Unruly Students Facing Arrest, Not Detention

NY Times ^ | January 4, 2004 | SARA RIMER

[neverdem]

What liberalism hath wrought.

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[JackOfVA]

I'm 57 years old and went through 12 years of elementary/junior high/high school without once ever seeing a policeman inside a school building, let alone having a student arrested.

We certainly have advanced, haven't we.

Jack

[breakem]

Probably she just copped an attitude.....kewl dude!

[logan]

Expectations matter.

If you tread kids like criminals, they're more likely to act like criminals, unless you come down on them so hard it breaks their natural rebeliousness. The problem is when you try this, you inevitably run into a few real hard cases who only get worse when you impose rules. I was kind of like that back in my day; luckily I avoided serious trouble long enough to make it to more stable ground.

[PeterPrinciple]

"What liberalism hath wrought."


When there is no moral right or wrong and it is all relative, what do you expect?

I agree with you.

[hellinahandcart]

The girl won't obey the principle or her mother, keep suspending her til she gets the message. It shouldn't be a matter for the courts.

But since the principle and the mother are acting like children, this could have been predicted.

Soon the police will throw up their hands too, and we'll have to call out the National Guard on disruptive smartasses under 18.

[HennepinPrisoner]

You mean parents can take their children to a nudist resort in Florida and everything is hunky-dory.....but this schoolgirl gets arrested?!?

[Paul C. Jesup]

Experts say the growing criminalization of student misbehavior can be traced to the broad zero-tolerance policies

If you teach kids that they have no rights whatsoever, then kids will eventually view, as they grow older, that their elders and peers are undeserving of rights as well.

Zero-tolerance policies teach kids that the United States is NOT the land of the free.

[whereasandsoforth]

Oh, the irony! The courts have walked hand-in-hand with the liberals running the schools as they took away almost everything that was good and decent and moral in our schools. Now the results of their actions are showing up daily in their courtroom and they don't like it.

How about giving our kids back something to believe in besides their own egos. No moral compass means no moral direction. We are all paying a price way out of proportion with demand.

[B.O. Plenty]

I'm a little older than you, and me too....I never saw a policeman inside my school...ever. However, I went to a small school....maybe 300 total in h.s. The school superintendent was D.W. McEwen....who would never tolerate any breaking of rules....I am sure that he would not have hesitated in calling the police if students got unruly...and more...he was backed up by the school board as well as the town. No b.s. in our school.

I knew all the kids that would cause trouble if D.W. even hinted that tolerance would be given...but their fear of swift and terrible punishment always kept the peace....and, who knows, might have saved the potential troublemakers a lifetime of strife.

[Marty]

Suspension may well be the only answer. Making up suspension time will be expensive and if the student won't make up the time, she'll fail the classes and have to repeat the year or the semester. There must be costs to the student associated with the bad behavior or the behavior won't change for the better. Putting her in a situation where she'll be behind her peer group may well inspire her to change.

By the way, I work with high school students.

[proxy_user]

Well, if you're arrested, you're entitled to legal counsel and a fair trial.

I'd particularly like to see the trial of that eight-year-old. It might top the Chicago 7.

[Poser]

Her mom should have taken her home and kicked her ass.

[wildwood]

What has also changed, Dr. Steinberg said, is that principals are less able to depend on parents to enforce the discipline schools mete out. "I think in the past the threat of getting in touch with a kid's parents was often enough to get a kid to start behaving," he said. "Now, kids feel parents will fight on their behalf."

well, there it is. unless you work with today's PARENTS, you don't know. you just don't know. between them and the teachers' unions, we have spawned some serious problems in school systems. why would a kid behave when parents are worse than the kids? and why would teachers bother to have high standards when parents attack them? and why would teachers' unions want to do anything than what they are doing when they get away with protecting incompetent teachers who don't give a rat's hindend about what kids learn?

it's depressing.

[SVTCobra03]

I am about your age and concur. Have you ever been to a mall in a major city on a Saturday afternoon in the summertime? You would think it was a teen-age hookers convention.

[CTOCS]

Too true......

If I had publicly defied one of my parents like that, I'd have been smacked so fast they'd be sewing up my lip when my ass arrived!!

[hellinahandcart]

Suspension may well be the only answer.

The problem is that parents have sued when the schools suspend their little darling. Their attitude is, the kid's gauranteed a free education, so educate away, as long as you don't inconvenience me by putting the responsibility for my spoiled brat back on ME.

I would have put on the bowling shirt rather than have the principle call my mother in to the school. My mom wouldn't have brought me a T-shirt, she would have brought repercussions...

[Marty]

I knew better than to do anything to cause problems, too. My parents wouldn't have put up with anything like that from me, but then again, I had no desire to cause problems. I always had a tendency to consider the costs of my actions before doing something stupid. Kids now don't consider the costs because they don't have to bear them.

We have to reinstate costs that the students alone must pay. Until we do, there will be students who won't behave.