I can’t decide between “too soon” and “not funny”.
Domestic violence rates among combat soldiers are much higher than the general public. How are they going to deescalate violent situations when they are trained to use overwhelming force to resolve situations at work?
Military worship has gone way way too far in this country. A lot of veterans I know will be honest about how inefficient and wasteful the military is.
I wonder if the OP expects these military people to have gone to college, or if that is elitist.
When I wrote that post, I think I intended for my “So, you’re wrong” to be a light and jokey introduction to a post in which I was saying you were technically wrong on the point but were right on the broader point. Rereading it, though, I’m appalled at how it comes across totally devoid of humor, instead just being arrogant and shitty. My apologies. I absolutely agree with you on the broader point, nitpickery notwithstanding.
No problem.
The suggestion in the OP is clearly an insane authoritarian fantasy, but there’s one thing the military does right that I think education needs to pay more attention to: they have a growth mindset. They are very, very good at taking kids who did not respond well to traditional educational methods and getting them competent and confident in a skill set. And near as I can tell, they don’t beat and condition them into compliance–they 1) set the expectation that you can and will learn 2) work real hard to break down what needs to be done into small pieces 3) expect you to keep going until you get it. The academies are famous for this: if they find a kid with the character they are looking for but not the academics, they send them to a prep school for a year and grow them, instead of just assuming that where the kid is now is the best he/she can do. But you see it in the regular army as well–it’s not sink or swim. They believe that training works. Far too many teachers don’t–the believe in smart kids and “struggling” ones.
I taught in a district whose superintendent was former army ranger. His attitude was “Do things my way or you’re fired.” Bear in mind he had no pedagogical background. He also fired any teacher who discussed unionizing. He told all of the teachers in the district that we got in the way of our students’ education. He searched teacher laptops on the basis of “We own them so we can search them”. The evaluation plan made no sense and the teacher coaches he hired refused to help teachers improve. What was the motivation? By grading teachers artificially low he could fire anyone he wanted. The year I left, EVERY first year teacher was fired.
That’s what you get when a military mindset runs a district.
I know who you are talking about! He came to Dallas next. Was a disaster.
Also, honestly, not at all like the real military. Actual military people don’t cultivate a culture of fear.
Except maybe for JROTC, as long as participation is voluntary.
What the OP is proposing sounds like what school must be like in North Korea.
I haven’t read the whole thread, but there’s an underlying current of racism and classism in the OP.
How did this guy get the job?
The wonderful documentary “Country School: One Room, One Nation”, which is about one-room schoolhouses, does not sugarcoat the experience. One interviewee described “an older boy who was a bully” who sexually assaulted smaller children, presumably including him, at knifepoint, and added, “We didn’t have the courage to tell our parents, or the vocabulary to do so.” For that reason, it is not recommended for young children. I don’t think it’s on Netflix, but you could get the DVD through your library.
ETA: It’s on Vimeo.
I also had a college classmate who graduated from high school in the late 1970s, and when she was in school, a black girl was dragged into a bathroom by 3 white boys, and severely beaten and gang-raped. Everyone knew about it because they readily admitted (let’s face it, bragged) that they were the reason an ambulance was called to the school. Nothing was done to them because after all, it was just a black girl :mad: and upon hearing about this, her mother packed her up and moved her in with her father, who lived in an ostensibly safer area. That they were bold enough to do that indicates to me that it wasn’t the first time they did it, either.
In every city I’ve lived in, the Catholic high school had the best drugs, because that’s where the money was. My dad was a substitute teacher from 1961 until the early 00s, and he always said that the wealthiest schools had the worst discipline problems; the poorer districts’ issues were out in the open and the wealthier schools’ issues were covered up, with varying degrees of success.
And there was a shooting at my junior high in 1972, a few years before I went there, and I never knew about it until I read about it on that school’s Facebook page; nobody was shot, because the bullets all went into a wall, and the injuries came from kids jumping out a first-floor window.
BTW, I can also pretty safely bet that the OP’s definition of discipline involves some kind of humiliation and/or torture.
Neither do people who are genuinely in charge, be they parents, teachers, supervisors, etc.
Sounds like the OP thinks students would benefit from being beaten but not bullied. No-sir-ee, no bullying! Beating, sure. Bullying, no.
The Army Corp of Engineers was responsible for facilities management in DC pubic schools. Guess how easy it was to get the heat fixed, or a window replaced, or anything else when you had to ask the ACE and didn’t have a single member of Congress to make sure ACE took your request seriously.
I just wanted to put out this story told to me years ago by a friend from Nigeria.
It seemed that a major high school in Legos Nigeria had gotten out of control. Students turned it into toal chaos. Well the military DID go in and (sort of) take over. I dont think they had anything to do with instruction or curriculum but they DEFINITELY were in charge of discipline. For example any student causing trouble was immediately taken outside and dealt with. For example they had to hoist a brick over their head and run around the school while soldiers with sticks chased them. You can bet that pretty soon every student toed the line.
Now if you recall the movie “Stand and Deliver” where a tough as nails former miliary leader principal came and and turned around a failed Philadephia school, the idea has credit IF the school has gone totally over and teachers cannot teach because of mass chaos.
So I think their are times it might be needed.
Pretty sure that “Stand and Deliver” was about a math teacher who taught students calculus.
Woah, dude. Handy tip: while you might secretly wish that our nation were turned into a brutal dictatorship that beat children into submission, maybe don’t use your out-loud voice on the subject?
I think a key to any significant reform is to accept the fact that not all students have to attend public school no matter what they do and how they act.
If you talk to veteran teachers who teach in difficult locales, they’ll tell you that, if they could eliminate the 20% that don’t want to be there and spend all of their time disrupting the environment, their results would increase substantially.
I suspect that Urbanredneck is actually thinking of the movie “Lean on Me,” though it’s not clear to me if Joe Louis Clark (the principal in that film) actually had a military background, or if he was just a hard-nosed disciplinarian.
Just in some cases. Kids who need more discipline than the usual population. You know, the Nigerians.
And when 20$ of the population is illierate, unsocialized, unsuited to even menial employment, what do we do then?
9/10, the highly disruptive kid is a perfectly normal kid put in an environment beyond his ability to handle. He’s being abused. He’s hungry. He doesn’t think he’s going to live to be 18. He believes he is so worthless, all this is worthless, that there’s no point. He’s been through some terrifying shit and all-over anger has destroyed his ability to be rational and he’s lashing out.
But it’s easier to blame him for the problems the other kids are having than to recognize that, 9/10, he’s the worst victim of the problems of society, not the cause.
And I say this as a nearly 20 year veteran of one of the largest, poorest school districts in the country.
We’re already there with that group, believe. The difference is that we are allowing them to drag as many people down with them as they can.