I don’t think you realized how difficult it is predict the behavior of anybody, let alone children whose moods and decorum are by their very nature given to large swings and changes. Highly trained psychologists, sociologists, judges and parole boards mispredict the behavior of adults all the time. Expecting a teacher with two years of post grad work in “education” to accurately do the same with children is asking a lot.
Certainly, it is the duty of any adult (not just teachers) who suspects that a child is a danger, to himself or others, to act on those suspicions. Saying it’s their job is just plain incorrect.
As the only adult in a room full of children, a teacher is, by default, resposible for the welfare of those children, however the primary responsibility of a teacher is to teach. It’s grossly unfair to blame the teacher when the problems of the rest of society is carried into the classroom by one of their students.
Anybody who says a normal six year old knows it’s wrong to shoot people are by extention saying that the normal six year old can be trusted with guns. If a six year old knows the difference between right and wrong, how come we don’t send them to deathrow with the rest of those we’ve determined know the difference?
URSA said
Anybody who says a normal six year old knows it's wrong to shoot people are by
extention saying that the normal six year old can be trusted with guns. If a six year old
knows the difference between right and wrong, how come we don't send them to
deathrow with the rest of those we've determined know the difference?
That is not what is taught to a 6 year old.
You teach them that they are not old enough to use guns. Believe it or not they really understand that.
when I was 8 years old I had an operation (doesn’t matter what for). My parents brought me gifts while I was in the hospital. One was a football and the other was my very own,I had a younger brother you understand.My very own six shooter with a real holster. And we used to play war and cowboy and indians …you get the picture.
In the 60’s many of the more educated of my generation decided that having toy guns around was somehow a indication that WAR was ok.They convinced themselves and others of this. What they really did was to take the childhood to adult link away. Toy guns when you are a child. Real guns when you are an adult. Sound childish. Well who are we talking about.
Ursa,
You’re right, I probably don’t understand how difficult it is. But there is one thing i’ve noticed(from sitting among them day in day out). Troubled children usually make a severe detour in their work habits, and show a string of inappropriate behavior. Teachers sometimes don’t need to see the subtler signs if they investigate the blatent ones. This is the advantage that they have over those highly paid psychologists.
Um, ok, If society doesn’t take care of the child then is the teacher also morally exempt from doing so? They spend the most time with the child. They have the greatest chance to make a difference.
Extentions, extentions, extentions, those are nothing but your extrapolations.
I was not a normal 6 year old, but I still knew rather well the universal rights and wrongs. I did this without help from my parents, but that is story is for another day.
The child mind is incredibly active. On a purely physiological standpoint the child mind has double even triple the amount of neuron activity then does the average adult–yes even at age 6. What this means is that the child has an incredible ability to learn. Teach them something and it shall be so.
We are not nearly as naive as you might suspect.
Maybe it seems that way looking back (I especially recalled what a mature, erudite teenager I was, at least until I found a cache of letters that I wrote to boys and musicians but never sent- god I was shallow) but a cursory observation of 6-year-olds indicates otherwise. Your average 6-year-old can’t really grasp that their teen years will not be like a Mandy Moore video, or what adulthood means. They can’t grasp that Mommy was once as young as they were and will one day be as old as Grandma, or that children in other countries live very different lives than they do. And they are at the age when they are just beginning to get a clue that death means forvever.
It’s not that they are dumb; it’s the natural development of the human psyche. By and large, kids can be angry, arbitrary, and occasionally cruel, and the only thing that keeps the little fascists in line is that they are smaller, weaker, and dumber than we the grown-ups.
So it isn’t the intellectual knowledge that “If I play with this gun, I could cause a lot of pain and maybe death to someone.” It’s more like “If I play with this gun, the grown-ups might catch me and than all hell will break loose.” In some cases, the child will weigh his or her chances of getting caught (that was my technique. In others, the grown-ups may never have taught that all hell could break loose.
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right
This is really not headed in the direction that I had Hoped for.
I had hoped more for suggestions on a direction. WHAT SHOULD WE DO TO KEEP THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.
I still think that the teacher has the best chance to make a difference. Isn’t that the reason they wanted to be teachers in the first place. NO BLAME JUST IDEAS
A test of kindergarteners is going to determine very little except what the preconceptions of the test evaluator are.
Slightly off-the-OP-theme comment: My wife received an IQ test in first grade. Though she is a quite brilliant woman (3.85 GPA in her last two years of college, completed a few years ago since she was unable to afford it when young), she was coming down with the flu when she was tested, and scored poorly. For eight years she was bored in a “slow” track as a result, and (with other reasons) picked up a very poor self-image that has taken us years to resolve (and which we’re not completely done with even now).
If such tests are used, you’re going to find some kids classified ADHD not because they are but because Mommy didn’t catch them putting extra sugar on their cereal this morning and they’re on a sugar high. You’re going to find kids with serious social problems, not because they have them, but because they’re justifiably angry that Mommy and Daddy went out and left them with Mean Aunt Hazel last night. And so on.
Polycarp,
I heartily agree. While I think it would be wonderful to “know” which kids would be dangerous to themselves and everyone else, it scares me to think of the consequences of labeling children before they even get to school. We do too much of that as it is.
If we start doing psychological testing on all incoming kindergarteners, how long will it be until those tests are being used to justify preventive separation or “treatment”?
On the other hand I think the teachers are another line of defense against the violence that seems to be erupting more often. I’m not just talking about the big stuff like shooting, but fighting and bullying.
I don’t mean that teachers should be required to prevent these things and held liable if they don’t. I do mean that teachers should be aware of the way kids behave and maybe an education degree should include more info about danger signs. I know that good teachers know their students as well as they can, but maybe they need better tools.
I know there is no way all of these things can be prevented but I sure would like to think that teachers are working with me and would let me know what they see if it was a problem.
(darn new password. I had to look it up.)
sugaree,
I said I wasn’t exactly the normal 6 year old didn’t I? Anyway, that wasn’t my point. Fyi, I really do believe that I knew the rights from the wrongs–at least to a certain rather large degree.
My point was that although the average 6-year -old may not be able to learn these truths on their own, their brains are certainly capable of learning them if the information is administered.
That was my technique also, but that in itself shows that knowledge of right and wrong.
Bored,
I can guarantee you that you di not know right from wrong. Parents and society taught you in the most fundamental moral cornerstones of life in a basic black/white sense. Killing as a wrong was placed into your head; however, you had no concept of the actual implications of murder. You had no idea of the actual pain and suffering it would cause. This is precisely the reason that 6 year olds are not executed. Six year olds cannot and should not be placed under the same punishments as adults or even adolescents.
At 6 society takes the blame.
At 16 both society and the individual take the blame.
At 26 the individual takes the blame for their own actions.
Post scriptum: What classes, particularly math and science are you taking right now in highschool?
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
Really? My parents taught me morals? Wow, new one on me. Even til this day I am much more moral then they are, trust me, I didn’t learn from them. As I said, I was not your average 6 year old.
I’m in 11th grade. I’m taking AP chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, AP U.s History, AP calculus ab(woulda had it last year if I had goten off my butt and gone to summer school.)
H american literature, economics.
Next year I plan to take AP physics, AP biology(had regular H bio in 10th.) Ap Calculus bc, Ap English, Ap government. My 6th class is undecided.
So you are claiming that indeed you were morally upright and therefore punishable to the extent of any adult? Had you perpetrated the crime of murder, you would have been utterly responsible. Had it been premeditated, you could be executed as a six year old?
Hypothesizing that you are indeed going to say no to this, are not most six year olds beholden in some basic sense of morality such as not murdering, even though this concept is at least partially fed to them? Are you claiming that your concept of why murder is wrong now is no greater than that of when you were a six year old?
You yourself concede that you understand morals to a greater extent now than when you were six, so would not this indicate that you had limited moral reasoning ability as a six year old?
P.S. What classes are you enrolled in in high school? This question is somewhat important to this debate; at six, how different were you from a typical six year old?
