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I think all our new system has done is replace old problems with new ones. It is not better or worse, just different.
Horrible teachers still abuse kids, they just do it without touching them. However now, good teachers lack any tools for maintaining discipline.
I only had one teacher who physically attacked me. The others were all forms of emotional abuse, most notably the teachers who spread false medical information about me, and threatened to kick me out of their class permanently if I "talked back" to them. The question is, does the current system still allow teachers to get away with that, and still give students no recourse? I have no current firsthand knowledge, but the teachers who post here say that those things would never happen nowadays.
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The schools try so absurdly hard to protect kids from any adversity, kids come out of school unable to deal with adversity and often from a background where all creativity has been stifled.
That very well may be true.
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Some of the rules I woudl do away with are the extremes, also the many many rules designed to allow administrators to be lazy and not deal with problems. For example Suspending kids or expelling them for bringing a squirt gun to school under the zero tolerance for weapons policy - this simply tells kids that adults are stupid and should not be respected. Kicking all kids involved in a fight out of school rather that sorting out what the problem is and dealing with it. Disallowing any form of physical contact by a teacher even in self defense. Failing to recognize that even an elementary school kid can seriously injure a teacher or other students. Trying to prevent all conflict rather than teaching kids to work through it.
I agree with you about all of those. Although, things weren't that different when I was in school.
For yearbook we polled all of the students in the senior class. One of the questions was whether you had ever smoked pot. 6 people out of roughly 250 said no. Four of them were girls, so if you wanted to only date someone who had never smoked pot, you had your choice of two guys.
Haha... exactly the point I was making (when I responded to that comment)! Especially here in California, and considering I attended high school in the early '90s, you'd have had a REALLY hard time finding someone "clean" to date. And I went to a very competitive private prep school, so we weren't exactly the "bad" kids either. In fact, most of us ended up in top-tier colleges and went on to professional careers like medicine/science, law, and education. So the old stereotypes about pot = losers isn't always true.
And it wasn't just pot, btw. My fellow students and I tried it all, with pot, LSD, and cocaine being the drugs of choice.
But it goes both ways. I and others have posted about teachers who were borderline abusive. According to current teachers and parents who post here, what I and others had to endure would no longer be allowed. I even (in several different posts) posted specific examples of things that teachers were able to do back then that they would likely not get away with nowadays.
Just out of curiosity, what current school rules do you especially not agree with? Would you be willing to do away with those rules if it meant going back to the era where teachers were allowed to borderline abuse students without any consequence?
There will never be perfection. I think Coldjensens is right that we have replaced one set of problems with another. That will probably always be the case. Every solution we have to one problem contains the seeds of a different problem, and eventually we come full circle.
All in all, I wouldn't change that much about my own school experience. It surely wasn't perfect, but it seems that people who were educated as I was turned out to be better adjusted on the whole than people coming out of school now. Parenting and our culture were different then too, and that is also an influence.
Some teachers I had could be called "abusive" in today's lexicon but they really weren't abusive in any serious way, at least in my experience.
One thing that seems to be missing in today's society is a feeling of freedom. We are so stifled and repressed today. I remember the intoxicating freedom that I started to feel in the second half of high school, when I got my driver's license plus woke up to the fact that nobody could really control my behavior as long as I was willing to accept the consequences for whatever I did. The atmosphere in this society today is that of an unhinged mob, and I would hate to be growing up in that today.
Going to school in the 1970s to early 1980s in the midwest, things that wouldn't happen today:
1. 6th grade math teacher who would enforce the no baseball hat wearing in class rule by taking the hat from the student and chopping off the brim in his paper cutter.
2. 6th grade science teacher who rewarded the best students in his class by taking them out on an outing where each kid got a turn piloting his snowmobile.
3. Smoking lounge inside high school for students.
4. Unofficial smoking area outside school for cigarettes and other things called "the courts" - a group of trees planted by the Biology teacher as a windbreak for the tennis courts that offered hiding places. Teachers and admins had to have known what was going on there but never raided the area.
5. Shop teacher kept his BSA chopper in the front of the classroom.
6. In high school, a friend of mine broke a toilet off the wall by jumping up and down on it. Another kid witnessed this and turned him in. He got called into the assistant principal's office and was told how much it would cost to replace the toilet, he then took out his check book and cut a check - no further punishment.
