Why the hell were they playing with a soccer ball in the bathroom of all places?
Because they were ditching class and if they’d played in the halls or the yard an adult would have noticed them.
Couldn’t we just lock the stupid bastards in a cell with Carrot Top for about 12 hours, while telling them it will be for 30 days?
:eek:
“Kids, you keep pulling this shit and you’ll be spending ten years with Carrot Top. Do you want that? Do you really want that, you little shits? If you do, then keep doing what you’re doing. Otherwise straighten the fuck up already.”
I realize this:
My statements were in response to the “toss them in juvie” crowd.
It is unclear to me why the school can’t demonstrate this point. It is unclear to me when we started to need cops to punish kids.
When kids started breaking the law at school.
Back in ye olden days of the 1990s, the cops were called to my high school one day just because some kid brought an unloaded gun to school and stashed it in his locker. (The nerve of the school, calling the cops for that! The kid didn’t even shoot anybody! Harmless fun, I tell you.) Cops getting called to schools to deal with serious infractions is not new.
Because over the last 25 years or so, it’s become bad form in many circles to control your child’s behavior. People don’t accept responsibility the way they used to, and that includes the responsibilty of disciplining your children. Now schools have to do it, and if the school can’t or won’t, it’s up to the courts.
Are you contending that playground fights are a new phenomenon?
Yeah, I can totally see the parallels between bringing a gun to school and a minor playground fight.
I see no reason to think that this school, or any generic school in the USA, can’t or won’t properly respond to this type of incident.
No.
Look, you can refer to it as a “minor incident” or a “scuffle” or a “tap on the noggin” or a “tickle fight” as much as you want but it doesn’t change the facts as posted in the OP, which resemble deliberate assault, and not a cute lil’ playground scuffle.
As for your assertion that any school in the US could readily handle this sort of incident, well. I don’t know about that. But the OP’s kid’s school handled it quite well, in my opinion.
What does “pressing charges” really mean? In the long run, isn’t it the state (or the police or the school or someone) who decides to give these thugs the full-court press?
Then you didn’t answer my question. When did we start to need cops to discipline children?
And you can blow it out of proportion as much as you’d like, but the fact remains this was a minor fight between children. There is a vast gulf between a “tickle fight” and an incident requiring police intervention. This incident clearly falls in the range of “serious, but easily handled by the school”.
No they didn’t. Having the cops come and haul the other kids away isn’t the school handling it. It’s passing the buck onto the court system, and likely will result in a worse outcome.
You are so far wrong you’re not even in the same zip code as right.
This was an assault. Period, end of statement. It was a criminal act and is correctly being treated as such. I’ll be willing to bet these jerks have a long history of being bullies and being treated EXACTLY the way you advocate. There were no consequences to their actions, so they learned it’s perfectly okay to jump on other kids.
So it’s gonna cost the families of the criminals some money? Sucks to be them - they should have kept their apes on a leash and taught them some basic manners.
I take it back. You’re not even in the same state as right, much less a zip code.
When kids started breaking the law at school. Didn’t I just say that up-thread? Well, maybe you missed it.
My point is, this isn’t new.
And my point is that getting the cops involved is new. So what has changed? Why do we now need cops to handle these incidents when we didn’t need them before?
Because we are finally treating criminal acts by minors as criminal acts and not mischief.
Okay…
I don’t understand why you think detention and suspension aren’t consequences, but whatever.
Maybe you can answer the question MsWhasit has been unable to. When did we start to need cops to discipline children?
And why are we doing that?
Glad your kid’s doing OK. As horrible as it must have been, at least now he knows his classmates have his back.
Reporting it to the cops is pretty much the same as ‘having sheriff Dan have a word with the young troublemaker.’ These kids aren’t going to go to jail, but they are going to be in trouble, which will be on record, and their parents will definitely know about it; IME as a teacher and parent, parents do not actually always know about and condone the fact that their children are bullies. At least, not to that extent.
It’s actually the perfect age to intervene - they’re still just young enough for ‘being told off’ to have some effect before they start to not give a shit about what the adults think, then getting into the sort of trouble they can’t get out of.
I don’t understand why you think “lets make the kids take a glorified time-out” is an acceptable punishment for beating a kid up.
If people want to debate the pros and cons of how schools, public or private, treat physical fights among their kids, start a new thread in Great Debates.
If you want to call each other sociopaths, take it to the Pit.
This thread is for the specifics of Hamster Kid’s experience, and that’s it.
Any further off-topic comments, as I have just defined them, will get warnings.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator