School Discipline and self defense - why can't kids protect themselves at school?

[MandaJo]

Having taught a lot of years, the teachers I knew that were 100% confident they knew what was going on with kids were generally the most clueless–they knew so little, they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and they were blind to their own prejudices. Kids are bad witnesses, both in the sense that they miss a lot and in that they are poor communicators: they don’t know what it important and what is not, and they can underplay important things and overstate unimportant details. It’s terrible to be a target, but it’s also terrible to be a kid the administration has decided is “bad news” and comes down on for shit that other kids get away with all the time. I’m no fan of “zero tolerance” policies, but so many situations really are ambiguous–it has nothing to do with laziness or moral cowardice.

For example, I had a girl sexually harassed in my class–among others–for weeks and none of us picked up on it and none of the kids told us because they thought they weren’t allowed to: the assailant was in special ed, and they knew we refused to discuss his other disruptive behavior with them, so they thought that meant they weren’t allowed to tell us. Obviously, this eats at me: I wish I’d seen it and I wish I’d done a better job of making sure the kids knew they could talk to us. But teachers and administrators aren’t psychic, bullies are sometimes very clever–and sometimes very stupid, so you can’t even rely on that–and there’s a lot going on in a school day.

[Velocity]

@Hampshire

I don’t think it’s “administrative laziness” as much as it’s tax paid school administators should be doing more valuable work than playing crime scene investigator, interigator, hearing judge, and sentence giver.
These situations aren’t black and white where the bully has a big “B” on his shirt and we can watch the instant replay to see who hit who first.
These are occurances of he-said she-said and who did what first and second and who saw what and who’s friends with who and who’s lying, etc. etc. I’d rather have education dollars go into ya-know “educating” kids rather than opening a student dispute investigation depatment in the school.
Zero-tolerance is the way to avoid all the nonsense and put out the “take a time-out, knock this shit off and get back to class” message.
Same reason states have no-fault traffic accident laws. Trying to sort out whose fault it was just wastes alot of time, money, and resources and usually doesn’t figure out anything anyway.

I don’t agree one bit. What you are dismissing as “nonsense” is serious business. You can’t, or shouldn’t, just sigh and say “I can’t be bothered to determine who’s aggressor and victim. Why don’t I just allow injustice to persist, and call it a day. At the end it’s just merely emotional scarring for life, deep resentment and distrust of the system, is all.”

[Velocity]

@MandaJo

I think the problem is that “first strike goes home” is also a bad rule: there’s a type of kid that is really good at finding sensitive kids and taunting them into taking a swing. In those cases, sending the “attacker” home and treating the other kid like the poor victim is compounding the error, because it’s validating that verbal abuse to whatever degree is fine and that he was the only “bad” kid.

AIUI, this is exactly what would happen with some American kids provoking refugee students from Africa/Asia in schools in New York state, several years ago. They would deliberately physically or verbally provoke and harass the refugee kids until the refugee students finally lashed out, at which point the American students would immediately play victim.

I have the same gripe with sports referees. Player A punches Player B, Player B punches back, and the referee will only penalize Player B! :rolleyes:

[k9bfriender]

@MandaJo

Having taught a lot of years, the teachers I knew that were 100% confident they knew what was going on with kids were generally the most clueless–they knew so little, they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and they were blind to their own prejudices. Kids are bad witnesses, both in the sense that they miss a lot and in that they are poor communicators: they don’t know what it important and what is not, and they can underplay important things and overstate unimportant details. It’s terrible to be a target, but it’s also terrible to be a kid the administration has decided is “bad news” and comes down on for shit that other kids get away with all the time. I’m no fan of “zero tolerance” policies, but so many situations really are ambiguous–it has nothing to do with laziness or moral cowardice.

For example, I had a girl sexually harassed in my class–among others–for weeks and none of us picked up on it and none of the kids told us because they thought they weren’t allowed to: the assailant was in special ed, **and they knew we refused to discuss his other disruptive behavior with them, **so they thought that meant they weren’t allowed to tell us. Obviously, this eats at me: I wish I’d seen it and I wish I’d done a better job of making sure the kids knew they could talk to us. But teachers and administrators aren’t psychic, bullies are sometimes very clever–and sometimes very stupid, so you can’t even rely on that–and there’s a lot going on in a school day.

Emphasis mine.

I think that there is your problem. If the kids know that you will get upset if they complain about his behavior, then not only will they not complain about his behavior, they will not complain about other’s behavior either. You have told them that you don’t want to be bothered by the little details, and then left it up to them to determine what the little details are, and what is important, something that you admitted in the earlier paragraph that children have a hard time doing.

If students are afraid of approaching their teachers to inform them of situations that are disrupting the class, then the teachers will not know about these issues, and will only learn about them when it is to late, and things have already blown up with some kids being hurt and even more being disciplined.

