I’m saying right up front that this is in no way mentioned in the article, but rather comes from inside my own head, but I can picture a situation where Kevin declines to take the phone call because he realizes that when his mother asks “What’s going on?” he will now have to include “I’m in trouble for cussing out a teacher.” I have seen students in my office make this turn on a dime – wanting to talk to the parent, and then the light bulb moment when they realize that talking to the parent at that moment would mean that the parent would also hear my information (acting as a representative of the school) as well as the student’s story.
I don’t have any claim that what I described is what happened, but I don’t think the scenario is in the “Nah.” category either.
True. However, if YOU don’t think of it beforehand, then the blame for any misunderstanding lies 100% with you, school administrators not being mind readers.
“Mr Garfield, can we leave the room?”
“Of course not, the school schedule says this class doesn’t get out for another twenty minutes. Rules are rules.”
“But Mr Garfield, the building’s on fire and I really think we should get out.”
“If the Adminstration had wanted me to make an exception to the Rules, they would have told me. I will however submit a request for a special exemption to the Principal at our next staff meeting. Now everybody open your books to Chapter 5. And I am taking the names of those of you violating the excessive coughing in class rule.”
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If not…we truly are screwed if we don’t know every one of the rules in every single situation for our whole lives, wherever we may be or do. Is that correct, in your estimation?
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We are truly screwed in every situation where we fail to follow the rules…if we curse and act beligerently toward the people who have no idea about our special circumstances and are merely trying to do their job. This kid found himself facing a 10 day suspension because of his failure to control his temper. Had he acted reasonably, either before the phone call or afterward, he’d not be facing a supension today.
If I were in a similar situation and my mother or father found out about how I behaved to a teacher, not only would I have to apologize to the teacher, but my ass would be grounded until 2020.
Actually, I’m pretty sure most schools have established standards and procedures for dealing with fire alarms and (at least in the midwest) tornado drills (and increasingly today, bomb threats, dangerous people on the premisis, etc.).
I’m talking about situations where a student unilaterally chooses to clearly disobey a rule, when there is no threat of personal harm to him or any other student. Are there situations which the rules might not cover? I think so, sure. I just think the line lies further away than you do, apparently.
Hmm. Does the school have a response to a fire instead of just one to the fire alarm, I wonder?
Rules aren’t sacred or special. They are instituted for a specific purpouse: in this case, to aid in the educational process of the school. A student hearing from his mother during lunch hour does not interfere with the educational process. In fact (as I have pointed out), the stated reason for the cell phone ban has nothing to do with this use of the cell phone. Are you all really trying to say that enforcing a rule in a way that is directly contradictory to both the general reason for the rule set and had nothing to do with the specific reason the rule was created was a good idea?
I remember a teacher I had, who believed in following all the rules. I helpfully dug out my copy of the student’s handbook and corrected him when he violated some of them in class. He soon stopped.
I realize your comment was smart-assed, but actually, when there is a fire, generally there is a fire alarm, so that is what is planned for. It can severely muck things up when there is a fire but no alarm, since people not in the general vicinity of the fire must be alerted by other means, all while everyone is trying to safely exit the building.
The fact remains that no matter what justifications you try to make that the rule is stupid, it was still the rule, and the way around it is to attempt to work things out with the administrators first. I do think the kid should have been allowed to talk to his mother, but I also think it should have been arranged first. What if the kid’s mom was on leave for a day so the kid just up and left school with no warning to meet her for lunch or something?
But yeah, throwing a red-faced profanity-laced tantrum is definitely the way to explain what’s going on and ask the administration to bend the rules for you, pwecious. That always works. :rolleyes:
I am glad to hear that the suspension was reduced. It makes more sense, considering the situation. The school recognized this was a special case, and so reduced the punishment. At the same time, by leaving some sort of punishment in place, they can reinforce the Don’t Scream And Curse rule. It’s all good so far.
However, some of the posts in this thread bother me. Some people seem to be saying rules are rules and must be blindly obeyed, no matter what the situation. It’s not so. Rules are just as fallible as the humans who make them. No set of rules can cover every situation fairly, or even adequately. There has to be some “wiggle room”, to cover things that are not a perfect fit.
I am also bothered by the idea that the student should know every possible rule and every possible permutation of every rule, and work it all out beforehand. How many months or years would it take for every student to negotiate the rules and the possible or probable “special circumstances” against each rule? This is a student, not some high power attorney at law. Even attorneys have limits on how much they can know – unless they are far more than merely human. You are putting more burden on the student than on any teacher or staffer if you insist on this being a condition of getting a fair shake. Nobody, even with a full staff can hope to cover every contingency.
Sometimes a person deliberately decides to totally ignore a rule. That can be the right thing to do. There are rules against distrupting a class. Does that rule stay in force if the student next to you starts choking and turns blue? “Sorry Joe, but you can’t interrupt the class just because Jim is choking and flopping on the floor, wait until recess”.
