Students disciplined after drinking beer in Germany

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | Apr 24, 2004 | Associated Press

[Willie Green]

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Parents who gave their teenage children permission to drink beer on an exchange program in Germany, where it's legal, say they're angry the school later disciplined a few students who overindulged.

Parents for two of the 19 Cincinnati Mariemont students who went on the 12-day trip are suing the school, its school board and superintendent in U.S. District Court, accusing them of interfering with parental rights.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop the district from ordering 17 students to perform five Saturdays of community service. Two also were ordered to serve after-school detention. It also asks the court to require the district to rewrite the code of conduct the lawsuit calls "vague" and pay monetary damages.

[Willie Green]

High schools taking students on a beer-drinking field trip to Germany?

Sheeeeesh, we never had fun like that when I was a kid.

[billorites]

God forbid that the parents should back up the authority of teachers who they entrusted to supervise their children when abroad.

This is why I've moved heaven and earth to send my kids to a private school.

This is why I'm even willing to tolerate a private school in which peanuts are not allowed.

[Paleo Conservative]

High schools taking students on a beer-drinking field trip to Germany?

My high school's Spanish club sponsored a trip to Mexico. Not only did the teachers/chaperones look the other way, they never asked us to get signed permission from our parents. They did however bust a handful of students for using marijuana, and made their parents pick them up on the Mexican side of the border.

[FreedomFlynnie]

Heh...I could tell a story, but it's only been a few years since the trip I'm thinking of.

Thanks to the "brilliance" of U.S. alcohol regulations, I think half the teenagers who go to see Europe miss a lot of the cultural, historic, and language differences because they're too busy drinking legally. I don't exclude myself from that group. It's a shame, but with the laws the way they are that's how it's going to be.

[Graybeard58]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1123846/posts

[patton]

Ach, tja. I remember was legal in germany war...

[billorites]

"High schools taking students on a beer-drinking field trip to Germany?"

I had to wait to college to go on a beer field trip.

We didn't get to Germany either, but did make it to Fredericton, New Brunswick.

We rolled a keg of beer into our dormitory in a church hall.

Managed to disrupt an AA meeting in the process. I still feel embarrassed.

[Paleo Conservative]

I think half the teenagers who go to see Europe miss a lot of the cultural, historic, and language differences because they're too busy drinking legally.

Almost as many in the US have their minds fogged with illegal drugs. You'll have to do better than that.

[CzarNicky]

on all my field trips, which were never to Germany, they always said that school rules applied no matter what.

[Willie Green]

Thanks for the link.
I don't like posting duplicate threads,
but there's not much I can do when a slightly different article appears with a different title.
C'est la vie.

[hermgem]

Under german law one need to be 16 years of age in order to drink beer legally. Prior to 16 adult supervision is required for beer. Hard liquor age is 18.

[A Jovial Cad]

I was stationed in Germany right out of high school with the USAF. I was able to drink beer, go to bars, all of that legally at 18 while over there. What I observed among my German friends was that they were much more mature, as a rule, about alcohol usage since it didn't have the same "forbidden fruit" status it had among my peers back in the states. It was strange, after a couple of years, to come back to the states and no longer be able to do that for the intervening year before I turned 21. Strange, and ridiculous. I've always felt the drinking age should be at least as low as the age at which a person can be drafted or legally join the armed services. It's simply absurd to say that a 19 year soldier in Iraq can be entrusted with the responsibility to handle high-powered weapons and explosives in life-or-death combat situations, but then turn around and be told he can't be entrusted to drink a beer in his neighborhood pub while home on leave.

[Oztrich Boy]

Yo made a couple of minor errors in your post.

God forbid that the parents teachers should back up the authority of teachers parents who they entrusted to supervise their children when abroad set the rules about what their children could do.

There, better now.

[Sonny M]

God forbid that the parents should back up the authority of teachers who they entrusted to supervise their children when abroad.

This is why I've moved heaven and earth to send my kids to a private school.

This is why I'm even willing to tolerate a private school in which peanuts are not allowed.

Apparently, from reading the whole article, it looks like the teachers basically lied. Any parent who would choose to back up somone who lied to them, and there kids, is not a fit parent.

The kids were not told they couldn't drink, no teacher told the students they couldn't drink (in fact, one teacher only discouraged it, but didn't say stop).

What I find idiotic, is that the students were shown pictures of students in the past drinking on these trips, and even more dumb, taken to a beer garden.

No written policy against drinking + Previous history of allowing students to drink + students being taken to a beer garden + 25 parents who later testified before the school board said they understood that any discipline would be a family decision=School done messed up, score one for parents and kids.

Side note, I used to make jokes about the peanuts being banned untill I met somone at my job who has some kind of allergy, supposedly, being in contact with the most slight amounts can kill them.

[snopercod]

A good and thoughtful post.

IIRC, the German philosophy on pre-marital sex is a lot more liberal than what we are used to here in the States. Sleepovers were routinely approved by the parents when I was there in the 70's. (Not for me, I was married at the time ;-)

Americans are pretty much a bunch of prudes, I think.

[FreedomFlynnie]

Do better than what? I guess I don't follow you.

[Paleo Conservative]

Come up with a better theory to explain the performance of American students in Europe.

[Paleo Conservative]

Sleepovers were routinely approved by the parents when I was there in the 70's.....

....Americans are pretty much a bunch of prudes, I think.

They may approve of allowing teenagers fornicate before marriage (or instead of marriage), but they don't seem to be producing very many offspring. Perhaps in 50 years when Muslims are the majority in Germany, social customs won't be so relaxed.

[FreedomFlynnie]

I don't know that their "performance" needs explaining. I made the statement, based on personal experience and observation, that when high school seniors and recent graduates suddenly have access to a substance that's been forbidden to them and will continue to be forbidden for several more years, they'll often choose to use that substance rather than take in the more "intellectual" aspects of their trip.

I guess maybe there are some people in these groups who go to Europe and neither drink nor explore the culture, but I've never met one and I don't know what the point of their trip would be.

[Hacksaw]

High schools taking students on a beer-drinking field trip to Germany? Sheeeeesh, we never had fun like that when I was a kid.

In high school, I went on a field trip to Stratford, Canada, and "indulged". Very friendly people there.