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
Alright, sorry about the discrepency here between posting.
Because I am one year ahead of mathematics (I am a freshman) in high school and everything else is absolutely incompirable in highschool because different districts label things differently, let us go ahead and assume that we were at the same cognitive level at the age of six. I certainly was not at the level of moral cognition you claim to be, and yet my idea of morals and governemnt also developed independently from my parents. Although you might argue that you are the intrinsic expert upon your own pshycological development, I find this argument highly unlikely. One cannot simply claim to have been a genius at the age of two at the same cognitive level as thier current cognitive leval and expect everyone to believe them. Does anybody else remember thier moral development to back me up here?
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
First of all I stick to my claim that my parents did not teach me these morals. I rather picked them up while at church more then likely, but to tell the truth I don’t know for sure.
I would like to say yes that I would have been fully responsible, but I can’t say that with complete certainty.
Spoon-feeding is good. Did you know that the average 6 year old mind can grasp abstract concepts such as algebra? If that, then why not the abstract idea of consequence?
I was not the typical 6 year old. that is all I have to say about that…
Hmmm…
If only I could get some sort of assertion that you made when you were six and ask you to defend that today. On the question of consequence, yes it is simple to grasp the concept of choosing to kill someone and thier death. What is harder to grasp is how profound the death of another human is, no sixth grader can emotionally grasp that concpet. You cannot back up your claim that indeed they can beyond the argument, “because I say so.” If only we had a psycologist in this thread.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
Well, uhh hows this. I’m 2 years ahead in math and by the time I graduate I’ll have taken every single science class my school has to offer. H Bio, Ap chem, Anatomy and physiology, Ap Physics, Ap Bio.
You’re right. I can’t back up my argument. But then again, neither can the psychologist. It’s all theory.
I do however suppose that the average 6 year old can be spoon-fed the information required to become morally just. I just did it unusually faster then most others.
Just a question, how can you possibly claim what a 6 year old can or can not grasp? Are you 6?
I said above
We do not give these kids enough credit for knowing what they do. Don’t get me
wrong. I feel that his reasoning was flawed probably because of his age but to be that
angry with no ability to control it is not right. What do we do to help.
Any comments on this?
Bored2001, I’d suggest that you spend your free time after you’ve mastered your current subjects reading Piaget, Coles, and the people who have followed them. I am not saying this sarcastically. The way that a six-year-old processes information is qualitatively different than the way that a 2-year-old or a 12-year-old processes data.
I do think that a six-year-old should already know that inflicting violence on another is wrong. Everything I’ve read so far about the Mt. Morris shooter would seem to indicate that there was enough disruption in his life that he was not going to learn that at home. As the parent of a disruptive kid, I know that his teacher probably had her hands full just getting him to maintain a minimum level of decorum (forget actual discipline or morality) in the classroom.
I don’t have the answers. It has taken us five years, psychological/psychiatric intervention, and a special school to get my son turned (part way) around. My problem with the OP is that I do not believe that there is any test that can provide an accurate warning of potential violence. If someone wants to fund putting an actual on-site psychologist in every kindergarten or first grade classroom, that might work. (But we would have to specify that that person had no other responsibilities. Putting a second adult in every classroom is going to be an open invitation to every teacher and principal to put them to work on other tasks.)
I’m also not comfortable with the idea that if an outsider “perceived” a problem, then the state could remove the child from the home “for their own good.” A few years ago, a young mother called a help-line associated with her county’s Human Services department to ask about sexual feelings she felt when she nursed her infant. The HS department removed the child from the home claiming abuse. It took her two years of court fights to recover her child. I am generally supportive of the efforts of social agencies, but I am not about to grant them unlimited powers to intervene.
Tom~
I am sorry, I meant to say that I am one year ahead of YOU in mathematics. I will take Multivariable Calculus/Linear Algebra (Calculus 2) In my junior year.
Are you?
I guess neither of us can support either of our arguments without some sort of expert on the field helping us out here.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson