Yep, we did that. Then, after practice when the coach left the room, we put bars of soap in our socks and used them to beat the crap out of the screw-up who was getting us punished. I heard later on that the kid shot himself after killing the coach. Oh, well. Junior high was fun.
I don’t appreciate that Otto. Presidential politics has no place in this thread.
I disagree, and here’s why.
Sometimes, you get kids (especially that age) that don’t care about the punishments. Especially suspension – hey, no school, that’s great! For whatever reason, they’re still going to start trouble. Now, usually, that just affects them, and they have to deal with it at home. But here, at this school, they have a great opportunity – start trouble at lunch, and get all the other kids in trouble, too! What fun!
Then there are kids who are usually pretty good, but can be influenced. This mess starts, and maybe this time they’re good, and they don’t join in. What happens? They get in trouble anyway. Next time, they’re thinking about this. They don’t join in – they get in trouble. They join in – they get in trouble. What’s the difference? Nothing different will happen around them based on their behavior. There is no incentive for good behavior once someone else starts a problem. There will be a few that have been raised well enough to stay out, no matter what; but, for far more of the children, they’ll get involved. Why wouldn’t they? Nothing different will happen.
The difference between the entire class of 6th graders and the people at your basic training, or at someone else’s high school team, is tremendous. The younger kids are less mature. They are less able to exert peer pressure on the ones causing the problems. The larger groups have less cohesion than the smaller ones.
For all these reasons, I think the mass punishment of these sixth graders will not be very effective. I’m not making any statements about right or wrong; merely “ineffective”.
One last point, speaking as a parent. There’s a problem at school, and they narrow it down to (for example) 5 or 6 kids, and one of them is mine? He’s in trouble. I’m likely to take the school’s word for it. They suspend 136 students, they know up front that not all were involved, and one of them is mine? You have no backup from me at home – I will discipline my child for what he has done, not for what his classmates do.
Mom? Is that you?
I was a pretty good kid, even at that age. The only thing I ever got detention for was maybe a couple of days of it for cumulative tardies over the course of a semester. If I’d been suspended the way these kids were, my parents would have known that something was wrong, because not only would I not have joined in, but I’d probably have been one of the kids that was under attack. (If the whole cafeteria was in an uproar, I’m guessing some kids were.)
Not all parents are totally out-of-touch when it comes to their kids, and not all middle-school kids even try to keep their parents so far out of their life that the parents don’t know that their “little darling” is more like “little Satan.” The few who do make life fucking miserable for the rest, though, trust me.
I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I would remember having been the other gender at some point in my life. 
Thank you!!! I’m not a teacher, but I AM a parent. I see so many parents in the mall or wherever, trying to “reason” with their two year old. I saw one haul off and slap her mom across the face, and the only reaction was “Dear, you know we don’t hit”. Whereupon the kid did it again. I know some people say that spanking only teaches the child that violence is the answer, but how do you explain the above scenario? I’ve found that a slap on the butt followed by “Don’t EVER do that again!” is much more effective than trying to explain traffic safety to an eighteen month old kid. My kids learned early what the difference is between a spanking offense and a time out offense, and are very well behaved. They don’t get in trouble at school, and the older one does not smoke or drink or do drugs like a lot of her (junior high) classmates. I say it’s time to go back to old fashioned valuers, where the PARENT is the one in charge of the household, not the child!
Oh well.
That’s precisely the sort of thing that kept me away from team sports.
That and my epic laziness, of course.
Yeah, Airman Doors, that’ll teach kids for existing while around idiots! Damn them for not committing suicide the moment they see trouble stirring. :rolleyes:
Airman, I must disagree with you here.
Schools exist to instruct students, not to control their lives. Military training teaches unit cohesion- the kids are not a fire team! Little Johnny isn’t going to die because Sally threw peas in the cafeteria! As far as defiance goes, it’s every American’s right under the Constitution to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness- all illegal under the military model. You want to take the basic right of every student away just to make it easier for the administrators, and that just plain sucks.
