Um, I don’t know. Like 5.
Okay I don’t know. But just think logically! Would you punish extremely young children for things like that?
Yes. The number one job of the adult in a situation like that is to keep the kids safe. They are not safe if they are not under control. Eventually, there’s going to be an emergency. Someone is going to trip and put there teeth through their lip and start bleeding everywhere, someone is going to have a seizure, something will catch fire, something. When that happens, the other 19 kids have to respond to you. They have to know that you are the authority. If rules are always suggestions, if everything is open to negotiation, if there are always circumstances, exceptions, discussions, then when the chips are really down, when it really matters, they won’t snap into autopilot mode. My students are 16-18, and this is true for me. It’s sure as hell true for anyone with a horde of rugrats to keep safe.
You do NOT have to destroy any egos to do this. It is quite possible to make it clear to a kid that rules are rules while still being his most favorite person in the world.
Seriously, you would punish a child for leaning out of line!
Wow, just wow!
Thinks, “What has happened to society these days?” 
And I can’t believe you’d be so careless with the safety of hypothetical children!
Letting a kid lean out of line is being careless with the safety of children???
I don’t understand…
Can someone please explain to me how this can be justified?
Because sometimes the Slippery Slope fallacy holds true, and “sometimes” when you’re dealing with kindergarteners tends to be “twice a week and three times before vacation.” Let them lean, and then they step. Let them step, and then they wander. Let them wander, and suddenly the whole damn school is on lockdown and you’re in front of a microphone at a press conference.
Kids need boundaries. Groups of kids need boundaries at least two steps more restrictive than “it causes problems/issues”.
Again, this teacher was out of line. But the notion of bringing some sort of consequence to bear for a small child leaning out of line is not…out of line.
So set the boundary at, “Let them wander.”
This is still not a convincing argument. I’m sorry. Not trying to be rude, but honestly, I am still not convinced. Let them lean out/step out of line, but don’t let them wander (and that should have exceptions too, such as emergencies, etc.)
As a side note, I disagree the children need boundaries two steps away from “it causes problems/issues”. Why not zero steps away. That itself should be the limit; not two steps more restrictive.
They’re kids for heaven’s sake. Kids are wiggly anyways. It’s fine! Nothing’s wrong with leaning out of line whether you’re 3 or 100.
Come now, the only thing that will convince you is herding 30 5 year olds. I know that.
See this post. Is my rule that students must keep their hands at their sides at all times while walking in line an unreasonable rule? If so, what do you think about the kid who got smacked with a lunchbox?
Once more: children lack the common sense that some adults get through experience. Clearly, positively-phrased rules are vital toward keeping large groups of children safe. Without such rules, you not only endanger kids, you also make teaching in large groups impossible.
So, lemme ask…are you opposed to contraception because you’re not pregnant yet? Would it make more sense to wait until you are pregnant and just have an abortion, even though it’s riskier, more expensive and more time consuming? Or is it better to prevent problems than to correct them once they happen?
Whynot raises a fair point. One of the things it’s taken me a long time to get good at is “frontloading”–that is, spending a ridiculous amount of time making my expectations clear to students before there’s a problem. If you wait until there’s a problem, it’s too late.
I agree with young Mr. Anonymous User. I still fail to see why the children’s behavior deserved punishment of any sort. A verbal reminder would be more than enough. The piling on of punishments was absurd.
When I was a little girl (many years ago) I had very long hair. When we stood in line to go inside or whatever, invariably the girl standing behind me would begin to braid my hair. It’s one of my fondest memories of my school years. I have no doubt that this would be strictly verboten in many schools today. And why? Oh, just because. No real reason.
An authoritative teacher can always cope with classroom management issues without resorting to OTT discipline techniques. Unfortunately, many teachers have confused authoritative with authoritarian. There is no question that U.S. schools are in dire straits. But many of the currently popular attempts to fix the problems (including but not limited to authoritarian approaches to discipline) have done nothing to help and much to make the problems worse.
I have something I call Calvin-and-Hobbes philosophy. You know, when you idealize Calvin as a model of a child, and love his curiosity and desire to play in the world.
But most people only have one or two Calvins of their own. Not a classroom full of 20 that you’re trying to herd down a hallway in less than 10 minutes. Sometimes you just gotta tell your Calvin to get in line if you want to get anything done, especially since they feed off of each other.
I am becoming ever more appreciative of my better elementary school teachers. It’s unfortunate what most children are subjected to.
The other thing is that if you were one of the well-behaved children, you almost certainly didn’t even notice the rules. On my meaner days I feel like an absolute beast, but when I do things to check the kids’ responses, the well-behaved kids invariably are happy and don’t think I was strict at all.
Kids like rules. They like structure. What they don’t like is inconsistency or unfairness or favoritism. Kids like to control their environment, and without a very clear super-structure of rules around them, they can’t do that.
Kids never complain about rules. They complain about unpredictability and favoritism.
So are you trying to tell me that “No leaning out of line” should be a rule?
:eek::smack:
If experience shows that kids aren’t good at telling the difference between “leaning”, “stepping” and “wandering off like a lost cow”, then the rule needs to be “one hand on the wall”.
Kids aren’t good at making the distinctions adults make. Rules that demand they make those distinctions lead to problems.
For example, let’s say you were totally color-blind and didn’t even understand the concept of color. If you were somewhere where the rule was “Don’t touch the red balls”, it would be very hard for you to see why sometimes you get in trouble for touching balls, and other times you don’t, and yesterday you saw someone else touch a ball and they didn’t get in trouble at all, and today, you did the exact same thing and you are getting in trouble. It doesn’t matter how many times someone explains to you that you touched a red ball and that other kid touched a green ball, that just goes right over your head because you don’t even get this color thing, you dismiss it as rambling and excuse-making. For a rule to mean anything to a kid, it has to be crystal clear when they are breaking it and when they are not. Rules like “Stay in line, unless you want to get out just for a second to see why there is a delay, and only if not too many other people are out of line at the same time, and only when you don’t take your 4 friends with you” are meaningless to a kid. A kid who is 50’ behind the last kid in the line, with half his backpack unpacked and strewn in a circle around him as he roots for a Pokemon card that isn’t even in there, really, honestly, believes he just stopped for a second. He can’t see that he didn’t. The kid that has wandered out of the line , trailing 5 other kids behind him as he wanders across the soccer field thinks he just leaned a little out of line. Kids are aware of everyone and everything in the world before they develop any awareness at all of their own selves and their own bodies.