[Sunny_Daze]

@k9bfriender

Emphasis mine.

I think that there is your problem. If the kids know that you will get upset if they complain about his behavior, then not only will they not complain about his behavior, they will not complain about other’s behavior either. You have told them that you don’t want to be bothered by the little details, and then left it up to them to determine what the little details are, and what is important, something that you admitted in the earlier paragraph that children have a hard time doing.

If students are afraid of approaching their teachers to inform them of situations that are disrupting the class, then the teachers will not know about these issues, and will only learn about them when it is to late, and things have already blown up with some kids being hurt and even more being disciplined.

What k9bfriender is describing is another example of what happened with my son. “Just ignore it,” albeit from the “I can’t discuss him” side of the fence. The result is the same. The children end up feeling that they can’t discuss behavior issues with teachers.

Also, Manda Jo, I am not trying to say that teachers are omnipotent, but I do think that they have some understanding of their students, generally speaking. I also think that they should make an effort to have an understanding of their students.

[MandaJo]

We didn’t get upset. But when kids wanted to talk about a particular student’s very disruptive behavior and why it was handled differently than their own, we refused to discuss the details of his IEP–because kids have a legal right to privacy. The kids just thought that that meant that it was also against the law for them to talk about it.

Obviously, schools should do everything possible to make sure kids feel comfortable turning to adults, but perfect knowledge isn’t possible, and expecting schools to act as if it is would also lead to injustices.

[MandaJo]

@Sunny_Daze

What k9bfriender is describing is another example of what happened with my son. “Just ignore it,” albeit from the “I can’t discuss him” side of the fence. The result is the same. The children end up feeling that they can’t discuss behavior issues with teachers.

When there is an IEP in place, it can lead to a weird dynamic. That doesn’t mean that it’s okay to tell your son to “just ignore it”, but it does mean that it is harder for the teacher to address the whole group and just nip the situation in the bud that way. I understand the importance of protecting a kid’s privacy, but it makes it hard to even advise the other kids how to accommodate the kid with the IEP, beyond “totally ignore him”, which isn’t what anyone wants.

Also, Manda Jo, I am not trying to say that teachers are omnipotent, but I do think that they have some understanding of their students, generally speaking. I also think that they should make an effort to have an understanding of their students.

Of course they should try, but when it comes to things like assigning punishments for an event no adult saw, I think there is room for really horrible injustice if you rely on what you think you know about those kids and the things you think they would do. This is why prevention–through a healthy school culture–is so important. By the time there’s an incident, every resolution sucks.

[Sunny_Daze]

OK, I think we can agree that a healthy school culture should include some understood rules for conflict resolution that the entire community understands. Here are my thoughts on that. It should include:

-How to bring up issues regarding students with IEPs (my son has one, so I am aware of the policies here). Students should be able to come to a teacher confidentially and tell them what is happening, even if they are not able to know how the issue is handled.

-An escalation path. If the first complaint isn’t handled by the teacher effectively, the student should have another place to go. A counselor, their homeroom teacher, advisor, wherever. Every student should know what option 2 is. Ditto for option 3, their next step on getting someone’s attention. They should know how to go all the way to the school board if the problem is severe enough.

-An ombudsman or student-teacher conflict resolution council could also be an effective tool in some circumstances. Get the students involved in the solution. Have the student body part of maintaining a specific culture at the school. I am thinking of this more as an arbitration rather than a judgement group.

-Students should not be told to suck it up, just ignore it, or made to feel that they cannot or should not mention issues that impact them or others around them.

[k9bfriender]

@Sunny_Daze

OK, I think we can agree that a healthy school culture should include some understood rules for conflict resolution that the entire community understands. Here are my thoughts on that. It should include:

-How to bring up issues regarding students with IEPs (my son has one, so I am aware of the policies here). Students should be able to come to a teacher confidentially and tell them what is happening, even if they are not able to know how the issue is handled.

-An escalation path. If the first complaint isn’t handled by the teacher effectively, the student should have another place to go. A counselor, their homeroom teacher, advisor, wherever. Every student should know what option 2 is. Ditto for option 3, their next step on getting someone’s attention. They should know how to go all the way to the school board if the problem is severe enough.

-An ombudsman or student-teacher conflict resolution council could also be an effective tool in some circumstances. Get the students involved in the solution. Have the student body part of maintaining a specific culture at the school. I am thinking of this more as an arbitration rather than a judgement group.

-Students should not be told to suck it up, just ignore it, or made to feel that they cannot or should not mention issues that impact them or others around them.

I would also suggest using more in school suspension rather than out of school. With out of school suspension, the bully gets a reward for a few days off, while the victim is further harmed by being put behind on school work. If it is felt that all the participants should be removed from the situation to cool off, I can understand that, but impacting a student’s education because the admin and teachers are unable to create a safe learning environment for the children in their charge is absolutely not fair to the students who are there for the purpose of learning.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Sunny_Daze

-Students should not be told to suck it up, just ignore it, or made to feel that they cannot or should not mention issues that impact them or others around them.