Yes, you (and I) swore an oath to defend the Constitution, and we were adults when we did it! (I was 17 with permission, same deal.) Children need time to grow, and making all schools military means denying unstructured creativity and non-conformity. Some of our finest citizens have been non-conformists- there are several here on the Dope who have my respect.
Military discipline involves fear and discomfort, violence and pain. Did you have fun the first time you had to to pushups because the guy three bunks down forgot to make his bed? What of the challenged kids, the disabled? Are they doomed to being treated as Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket for the duration of school? I find these prospects unacceptable.
Peer pressure is an awful method of discipline. It brings out the worst because the kids who are being hurt by the group punishment will take it out on the percieved transgressor- often without checking to see if they have the right person, and with no moral limits on their actions. Do you really want your kid to be beaten senseless by his classmates, wrong or not?
I’m not saying military schools don’t have a place, it’s just not for every kid. The climate of paranoia running ramapant through the school systems nowadays threatens to erode our rights further. If you add military discipline to the mix, why call them schools anymore- they’re just juvenile prisons, beating conformity into their young minds.
School discipline, better training for teachers, smaller classroom sizes and more teachers are a much better choice. I, for one, don’t want to see a class of sixth graders doing punishment pushups as their teacher/drill instructor paces around with a riding crop and bullies them until they cry.
I did enjoy the pushups, actually. I took to military life like a duck to water. But that may just be me. 
And you referred to basic rights of a student. What are those? While at school they have the right to an education, they have the right to get the basic necessities, they have the right to participate in extra-curricular activites, and they have the right to participate in classroom discussions. They don’t have the right to loiter in the hallways, they don’t have the right to speak out of turn, and the surely don’t have the right to start food fights in a cafeteria.
I think we should bring back uniforms. I think we should bring back hall monitors. I think in the really troublesome schools we should have enforcement officers. Because if kids are allowed to run all over the school and administration, education suffers, and if that happens, well, I’ll just save my money, since I’m obviously wasting it in ineffective schools and people who have no intention of learning anything anyway.
As usual, I’m taking the hard line on this, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let what happened to me at the hands of the junior anarchists while I was in high school happen to my son. It’s just not gonna happen. If I have to, I’ll teach him how to fight, and I’ll advocate fighting in self-defense. Better that your (the general “your”, not any specific person) kid get suspended and learn a life lesson about self-control and herd mentality than take a beating at the hands of my son because your “He’s so angelic, he would NEVER do anything like that!” kid is being a prick.
OK, I’ll calm down now. See, this all brings back not-so-fond memories of my mother forbidding me to fight back, resulting in numerous attacks including one where seven guys stomped a mudhole on me and walked it dry in my own front yard one day after school.
I cannot and will not allow that to happen to my son. If the fists start flying he will have my permission to have at it. No walking away, no backing up, just a good ol’ fashioned butt whooping. Walking away from a bully makes you a target, not a better man.
And that is the end of that tangent. This thread is getting to hot for MPSIMS, and most of that is my doing. Sorry about that, and I’ll go away now that my thoughts are on the record.
What bothers me is what let the situation get incredibly out of hand?
Why didn’t someone in authority yell “SHUT UP!!!” If they didn’t, then a threat about calling the police might make them behave. When order resumed perhaps an appropriate punishment would be NO talking in the cafeteria ALL during lunch for a week or a month even? Maybe a lecture about their behaving improperly will require their being watched like the little children they are. Okay, maybe that all sounds a little severe but I’d rather hear that my school took that action against my kid as opposed to suspending him.
As I said, I hold the adults responsible for such an outright lack of showing authority which allowed an incredible breakdown in discipline to occur. All the adults from the cafeteria workers on up to the principal should be required to explain why they acted irresponsibly.
I think Airman Doors would agree with me that the military quells such situations much more quickly (and harshly).
