1907 – Ragtime music is banned in school as being a fad and horrible.
That Scott Joplin, after all, was a (whispers) negro!
1887 - Black people are banned. From everything.
1957–Negro student Adam and white student Eve are caught holding hands. Bill is lynched and Mary is sent to a school for wayward girls.
1977–Students Adam & Steve are caught holding hands and are beaten to death.
I think that ringing may be tinnitus from age related hearing loss.
Please. I was in 9th grade in 1977. In a high school with an even mix of kids from both the poorer and the richer neighborhoods in the area. All of these sunshine and lollypop endings for the 1977 scenarios are as realistic as a Shirley Temple Movie.
A lesbian teacher who says she was forced out of her job by a “sustained campaign of harassment” by her pupils has taken her fight for compensation to the House of Lords.
That was five years ago - and such a scenario would now be covered by legislation that protects homosexuals against discrimination in the workplace. Okay, I’m not saying that life for all gay people in schools is ideal (given how school is recognised as the last great bastion of widespread homophobia), but as far as I’m aware (considering that I work in education) situations of teachers being pushed out of jobs because of it are far from the norm.
2008 - Johnny is kicked to death by jjimm for removing an unlit candle from his office because it’s “a fire hazard”.
Well the House of Lords rejected her appeal in 2003:
Five law lords today dismissed a lesbian teacher’s 12-year bid for compensation for alleged homophobic abuse by pupils in the private school in which she taught.
More importantly, you started by saying you “can’t imagine that happening in the UK.” Now you say “it’s far from the norm”.
As a teacher, I find your initial use of right-wing propaganda bad enough - this is a serious subject and you should try to stick to the facts.
A paddle hung on the wall of my principal’s office all through my elementary school years. It did indeed act as a deterrent. I found out years later (the principal and I went to the same church once I became an adult) that he never used the thing. Frankly, sometimes I feel we could use a bit of that sort of intimidation. There is no getting away from it–kids are more “spoiled” today. They are allowed much more license and their behavior is tolerated. Limits do not seem to exist for most kids. Sorry to paint with a broad brush, but the good, well behaved kids are now a minority in themselves. No one can wait anymore; no one can defer pleasure/attention/“needs”. Or so it seems.
I do not blame the schools–I blame the parents (and our culture of gimme-gimme-gimme). Sometimes I want to go up to each parent and say “thank you and well done” for every kid who has ever used “please” or “thank you” with me. “You’re welcome” out of the mouth of a child might give me a heart attack from the shock. I live in upper middle class/middle class white suburbia where such rudeness is rampant. I work in blue collar/unemployed minority part of Chicago where such rudeness is… rampant. There was indeed more class control “back in the day.”
But there were lots of problems. Beating a kid is never an answer–slipper, cane or whathaveyou. Sexual abuse was poo-poo’ed as has been said as well. Kids were not listened to–I was told two things re my poor math skills (in elementary school): 1. I had to be able to do math, because my language and other scores were so high; and 2. if I did poorly in math, it wouldn’t matter, *because I was a girl. * Those messages would not be delivered today and thank god.
“Playground safety has been improved?”
Yes, like in that Oregon town that has “No Running” signs in the playgrounds and those schools where children aren’t allowed to play anything competitive or that may require “touching”, such as tag.
Thanks, but I liked it when I was allowed to run around, even if it meant I might fall down go boom.
My school had a cane, which was regularly used. Mainly on the same few boys. It didn’t change their behaviour.
I think a survey some years ago showed that every single generation (going back to Victorian times) makes this claim about the previous generation.
Good.
In my opinion, there have been real recent improvements in dealing with bullying (Childline), sexual abuse, learning disabilities and dropping rote learning.
Oh I bet it had been invented! It just got transmitted around differently, i.e., by anonymous mailings. It’s like the Nigerian scam: that’s been going on for decades. I first heard of it at my first “real” job in 1982 and while it was new to me, everyone else had gotten the same notices over the fax (called at that time the “telephone facsimile machine”) many times. I’m sure it goes back a lot further than 1982.
I’m sure there were lots of people in 1977 pining for the good ol’ days of 1957 and writing glurge about it. It’s just harder to find now.
I meant replacing concrete playgrounds with rubber surfaces:
Surfacing is required on all playgrounds so it can absorb the impact when a child falls off of the equipment. Not if, but when. The importance of it lies in its ability to prevent a head concussion. It must be the right type and depth in order to do this.
http://www.kidsource.com/safety/playground.safety.sb3a.html
Is ‘no running’, no ‘competitiveness’ and ‘no touching’ a US standard?
I’m sure I could find a small US town school board that doesn’t want to teach evolution, or says that gays will burn in hell or that all children must pray in school.
Isn’t your effort just more propaganda?
