We learn that parents are teaching essential life skills to their children in the form of threatening lawsuits. “Remember son, when the chips are down, and you get caught for plagarizing, call your lawyer.”
They are winning these suits too, or at least scaring the board enough to get what they want. Educators are resigning in protest. Is this a brave new direction our legal professionals are boldy heading?
P.S. I completely agree with the one suit, that a child with disabilities should be accomodated, and the disability should not be equated to laziness. Although six million dollars? Gimmie a break. Even our incredibly wealthy public school teachers couldn’t afford that.
Ya know what makes me wonder is why is someone sueing over not graduating at the end of summer. Wouldn’t you sue some time in the early spring when it’s apparent that you’re not going to graduate.
Unless this is a very old news item, or a OP that got ate was mysteriously returned to us.
Actually that’s a scary thought, all those lost OPs being returned like with a ‘white hole’… And if we get them all at once…
ATTACK OF THE SPAM GENERATED BY MYSTERIOUSLY RETURNING OPs!
These kids are the kind of people who grow up (term used VERY loosely here) and break into other people’s homes then sue the homeowners when they trip over a kid’s toy and break their arm.
I worked hard for my grades (my parents insisted!) and it really sickens me to see that there are kids out there who refuse to get up off of their dead asses and DO something, yet expect to be rewarded. They later go on talk shows and talk about how “the system” failed them and that’s the reason their lives stink. And the parents who sued the schools for their kids’ bad grades will be the first ones to stand up and talk about how “my kids just slipped through the cracks” when others ask them why Johnny can’t read.
“Don’t discipline my child, don’t insist that he actually do the work you assign, don’t penalize him for cheating, don’t expect anything of him at all, but when his life turns to shit, it’s all YOUR fault, you terrible teachers, you!”
I’m much rather live in a world where I can look at someone and go, “Oh hey! You’re that guy who couldn’t graduate from High School without a lawyer to help you.”
I’m a student who works very, very hard for her grades, and fully intend to graduate with flying colors. It disgusts me to hear that some of those people who are out partying while I’m studying and fail because of it will be standing up there graduating with me. The only message that this is carrying is that the slacking off pays off.
And what’s sad is that I seem to remember another case in which a student’s parents sued the school because he was graduated without being able to read.
So the teacher really can’t win- no matter what you do, stupid people will sue you.
Oh, I knew several people like that in high school. It was a continuing pattern: they would state, unashamed, that they weren’t doing any work. They didn’t care about the work, they said; it was all bullshit. Then it was always the same: when the tests came back, or the report cards came out, they would be sitting on a tack for days.
And I was just dumb enough to try to reason with them and ask what they had expected. I mean, a lot of the curriculum in high school is bullshit, but not all of it, but you have to do it anyway. Your report card is like your paycheck: you’re rewarded according to how much work you did. Bad grades? No privileges, no job, maybe another year in the same grade. And I know that’s not a perfect analogy: how many people are really paid what they’re worth? But the parallel is: you don’t work, you don’t get paid. You don’t do schoolwork, you get Ds and Fs.
And I mean no offense to teachers out there. My high school was poorly funded, which led to my cynical attitude. If I’d been to a better-ranked school, I might have done the work out of love. But somewhere along the line, I figured out that we all have to do things we’d rather not do, if we want to survive. So I did the work out of obligation.
I wonder how my former classmates like the jobs they have now.
[hijack]One of the kids I mentioned was in the Behavioral Disability program. Separate classroom. If everything he told me is true, they let him get away with absolute murder. Like tearing up the assignment sheet right under the teacher’s nose and saying “Fuck you, I’m not doing this.” Is there a state law or something that says students in an alternative program can’t be forced to do any work? I just wondered, because it killed me that in the gifted classes, I was yelled at for opening my book during a class discussion (to verify something before I made my contribution) while these “problem children” were apparently allowed to remain at a kindergarten level of behavior.[/hijack]
I would guess that litigation of this nature will not benefit society or the public school system. I can understand how students and parents of students feel that the system has “failed” them. I teach. I frequently find that the choices I am faced with are all unattractive. There are numerous state and federal laws that address students with special needs. These laws are necessary. The system breaks down when it comes to compliance. It appears to me that there is more energy and effort exerted in keeping up with the documentation than in providing the service needed. It appears to me that we would be more able to meet the needs of these students if we had the people that push the paper around replaced with people that would actually get in the trenches with the teachers, be physically present in the classroom to modify the instruction so that it fit the needs of the student. Sometimes when I get the modifications for my special needs students, I think…“I am a teacher, not a magician”. The reality is that my classes are on average, 33 students. Students slip and I don’t notice.
Indeed. It will harm society and the public school system, and the student. If we’re lucky, the judge will throw it out and the family will be shunned from society.
People, notice something. The link given in the OP is not a news story. It’s an opinion column. Like most opinion columns, it doesn’t claim to be an objective survey of all recent events in the subject it discusses. It’s the columnist picking out a few events over the past few years that illustrate the point that the columnist wants to make. I’d be really suspicious of the trend that this column claims to have found. In general, don’t get your news from opinion columns. They’re frequently deceptive.
I’m not saying that any of the lawsuits mentioned in the OP have any validity, but let’s face it, teachers are humans, too. They can act a capriciously and unfairly as anyone else. Sometimes, a lawsuit may well be appropriate.
There is a well-remembered story in my family history along these lines. My oldest brother is the family genius. He wanted to attend Swarthmore college. We live in the same county as Swarthmore college, and there is one full merit scholarship to Swarthmore offered competitively each year.
My brother was pretty much a shoo-in. His academic record, his regional and national science fair victories, his SATs, etc., all pretty much locked up the scholarship for him.
There was only one problem. His high school’s college counselor believed that every student should take the SAT twice to maximize their scores. My brother scored a 1560 on the first try, and reasonably believing he wasn’t going to do any better, decided not to take it again.
In response, the college counselor refused to fill out the forms for the scholarship. My parents bitched and moaned to the college counselor and the school administration, and the result was that the college counselor wasn’t the college counselor the next year, but the forms were never filled out and my brother was never nominated for the scholarship.
My parents didn’t sue, but they probably should have.