:4, Interesting)
so having a can of coke in class is disruptive?
http://www.njjn.org/uploads/Miscellaneous/Juvenile%20Probation%20Letterhead-letterfor%20Police%20Chief.doc [njjn.org]
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Thank you for your comment, however your comment assumes that school administrators and parents can act with basic common sense and logic. That assumption is not possible in the United States in 2011.
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12 fl oz is a lot of cocaine.
And more than enough to share with the whole class!
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what highschool you went to, but in mine I was carrying the math and science grades of 12 (yes, I said TWELVE) other students, year round, for YEARS.
I suppose it was pure coincidence that I had straight A grades, and that they were always the same 12 students, and also were the A-team football lineup.
Pure coincidence, surely.
When I would enquire about this fact, teacher after teacher would tell me that there was nothing they could do about it, and totally circumnavigated the issue.
Strangely enough, in my junior year when I had decided that I had enough of their bullshit and chose to get straight Fs on purpose, it was less than a week before there was a parent teacher conference. (Unscheduled, mind.) The teaachers gave the whole song and dance about how I was not living up to my potential, and the whole usual shool administrator song and dance-- but refused to listen to my grievances. Something my folks both noticed.
Prior to this meeting, and as a direct result of my decision to fail spectacularly, I had managed to make pretty much the entire A-team uneligable to play, had ruined their chances for athletic scholarships, and had literally received death threats in the hall.
As a result of this insanity (and the literal breakdown of my psyche from fun loving kid to cruel cynic in such a short period that had my parents frightened) I was taken out of school, obliterated the GED test, and stomped the local university entrance exam.
I loved college.
My grade was my own, and nobody elses, and I got to see first hand what happens to pampered highschool jocks when they get thrust into doing their own damn work.
I am now an engineer, working in aviation.
Don't talk to me about being a jealous nerd. Betty Big-boobs with her pompoms and Andy the dumb-as-rocks athlete that can't write his own name have nothing I want. I am interested in neither, for any reason.
And no, I never liked the "pretty girls" in science class. I found them painfully and willfully ignorant, and as such loathsome. If they and the deadweight athletes hooked up, they deserve each other.
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, the school was a big fan of "group participation" projects, designed specifically to carry dead weight.
An example:
14 students are assigned to a science fair project. Regardless of who actually does the work, the whole group gets the same grade. This leads to the situation where football boy does nothing, and gets an A, with an awesome project that he knows nothing about, and did nothing to contribute to.
Similar with some stretches for math, history class, etc.
The beef was not the group participation idea itself, the complaint was over the consistent assignment of the exact same 12 "partners" for every project, every year.
Re:Result of Truancy Laws (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry I wasn't more descriptive.
This particular school was rural, and had a small student population. (My graduating class would have been 90 students)
Due to the small student body size, the school had to rely on extracurricular activites generating income for the school.
As a result, the school administration came up with some 'clever' solutions to keeping dumb as rocks kids that lived and breathed football academically eligable to play.
One such clever solution was the implementation of large group projects, where grades were given to the whole group.
Think:
Science fair project. Many students are supposed to work together to create an awesome team effort project. In theory.
In reality, the cliche smart kid does all the work, makes the project, sets up and tears down the exhibit, and writes the experiment reports. The other kids assigned coast on his/her hard work, and do nothing.
To add insuult to injury, and a point which further illustrates the true intent of the practice, is the percentage of the yearly grade that such group projects add up to. (In this case, cumulatively they added up to over 70% of the grade, meaning that as long as that smart kid keeps doing all the work, the freeloaders still get passing grades, even if they bomb all their homework and tests.)
That is how failing on purpose derailed the gravy train.
Bzzzt!!! (Score:3)
Bzzzt! Wrong answer.
My point was that if someone understands something when they're in the 5th grade then they probably have the same understand (or a more complete understanding) when they're an adult.
Unless they have some kind of brain trauma.
So claiming that a large number of adults have a limited understanding of something means that when they were in the 5th grade their understanding of that mat
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Intentional irony?
Somehow, I expect not...
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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.
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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.
Most states in the U.S. didn't have any mandatory public school for the first century of the U.S. or so. Somehow, by the 1820s and 1830s, though, European visitors were writing home about how literate Americans were. Even when individual states began introducing mandatory schooling in the mid 1800s, it was usually only 4-6 years.