In theory? Sure. In practice? At third grade kids need to hear that they’re expected to solve many problems themselves, from “I wanted to play four-square but Jill wanted to talk with Anna, so Jill’s bullying me,” to, “He said my name, and I hate it when he says my name,” to, “Frank always catches the ball when we play that game where you catch the ball, and that’s not fair!” to, “my pencil is broken, can I stand up and go get a new pencil from the pencil supply that you showed us on the first day of school?”

There’s no magic formula for it, but if a teacher steps in to resolve every conflict, the implicit lesson is that kids are powerless to solve their own problems. The challenge as a teacher is to make sure kids know when a problem is worth bringing to you, and when it’s something they should be solving themselves.

Students should not be told to suck it up when someone is repeatedly, deliberately harassing them. Students should not be told to ignore it when there’s a problem that’s really vexing them and they’ve tried to solve it. Students should not be made to feel that they cannot mention issues that involve physical violence, invasion of privacy, emotional bullying, or other real issues.

Students should maybe be told to suck it up when they’re mad that they’re losing at a game, or that other people don’t want to play what they want to play, or they think someone cast a dirty look at them but did nothing else.

[Sunny_Daze]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

<snip>

Students should maybe be told to suck it up when they’re mad that they’re losing at a game, or that other people don’t want to play what they want to play, or they think someone cast a dirty look at them but did nothing else.

Yes, I agree with you. The trick is giving kids the tools to transition from bringing everything to teachers and learning what they can resolve on their own. When they are very small, and tend to hit each other when they can’t the toy they want, the first thing they are taught is to get a grown up for everything (think pre-k), rather than lashing out. Then they need to get re-taught when they are older.

My sister includes work on “tattling” with her grade schoolers. It’s tattling for “I want to play 4-square but Jimmy always picks the game”. It’s time to get the teacher if someone can get hurt. I’m over-simplifying, since there are other rules, but you get the idea. IOW, she helps them build some new rules for when teachers should be involved, and when they are expected to work things out on their own.

[Dangerosa]

One of the things about my daughter’s class is that its been bad since kindergarten. When she was in kindergarten they had to have the social worker come in to give “friendship lessons.” Middle school brought the social worker back into the classrooms to discuss “respect.”

Her kindergarten class was eighteen girls and four boys (or some similar proportion), and while its evened out a bit since then, for some reason, her class is still an ill weighted statistical anomaly. I think that has something to do with the level of girl bullying happening.

(My son’s class is the stoners - for whatever reason, there is a disproportionate number of them who have gone through rehab, gotten disqualified from sports - there are more than usual not making it to graduation because they didn’t pass their classes - when I talk to teachers I get - for both my kids “its this class.” When I went to high school, my class got pregnant - 10% of the girls in my graduating class either had children already or were pregnant at graduation - my sister’s class was the headed to college group - she had more national merit semi-finalists/finalists/scholars in her class than the preceding ten years combined)

[F.U.Shakespeare]

I would stop short of saying that there are substantial numbers of teachers who actually want bullying to occur.

But in schools that have lots of disruptive behavior, teachers sometimes face a difficult set of choices:

1) If a kid being bullied fights back, it usually results in an incident that has to be dealt with, possibly involving other teachers and the principal. The more such incidents, the more it reflects poorly on the teacher, and takes time away from productive classroom activities.

2) OTOH, if a kid being bullied puts up with it without fighting back, there is no incident or lost time (assuming the bullying isn't severe enough to result in visible injuries).

So, I think teachers sometimes overlook mild-to-moderate bullying if the victim doesn’t fight back, and only intervened if the victim does fight back (or suffered broken bones or bloody wounds).

So, a clever bully knows that if they don’t go too far, they’ll never be punished for bullying anyone.

This creats a perverse system in which the victim is given the same punishment as the bully, unless he accepted the bullying.

Imagine if we treated crime that way: a guy tries to rob you. Give him your wallet, and no crime has occurred. Resist, and you are now guilty of participating in a mugging.

As I said, I know the teachers don’t want things to turn out that way. I’m sure their preference would be for no bullying. But if there are small incidents that don’t get too out of hand, they often prefer the victims to suck it up.

I was bullied when I first went to junior high school in the 1970’s, and at first didn’t fight back, as ordered by the teachers.

But it got worse - the bullies now knew where to find a soft target - so I eventually decided to fight back.

When I did, I was disciplined along with the bullies. And, the school told my parents that I’d “been fighting”, and was a discipline problem. My parents were of a generation that respected and trusted the educational system. So they accepted the school’s version of events. This made me feel like everyone - the bullies, the school personnel, and my parents - were arrayed against me.

