Of course it matters. If the teacher called the student a stupid cunt, it’s a different issue than in the teacher was simply firm. Doesn’t make the violent response acceptable, but it does matter. There’s nothing wrong with a principal trying to find out what happened, and if the teacher escalated the situation or even failed to take obvious steps to deflate it, then the principal needs to have a talk with that teacher, because there is more to prevention than harsh punishments for offenders.
You know, I can’t even imagine this happening in my old school district. The shoving the teacher thing? Yeah, that could happen. Cheering by other students is somewhat less likely. The student being in the building 5 seconds after the administration found out about it? Not fucking likely.
I went to a small school, very calm. Fights were rare, and not very exciting, as they were broken up after about two seconds. The worst it ever got while I was there was a fad for bomb threats just before I graduated. Anyways, my point is that this kid would have been hauled out of the school by the principal and one of the gym teachers, then sat on the curb until the cops could come pick her up. I’m sad that the administration at that school wasn’t willing to stand up for their teachers.
Right, 'cause every American school is like that and every foreign school is perfect.
I can understand being concerned by things like this, but when I see overreactions like this and Jinx’s post it bugs me a bit.
Well, it’s not like I’m randomly selecting a country by throwing a dart at a map.
The other day I was driving by the junior high school my daughter would attend, if we remained in this town (which is the only town around here we can afford to live in), and I had to suddenly apply the brakes to avoid running over the 6 kids in the middle of the road who were in the process of beating the holy living shit out of a seventh kid. My wife says there were at least two stabbings in that school this year. Right; that’s the kind of environment I want for my daughter. I am the fuck outta here.
But if you are moving anyway, and as far as another country, it’s hard to imagine you couldn’t also move to a community in the U.S. where you could afford to live and have access to safe, decent schools. They do exist. That doesn’t make it wrong to move to another country, of course, but it’s not your only choice, nor are the people left behind thoughtless parents who don’t really love their kids or value their safety.
And I hope you called 911 when you saw that.
Again, DianaG, you’re in my head. We must share a drink and a smoke sometime. 
This sounds exactly * like something my mother would have said–and maybe even have done.
And I must say, though I’m a survivor of childhood domestic violence (my father was the culprit, not my mother), and though I generally view striking children (or anyone, for that matter) with extreme disfavor, all things being equal, I kinda get this.
*Of course, for whatever her other failings as a parent may have been (i.e., not protecting us from our father–but he was kicking her ass, too), my mother knew my brother and me, and what we were/were not capable of (not, mind you, that we were bad kids), and she would have our backs (within reason) vs. other authority figures if she believed that we weren’t entirely in the wrong.
True. To be honest, I was exaggerating a bit. We aren’t leaving the US because of the schools. There are a lot of reasons; access to better education where we are going is just one of the reasons.
No point really. It broke up in a minute or two, and everyone (including the ass kickee) dispersed.
I’ve got a feeling we’re not simply talking about Kansas (or Baltimore, MD) any more.
I also meant to comment on the OP. If what happened is in any way close to the desription that has been given, the teacher should not be faulted for what she apparently said – otherwise teachers can never verbally enage students under these circumstances for fear of uttering some “unknown trigger.”
I also think that, once the incident was reported as being as violent as it was, the student should have been held in detention somewhere and not have been walking freely around the halls (one poster said the teacher encountered her), especially since the facts did eventually lead to her being suspended later.
Additinally, a vigorous (though probably futile) effort should have been made to find out which students egged on the assaultant. Some disciplinary action should be directed towards them (redemptive-type essays, etc.), if not the video maker/poster also.
It doesn’t eppear, however, that that this will happen, given that this school system seems disinclined to truly try to get a handle on this student-on-teacher violence.
This whole “kids brutalizing other kids/teachers and putting it on YouTube” is certainly becoming an alarming trend.
I cannot help but wonder what’s gone wrong in some parts of our society.
When I was in high school, this kind of shit just didn’t happen. Even if you were a malcontent, you still didn’t hit a teacher.
I worry for my young boy’s futures in what seems to be an escalating downward spiral of violence and alcohol abuse amongst teenagers.
Oh, and the dick-sucking culture. I run a business where all of my employees go to a private all-boys Catholic school in Cincinnati. They are good kids, by and large, and good workers, too. But some of their stories from the parties they attend…gawd!
One kid told me just the other day about some girl that went to a party with a toothbrush and toothpaste so she could brush her teeth in between the multiple dick-suckings she administered to several male attendees at the party. And she was a student at a Catholic all-girls school, and only sixteen!
Part of me thought “where were girls like that when I was in High School?”
And the parent in me didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
There’s a lot of exaggeration about this stuff. High school boys are masters at bullshitting. There are lots of slutty girls and lots of sleazy behavior in high school, yeah, but it definitely gets exaggerated sometimes. (Did those “rainbow parties” or whatever they were called even exist?)
My guys weren’t lying, and yes, “lipstick parties” exist.
