It’s actually a fairly recent development that the lives of children are considered to be more important than the lives of the parents. It wasn’t that long ago that a couple that had 10 children expected 2-4 of them to die during childhood. The idea that a parent would sacrifice their life to save the life of their child 2-300 years ago would be ludicrous.
It also doesn’t make sense to say that we’ve made pain and death the ultimate boogeyman. Those things have always been a part of the human condition. In fact during the Dark/Middle ages the population was consumed with the fact that they were going to die. Look at the power of the church in that day. Everyone was acutely aware that they could drop dead tomorrow, and they spent a great deal of effort to ensure that they would make it to heaven when they did.
This isn’t a James Bond movie where 100 henchmen open up and can’t hit Bond. A group of parents trying to rush the shooters would be shot down like dogs.
I can think of another good reason to let a teacher know about harassment or other threats.
If a teacher knows that Jimmy is threatening other kids, and this isn’t like Jimmy, the teacher can talk to him to find out if there’s something going on at home, like a parent losing a job or a death in the family or some other stressor. If Johnny just hits back, the larger problem about Jimmy isn’t solved when it could be.
Teachers do know their students’ behavior patterns, but they can’t help if no one will let them.
I think the real issue is that we punish people for fighting back (or even, in some cases, helping) and prevent them from defending themselves. If I was bullied on the playground, I coudn’t fight back, because I’d just get in trouble. The teachers didn’t care, because they could be punished for physically touching the students. Heck, you can get sued (successfully) for saving someone’s life if you broke a bone doing it.
Bullshit. You’ve just proven you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Maybe, but it would have been a much harder to actually kill anyone. It’s not easy to aim and kill someone who’s moving and attacking. Sure, some would be shot - maybe even die. But a lot fewer.
Doesn’t work. Teachers do nothing unless they witness it, and even then usually nothing happens. And when they do something, they’re tryig to be “fair” and wind up making it worse.
I was once attacked by a dumbass out on the playground. The whole thing was instigated by some other idiot who (rather obviously) lied about the whole thing but dumbass was too stupid to figure it out. I was not going to apoligize, given that I had not actually said or done anything to start the fight. Dumbass, twice my size comes at me, and I took a few hits but smacked him up pretty good.
I get detention. What was I supposed to do? Let him beat the shit out of me until a tacher wandered by a few minutes later? :rolleyes:
And what were the teachers going to do beforehand? Nothing, as usual.
It sounds good in theory, but the fact of the matter is that it takes an inordinate amount of training to convince people to do anything but hide when faced with danger. The idea that a bunch of 40+ year old parents would be able to execute a cohesive attack after they see the people next to them fall down dead is just unworkable.
Actually, in my experience, the best way to fight back was to act bored by the whole thing, and pretend I didn’t give a shit. After a while, I really DIDN’T give a shit, and would just roll my eyes and act like the whole thing was beneath me.
However, NOT letting the teachers and/or authorities know isn’t a good idea. Like I said, it’s THEIR JOB to know these things, and to deal with them.
I think this is an oversimplification. Certainly people who accord respect to religious authorities are more likely to identify themselves as conservative. (Liberals are sometimes guilty of this same kind of blind ‘faith’ in science). Ditto for military authorities. While I would agree that liberals are more likely than conservatives to accomodate school system authority, I would stop short of saying that liberals are in general more accomodating of ‘bureaucracy’: there’s nothing more bureaucratic than the military.
People are more willing to accept an authority’s rule if they feel they share the authority’s values.
IME, that only worked until something was found to do to you that you actually did give a shit about. Also IME, it was always easier to keep pushing than to forever remain unmoved. All they need is to catch you on a bad day and, from their perspective, all of their hard work is rewarded.
Fighting can be pre-empted if kids tell you about what’s going on. I’ve certainly had to intervene in situations before they came to violence, when I got wind of it. You wouldn’t believe what kids will tell you if they trust you.
Yeah, their crystal balls were in the shop. What do you expect from the human beings who are teachers? Prescience? Pre-crimes is for science fiction. You can’t rail against teachers not helping you if you won’t tell them anything, or if no one knows it’s coming until it comes. Then, all they can do is witness it.
Schools, like the rest of society, are never going to be an Eden of peaceable harmony. Because human being are involved, and they fight. It’s senseless to argue against telling teachers and then complain because teachers don’t know anything.
The schoolyard isn’t a court of law. You use your judgement. You look at the characters involved. You look at the number of kids on each side. You think about events that led up to it. You consider the history of the kids and whether they’ve been in this kind of trouble before.
You know, in industry we have to make judgements like this all the time. Performance reviews, job interviews, etc. There are sometimes conflicts and accusations, and opposing sides to the conflict. Sometimes there are no witnesses. You do the best you can. Sometimes you get it wrong.
And teachers somehow used to manage this. Before there was all this zero-tolerance nonsense, teachers exercised their judgement. If little Johnny was caught with a nail file, you might bust him because little Johnny has a history of violence and threatening behaviour. If little Suzie is caught with a nail file, that’s fine because little Suzie sits around and buffs her nails all day. And if little Johnny’s mother comes in screaming that her kid was punished for having the same item as another kid, the teacher would say, “That’s because the other kid doesn’t have a history of threatening to poke the eyes out of her enemies. You don’t like it? Talk to the principal.” And a good principal would back the teacher up.
