I agree 100% it is a problem, but these types these days do NOT respect the authority of teachers, or any authority figure. Teachers should have the brains to realize these are different times, and saying that to a kid like that IS a challenge. It is a sad state of affairs that it is, but that’s the way it is. Obviously it is, because the kid beat the teachers ass after she said it, what more proof do you need? Maybe she would have beat her ass anyway, maybe not, why take the chance, especially when it was an empty threat anyway, as she apparently did little to stop the kid’s attack, right?
Wow, where to begin?
We could go with the “hospitals as business” model. THAT certainly has worked well, hasn’t it? :dubious: Likewise, the schooling of children should be public sector, not-for-profit.
Many of my colleagues and I are of the opinion that this isn’t merely intended to shuffle students among public schools. They really aim to funnel public school money into private schools.
A) Contrary to common (?) belief, private schools operate without the same constraints we do. E.g. if a kid needs special education or ESL, we have to provide it. The cost is great, and they won’t make us look good on state tests. Private schools can cherry pick, not admit the kid in the first place, then claim how much better they’re doing. Public schools will be left with a disproportionate number of the special needs populations. Does John Q Public really take the time to look at what statistics say or mean?
B) The very tests that they flog us with? Here in Texas at least, they don’t intend to use them in private schools. We’re accountable, beholden to results or else; they will not be. This, more than anything, tells me that the issue is all about money and not quality of education.
In fact, we’ve had private schools around here go belly up due to mismanagement. In theory, if this scheme gets off the ground, a kid could take his voucher to a private school, and if the school goes bankrupt, we’d have to educate him for free. The plan here, in fact, is that if a public school is “failing” by state standards, we’re supposed to transport the kid to his school of choice…that’s a nice break for the private school, eh, not having to foot the bill for transportation?
C) It has been said that America isn’t a melting pot where all the races happily mix and mingle. We’re really a salad bowl. Sure people come here but they often stay with their own kind, go to their own churches, and so on. Sometimes that means colorful ethnic neighborhoods like Little Italy in Chicago or Chinatown in San Francisco. Sometimes that’s slums and ghettos.
But if any part of this country is a melting pot, it’s the public schools. That’s where kids from many walks of life come together and hopefully learn some tolerance and appreciation for other ways of life.
Funny thing is, we segregated the schools but if you go to a public high school cafeteria, you’ll find a lot of kids eating with their own ethnic group. Vouchers in some areas would probably lead to more self-segregation.
D) As stated before, we think they’re moving toward funding private schools, i.e. including religious ones. There goes the separation of church and state. “Intelligent design” or “prayer in schools” paid for by your tax dollars, anyone?
E) When it comes to schools, bigger is not better. As schools grow, students have more chances to fall through the cracks, it’s harder for teachers to keep up with the work load, and so on. Struggling public schools will fall, and those who stay in public schools will overcrowd the remaining ones until they’re ineffective as well.
F) You can’t polish a turd. Take some inner-city gangbanger and put him in a private school…do you think he’s going to thrive? No, they’ll expel him and he’ll be back in the public school, possibly with no tax dollars to pay for his education. And if you’re a parent with big plans for your child so you opt for a private school, how do you feel when they bus in the gangbangers?
PS-For anybody who has never read “NCLB football…”
Did you mean “integrated?”
Touché…desegregated, actually. Monday’s brain fart.
Oh and I forgot to mention…all those books they keep trying to ban in public schools? I imagine they won’t be on private school curricula.
It’s harder than ever to be a parent, I’m sure. But I think there are things you can do to give your kids the best chance. Off the top of my head…
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Know who their friends are, whether they are decent kids, and eliminate those who aren’t from their circle.
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Demonstrate that you care by talking to your kids about their report cards, and have high expectations for them. Use “tough love” when they drop the ball…take away privileges if they’re not taking their job—education—seriously. Visit the school, and talk to the teachers, as a show of solidarity.