For some reason, I think that this dick-sucking culture has arisen as an OK way for (seemingly, particularly Catholic-schooled boys and girls) to have sex without actually “having sex”, of course, depending on what your defenition of “is” is…
Are there girls like that? Of course there are, always have been, and just like always, the stories of one get around, a lot. I teach high school. Kids are remarkably indiscreet around their teachers. While many of them are having sex, many of them aren’t, and lots of them are liars. Among the ones that are having sex, it varies as much as with any other population: I’d say it’s as often in the context of long-term monogamous relationships as it is “dick sucking parties”
Oral sex remains, as always, the poor man’s birth control. And it’s pretty effective. Again, I suspect it’s more often in bf/gf situations than indiscreet casual hookups, and if two 17 year-olds are desperately hot for each other but want no risk of pregnancy because it would so completely mess up their lives–that seems a reasonable thing, to me.
You know, I used to think that too, and I’m only 38, but the sheer amount of these anecdotal “stories” is a lot larger than I recall as a HS student. Yeah, we knew whom the supposed “sluts” were (and all wanted to have sex with them), but now it’s a different game, IMO. Now, my impression is that there are MORE girls doing this stuff and they are no longer as “slutty” as they used to be, it seems from talking to these guys that it’s more acceptable, and from what I can tell, common and almost expected behavior.
I think it’s more common now than it was in my day (I’m 45). I read a book by comedian David Brenner in which he tells about a girl who was giving bj’s to all the neighborhood guys in an abandoned bldg, so there’s always been an element of it.
But I see things on TV that tell me it has changed, grown. E.g. very little, save the f bomb, is censored any more. IIRC a few years ago a rapper on TV was at a major event (the Super Bowl?) doing a song about the girl having his “white stuff in her throat” or something like that. HUH? :eek:
E.g. girls will make out with other girls to attract a guy. Look at shows like Elimidate where girls or guys will one up each other. I have a real disconnect with those shows because I’m sure in many cases, they’re competing over someone they don’t really want…they just want to beat the other contestants.
I’m feeling a little guilty as we’re getting far afield of the OP. Woodstock and all that brought a kind of free love era or something, and there was the pill and women’s lib and everything else. But there’s supposed to be a pendulum effect that societies will veer toward liberalism and then something like AIDS pushes us back toward conservatism. I wonder how society will deal with the bumper crop of “never-been-married-but-I-have-a-kid” twenty-somethings.
Used to be we had to teach kids that hitting **each other ** to solve their problems was wrong. But that presupposes parental involvement—the original authority figure(s)—in the first place. I don’t know how you could legislate adequate parenting.
I posted here
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=459789&page=3&pp=50
that I think we may have to start educating parents on how to be parents.
Jinx says building more prisons is an answer, but I think it’s a pound of cure that costs more dearly all the time, and it goes way beyond money.
Getting back to the OP, cameras unfortunately won’t stop attacks. This generation has grown up on Youtube and mugs for the cameras. They have no shame. They have self esteem, but no morals to go with it.
I teach in a rural high school where we have gangs, drugs, assaults…unfortunately the “typical” violence. I am a tough love teacher.
In one of my classes, I have a great student, who is an illegal alien and a gang member (gangs want their members to be good students, btw). He told me he keeps his gang activities out of the school. I told him in essence that if he took it to the street, and showed up at my house with his homies, that I would do whatever necessary to take matters into my own hands and defend myself.
This kid knows I am serious. He looked at me and said, “no problem. I understand you, ma’am.” He has never given me a problem.
Provoking or not, I am not putting up with any bullshit from anyone. My students know that, which is why I believe we need to stop letting these kids run things. We need to be not just firm but tough. Take back our schools, our neighborhoods, our towns, our cities. Aren’t we the adults? Or are we too damned apathetic to do anything?
Case in point: a friend and colleague of mine has several gang members from several gangs in her class who verbally abuse her daily, along with bringing their fights into her class. She has followed proper procedures and nothing really is done. She actually found out one of the girls was a “queen” in a latino gang, which means, she is a sex slave to the gang…well, my friend tried to step in and report the abuse (the mother had no idea.), which by law we have to do, and it backfired through the inept handling of the case by a Barney Fife detective…who not only harassed the girl, but revealed my colleague as the one who reported it to authorities. The girl is no longer pressing charges on the gang members who were raping her.
My friend has been threatened. Have any of the administrators gotten off their asses? No! Lip service is the rule.
Is is any wonder why teachers are leaving the classrooms? You know, law enforcement officers get to certify with pepper spray, tazers and such. I will gladly take the training if it means I take charge of my class. We are targets with no defense against these idiots.
I can totally feel that. Unfortunately, and I think I’ll be labelled a racist here, it’s become “street cred” to be ignorant of just about anything other than “protecting your own”, whether that be turf, homies, family, whatever. And it’s usually the predictably ignorant cycle of one-upmanship through acts of violence that creates the self-perpetuating scenario, along with non-existing or uncaring parental relationships, having no boundaries or rules as a child, etc, etc. Single mothers having a fourteen year old that they aren’t around to supervise and set boundaries for because Dad is a deadbeat and they have to work to provide is an all to common low denominator.
And the beat goes on.
It’s certainly frightening.
It all has a very “fall of an empire” feel to it, doesn’t it? When parents stop teaching their children…
One might even say “end of days”.
Heh. I doubt this girl even has what we would normally think of as “parents.” She is probably an out-of-wedlock child with no father in her life, and her mother is probably too busy being high/drunk/unemployed/sleeping around/having more kids out-of-wedlock to care what her daughter is doing. And/or, the kid is probably is just repeating the violence she sees at home.
I weep for the future, I really do.