Some rules do not apply to a specific (maybe unique) situation. Sometimes they do need to be bent or broken. Obedience is reasonable. Allowing for exceptions is reasonable. Being unwilling to even consider any deviation is unreasonable and lazy.
But clearly, the school was NOT unwilling to consider any deviation. The kid was the one who unilaterally decided that the rule didn’t apply to him because of his particular circumstance. Whether it did or whether it didn’t is NOT up for the kid to decide, but up to the administraion.
Out of curiosity, given that it’s nearly summer, and that the kid wasn’t expecting his mother to call back for another month, and that he is 17 and may well be leaving the school behind before his mother calls back, and given the fact that the offer to work something out happened after school adminstration had attempted to physically taken the phone away from him in the middle of a conversation and not answered it after it rang again, what kind of agreement could have been reached?
Also, have you the-rules-are-the-rules people ever actually read the rules, all the way through? Have you seen if there are actually provisions for leaving class for a fire but no fire alarm? Did you know that I can in fact wear a strapless dress without violating Lafayette’s school dress code?
Anyone read the bits on student harrasment? They’ve left it deliberately vague, so they can nail the creative bullies, but if a teacher tried to actually enforce every little bit of it, without allowing for context, virtually no social interaction between students is possible.
He could have gone to the administration when his mother was deployed and said, “Hey, my mom’s in Iraq, she gets very limited phone time and doesn’t always know when it will be. Is it ok if use my cellphone during lunch, should she try to call me then? Perhaps if she has phone priviledges during school hours, she could call the school and you could call me down to the office.”
An administration that has created a rule that says you can have a cell phone but not use it, even on breaks? That has to the dumbest idea ever. If cell phones have the potential to create such huge problems that they can’t be used, why not ban them from school property altogether?
I’m also willing to bet good money that he isn’t the only kid that has used his cell phone on school grounds.
Just because you can’t comprehend the rationale of the “dumbest idea ever” doesn’t make it the dumbest idea ever.
The rule says you can have a cellphone but not use it during school hours. The reasoning is that “Hey, kids might need to use their cellphones after school but before they get home. Banning phones at school prevents students from using phones after extracurricular activities, if they should happen to get into a car accident on the way home from school, or if they go to a job immediately after school.” They have the potential to create problems when used DURING SCHOOL, not after school. And when I was in high school, they were, indeed, banned from being in school at all.
Are there situations when using a phone in school is appropriate? Sure. However (in my opinion) they are so few and far between that a no-cellphone-use-during-school rule is reasonable, and individual exceptions can be handled by the administration. This requires an administration who is willing to work with the students (which this one clearly was) and students who are willing to work with the administration (which this one clearly wasn’t).
Sorry Garfield, but you and I will never agree on the basic premise. I strongly disagree that every rule MUST be obeyed simply because it is the rule. There have been rules and laws that WERE stupid. Did everyone blindly obey it just because Rules Is Rules? No they did not. They either broke the rule or got it removed.
You are aware that even if this had been the case there are some people out there who would deny even this, because Rules Is Rules. There are also certain things, for which you should not need anyone’s permission whatsoever. Communicating with a family member who might very well be dead by tomorrow trumps the hell out of any school policy.
And sometimes the best way to get rid of a stupid rule is to question it. If there is no justification for it, it’s gone (or should be). If it is logical but too inflexible, it should be modified.
If I had a parent in a combat area (I do not), rule or no rule, I would take the call, no matter if it was lunch time, or in the middle of class. Woe unto anyone who tried to take the phone away, or forceably hang up the phone. I’d do everything I could to have the parent, the commanding oficer, the Pentagon, and the local politicians calling and raising holy hell with that individual.
You can’t fault the administration for not doing something they never had the oppurtunity to do. From the article I get the impression that the administration is reasonable and would have worked something out with Kevin.
Everything but take 5 minutes to stop in the principal’s office to work out a prior arrangement? If Kevin had gone to the administration and they were unreasonable I would agree with the pitting but that is not what happened.
So now we’re talking about appropriate reactions to stupid or unjust or whatever rules. Civil disobedience? Sure. As long as you accept the consequences of your actions. This kid didn’t. Get the rule removed? Of course. This kid didn’t.
I’m not saying rules must be obeyed simply because they are rules, and there is to be no dissent whatsoever. I’m saying there are ways to go about effecting change, and deliberately breaking a rule and then pouting when you’re called on it isn’t one of them.
And if the headline read “Student denied permission to talk with his mom in Iraq,” I think I’d be on the other side of the fence here. That’s not what happened.
Open defiance != questioning. Or rather, it may, but there are certainly more appropriate ways to go about it.