It wasn't until the "dangerous communist and socialist radicals" became a concern in the 1920s through the 1950s that anyone really pushed kids to go to more than primary school
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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?
Haha are you serious? We're going to allow children to choose whether or not they want to go to school? And force those that don't into child labor? These are great ideas. You'd be right at home in England in the 1700's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor#Historical [wikipedia.org]
The reason school is mandatory is because if it were optional, many children just wouldn't go, and their parents wouldn't force them. The result would be an overall decrease in average education level, pushing the US even further down that c
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Spot on, I used to skive off on days when my mum was in London seeing her PHD tutor. She never knew until I told her a few years ago - she asked how I got away with it - and I told her I only did it when I knew I wouldn't miss anything important, or make it too obvious.
She now uses me as an example (she's a child psychologist) as how teenagers can make informed decisions even when they're misbehaving.
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Yes, but plenty of those "uninterested" kids become interested later. Why punish those kids because of the ones that won't.
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I think 5 is a little young for a child to be taking such a serious view on their education, or to have them be put to work.
Also you have to look at the zero tolerance policies. Should child who is the victim of an assault be expelled same as their attacker, and then put to work? Many of these sort of violations and issues are things the school police would deal with are often times the result of these policies. If a student is the victim they get a citation same as the attacker.
Furthermore we have such thi
Willing to learn? (Score:3)
Show me a child unwilling to learn, and I'll show you the parents and teachers that continually failed the child.
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Proudly a C student after that little experience. Never stopped being a nerd (and proud of it) though. Just turned toward things that interested me, rather t
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Right now, our culture has a frightening lack of tolerance.
Really? We tolerate all sorts of things we shouldn't. We tolerate being lied to about the motives for war. We tolerate having our economy crashed by bankers, and then we tolerate having our taxes spent on bailing out those bankers. We tolerate the police filling our jails with harmless pot smokers. We tolerate millions of unreasonable searches every day. We tolerate complete disregard for our Constitution by officials at every level of governm
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?
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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.
My wife is a teacher and all of her co workers ask me if my oldest will be like one of the little hellions they have to deal with. I tell them if he is like that let me know and I will solve the problem. I have been harassed by other parents for punishing my child as I will haul him right out of places if he misbehaves because that supposedly hurts their self esteem. I see lots of other kids his age and mine is an angle by comparison, he doesn't throw sand at them, hit, throw toys, take things from others.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like you consider him to be acute kid.
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Don't be so obtuse. You know all the sines of "self-esteem"
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How does this contradict the GP's point? The increasing class size due to reduced numbers of teachers is one of the many factors that are preventing teachers from maintaining effective discipline.
What we really have here is a formalized system of school discipline, because leaving it to the teachers and school officials is insufficient. (For a variety of reasons). It may be kind of stupid
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When funding is cut by the millions of dollars per district, on top of cuts two years ago, districts have no choice but to cut teachers.
Officials say the impact will be felt the most in the loss of teachers and in increased class sizes.
Some districts, like Arlington and Keller, laid off staff members. Others, including Mansfield and Birdville, trimmed staffers largely by not filling open positions.
The number of teaching positions being cut remains fluid because many districts will make last-minute budget adjustments after school starts and finalize budgets this month. Administrators expect about 175 fewer teachers in Arlington than last year, nearly 85 fewer in Mansfield and about 45 fewer in Keller, for example.
This is the first time widespread cuts have significantly increased class sizes in elementary schools countywide, Poole said.
Everything else you said is ignorant bullshit, so it's not worth responding to. Read a little about what's been happening with Texas school funding before you try to talk again. At least start with the change to the funding structure in 2006, how well that has or hasn't worked, and the effect it has had on districts' ability to raise their own revenue locally.
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.
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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.
Say a student is being disruptive in a classroom, cussing at the teacher. The teacher tells them to go to the principals office, they refuse. Now what? Teachers can't lay hands on the child, and the kids know it. They can't physically force him from the classroom. The student will claim the teacher attacked them in anger because they had a disagreement or were angry about such and such and their parents will back them and they'll have all sorts of problems on their hands. So what do they do?
They call t
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There are a lot of people having fun with unlikely hypotheticals in this thread. What if the kid pulls a knife. What if he holds the teacher hostage. What if he refuses to leave the classroom when told.
