(no subject)

[theweaselking]

How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million

One parent who was also a teacher’s aide threatened to “kick my white ass” in front of my class and received no punishment from the principal, beyond being told to stay out of my classroom."
...
This lack of consequences encouraged a level of violence I never could have imagined among any students, let alone second-graders. Fights broke out daily—not just during recess or bathroom breaks but also in the middle of lessons. And this wasn’t just playful shoving: we’re talking fists flying, hair yanked, heads slammed against lockers.

When I asked other teachers to come help me stop a fight, they shook their heads and reminded me that D.C. Public Schools banned teachers from laying hands on students for any reason, even to protect other children.
...
One week, two of my emotionally disturbed boys went on a binge of sexual harassment, making lewd gestures and grabbing girls' buttocks—yes, seven- and eight-year-olds. On another occasion, three students piled on top of one of their peers and were punching him with their fists before I intervened. My students were not even afraid to try to hurt me: two boys spent a month throwing pencils at me in the middle of lessons; another child slugged me in the gut.
...
Kids who stab each other, use teachers as shields in fights, bang on doors to disrupt classes, and threaten to 'kick out that baby' from a pregnant teacher have created a 'climate of terror,' the Washington Post reports."

Comments

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

why do you think there is such a major across-the-board/nation increase in elemen5tary school violence?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

#1: Because parents do not discipline their children.
#2: Because parents do not set an example for their children to follow.
#3: Because the examples children *do* have are spoiled brats themselves - their musicians and movie stars.
#4: Because children are given massive and effective weapons against adults who might want to discipline them, in the form of false reports of physical or sexual abuse.
#5: Because of laws like the one that says teachers cannot touch students, even to break up a fight.

The children realise first that there are no consequences for their actions, at all, on anything approaching a child's scale. Sure, you're uneducated and can't get a job when you're 17, but right now you're 7. They have no idea how to act "properly", and all their examples (their parents and the people they see on TV) tell them that screaming when you don't get your way is a workable solution, that violence is cool and carries no consequences for adults, either, and that people who want to talk or reason deserve no respect. Especially in poor inner-city areas, there's an extremely strong hip-hop-wannabe culture: Respect is demanded by the alpha, and anyone who disrespects him is beaten or killed. If you do not beat or kill those who challenge you, you can't possibly be alpha - and so you have the children challenging the teachers for dominance and, like puppies, when the teachers roll over and allow them to assert it, they decide that they *must* thus be in charge, and start acting like it.

So what you've got are typical children plus a lack of examples and teaching of good behaviour plus rewards and a complete lack of consequences for bad behaviour.

All the the hamstringing of teachers, incidentally, is moved forward by the heavily Republican groups who want to destroy the public education system to begin with. It, like American emergency response, health care, insurance law, and bankruptcy law, is being actively sabotaged to create a permanently poor, uneducated, controllable underclass.

And that's why you've got schools like this one.

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

I agree.

so what do you think the end result of this slide is gonna be?

(btw, there is a similar situation taking place here in UK schools)

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

>>>>>so what do you think the end result of this slide is gonna be?<<<<<

Dunno what the 1890s were like in the UK, but in America they were The Gilded Age, the height of American class privilege, the Charles Montgomery Burns paradise. The Republicans have slavered for a return to it, and now (aided by their contemptible allies in the Libertarian party and by the Vichy Democrats such as Clinton and Lieberman), they're getting it.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with 1 and 2... the current generation of children is full of undisciplined shitheads with undisciplined shitheads as parents.

[thormation.livejournal.com]

Loathe though I am to admit it, we cannot put all the blame for sabotage--at least the political sabotage--on the right wing. The left wing has a long history of kissing teachers' unions' hineys, resulting in laws that prevent the firing of long-standing, entrenched teachers who are just going through the motions.

And both parties are to blame for not getting funding to poor schools. With No Child Left Behind, we now have Federal mandates for school performance, but in most states, school funding is provided at the state or municipal levels. Plus the tax base of the district your school is in most often determines the amount of "frills" that your school can provide its students--"frills" like art and music instruction, science labs, athletic equipment, college placement classes, and HVAC.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Rarely does bending over backwards for a teacher's union *hamstring* teachers. NCLB's testing is a joke in practice - but you're right about the "frills".

And you'll forgive me, I hope, for putting the blame for the execrable *current* state of your education system on the "home-skooling is the only way to save our chillllldrun from teh icky socialist atheist homersexuals" crowd who've been in charge of writing your laws for the past decade.

[jerril]

My mother taught kindergarten in a really rough neighborhood. This is Canada, but it's the closest thing to an inner-city ghetto we have around here. One of her kids, and these are 5-6 year olds, kicked her in the kneecap hard enough to cause damage that required knee surgery.

She escorted him to the office in a police-style restraint, and then promptly called the Childrens Aid Society to report herself for doing so (they laughed and said "don't sweat it, but we're glad we have your story on the record") and *then* went to the hospital. His mother never bothered to raise a racket over it, however; she was mostly neglecting him anyways. I still don't know why the CAS didn't come to investigate HIM and his family after that, though.