With the emphasis on bullying in schools, the next thing is that playground fighting will be criminalized, with ten year olds being accused of assault and battery for punching one another.
It looks like we are going too far.
The more severe acts of bullying violence that happen on a schoolyard are, to my knowledge, already criminal acts under the law. The school authorities are merely in the habit of looking the other way and quipping “Boys will be boys” whenever such bullying happens. … Until a bullied kid snaps and goes on a Columbine-style rampage. Then suddenly it’s the bullied-kid’s parents fault, or its video-games’ fault, or it’s violence-in-the-media’s fault, or it’s the school’s fault for not monitoring the bullied-kid’s behavior more closely beforehand – but for some reason it’s never the fault of the bullies, or of the school’s tendency to allow the bullying to continue.
I dunno. When I was six years of age I would occasionally get into a fight with someone else at school. I can remember getting a fat lip at least once and giving someone a bloody nose at least once. As I recall if the teachers caught us fighting we were in trouble with detention or loss of recess priviliges. The last time I got into a fight in school was in 7th grade and both of us were suspended for the day and spent the next day in ISS. (In School Suspension)
Not every fight in school is the result of the actions of a bully. Sometimes two kids just don’t like each other and they end up fighting. I think it would be silly to call the police and treat each school yard fight like an assault.
And speaking of bullies. Is it possible that some of these school shooters were just assholes to begin with? Maybe that was why they were being picked on by everyone. It is possible after all.
Marc
So getting the shit beat out of you on the school playground is children’s play…
I’m not inviting your kids over for a play date.
My own mother is the Director of Special Services for our local school district.
They just recently had a case where two kids, both with behavior, problems got into a fight(nothing big, no injuries.) But . . .one parent asked for the police. LOL!!! “What are you going to do lady? Press charges against a 5 year old.”
I’ve got many more stories of stupid parents too.
MGibson wrote:
True – but this should not mean that no schoolyard fights or threats of violence should be left alone. We shouldn’t have to wait until the “picked on” gets a real injury before intervening.
You make it sound like teachers are literally ignoring something when they see it happening. I seriously doubt that this is the case in a majority of the schools. Truth is that teachers cannot see everything that goes on. We can’t even stop prisoners from knifing one another and that’s suppose to be a far more controlled environment then our schools.
Marc
First of all, school personnel are not ignoring things they see. The problem is we often don’t see it.
Then it gets into kids telling their side, and they are always blaming someone else, and if you allow yourself into this situation it becomes a big mess. It comes down to, we can only discipline that which we see happen.
Now that MAY go out the window if it’s a kid with chronic behavior problems, or if there’s a kid who was clearly injured by someone. And I submit that anyone who thinks this is an easy situation has not been around kids very much.
Another thing is that teachers have widely varying personal standards as to what behaviors they will tolerate from kids. I personally am quite strict. I feel that hitting others is simply RUDE. Forget about injuries or hurting people - it’s just plain goddam rude in the first place. And I do not tolerate rudeness from my students. Not to me, not to each other - verbal or physical.
So I come down hard on kids for things some other teachers ignore. I’d rather err on the side of strictness than be too easy and let kids get away with being nasty. But other teachers don’t do that. It takes a lot of energy to hold the kids accountable the way I do, and some don’t do it.
I agree with Grok - you can’t punish for what you can’t see. In which case, kids need more supervision.
I try to instill in my own nephews and neices that you can’t just go around hitting people. It doesn’t solve anything for adults, and it doesn’t solve anything for children. What kids learn when they’re little stays with them - if they bully people on the playground and can get away with it, they’ll bully people later in life and either become a total asshole that people love to hate, or a guest spot on COPS with some appearances in court for assault and battery. (Trying to instill this, especially from a distance, is an uphill struggle. In my nephews’ and neices’ case, they’ve seen their dad get away with it and are learning the bad habit at home. Where’d the dad learn it? From his own dad.)
No, you can’t very well charge children with assault for every playground scuffle, but you can use it as a learning experience. Fighting, whether provoking a fight or allowing yourself to be provoked, does not make things better. It takes a bigger person (intellectually) to diffuse a situation and resolve it than it takes to sock someone in the head. Would that everyone involved with the training of children might work together toward fewer fights.