In a *perfect * world this would work, however, we are living in a country where everyone wants the teachers to be effective (and by golly, we’ll check it by giving those kids ONE TEST to measure the skills they have been taught all year), but we also want them to be parents, social workers, counselors, etc. on a salary that would qualify some of them for govt. assistance!
Smaller class sizes would help, so would more money in the paycheck, but like I said, that would be in a perfect world.
I think the answer is better respect for teachers nationwide. If you want us to treat your little darlin’ with dignity, how 'bout showing us some in return and backing us up when we have a problem?
Nothing irritates me more than to hear a parent say “He doesn’t do that at home,” or “She would never do that!” Better yet, when the parents go whining to the principal because {gasp!} we gave their child a detention! PUH-LEEZE!
Just kidding – my mom posts here sometimes, which has caused me to rethink a few TMI sort of posts in the past. She doesn’t want to know some things about her little girl, you know?
Airman Doors, I think your policy concerning a future kid is right on – but do be warned that if things don’t change, if he (arbitrary gender choice) follows said advice, chances are good that he will be in as much if not more trouble than the other kid(s) who actually started it. In the long run, though, if said kid can intimidate the bullies into leaving him alone, then that’ll save him a world of heartache. You know about that. I know too (though I wasn’t beaten up, rather emotionally abused and sexually harassed).
I hope to get a little closure on this in early May because I’ll be able to go flip off my middle school like I’ve been dreaming of doing for years – I moved away from the area twelve years ago, and decided if I was ever in the area again, I’d make a point of going by and making obscene gestures at the place. In my car, where nobody can see me, because I’m a bit of a coward, but I expect it will feel really good nonetheless. (The evil part of me wants to torch the place, but I think a drive-by “fuck you” is more realistic.)
You punish me for something I didn’t do and which you very very obviously don’t have any reason to think I did, you lose any vestiges of legitimacy I might have accorded you up unti that time.
And I would expect everyone in my cohort to feel the same way about it.
But if they didn’t, it would not bother me overly much to be hated and reviled by my peer group, or subjected to lots of peer pressure to join them in some self-recrimination exercise. I’m very used to that outcast stuff and it doesn’t faze me.
Oh, and if my parents punished me for getting in trouble at school without having any valid reason to think I’d done something wrong, they go on my shitlist too.
I expect fairness and reasonableness from my authority figures, and when I don’t get it they cease to possess any authority I give a shit about.
Hear hear!
That’d be my mum’s reaction, too. If my entire grade had been suspended when I was in school, it would have amounted to nothing more than time off school for me. And I liked time off school when I was a kid.
If I’d been among a small group of genuinely guilty students causing a rukus, on the other hand… she didn’t yell, she’d sooner die than hit, but she was very good at “I’m very disapointed in you.”
Aren’t around sixth-graders much there, are ya Wolfie?
Apparently there is some history here
It’s a tough gig here. Let’s say you have 136 students in a cafeteria, a food fight starts (apparently with the 16 suspended kids for behavioral problems, maybe?) but quickly escalates out of control to where it appears that damn near all of the kids are involved.
Attempts are made to quell the situation…but
What do you do?
Calling what happened to the other 120 kids a “suspension” while technically accurate, doesn’t tell the whole story.
There was a meeting that night in the cafeteria…and
So the REALITY of the situation is…that a kid may have been sent home at noon (missing another hour or two of classes) and then returned to school the next day after his parent(s) showed up at the Wednesday night meeting.
In an environment where it’s becoming increasingly difficult for teachers and administrators to get a reasonable amount of respect, due in large part to parental apathy…I’m not sure what the best solution would have been for this kind of event.
I’m not thrilled with the steps the administrators took…I’m not aware of a better solution…I certainly haven’t seen one offered in this thread.
I suspect that the number of parents “outraged” at the mass “suspension” outnumber the number of parents “outraged” at the actions of their kids.
I suspect though, that if one of their students had been injured by a flying fork or knife…one could measure the time between that event and a lawsuit against the school…in hours, not days.