What in the FUCK were this teacher & principal thinking? Ok, they have a very reasonable rule about cell phones during school hours, but the kid was on his LUNCH BREAK. So he used a little profanity when the teacher had HUNG UP ON HIS MOM by trying to take the phone from him & took the student to the principal’s office - if someone hung up on me while I was talking to a parent serving overseas, I’d probably use profanity too.
And the only other choice was ARRESTING him? WTF? So the kid wasn’t being cooperative about “working things out”? Well, maybe if you’d let him TALK to his mom first, he would have been willing to “work it out” when he was done on the phone.
This hit the AP wire about an hour ago, and I found probably 50+ stories on it when searching Google News from all over the country about this. Yes, there is a time for rules - I’m not so liberal that I don’t understand that. But this isn’t a normal circumstance. Hell, the teacher who wanted to take the phone away could’ve maybe spoken to the student’s mother to verify that she really was who she said before causing an uproar - or hanging up the phone. This is much bigger than a student using the phone during school hours. Who knows if this is the last time she’d be able to call…in case the principal hasn’t noticed, people are DYING over there.
Heads should roll. Suspensions should be ended. This is just STUPID. I hate stupid people. :mad:
I have an idea. We write down every single school policy decision, code it into an expert computer, and then fire every administratior.
Then, when people realize that oh, wait, the reason we have these people around is exactly because they need to know when to make exceptions to policy. As long as they’re not willing to, I say fuck 'em all, and let Principal ELIZA sort things out.
My understanding is that the kid essentially replied to the teacher in a stream of curses. My money is if he had been more tactful he would have escaped suspension.
Those damn sacks of shit. How dare they try to make an exception to the rule for this kid and then have the audacity to suspend him after he goes on a profanity laden tirade at the administration.
I’m with the school. He wasn’t suspeneded for talking to his mom in Iraq, he was suspended for cursing out the teacher and generally being rude and obnoxious about getting hung up on.
The teacher couldn’t have known the circumstances when she told him to hang up. She saw a kid yakking on a cell phone, that was against the rules, he wouldn’t hang up so she hung up for him. If he was talking to his girlfriend or one of his buddies, and a teacher hung up the phone, and he went off on the teacher I don’t think anyone would have any problem at all with the suspension. The only difference here is a perceived special circumstance in that he was talking to a parent deployed overseas in Iraq. The teacher didn’t know that, and I’m not sure she would have been able to make an exception even if she had known.
Yes, I know, he supposedly told her who he was talking to, but kids make shit up all the time. She might have thought he was lying or being a smartass and we don’t know what kind of behavors or attitudes this kid has demonstrated before. If he acts like an asshole all the time, that could play into it.
I think part of this was just bad luck that his mom called at a bad time, that the teacher didn’t really seem to grasp (or believe) the circumstances and that kid reacted emotionally and inappropriately. It looks like they tried to give him time to calm down and discuss it rationally but he wasn’t willing to do that so they had no choice but to suspend him.
You can’t give a kid a pass on cussing out a teacher, no matter what the circumstances and especially when that teacher was only enforcing a rule.
I’m with Treis. It sounds like this kid got caught breaking the rules (he wasn’t even supposed to have it ON during school, so he shouldn’t have received the call to begin with) and was mouthy and rude about it. It sounds like it’s not the initial rule break that’s the problem, it’s the attitude of the kid.
Honestly, I don’t necessarily think that there shouldn’t have been ANY consequences for the kid at all; attitude IS a problem & it should be addressed.
But I think 10 days is excessive for the circumstances; the fact that they even considered arresting the kid is a bit much, and both the kid AND THE TEACHERS should have handled it differently.
I’ll tell you, though, I was Miss Goody-Two-Shoes when I was in school & I would’ve freaked out too.
However, the way I read the story it seemed like they were trying to “work it out” with him WHILE the situation was still fresh & he was hearing the phone ring, knowing it was his mom & wasn’t being permitted to answer the phone EVEN long enough to tell her what was going on & why he couldn’t talk. For that matter, the principal could have answered the phone & explained the situation to the Mom.
There are lots of other ways it could have been handled. And no, you’re right, he’s not suspended for talking to his mom but for his attitude. Still, given the situation, I really feel 10 days was excessive.
A question to the people on the side of the school (I don’t care, you do have a valid point) - Does it not strike you as odd that the two possible punishments are either suspension or arrest?
IMO, suspension is a lousy punishment for a school to hand out. A couple of hours of detention a day for a few weeks and extra assignments seem like a better deterent to me.
What seems worse is that they didn’t let him answer it a second time. On the second call, the principal or one of the teachers could have answered, confirmed that it was the mother, and then handed the phone over. Hell, they could have done that the first time. The kid mouthed off, but consider the circumstances: he talks to her once a month, dozens of soldiers die in Iraq every day, and it’s right before Mother’s Day. Now that kid thinks that his mom thinks that he hung up on him on Mother’s Day, and he has no way of getting back to her easily.
I really don’t see what’s wrong with letting kids use phones on their lunch breaks. I can see why they’re not allowed in classes (aside from cheating, it’s disrespectful to talk on the phone in class), but why ban them on breaks? That’s the definition of a break, it’s a time when you’re free to do your own thing. It’s not “eating class.”
Well, I know this is the Pit & everything, and maybe that’s why some people are reacting that way, but I’m certainly not one of them. :dubious:
I’m opposed to the War, have been since we went, but reflexive patriotism is not why I pitted the situation.
I’m pitting how the situation was handled. I’d pit it even if I supported the War (I don’t support the War-I support our troops) or if it was another special situation. The problem isn’t even necessarily that Mom’s overseas. It’s that there were BETTER WAYS TO HANDLE IT. Ways that could have worked out better for all involved - and still taught the kid not to cuss his teachers out while allowing him to be upset.
If you read the link I posted, the student even takes responsibility for getting out of hand. Sounds reasonably mature to me.
Well hell must be freezing over because I am in 100% agreement with everything Dio said. There are a lot of teachers in my immediate family and circle of friends, and stories like this very, very seldom paint the true picture, and there aren’t near as many “morons” in education or administration as some of the comments in this thread would indicate.
The profanity to the teacher indicates that this is an asshole kid, period. The teachers and administrators of the building have their hands full in keeping order and enforcing rules. A waiver may have been in order for the kid to talk to his mom, but the time, place, and method to get that waiver was not on the spot after teacher-student confrontation.
Ten days suspension seems too harsh, but this kid could have avoided the whole thing if he’d just responded appropriately. “I’m on the phone with my mom serving in Iraq, and she only gets to call me once a month” would probably have gotten the job done, instead of a profanity filled tirade.
The teacher and the principal should have been willing to admit this was a situation where the student really was receiving an important phone call. Even if they didn’t know it at the time, they certainly understood it later. But it appears they were unwilling to admit that the student might have been right and they might have been wrong. So they’re enforcing their decision based on what they thought was happening rather than the reality. Being unwilling to admit to a mistake or ignorance and insisting on enforcing rules regardless of the circumstances are the signs of a petty bureaucrat.
He did tell the teacher pretty much exactly that. The teacher took the phone anyway breaking the connection. That’s when he swore at the teacher. So it appears a reasonable explanation didn’t work.