Well. . .What if? Sometimes shit happens and you deal with it. When it's statistical outlier shit that happens, you don't staff accordingly unless you're talking about something ultra-critical like guarding the President. You don't stick a police station in a school because some time down the road a kid MIG
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
So cavity searches and rendition are powers "taken away from the schools"? I have some bad news for you. When your 4th grade gym teacher "disappeared" you to his house and cavity searched you, that wasn't a school sanctioned punishment. You might want to get in touch with a lawyer.
Texas Police Are Pretty Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
My then, 17yo kid (he literally just turned a week previous) DEFENDED himself against a 14yo, who started a fight. My child was arrested and charged as an adult. The child who started the fight was not charged and was given one week of in school suspension. My child is now classified as a violent offender. He's fucked until he's at least 25. In Texas is it now, literally, illegal to defend yourself.
Police and Judges in Texas constantly prove they are incapable of intelligence, compassion, or logical application of the law. Stupidity, good 'ol boy politics, and bridged judges is an everyday event. Some judges only hold court a couple days per yet. Ya, things are that corrupt here.
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in the same Texas with stand your ground rights (Score:2)
in the same Texas with stand your ground rights
Re:Texas Police Are Pretty Bad (Score:5, Interesting)
In Texas is it now, literally, illegal to defend yourself.
It's Texas. He should have used a concealed handgun to defend himself - he'd probably be off scot-free.
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>>It is NOT a gun friendly state
It's not a sword-friendly state, either.
But I think the perception of it comes from those cases where innocent European tourists entered various Texans' properties and were summarily shot and killed. And the Texans got off under the Castle Doctrine principle, which caused a bit of an outrage in Europe.
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You're absolutely right, the policies here suck donkey balls. It's so very much black and white, with little consideration for the middle ground, trying to understand the circumstances on a case by case basis; like the sex offender laws.
IANAL, but my suggestion, as so
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Side note: Seriously? A fine for profane language? What the fuck?
Yeah, that's bullshit.
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I don't disagree with you but I can't agree with putting something on a kids permanent record for a first offense scuffle.
If there's a fight in which no weapons are used and neither participant is seriously injured it's just a freaking fight. It's happened with teenage boys (and girls for that matter) since... probably since we came down out of the trees for Christ sake. Punishment yes, preferably from the parents but if necessary from the school as well. A second offense I could see maybe trying him for
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they should aks for trial by jury! (Score:2)
It's there right and I don't thing they are being told that they have that right!
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They're juveniles, so unfortunately they don't have that right. Juvenile courts work very differently from adult criminal courts. Basically, unless you're being tried as an adult, you're pretty much at the mercy of a single judge (with little recourse). That's what allowed those corrupt judges [wikipedia.org] in Pennsylvania to get away with what they did.
Court? (Score:2)
So, are these kids getting represented by an attorney? What's it take for them to get a jury trial? Do they in fact have ANY constitutional rights in this court?
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Having been through the juvenile system in my younger days, I can tell you that what they typically do is suspend dispositions of minor offenses (mine was pot) upon completion of a intervention type program (usually probation, drug education, some type of work program or community service, etc.).
Getting an attorney involved in that process usually means a disposition is entered and the kid is sentenced accordingly (could be some term served in a juvenile facility).
During your suspended disposition, if you s
welcome to the bottom of the slippery slope. (Score:2)
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.
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It is parents like yourself who do not raise their kids to have respect, that are a problem.
Respect what, exactly? I get along great with my kids' teachers. On the few occasions when my kids have done something boneheaded, their teachers have emailed me and I addressed the problem at home. It's a two-way street, though: I respect those teachers because they deserve it (which is the default setting for teachers until proven otherwise).
In contrast, my oldest had a terrible teacher when she graduated from one school and started in another. I'll skip the details, but the essence was that my daughter w
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But! But! (Score:2)
Our zero tolerance policy will save the children!
(aside)Now where did I go an hide that sarcasm tag?
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: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: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.
Good and Bad (Score:2)
Haha! (Score:2)
3) Austin middle school student ticketed after she sprayed herself with perfume when classmates said she smelled
Oh how I wish this would have happened to both the girls constantly spraying perfume and the guys constantly spraying axe when I was in school.
I've always had a sensitive nose, and they would just douse themselves with the stuff. I swear you could light a match nearby and they'd catch fire.
At least the perfume, for the most part, had a halfway decent smell. Guys? Women don't like the smell of a chemical shitstorm, ask any female. Put the axe away.