C’mon. Kids fight. It’s all a part of growing up. Let me tell you what my dad told me as a kid.
“You don’t start a fight but if someone starts one with you, let them have the first punch and then hit 'em back. Don’t let anyone push you around, you need to stand up for yourself but don’t ever start a fight.”
That’s exactly what I did too. I only got in a couple of fights when I was in school and this is the advice I followed. I didn’t start the fight but I sure as hell finished it. And you know what? The two kids I fought with that were picking on me never did it again after I beat the shit out of them. One fight happened on school grounds and we got detention for fighting and the other happened off school grounds when I was walking home. I didn’t get detention for that one and I didn’t get in trouble at home for either one of the fights.
I don’t know. Maybe the cops should be called when these kids are constantly fighting and bullying other kids and detention and ISS isn’t solving the problem. Not to arrest them or charge them with assualt and battery but maybe as a scare tactic. A cop would be more intimidating than a teacher or a parent would and would might scare the kids enough that they’d straighten up.
Maybe, but I remember when ISS and detentions were enought to keep kids from fighting. Those were the scare tactics back then. But now those don’t work anymore. So what do we do? Increase the severity of the scare tactic by having the kid arrested? What happens when that doesn’t work? Give 6 year olds hard time?
I’m not an expert, but IMHO, scare tactics like this only work in the short run. The solution (whatever it may be) needs to be something long term that puts the responsibility on the shoulders of the bully.
I think detention and ISS still work just not for some kids. Some kids need harsher punishment. So what’s it going to take? If ISS and detention don’t work as a deterrent it’s time to try something else.
**
I’m not saying have the kids arrested. I’m saying pull the trouble maker/bully/fighter/etc. out of class and make him sit down and talk with the cop. I’m not saying to put him in jail or put him in a room alone with the cop like he’s being interrogated. Maybe the kids parents and the principal should be there with him. The cop is just there as a higher authority figure. The troubled kid (bully, fighter, etc.) needs to know that if he continues behaving the way he is he may end up in a lot of trouble when he’s older, worse then detention and ISS. Something needs to be done to try to get him to straighten up. The parents need to be more involved too. If he’s in detention and/or ISS a lot for fighting then they’re aware of the problem, they’re just not doing anything about it. The parents need to lay down the law.
The “short run” is all that younger kids know. Don’t believe me? Try explaining things in terms greater than a week to a five year old. They just don’t have a grasp on things like “years”.
Oh, so I guess we should just ignore it and ignore the kids who get picked on in a place that SHOULD be safe.
Please.
The fights I see at my K-2 building are not of the “reasonable” nature you describe (wait until they hit you and then defend yourself). It’s more like, “He looked at me funny, so I punched him.” And kids learn their habits early. This is why I am TERRIFIED for many of the kids I see, bullies and picked-on kids alike.
C’mon folks. Let’s at least not allow our kids to behave like fucking animals!
Just as soon as the phrase,“the next thing they are going to do…,” appears in a post you know you are in the realm of speculation and flawed logic. There is such a thing as mutual affray and it is not the same thing as assault. Assault is a criminal act within the legitimate interest of police and judges. Mutual affray may or may not be criminal. Illustration: bad guy goads poor sheep farmer into gunfight, blows PSF away and claims that PSF drew first. I have spent too many sessions in juvenile court with an out of control, assaultive kid to think that it is nobody’s business when one child (who may be six feet tall and weigh 200 lbs., not a five-year-old kindergarten kid) decides to rough up a classmate. There was a time that such kids, if evenly matched, would be turned over to the gym teacher for a supervised four round match. Because schools finally realized the potential liability involved in this, the practice has stopped.
I can’t tell if berdollos’s point is that kids should not be taught to not beat up on each other, or that kids who do beat up on each other ought not to come to the attention of law enforcement authorities. Either argument is flawed and simply invites a might-makes-right mind set. I suppose that’s alright for the kid who is six feet tall in the eight grade, but it doesn’t do much for other children who are thrown in with him. If we learn every thing that we need to know in kindergarten, it seems to me that we ought to learn that fist fights are not productive. I had to break my nose a couple of times before I figured that one out.
I am trying to make the point that our society is headed in the direction of criminalizing any aggressive play among children. I agree that some forms of aggression warrant punishment and that adults in supervisory positions should try to stop fights, etc. But I have little doubt that this society will go to extreme measures and get into a zero tolerance mode regarding normal behavior.
