I think the punishment needscoffee outlined sounds about right. As described in the OP this wasn’t just a little fight between three kids. Two kids planned to start a fight with a third and when the third wouldn’t co-operate they jumped him and proceeded to do a little two on one beat down.
I don’t know if their history means that they need to be sent to “juvie” but the idea that they need actual consequences (as outlined by needscoffee’s post) sounds pretty acceptable to me. In both the idea that it teaches them there are consequences and it doesn’t ruin their lives by automatically treating them as adults. One other thing it does (again as outlined by needscoffee is it creates a record that can let adult know if these are one time offenders who may have gotten carried away or if they actually are problem children.
2 on 1 is not a fight. It’s a beating. I don’t care if there are no injuries and they’re stopped. The 2 need immediate, significant consequences to learn that lesson.
MeanOldLady, I’ve said before that when bullying goes unchecked, thugs run the school. After they get their entire peer group under their thumbs, then they start threatening the adults. And at that point there’s nothing anyone can do. You’ll say it could never get to that point. Reactions like Hamster King describes are what keeps it from getting to that.
Good lord will ya’ll stop with the excluded middle. There’s no reason to think that MeanOldLady wants bullying to go unchecked. There is a vast range of options between ‘nothing’ and ‘call the cops’.
Suppose your kid “fights back” and gets suspended along with his attackers. Leaving out how wrong it is to punish any kid for fighting because fighting is a natural part of childhood, what do you do about the suspension? Tell the kid you’re proud of him and it doesn’t matter that he now has a discipline record and will probably take a grade penalty, as long as he acted like a real man with his fists? Or do you demand the school take back the suspension? I mean, fighting shouldn’t be punished, but if you protest the punishment, aren’t you asking for special treatment?
ETA: In other words, what are the options between “nothing” and “call the cops”? If I’m excluding the middle, so is she.
If you’re going to characterize any 2 on 1 fight as a “beating” regardless of the severity or circumstances, then fair enough.
I’ve broken my pinky toe running into doorways.
But I get it. You guys resort to cops and lawyers to resolve every issue you have, including children’s school fights. This is the kind of thing I’d say is best left up to the kids’ parents and the principal. I know – don’t even say it. Anyone whose kid is this kind of hellion *clearly *isn’t a good parent whose judgment can be trusted to enact an appropriate punishment. Got it. Every kid who beats someone up at school is being raised by a negligent monster, which is why you have to drag the little shits to jail.
You win.
Edit:
No, they will not stop excluding the middle. Make a court case out of it (literally) or do nothing and have a serial killer on your hands. Those are your options.
Well, it’s too bad then that the juvenile court system is the exact opposite of immediate and significant.
Immediate and significant would have been the victim beating the holy hell out of the attackers, but I can see that being the wrong way to go (maybe). Maybe the principal picking them up by the collar and putting them to scrubbing the cafeteria floor while the parents are called, and keeping them there every Saturday at hard labor?
Why aren’t kids made to work during detention? Lord knows most of our schools could use some maintenance help.
And I’ve needed 13 stitches in my temple following a skiing accident. Does that mean if someone hits me and splits my head open it’s not a big deal?
…says the person who described the incident as just “misbehaving children” because the physical damage didn’t exceed a certain level. I would be less likely to assume that you “don’t want bullying to go unchecked” if you weren’t so busy handwaving away an assault. Yes, it’s an assault. A minor one not warranting jail time, but an assault nonetheless.
You’re aware, aren’t you, that calling the cops won’t automatically result in these kids serving life sentences, right? They may have to go before a judge who might sentence them to some community service, some counselling, and financial restitution.
No less evidence than the school and parents will help. At least the courts have the resources and experience to deal with this sort of thing. That’s why they’re there.
I’m not sure why some people think that a school principal is more qualified than a family court judge.
I don’t know the rules in the location where this event occurred, but when I was teaching in NJ we were specifically directed by both our union and the school administration that nothing even remotely resembling corporal punishment was permitted by law. That included writing “I will not beat up Johnny” 500 times.
(When I was on our local school board we twice in ten years fired teachers who undertook to employ physical punishment on students. There is no defense other than very obvious defense of one’s self or another person from physical danger. )
The student being punished could be required to sit quietly, to listen to a lecture about his/her behavior, or do some sort of study that was somehow related to the offense.
Of course, with the middle-school kids I was dealing with at the time, a simple notice to the parents of the offenders often resulted in far worse punishment.
Because I don’t have time to deal with it right now, I’m not going to issue warnings for ignoring moderator instructions. I may reconsider that decision later.
After that, people pretty much stayed on topic, talking about the OP’s situation or their own experiences.
At post 111, gurujulp got going on his own experiences, but realized quickly he was going against what I had asked for and bowed out of the thread, starting a new thread. I was happy to let that go.
Then we had about 20 posts where people continued to stay on topic, for the most part, until at post 131 we had this:
And then this:
If she wanted to debate issues, she could have started a GD thread; if she wanted to insult all other participants in the thread (except treis), she could have started a Pit thread. Instead she resumed an acrimonious debate in a thread that had pretty much died down. Since it had been a full day since the previous post, I can only assume she read the entire thread, including my two mod notes, where I laid out the GD and Pit alternatives. .
I am therefore issuing MeanOldLady a warning for ignoring moderator instructions.