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Enrich their education by taking them to museums, exhibits, and so on. Provide them with materials to explore their interests, e.g. art supplies or an erector set or what have you.
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Pay attention to what they’re watching on TV, listening to on their mp3 players, etc. Censor what’s inappropriate and discuss what “take away” message they’re getting from what they watch.
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Ask them what they want to be when they grow up. IMO that’s where it starts because it leads to a goal-orientation. Realize that these dreams will change often, but encourage them to think big—“Sure, you could be a doctor!”
Back to the OP:
News: -
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.volunteers15apr15,0,5417924.story
*Responding to a teacher assault that made national headlines, Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso is launching a campaign to recruit 500 volunteers for the city schools in the next two weeks.
In a letter e-mailed to 2,500 community members over the weekend, Alonso wrote that “this essential work of making safe schools cannot be done by the administrators, teachers, staff or students at each school alone. I cannot say strongly enough how important it is for families and community members to rally around our schools, our teachers, and our students.”*
Note: While I hope that will work I will point out that around here, we don’t just sign up chaperones for field trips…they have to pass a criminal background check. So I hope they get lots of qualified volunteers. I don’t think turning loose a bunch of strangers with unknown agendas in a public school is wise.
*The recent violence in Baltimore City Public Schools is getting the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Congressman John Sarbanes participated in “Teach For America” week, where notables head to the classroom. Monday morning, he taught ninth graders at Digital Harbor High School a civics lesson. The congressman says there needs to be federal funds dedicated to protecting teachers, after the video of Jolita Berry being attacked by a student surfaced.*
And finally, there’s Detroit. A couple weeks (?) ago I saw a thing on Good Morning America saying that Detroit has the lowest graduation rate of any major city in the U.S.
*“At some point, the system just will not be viable,” said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of education and history at the University of Michigan who has studied the Detroit schools.
Once one of the largest districts in the country, Detroit is no longer among the 20 most populous. And with the flight of each child, the district watches another $7,500 walk away. All told, the state is spending nearly $380 million a year to educate Detroit children elsewhere. *
Still, 25% of boys in Detroit schools don’t graduate in 4 years. Some will in 5. But even if 50% graduate ultimately, that means half never do. Maybe when the big three automakers were booming, they could get a union job on the assembly lines and earn a decent lifestyle.
Being a teacher, of course I believe that education can do big things for students. But I also know that a lack of it can mean young men and women don’t have anything constructive to do. That often leads to crime and a host of other problems.
Says Wikipedia:
In March 2007, metropolitan Detroit’s unemployment rate was 6.5%.[69] In the city, the unemployment rate was 14.2% at the end of 2005, leaving Detroit with more than one-third of residents below the poverty line.[70] This is in part attributed to white flight following court-ordered busing during the 1970s. Parts of the city have abandoned and burned out shells of buildings. Though the city has struggled with finances, since 2006 it has balanced its budget with more funding available to demolish blighted properties
Here’s an article from 1999, talking to a teacher about the strike that was on then:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/oct1999/det-o20_prn.shtml
It will be interesting to see how Detroit fares in the years to come.
Or the kid has learned that hitting is an option.
Well hitting is always an option, just rarely the most effective method for making a long term point.
The again I think if a kid jumps on a teacher like that the teacher should have every right to knock the kid into next week.
Equip each teacher with a grenade. If things get hairy, teach just pulls the pin and snarls “you wanna play? Fine, let’s all go to Hell together!”
I’ve had kids attack me a couple times in my career as a high school teacher. Both times, I restrained them with judicious application of force. That was because the attacks were basically half-assed attempts to grapple me launched mainly to look tough for their peers. More serious attacks would have required a more serious response.
My students have the usual array of inner-city problems: drugs, absent fathers, gangs, etc. The thing that they fear the most is being made to look weak in front of their peers. They will escalate any situation to ridiculous levels in order to avoid losing face. As such, they are actually quite easy to manipulate. You can manipulate one into boiling over if you want him suspended for a while. You can manipulate one into doing the right thing by making the right thing part of a face-saving avenue.