The article summary... (Score:2)
...is a perfect example of why schools need to spend more time teaching and less policing. Holy crap that's some bad grammar! I think it actually physically hurt my brain trying to understand it.
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.
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While I am very sympathetic to the desire to get him out of Texas I'm afraid I can't support foisting him off on the rest of the country.
Somewhere in the uncomfortable middle... (Score:5, Interesting)
It worries me because of things like the recent "Kids for Cash" [jlc.org] scam in Pennsylvania in which kids, unrepresented by lawyers, received huge out-of-state sentences for infractions that should have netted them a suspension or a week or two in jug. Two judges received millions in kickbacks. At least one kid took his own life. Who knows how many basically decent kids were introduced to lives of crime or otherwise psychologically damaged. In other words, I don't trust the governments that implement this kind of stuff.
On the other hand, we have parents assaulting teachers over a bad grade, big kids bringing in arsenals, little kids showing up with Daddy's (or Mommy's boyfriend's) handgun that they found under a sofa cushion, kindergarteners arriving with stashes of crack cocaine--the list is endless, and obviously teachers can't deal with these sorts of infractions. It's a huge problem, but I'm not sure police forces are the answer. Otherwise, all of the sudden every childish misbehavior is going to start looking like a major felony.
!ife in USA sounds freightening. (Score:3)
With all the things you describe, life in America seems extremely freightening. In comparison, life in Europe seems utopian, when compared to America.
Where is the money coming from? (Score:3)
State governments are complaining about teacher's unions, but they have money to fund their own police departments? WTF? That's almost as bad as spending one dollar out of every four on the military, then telling people on Social Security and Medicare we need to cut their programs.
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all of them foreign desserts they're fighting in
I must have missed the Battle of the Gateau
Cash for Kids (Score:5, Interesting)
Just this month, Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for taking a $1 million bribe from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a case that became known as "kids for cash.". http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/11/national/main20091371.shtml [cbsnews.com]
This can happen to your kids too! I am so sick of all of the "unique snowflake" crap from people on here saying the schools and state should be able to do whatever they want to my kids to get them "in line". We homeschool all of our kids, are extremely respectful to all of them and treat them with the same respect and dignity I want for myself. I will never send them off to be harassed by the state and turned into a tool for the elites or a cog in the wheel. They live their lives along with us in the "real world" and are charting their own course rather than the one defined by the government, political, religious and corporate sponsors of education.
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THIS.
You can also mention to those detractors that 99% of all crimes against children are committed by people they know. Stranger-fear is irrational and based on er... nothing, and on the contrary the conditioned "don't talk to strangers" thing is more harmful to kids safety. There was a case recently of a child who got lost in a Utah state park, he saw numerous adults during the 6 days before he was found - and didn't approach any of them, in fact hid away, because he'd been told not to talk to strangers.
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).
No child... (Score:3)
No child left behind. Hey, I know... let's elect another President from Texas. So far every one of them has started a war (and on shaky circumstances, too) and screwed not just the Texas school system but the National one as well.
But I'm sure the next one will be ok.
Re: (Score:2)
If smoking pot all day isn't the answer, you're asking the wrong question.
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.
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"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. .
Most totalitarian states have high literacy rates. So what? I wouldn't want to be a Cuban or North Korean.
We should seriously consider replacing state compulsory education... going a state approved school, or else... with a simple requirement that you get an education from a source of your choosing. And I say this as a man with a college degree, a son that's in his junior year of high school, and another son that just started Kindergarten last week. Most compulsory education systems exist either to produce
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"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. Stop talking hogwash.
Maybe some nations. Not really in the U.S. Actual functional literacy rates in the U.S. have been around 75-80% for the past century.
The "99%" rate cited in some sources for the U.S. is crap, usually based on census self-reporting (i.e., people get someone else to check a box for them). By the way, the same census figures said that over 90% of the U.S. (free) population was literate when such statistics were first taken in 1840. (Massachusetts was 98%, I think.) Look it up. That's before even primar
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That's true in the USA only if you count "literacy" as being able to sound out words without a functional understanding or ability to make simple inferences.
If you discount those who have limited understanding of anything past basic English, and a lack of ability to answer more than basic questions about any text utilizing moderately complex language, the rate falls to about 70%.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf [ed.gov]
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.