More teens going to court for school violations

Destroy government schools.

 

No problem here, basically Minority Report for gang life and teen pregnancy; that DVD doesn't have a lot of alternate endings. Blacks are still graduating at less than 50%.

 

Well, when you have parents not teaching discipline at home and then suing when teachers try to teach it at school, what do you expect? We, as a society, have no one to blame for this but ourselves.

 

Check your fact you must be looking at old numbers.
http://www.usnews.com/education/blo...national-high-school-graduation-rates-improve

 

We're quickly heading toward a time when NO ONE gets a second chance.

THIS WILL GO ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD was a threat regularly dispensed when I was a kid ... but it was just a threat.

Now it's true.

For all the talk about education, and aspiration, the most profitable quality a person can possess in modern society is blind obedience. Do what you're supposed to do (according to those in power), and NEVER deviate from it .... or you're screwed.

 

All I wanted was a Pepsi...

 

So they asked the kids what they did wrong and they say "nothing much" and then they asked a Senator "What's wrong here" pfft, and then they asked the parent of one of these kids that is bad enough often enough that the law had to be called on them, and they say "Billy's not bad, he's just a kid."

I would say the subject you bring up is a problem, but not so much for the reasons you seem concerned about.

It's about difficulty of control and discipline in todays social and legal climate as they relate to public schools. If you think educators and administrators are calling the law to get them a few dollars in their pocket, I think that's misguided. I would guess that often it's more of a last resort for kids that repeatedly prove they have trouble functioning in a school setting.

 

So you're saying students should be allowed to get in hair-pulling fights and throw firecrackers at each other? This isn't about "obedience", it's about consequences for your actions.

 

I'm saying that kids getting into hair-pulling fights and throwing firecrackers are just being kids. We're so dependent on the obedience of the populace to continue our inherently-unjust way of life that we think, as we've thought for a century now, that making the consequences for disobedience increasingly extreme is going to somehow make disobedience disappear.

That has never worked ... ever. Yet, the powers-that-be continue to profess that it will lead to less disobedience. It won't. It never will. No matter how severe the consequences, disobedience will never disappear.

 

"Kids will be kids" doesn't really just make whatever they do absolutely acceptable.

 

Okay (and understand, I don't entirely disagree with you): what's the alternative? I see a lot of people complain about discipline in schools...how do you suggest we fix this?

 

I don't see anyone saying that. I'm certainly not.

I wish I knew, but upping the consequences is just going to make everything worse. I don't see anything wrong with the typical routine - detention, short suspension, longer suspension, alternate schooling, expelled. Keep in mind that we put so little money into education (relative to other concerns), that public schools have an interest in keeping as many butts in chairs as possible - expelling kids isn't profitable.

The problem is that we're locked into this idea that somehow kids are behaving worse, so our discipline must be more extreme. It's not true. Kids are behaving (and not all of them, or even many of them) as they've always behaved. We're just more dependent on obedience now as our society becomes more unjust. It's not the kids who are the problem, because they're not any different in this sense. The problem is that, as our culture becomes increasingly unbalanced, we have a greater need of obedient citizens who will just go along with it - who will just follow the rules. School is where students are taught what it means to be a 'citizen,' and apparently the best citizen (according to the practices of commerce and the state) is an obedient one.

There are a few ideal, and likely unworkable solutions - reshape the society so that parents don't have to work all the time just to pay the bills (so they can actually pay attention to their offspring), or increase the alternatives for education by offering significant online credentials.

Otherwise, I'm just saying that the problem hasn't changed to such a degree that the previous imperfect solutions must be replaced with excessively authoritarian practices. We need to recognize that this isn't from "OMG KIDS ARE GETTING WORSE" (every single generation has believed that), but from the faults of the current social system in the United States.

 

Things HAVE changed. Administrators and educators have slowly, for one reason or another, lost some of their ability to keep children from being disruptive to the environment.

Look, I'm not saying "Yeah, hell, call the law every time a kid shoots a spitwad," so I don't think we're in disagreement with that, but I do think that in today's climate, I'm not surprised that the law is used more often as a deterrent for deviant kids. I would say it's a product of the system we've created, and decrying that while ignoring what's caused that would be shortsighted.

 

I don't think this is true. I think administrators and educators want to exercise greater control over their classrooms because they too believe that the problem is getting 'worse.' It's not getting worse! Though, there's a possible reason why it could (I won't deny it) - with greater demands on parents to earn enough money just to pay their bills, they necessarily can't take care of their kids as well.

But, at any rate, if the problem is "deviant kids" then EXPEL them as the last measure (after detention, after suspension). Simple enough ... but that won't happen, because butts in seats is more money for the school (far too much of which goes to the salaries of administrators who don't actually teach).

 

Abolish government schools/propaganda machines and government teacher unions. Eliminate the Department of Education. Promote completion and choice between schools. Abandon the Prussian education model.....

 

Almost everything you've said here would be horrible for education. But I need to correct you on something that isn't only a bad idea, but is incorrect.

Teacher unions aren't govt. unions. The entity that teacher unions butt heads and oppose most often are the govt.

 

My wife is a teacher..she once got on to a kid for hanging/climbing on the bathroom stalls. His lawyer-mom got mad at my wife for admonishing him. She then returned days later with a tape-measure and proceeded to measure all the doors to the bathroom stalls as if preparing for a lawsuit. Needless to say, the kid was not very-well behaved and was a distraction to the rest of the class.

I remember the overly-easy coach-taught classes in High school where the unruly kids couldn't pass the easiest tests..for crying out loud..the coach actually gave us the answers to every question the day before..it was a joke. Yet these kids, who grew up in the same schools I did, couldn't pass. It was then that I realized the problem with our educational system was not the schools or teachers, but the kids who think they're too cool to learn.

I was dirt-poor, wore cheap shoes and clothes and the other kids made fun of me because I couldn't afford anything..yet when I graduated and asked another kid (who always dressed in name brand clothes (fila, polo, etc) and drove a fairly new mini-truck) where he was going to college..his response was "I can't afford college". I was shocked and realized that some people just don't put education as a priority in life...clothes, cars, material things mean more to them then education. I worked almost 40hrs a week in college because I didn't want to be poor, and here were people with more money than me claiming they couldn't afford college.

Its not the education system in this country that are failing the students..Its the parents and students who are failing education system.