Posted on 05/27/2009 8:12:02 PM PDT by reaganaut1
When Glenn Storman, a guidance counselor at Public School 212 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, came across an unruly student cursing at a substitute teacher in 2004, he ordered the boy to “zip it” and brandished a rolled-up piece of paper, thinking that would be the last he heard of the encounter.
But five years later, Mr. Storman, 57, is embroiled in a legal dispute over allegations that he committed corporal punishment. A 27-year veteran of the school system, Mr. Storman denies hitting the student and is seeking to erase an unsatisfactory rating that a principal gave him. The Department of Education, however, has defended the rating, arguing that Mr. Storman did indeed touch the student, who was in the fifth grade.
The case shows the difficulties teachers can face in disputing the ratings they receive each year from principals. The ratings can determine whether they are eligible for lucrative teaching opportunities outside of the normal school year. The case also sheds light on the fine lines of interpretation surrounding the question of corporal punishment: Did Mr. Storman’s paper brush against the student? If so, was that intentional, and did it rise to the level of corporal punishment?
Teachers who receive unsatisfactory ratings are allowed to appeal to a court, and this month a judge in Manhattan ruled in Mr. Storman’s favor, saying she did not find evidence of corporal punishment. The unsatisfactory rating, wrote the judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, “shocks the conscience, was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
A perfect recipe for a failed society...coddling criminals and spoiled brat children....
Or did he perhaps stuff the lad's face into an institutional cinder-block wall, as one would expect?
I probably would have been tempted to poke the foul-mouth, disrepectful punk with the rolled up paper to emphasize the error of his ways -- after I had smashed him up against the lockers a time or five... :-(
Back in my day at an all Christian Academy, when you acted up you got paddled. Corporal Punishment was the norm and a condition of enrollment.
No better therapy for some of these so-called ‘Special-Ed’ kids. Their mommies and daddies never gave them a good swift kick in the ass and told them “NO”! from time to time.
Articles like these remind me of just how many times I received the cane across the back of my legs in school. As an adult I know now that I deserved it every time.
Thank you to all those wonderful educators that had my best interest at heart and had the wisdom and courage to keep me on the straight and narrow.
And some wonder where the Democrats get ideas about using stern words against North Korea or Iran instead of using a “big stick”.
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