Those who don’t learn how to play the kids tend to have the most incidents.
Indeed. Class, today’s vocabulary word is defenestration. Observe. 
Agree 100%- anyone who disagrees with anything you say here does not know anything about the subject.
Yea, OK, so what? Private schools work. Public schools are broken. Advantage: vouchers
Or, private schools that specialize in particular special needs will open, attracted by the voucher money, and these special needs kids will get not just better educations, but educations tailored to their unique situations. Advantage: vouchers
Again, great. I’m all for that. The stupid testing mentality imposed on school system by NCLB needs to be broken. There still nees to be some testing, of course, but test results shouldn’t dominate the focus of schools like they do now. Advantage: vouchers
So have the vouchers pay on a semester by semester or even month by month basis. If one school goes belly up, the student just transfers to another one. This is hardly a big deal.
If the result is more children being better educated than the current system, it’s an expense I’m willing to have the taxpayers bear.
I’m all for integration, but if some parents and students chose to self segregate, who are you to tell them they can’t? In any event, it’s a moot point, any school accepting vouchers would have to follow federal discrimination law, so this is a non-issue.
Fine by me, that’s one issue that badly needs to be attacked. The Constitution prohibits the establishment of an official state religion, nothing more or less. This principle has been distorted beyond recognition by anti-religious people and activist judges to the point where the law states that anything that has anything to do with any type of faith cannot accept any government funds. This is complete and utter bullshit. (and I say that as an agnostic theist. My wife is almost completely atheist and she agrees with me 100% I only mention this so you don’t think I have a particular religious POV that I’m espousing here ) The important thing here is the child’s education, and parent’s ability to control that. If Catholic parents want to send their kids to Catholic schools, Muslim parents send their kids to Islamic schools, Jewish kids to Jewish schools, even, God forbid, Fundie parents sending their kids to the Jesus Horse Academy then they should be able to do so. As long as certain core curricula are taught, and students can pass basic competency tests in these core curricula, the rest doesn’t matter. Advantage: vouchers
This makes no sense to me, could you explain further what you mean? Vouchers would lead to a greater number of smaller schools, greatly alleviating the problems of overcrowding and class size. Advantage: vouchers
This is the toughest question of all, and it’s one where the anti-voucher people have at least a bit of a point. There are always going to be some students who can’t/won’t/don’t learn. What do you do with them? Wherever they get put, they are going to disrupt the learning process for everyone around them. As it is currently, they get to disrupt the process for every one. Diversifying the school options and spreading the students across a wide variety of smaller schools will take most of the students out of their reach- a good thing, and an improvement on the current situation. Recognizing the simple fact some students are not going to be teachable using traditional methods (the “gangbangers”, as you call them), we should be willing to put these students in a reform school in a setting that emphasizes respect, discipline and real world skills. Accept that these kids aren’t going to be going to college and instead focus on giving them training that they can use in the real world. For many of them it will still wind up being a waste of time, but I bet you reach more this way than by fantasying that you’re actually training them for college. I still think vouchers give you the advantage here too.
I think this isn’t as much a trend as a byproduct of the you tube generation. This kind of stuff went on at my schools between 5th and 8th grade and got worse in High School 83 through 91 respectively). The first week I was at my HS, a kid was beaten to death with a pipe on the top floor of the school, and one student shot another on the front steps a week before school actually started over the honor of his sister. In both of those cases not everybody knew about it until long after it happened and it rated a small article in the local paper and a blip on one of three evening news channels. If that happened today, it would make national news.
Teachers being assaulted, I think, is the byproduct of our child-worshipping culture. Children, and especially bad ones, have little to nothing to fear from authority. We have proven ourselves impotent as authority figures again and again, favoring instead rampant PC posturing and placing self-esteem over convictions, courage amd order. I’m in the same camp as Dianag if my child managed to crawl away from the ass kicking I was in the process of delivering, he/she would be taken, under his/her power or mine, to the police station, wherein I would be arrested for child abuse.
