Sorry - missed the edit window. I was in middle school in the early 1970s in Colorado, and there was still one teacher with a paddle. He didn’t use it often (never on the girls), but he did use it. I didn’t consider this a good thing then and I still don’t now.
Although when the school bully jumped me outside his classroom and the teacher smacked the kid into the locker so hard it made him bleed, I thought that was pretty cool 
What is the saying, that history is written by the victors?
I mean, come on. Anyone who’s writing that uninterrupted schoolyard brawls are a lamented loss clearly was on the winning side.
Yes, discipline–because they don’t get it at home. These kids have to learn how to wait their turn, raise their hand, be polite etc. These are not kindergartners–these are all kids, up to senior in high school. Sad, but true.
Having just had a kid go through the college app process, you’d be surprised at the advice given by counselors–admissions offices are pretty good at recognizing “resume” padding. They are looking for genuine kids who are passionate about X or excel at Y or are just curious about the world. Ironic, then, that the very attributes looked for are discouraged by this culture of fear of the uncontrollable. I doubt school bullies are on the decline today–they’ve only changed their tactics.
We had wood chips. I like wood chips. They’ve been removed for rubberized compound, as I stated in my post. Chances are this kind of stuff will spread to your school as well-give it time. I have no vested interest in monkey bars, per se–but some type of climbing equipment that permits group play would be nice. I find it sort of bizarre that you seem defensive about this. Surely most people here understood that by monkey bars, I meant climbing equipment? :dubious:
Those here who say that the good ole days are BS have a point, but why the need to characterize those who remember when (some) things were better as rigid, sadistic or lawless morons? Decrying the Nanny cosseting does not equal endorsing bullying or dangerous practices.
The good ole days are not today–there were never and never will be any such thing. There are problems with this CareBear atmosphere where no one fails, and everyone’s feelings are protected to an absurd degree, not to mention the fearful administrators decreeing plastic bubbles for all because physical risk is a Bad Thing. I’ll bow out now, since this information seems unwelcome here.
I think what some of us are saying is that the “CareBear atmosphere” is not as widespread as the “good ol’ dayers” want to believe it is.
Odd. My kids didn’t have that problem, but neither did their friends. They were uniformly polite when they came over.
I hope that colleges are finally doing this, but parents don’t believe it, not yet. You hear these horror stories about how kids with 4.0s and 1600 SATs get rejected by Harvard for not having enough extracurricular activities. (It was probably because they came across as total tools.) I was involved in our district’s GATE parent advocacy group, so I saw a lot of this. On our membership form we asked what parents would like to see, meaning it to be in the area of supporting them, and most of the responses involved requests for enrichment. Plus, there was a scandal when how one of the 25 or so valedictorians at the “best” high school in town admitted she cheated for the grades.
They’ve been through several iterations of the playground, and they still have wood chips. And they don’t have the traditional monkey bars we had when I was a kid. Just as well.
I guess there are some places where nobody fails, but I sure haven’t seen them. My younger daughter who was in honors classes, worried all the time though she didn’t really have to. The school system has a policy of sending potential fail slips home if there is any chance of failure, and I was on site council, and I know they sent a lot home. Maybe kids in a ritzy private school charging an arm and a leg don’t have to worry about failing, but the ones in our pretty good public school did. Doper teachers: do kids in your school fail sometimes?
In fact, when I was in high school in the late '60s it was impossible to fail our honors classes, assuming you actually showed up. The worst that could happen is that you got given an 85 and kicked out. I’m not saying it is impossible, just that it might be a function of certain schools with wimpy administrators, and not of society.
Yeah, they don’t call them the ‘Me’ generation for nothing. Their stock portfolios are predicated on the production of our video games and yet they sneer down their hippy turned yuppie noses at their own children for being the product of their own excesses. Thanks boomers, you guys are the best*.
*I didn’t actually write best, but the boomer neurolinguistic program cannot interpret any assessment of their condition in any terms other than glowing compliment.
My middle school (don’t get me started on the hell that was those three years) in central Texas still paddled, at least on occasion, in the late 1980s. Not teachers, but the vice-principal. I was once sitting waiting to be given detention for tardiness or something when a kid I knew got three swats in there. It sounded painful, from the sound of the swats. But highly ineffective, really, he didn’t look even slightly bothered when he came out.
Anyone who thinks that a fight between two males in 1977 was a good-natured game of fisticuffs obviously never saw a real fight.
IRL fistfights, people lose teeth, people break bones, people tear flesh, and people are maimed. In fact, it is exactly 1977 that I saw my first ever serious fistfight between two boys (they were junior high schoolers), and blood did fly through the air. And I remember distinctly a janitor cleaning blood off of the fucking ceiling in one hall from a fight that lasted perhaps 5 seconds. The “bleeder” also lost 2 teeth. And one day while walking home from school (1983) I saw a 9th-grader systematically destroyed by a 12th-grader, while a gang of enormous testosterone-shooting 12th-graders stood around and warned everyone that we would be killed and dumped in the local gravel pit it we ever said a word. And we believed them, too, given what they did to the 9th-grader.
They all were life-changing events to witness. They convinced me, along with other things, that the big, strong males will always be free to impose their will on anyone smaller than them, and that unless you have an equalizer you are always at risk of meeting someone who wants to teach you that might == right.