7. Different friend thought if was funny to go into the faculty restroom to do his business. While he was standing at the urinal, a teacher came out of a stall and kicked him in the butt as hard as he could sending him into the front of the urinal with his pants still unzipped. No further punishment for the kid or complaint against the teacher. Kid that got his butt kicked thought it was funny and told us all about it.
8. Stoner kid in high school was walking in the hallway wearing a big cowboy hat. A passing teacher slapped it off his head, the kid then squared off with the teacher as all the students circled around and started chanting "fight, fight, fight!".
9. When our high school hockey team was in the state tournament, TV carts would be rolled into the classrooms and we would watch the high school hockey tournament on TV all day.
In one school I went to, 9th graders and up were allowed to smoke in the area outside the cafeteria in the back of the school. I was there for 7th and 8th grade. My high school allowed seniors to smoke in a certain part of the cafeteria. This was in the 1974-80 period.
There were other bathrooms in the school where it was clear smoking took place, though it wasn't allowed.
Haha... exactly the point I was making (when I responded to that comment)! Especially here in California, and considering I attended high school in the early '90s, you'd have had a REALLY hard time finding someone "clean" to date. And I went to a very competitive private prep school, so we weren't exactly the "bad" kids either. In fact, most of us ended up in top-tier colleges and went on to professional careers like medicine/science, law, and education. So the old stereotypes about pot = losers isn't always true.
And it wasn't just pot, btw. My fellow students and I tried it all, with pot, LSD, and cocaine being the drugs of choice.
I was probably in the small minority of people who didn't do drugs in high school. I drank quite a bit, but didn't cross over to the other stuff. Never smoked cigarettes either.
Kindergarten I think I got sent home once. First grade, I think three times (last time was more of an accident as I was swinging my legs trying to imitate something from Pinocchio and accidentally kicked a teacher in the behind (we were going in a line back to the school after recess and I happened to be right behind the teacher/instructor when it happened. Purely an accident.)
There will never be perfection. I think Coldjensens is right that we have replaced one set of problems with another. That will probably always be the case. Every solution we have to one problem contains the seeds of a different problem, and eventually we come full circle.
That is definitely right. Not just when it comes to school discipline, but basically every aspect of life, any solutions to solve one problem tend to cause an opposite problem. Unfortunately, the pendulum tends to swing far in one direction, as you said, rather than ever finding a middle ground.
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Some teachers I had could be called "abusive" in today's lexicon but they really weren't abusive in any serious way, at least in my experience.
I disagree. How was the teacher who spread rumors about a medical problem that I did not have, and threatened to suspend me (which would have led to disqualification from honors / AP classes and extracurricular activities) if I questioned him. How was that not abusive?
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One thing that seems to be missing in today's society is a feeling of freedom. We are so stifled and repressed today. I remember the intoxicating freedom that I started to feel in the second half of high school, when I got my driver's license plus woke up to the fact that nobody could really control my behavior as long as I was willing to accept the consequences for whatever I did.
Again, in my middle and high school, a suspension meant disqualification from honors and AP classes, and a disqualification from extra-curricular activities. So, if you were taking such classes, you had to avoid a suspension at all costs. I still feel that such punishments that were targeting the wrong people.
That is definitely right. Not just when it comes to school discipline, but basically every aspect of life, any solutions to solve one problem tend to cause an opposite problem. Unfortunately, the pendulum tends to swing far in one direction, as you said, rather than ever finding a middle ground.
I disagree. How was the teacher who spread rumors about a medical problem that I did not have, and threatened to suspend me (which would have led to disqualification from honors / AP classes and extracurricular activities) if I questioned him. How was that not abusive?
Again, in my middle and high school, a suspension meant disqualification from honors and AP classes, and a disqualification from extra-curricular activities. So, if you were taking such classes, you had to avoid a suspension at all costs. I still feel that such punishments that were targeting the wrong people.
I was talking about my own experiences when I said I didn't have a teacher who could truly be called abusive. A teacher talking about a student's private business is over the line even if true, and worse if it's a lie. Teachers generally can't suspend students though, so that threat sounds like a bluff.
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