I know it’s tougher than just pointing to an iron-clad rule and saying, “It’s out of my hands”. But it’s your job. Zero tolerance is a sucky system that benefits no one except teachers.
You don’t. Innocence doesn’t matter, what matters is if you have enough evidence to convict or not. When you don’t have enough evidence to convict (or to convince someone else to…) then you acquit. In other words: no one gets punished. You do not say “We don’t have enough evidence to prove you’re innocent so we’ll punish you just in case”
Bringing courts into this debate just weakens your position.
You’ve got to be kidding. Sure, infant mortality was high. You think that made parents less likely to defend their children? What a bizarre leap in logic. You have some cites that say that people more than 2-300 years ago treated their children as being expendable? People loved their children just as much then as they do now. And anyway, people have been commonly known to risk their lives to save complete strangers - or a dog.
Wrong again. Hitting a moving target is never easy. Crazed shooters are high on adrenaline, often drunk or stoned, and probably aren’t heavily trained. In fact, during the Virginia Tech shootings, one eyewitness says the shooter got the drop on him in a hallway and shot at him five times - and missed with every shot.
Futhermore, if the shooter is firing a handgun, there’s a good chance of surviving being shot, even being shot multiple times. There are stories of police officers emptying their entire clips into an assailant and getting beaten or killed anyway.
Also ridiculous. When Charles Whitmen opened fire from a tower in 1966, he was brought down by a policemen and an armed civilian who climbed the tower and engaged him at close range, but they were also provided covering fire from armed citizens on the gound.
There was another shooting in Virginia in 2002. This time, the shooter was stopped by two men who ran out to their vehicles, got their own handguns, and ran back to the school to confront him. One man was an off-duty cop, the other just a civilian. The two worked together to flank the gunman, then they both aimed and yelled at him to drop the weapon. He did, and no one else was shot that day.
During this Weston High shooting, the shooter was attacked by a custodian, who managed to take his rifle away from him. The shooter, then left with a handgun, was confronted by Principal John Klang. Klang attacked him and was shot several times. Despite being shot, the Principal continued the attack, and several other bystanders joined in the struggle to get the gun away from the guy and pin him down. Unfortunately, the Principal died. But how many people did he save?
There is a pretty big difference between running away from someone and running towards them. A group of people coming straight at a shooter is going to get shot.
I’d say there’s a lot better chance of you dying, or at least being incapacitated, than surviving multiple gun shots.
QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Also ridiculous. When Charles Whitmen opened fire from a tower in 1966, he was brought down by a policemen and an armed civilian who climbed the tower and engaged him at close range, but they were also provided covering fire from armed citizens on the gound.
There was another shooting in Virginia in 2002. This time, the shooter was stopped by two men who ran out to their vehicles, got their own handguns, and ran back to the school to confront him. One man was an off-duty cop, the other just a civilian. The two worked together to flank the gunman, then they both aimed and yelled at him to drop the weapon. He did, and no one else was shot that day.
Just this March:Armed citizens stop Memphis street shooter: During this Weston High shooting, the shooter was attacked by a custodian, who managed to take his rifle away from him. The shooter, then left with a handgun, was confronted by Principal John Klang. Klang attacked him and was shot several times. Despite being shot, the Principal continued the attack, and several other bystanders joined in the struggle to get the gun away from the guy and pin him down. Unfortunately, the Principal died. But how many people did he save?
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How many people ran and hid in these cases? Besides, in your last incident this is what happened:
The janitor had just wrestled away a shotgun from the attacker, and instead of using the shotgun to subdue him he ran and called 911.
The Virginia shooting you refer to is the Appalachian State Law school shooting I believe. The people that subdued him were both off-duty police officers, and one was a former marine:
Lets see what other people did during that incident:
In middle school, I was taunted regularly by a former friend. She would yell across the street and yell, “Hey, scummy scum! You’re scummy scum!” at me. I told my school counselor about it, and she called a family conference with the girl’s family, then she let me know what was going on. The girl’s father was either facing trial for or had been convicted of molesting two of our classmates, and for whatever reason, she thought I or my parents had dropped the dime on him. The counselor told the girl to stay away from me, I was to stay away from her (not hard to do, really; I’d been trying to avoid her for months), and the counselor told her mother to get her into some therapy for sexual trauma. (It turns out that her father had raped her, too.)
My family moved out of state not long after this happened, and I can only hope the girl recovered from her experiences. But had I not said something to the counselor, not only would the abuse continue, but the girl would probably never have gotten the help she needed.
Obviously, not bully went through what that girl went through, and there are kids who are just grade-A (no pun intended) assholes who fight for the fun of it, but teachers can’t help you unless you tell them what’s going on.
Well, if the boy trying to strangle her is 13 months younger, her height and about 10 kilo heavier, then she will receive four saturdays in detention.
Because, you see, you’re not supposed to fight kids younger than you. Any facts obstructing the Rule Of Ageism shall not be taken into account.
In a hypotethical fight between myself and the male classmate born the same day, he would have been held to blame; at any other time, the oldest one was always considered at fault. No, I don’t ever expect authority to help me, why do you ask?
What if you have enough evidence to convict both, because both kids hit? Then you have to prove one of them did it in self-defense, so that’s OK, but punish the other kids who hit. You need evidence of some kind to make a judgement here. I’m wondering what would constitute that evidence to people who think that teachers should “just KNOW” who did what.