I went into what would probably today called a depressive episode. My grades went to hell, and I got very withdrawn from social activities.

The bullying gradually stopped after I’d started resisting enough to convince the bullies to leave me alone in favor of easier targets, at which point I didn’t get in trouble any more. The school told my parents that my behavior had improved admirably, again omitting any mention of the root cause of the problem - bullying.

Some people today claim that eliminating corporal punishment increases bullying by creating an environment where the bullies have nothing to fear. Bullshit - my junior high school had several big, sadistic teachers who loved dishing out the punishment. But bullies clever enough to limit how severely *they *beat kids never faced this punishment.

The OP is doing the most important thing: siding with their child against the bullies and school administrators.

[kopek]

@Velocity

Administrative laziness.

“It’s too much trouble to sort out who was the victim and who was the aggressor, so let’s pretend that their physical violence is the same and that both are equally at fault.”

That but without the laziness comment. I taught back when we did try to ascertain guilt and aggression and too often we found out after the fact that we had gotten it wrong. Not right away when we could correct the mistake but a couple months down the road. Not a good feeling for any of the parties involved.

[Emergency911]

I know the older I get, the better I was comes into play here, but in my school days, the teachers had no problem picking out the aggressor in the few fights I witnessed. And they had no problem telling the parents that their “precious little johnny” was a bully/idiot/etc. (From the stories of the kids when they returned to school). At the same time, the parents believed the teachers and went along with whatever punishment they planned.

As stated in an earlier post, it seems like the parents back the kid and refuse to believe, let alone cooperate, with the teachers. I have heard tales of parents threatening lawsuits and all sorts of things that make the schools back down pretty quick.

While I believe the teachers should be teaching the kids, I still check their homework and I still discuss the lessons with my kids. I have even read their textbook to help refresh my memories on some things and I make sure my kids understand the lesson and turn in quality homework. If I can’t help them with something, (common core math gives me nightmares), I make sure the teacher knows that I’m unable to assist and I respectfully request that they either assist my kid or assist me, so I can help them.
It seems like some parents expect their kids to go to school, learn everything and never bother to check to make sure that they really are learning. I don’t get it.

[Sunny_Daze]

I went in with 'Beamer this morning, after some weekend conversations with the school. The other kid will not be changing in the locker room any more, and will be watched by two teachers during class (probably not constantly but he’s under scrutiny). We’ll see how it goes.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

I don’t doubt there are going to be instances where it’ll be hard to determine who started the fight.

But if a habitual troublemaker claims that a kid half his size (and who’s never been a discipline problem) attacked him, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out what happened.

The problem (at my junior high school at least) was that the school had decided to cover its ass, and wasn’t interested in finding out who was guilty and who was innocent. They could keep from admitting that they had a bullying problem by punishing both kids for fighting.

[TSBG]

I was in this situation in middle school–kid picked a fight and beat the crap out of me.* We both got 3 days in-school suspension. The administration realized it had made a mistake when the bully claimed I had picked a second fight with him at a school carnival–only I’d been grounded by my parents and wasn’t at the carnival, which they confirmed. I still served the suspension though.

That said, I agree that the school shouldn’t try to investigate incidents and assign blame. Our police and judges don’t do that very well, and they’ve presumably had training in it, and it’s their actual job.

The solution is to run the school in such a way that these incidents are rare. Easier said than done of course and I don’t know how you best accomplish that.

In the specific case described by the OP, the squeaky wheel always gets the grease. If you back up your child, demand repeated meetings even in the face of indifference, the word will go out–don’t let anything happen to this kid, his parents will make trouble. Hopefully the corollary word will also go out–this other kid is bad news, keep an eye on him if you don’t want angry parents of his victims crawling up your nose.

*I was wearing a yellow gym t-shirt that got splattered with nose blood. My mother bleached out all the blood so I had a yellow shirt with white blotches. No idea what she was thinking. Never wore the thing again.

[nearwildheaven]

@Velocity

AIUI, this is exactly what would happen with some American kids provoking refugee students from Africa/Asia in schools in New York state, several years ago. They would deliberately physically or verbally provoke and harass the refugee kids until the refugee students finally lashed out, at which point the American students would immediately play victim.

This went on all the time at my high school ca. 1980 with Vietnamese refugees. They also had to deal with their belongings openly being stolen or vandalized and even their pets being stolen because the American kids (and adults too) assumed they would be eaten (and so what if they were?).

[nearwildheaven]

@Sunny_Daze

I went in with 'Beamer this morning, after some weekend conversations with the school. The other kid will not be changing in the locker room any more, and will be watched by two teachers during class (probably not constantly but he’s under scrutiny). We’ll see how it goes.

It sounds like your son is not the only child who’s had problems with this classmate.