Now of course the arugment will come “how do you teach a child it’s wrong to be violent by visiting violence on him?” The answer is incentive. Fear is an excellent motivational tool. Even if you never lay a hand on the child, fear that you will is usually enough motiviation to keep “normal” kids in line. Aside from that, it shows consequence. If you do x, I will put my foot in your ass. The trouble becomes following through. If the child actually does x, you’ve got to put foot to ass. If you don’t, this kind of crap starts.
The OP is about a teacher being assaulted. Since part of this discussion is veering off into private schools vs. public, vouchers, and so on, I’m starting a new thread so the unintended hijack will not continue. Apologies to OP et al.
New thread here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9697490#post9697490
Total nonsense. ‘Gangster Types’ respect you more if you stand up for yourself.
I just want to ditto this. I always mention this when I get into discussions about how to make things better for kids who might be at-risk, struggling or just off-track as they grow up. Heck, that question is a good to be sure to ask of kids who are growing up in the best of circumstances.
This is one my parents never asked me (not to blame them, they did the best they could as parents with what they knew and had).
Asking kids this type of question not only leads to goal-orientation, in particular, regarding education, development, and career choices, but it actually aids in developing self-actualization, in general.
Who am I, what do I think, what am I interested in, how do I fit into the world, how is my later life different from the life I have now, and how do I make happen what I want to happen are all important questions for youth to ask and seek answer to, as they goe through adolescence and beyond.
Good post overall.
My nod to reality when I talk to friends who have kids is: “It’s a pity that those of us who really know how to parent don’t have kids of our own.” I.e. I know what I’d do in theory but practicalities rule. The fact is, I’d probably come home beat from work and not have the energy to correct my kid, I’d be suing for peace at any price, etc., a total wuss and a poster child for a movement to involuntarily sterilize those bringing down the neighborhood.
Another idea for foiegras: if you haven’t already, how about joining the PTA?
One item for the pit: where are the updates on the story? I hate it how media seize on the soundbites and initial shock, then seek fresh ratings by turning to the latest disaster du jour without following up. I found this short bit:
http://wjz.com/local/jolita.berry.andres.2.702499.html. Quoting:
*More than 220 have already volunteered including Latisha Samuels, a junior at Morgan State University.
“I think when students see someone who is close to their age and see that she is going to college, it will encourage them to continue with their education,” said Samuels.*
I hope the school is screening whom they let in. Drug dealers, pedophiles, etc. would be only too glad to roam the school. That issue aside, I wonder what the plan is.
If it’s just “Let’s have a more adult presence here to police the school,” I think the effect will be short-term improvement. The scare will die down, the volunteers will return to normal life, and the schools will backslide to where they were a month ago.
If, OTOH, the volunteers stay with it long-term and make connections with the kids, the results will be better. If the kids had had an adult mentor in the first place, in their earlier years, it probably wouldn’t have been this necessary. And a new line of kids keeps arriving every year so unless the line of volunteers matches it, I don’t know.
I think one gigantic lesson a lot of kids aren’t getting at home: “No means no.” When I was growing up, if I got out of line my mom would make me sit in a chair. This was torture—I wanted to run and play. When she returned 5 minutes (seemed like 5 eons) later, I had to explain why I was in the chair. If I was snarky or whatever, I could sit there 5 eons longer, till she came back and said, “Try again.” If I said, “Well, I shouldn’t have bounced the ball in the house; I should go outside,” then I could leave the chair.
William Glasser called it “reality therapy” and probably made a zillion dollars on it.
When they’re little, that’s the golden opportunity to straighten them out. After a dozen years of ineffectual complaining sans consequences, they’re too big to correct. Then they require the pound of cure.
But you can’t do that without injuring the poor little snowflake’s self-esteem!
The notion that the teacher “provoked attack” by saying she would defend herself sounds eerily like the old meme that some women “provoke rape” by dressing (and looking) sexy.