Playground fights are not the problem. It is the emotional abuse that bullies hand out to others on a daily basis that is the problem.
Fighting can be a symptom. At the start of a school year a bully will cast a wide net and pick on everyone a little. Some kids may get into fights with the bully. The bully will, over the course of a few weeks, narrow it down to one or two to pick on all the time because they respond how the bully wants them to respond to him or her. They bully, usually abused at home, needs to make others feel bad to make him or herself feel good.
This is the sort of behavior that is usually unseen by teachers. This is the sort of behavior that makes the picked on kid go berserk. This is the sort of behavior that needs to discovered and stopped.
Not many picked on kids go ‘Columbine’ and shoot the place up. I think it a pretty safe bet that 99% of every grade in every school has a designated pick on kid and a bully. Everyone else just watches.
As someone who was beaten up routinely ( and fuck you if you think that once every week or two from 4th grade to 10th grade isn’t routinely ), I can tell you that it’s assault. Plain and simple. Don’t hand me this tough-guy shit about how you " didn’t start a fight but sure as hell finished them". How very nice for you.
Fighting wasn’t an option for me, growing up in a Pacifist household. As a result, I’ve got more than a few remnants of those years burned into my psyche. Tae Kwon Do has only done so much to temper those feelings. I didn’t go to my 20th Reunion because I had the foresight to realize I’d not be able to control myself. That’s an adult’s ability to react in advance.
Kids don’t have that opportunity. When they’re faced with beatings, they either try to run, or fight back. Eventually, they get beaten more. And more. And more. Some kids don’t get to " sure as hell finish the fight".
Try This or This report, or perhaps This excellent article.
It’s not a little scuffle a lot of the time. It’s assault and battery by someone whose parents punch them around, and have learned that it’s okay to punch other people around. Fine. The world is filled with animals. MY Kids won’t be reduced to that level. They’re assaulted? The police are called. Period. Not the teacher, not the Principal of the school- whose mandate from Central Administration will ALWAYS be to quiet things down, hide the bad stuff and protect the district at all costs. No, one doesn’t sit calmly and debate assault. One prosecutes. Save the mindfucking debates for whether or not the Chicago Math Program works, or whether or not we really need a new color on all the school busses.
Your kid assaults my kid? It’s very simple. You get to stand up in court like any other American, and take some fucking responsibility for the actions of your minor child, since you’re that child’s legal guardian. And in some states, you get to be charged with the crime yourself. I like that. It works.
Cartooniverse
Man, I got the crap beat out of me all the time after I went from a small, specialized lower school to a large, very public middle school. I hated it. I was scared every day. I gained weight. My face broke out. I went to a therapist.
But I eventually got sick of being such a wimp, and realized that I was ultimately the only one who could really do anything about it. My parents and the teachers could only do so much. That’s what it means, in my opinion, to grow up. You realize that you are alone in some things and that you have to be your own best friend and defender. So I got over it and learned how to take up for myself. And you know what? It made me a very strong person.
(…climbing down from her soapbox and flexing her biceps…)
Disclosure-I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about local school districts’ discipline policies, because I’m a college student without kids. Although I’m working with five-year-olds as part of a research project, we don’t ask them about their schools’ policy or what happens to them on the playground.
That said, from the number of news stories I read about kids getting expelled or suspended for things like writing a scary essay-for a Halloween assignment, for Christ’s sake-the more it seems like school districts are going to criminalize everything besides sitting quietly in a desk. IIRC, some kindergarten students were punished for pointing their fingers like guns and saying bang.
I agree that out-and-out assault should be treated as such and punished accordingly, but I question whether “zero tolerance” policies are the best ways to run a school. I don’t think they help the kids who are getting picked on, because teachers can’t see everything, and I know that even if I were getting my ass kicked every day I would think twice before going to a teacher about.
I think a good question is why so many districts adopt these policies. Personally, I think it’s an ass-covering measure by school districts. If I were a parent, I think I would like to see an administrator say,“Our school will not tolerate bullying in any way, shape or form!”
Who would really want to hear an adinistrator say,“We don’t like bullying, but we admit we’re powerless to prevent all of it. Your kids will have to look out for themselves.”