Well, there probably was some around, but unless it got to the level of being printed in newspapers or magazines (and there was that possibility), it was a lot harder to find then. The Internet has opened up a lott of possibilities, some good, and some pretty awful.
At what point, though, does an individual example of school district idiocy become a valid counter point? I really don’t think that most school districts will have a ‘no running’ rule for their playgrounds. I really do believe, however, that most school districts will have at least one or two teachers who are sadists.
Alas my evidence for either supposition consists of one instance of fact, and several counter-examples.
But no matter how much negative evidence I am shown you won’t be able to convince me that all teachers should be allowed to be around children.
A related point, too - for all the commonality between US and UK cultures, the educational establishments in the two countries are very different. So, some of the things you’re pointing to, as positive changes, are as alien to me as Mars dust. (Childline, for one)
<juvenile humour>
Hehe. Homophone.
</juvenile humour>
Perhaps to (some of?) them it has become or is becoming disassociated with homosexuality, but I still can’t disconnect the two. Every time I hear a kid use it as a pejorative I want to smack them upside the head. Whatever happened to “lame?”
I think I’m becoming a crusty old fart.
Yes, this is true too. I’ve seen numerous instances where teachers or other faculty members have gotten away with little more than a slap on the wrist for what should have brought much harsher penalties, and that’s pretty unfortunate. The worst have been cases where the schools have tried to sweep such issues under the rug because they don’t want to face the school board’s wrath or whatever reason they have for doing so.
I’m sure that some helicopter parents are products of a less than reliable school system, but even so many of them take things too far, stopping just short of dressing their children in helmet and bubble wrap and sending them off to school in a giant hamster ball. Then there’s the other side – the defensive parents whose precious little snowflakes are always innocent of every accusation leveled at them no matter how heinous the events described in those accusations are. These are the ones who have forced schools to be on the defensive themselves, hurling public accusations and leveling lawsuits every time their child scrapes a knee or hears naughty words or has their hair pulled by other kids on school grounds.
I’m exaggerating a little, but I think my point is in there somewhere. There’s just no happy, sensible medium here, it always seems to swing to one extreme or the other.
Mindfield, I’ve got no arguments with your further discussion of helicopter parents. Even if the reasons that a parent might have for their behavior are understandable, that doesn’t mean that the behavior itself is automatically laudable.
Meaning that they haven’t been implemented in your area or that you don’t consider them positive changes?
Where to start? My kids’ elementary school has, over the years, constrained and restricted much of what used to be recess here. I went to the same school my kids do.
1960s and 70s: asphalt, wood chips and sand. Huge grass field. Monkey bars, swings, slides, tetherball, 4 square allowed, as was kickball, running games (tag, keepaway etc), jump ropes were encouraged, as were jacks, yo-yo’s etc.
Daughter (mid 90s): asphalt, wood chips and sand. Huge grass field-not used much. Swings and slides. No monkey bars. Balls must be “checked out” and returned after recess (no bringing your own ball). No jacks, yo-yo’s allowed. Running games ok.
#1 son (mid to late 90s): asphalt, wood chips and sand. Huge grass field-off limits except for outdoor gym class. No swings. One slide remains. No tether ball, period. No “exclusionary” games (keepaway, monkey in the middle, running bases). No jump ropes.
#1 son (millenium to today): Rubberized “pavement”. No climbing equipment on the older kids’ playground, period. No slide. No running games allowed. Only kick balls or foot balls allowed (must be signed for). Recess frequently canceled due to “weather concerns” (I was there the day the principal canceled it due to high winds–in March no less. No kites allowed). Kids are not allowed to run on the grass; gym is held indoors, no matter the weather; recess is most often “blacktop” (rubbertop?) only.
And yet I consider my youngest lucky in that he gets at least some form of unregimented recess. Other elementary schools around here do this for “recess”: they line the kids up by class and march them around the outside of the building. No talking allowed. No touching. Look straight ahead and march. Creepy as hell.
glee–by no means do I want either the paddle or the cane back. But kids should be allowed some license. It is only through risks/chances that they grow and explore. I am concerned about the lack of physical exercise and the lack of just plain fun. Penny drops on the monkey bars, monkey bar tag, running races, hopscotch, freeze tag–these are not only fun for kids, they teach stuff as well, if only what your body can do.
I do not see the here and now in school as great days or even good. Yes, we have addressed some issues that needed to be. But we have also closed off some outlets for natural aggression and energy. Illinois is one of two states (I think the other is Michigan, but I’m not sure) that REQUIRES physical education in all grade levels. No wonder our kids are fat… Sorry to have wandered off the discipline focus here.
Which originally meant “unable to walk properly”. The pejorative use of “lame” has made it offensive to use it in that original sense.