“Funny” is neither here nor there. It might be unfunny, it might be rude and it might be disrespectful, but only a fucking moron would think it was a THREAT.
I pity the kids who have to sing those teacher-killing songs all alone. 
You are naive. A veiled threat, which this can be, is a way of harassing a teacher. You may certainly never intend to use a 44 slug and your teacher may know that, but the suggestion itself is disruptive and intimidating because the teacher never knows for sure and the student knows that. Much depends on the school itself and the student.
Two of my students were arrested for having guns in my classroom, but verbal attempts at intimidating me were more frequent – including one from a student who later murdered two people in cold blood.
The student had no business singing in the classroom. Certainly when the student sang that particular song, that particular teacher felt threatened. A sixteen year old is old enough to know better. That is who the moron is – not the teacher.
Since that student had been granted a privilege – a special transfer to that school – it is fitting that that privilege be revoked. As the parent said, the teacher and student had been having problems previously. Since the parent wants to fault the teacher and has been unable to resolve the issues, a transfer back to the originally assigned school seems appropriate, but only at the end of this school year.
If the teacher has a history of conflicts with students who otherwise don’t have discipline issues, that bears looking into.
The teacher never knows for sure? I hope that regular interaction with the students give teachers a pretty good idea what the students are like.
It was a bad decision, but that doesn’t (by itself) legitimize the teacher feeling threatened by the song.
If the teacher felt threatened then the teacher is not only a fucking moron but was apparently never a child. There was no fucking threat, “veiled” or otherwise. Pretending to feel “threatened” is just a grandstanding move on the part of a dick teacher.
Sampiro, I’ve actually been interested in these things, how they arise, and how they’re perpetuated for quite some time now. So thanks very much for the recommendation - I just ordered a copy of the book off of Amazon.ca and am looking forward to getting it…
Another HS teacher checking in:
My own experience tells me that if you believe a 16 year old is unlikely to be immature enough to burst into juvenile song in front of a class, or that they are too mature to tell an asinine and easily-disprovable lie about how the teacher heard the lyrics, one has not met the average flunking 16-year-old of 2006.
Nowhere does it say that the teacher called the action a threat, only that the administration did. Nowhere does it describe the nature of the “trouble” between the student and the teacher in the past, leading to the accusations of a “vendetta”. As someone who is responsible for 88 students this semester, I am too tired after teaching and grading to consider taking on one or more vendettas. The students who might inspire such activities simply aren’t worth the extra energy expenditure that would be required.
I am disinclined to believe the student’s version of events. Given that in this thread alone, we have people from every region and even other nations chiming in with lyrics to these parodies, I think it’s highly unlikely this student heard these songs as a grade-schooler and her classmate had not.
I would also guess that this incident is simply a last straw. Both linked articles give more inches to the student’s reaction than to the school’s. The idea that she was suspended for five days based solely on this act is about as likely as the teacher’s “vendetta” against her. High school students who are performing well usually do not have bursts of demonstrative juvenile behavior in class. If this story were worth more broadsheet real estate and more serious journalism, I would not be surprised to find that this student had more than a few incidents.
Dio, I’d usually be with you on the zero-tolerance stupidity, but given the age of the kid and the reality of the times we live in, that kid needs a serious talking to.
I really hate the ‘the times we live in’ rationale… magellan, I’m reading your statement as “because some kids shot up their school seven years ago, we have to make a big deal out of this.” Am I wrong? She needs to understand that the song was stupid, but I don’t see why we’re obliged to overreact.
What is the overreaction? Between Columbine (sorry, it happened) and a culture that embraces guns in some circles, these songs mentioniing 44 slugs are not as purely hyperbolic as the ones I sang way back when. Also, someone who is singing these songs at 14, 15, or 16 is probably taunting the teacher. That’s my read. But I don’t see that what I called for in my original post is overreacting. Here it is:
Which part do you thnink goes too far?
Or was it this?
I don’t get where you see that what I’ve suggested is an overreaction.
I didn’t say that you had overreacted. I was wondering if Columbine really requires us to think differently about kids singing ridiculous songs about killing the teacher. I’m not aware of Harris and Klebold doing anything of the sort.
I know a french version of this one.
Anyway, what I wanted to add : Maybe singing such songs wasn’t a big deal back then, but on the other hand, I would note that the 5 days suspension of a student, even on stupid grounds, wouldn’t have been mentionned in the medias, either…
Civilized society won’t collapse if kids are allowed to to sing those songs, but it won’t collapse either because some student has been unjustly punished. That would be ground for harsh comments about the teacher amongst the student’s peers, and for a possibly heated debate between the student and her parents. Not for a nation-wide debate.
A forty-four slug to the face? That gets messy real quick. :eek:
We have our rotten tangerines, you have your large-calibre handguns. What a cultural divide the Second Amendment is responsible for.
Either the girl was making a veiled threat at the teacher, or she is inclined to sing primary-school songs at the age of 16, in front of class. So she either needs a suspension or a crash heltmet*.
*Just before clicking on the submit button, I noticed that I’d spelled this word “heltmet.” I meant to say “helmet,” but it is way too funny to edtit now.
But the rotten tangerine could count as biological warfare 
But will my sister suspend them? Send them [del]home[/del] to school?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a more complete account (which I won’t cite, since I refuse to play ball with those invasive AJC idiots an give them my personal ID for their idiot webpage…see the Metro Gwinnett section for the 9th of May) where The Brat cops to a long running personality conflict between the two, where she admits being loud, aggressive and obnoxious, and faults the teacher for being passive…Or something like that.
Reading between the lines, what we likely have hear is a disruptive student who pushed once too often.
The fact of the matter is that she’s supposed to be attending her neighborhood HS, but she had permission to attend a HS that she would not normally be attending.
That would be ideal, but that’s not very realistic in the neighborhood where I taught. These kids could break your heart. I had one student that turned in an essay fifth period about how abortion was wrong because it was like murder. Then after sixth period where someone humiliated him, he went home and got his gun and killed another one of our students by shooting him in the face.
And the hell of it is that everyone grieved for the dead student – which is understandable. But nobody understood why I was upset about my student! He had worked hard in my classroom and been polite. He was very slow. Was I supposed to know that he could be dangerous?
I also had a convicted rapist in my room and the administration didn’t even bother to tell me. I volunteered to teach a convicted murderer after school so that she could get a credit that she needed.
And why does everyone think that this is a result of Columbine? I had a student that poured duplicating fluid (not gasoline) down the hall and got caught when he was about to set fire to it. That would have been in the 1970’s.
I was beaten by trespassers over 35 years ago – bad enough to be hospitalized for three days. It was on my first day back at school that the first student with the gun was found. And he was a student that I liked.
Spoken with the limited vision of a former student from a “nice” school. Walk in my sensible shoes for twenty years until you choke and then tell me about it.
Maybe it’s not, I don’t know.
We may be speaking at cross purposes here; I’m talking about the reactions being influenced by Columbine. When I read about students being arrested or kicked out of school for writing poetry or throwing a tantrum or singing a dumb song, it’s impossible for me not to think “this is happening because teachers, police and administrators look at students in a different way, post-Columbine.” That’s where we get zero-tolerance in schools from, last I knew.
Our version was:
Three days later she was bitten on her underwear
Tried to say she didn’t care
Wished she had another pair
Three weeks later she was eaten by a polar bear
The polar died of rabies.
Poor polar bear.