Posted on 04/04/2005 12:49:21 PM PDT by SmithL
When teacher Bonnie Taylor swung open the gym doors of El Cerrito High School last week, she expected to take the stage at an assembly -- not take one on the chin.
The 56-year-old came home bruised, bandaged and outraged after a 17-year-old girl punched her in the face and jabbed a pencil at her hand.
The student faces suspension and possible expulsion. That doesn't make Taylor, a teacher of 33 years, feel any better about returning to work.
"Physically, I'm fine. Mentally, I'm still upset and angry," she said.
Student assaults are becoming more frequent in California, statistics from the state Department of Education show. Growing concerns in the West Contra Costa school district have prompted new demands from the United Teachers of Richmond to more strongly discipline unruly students and to protect teachers.
"They don't mind giving their life for education, but it should be a figurative thing, not a physical thing," said union President Gail Mendes.
According to a 2004 report, an estimated 90,000 violent crimes were committed against teachers on campuses nationwide from 1998 to 2002.
About 4 percent of teachers surveyed nationally in 1999-2000 said they had been attacked by students, according to the 2004 Indicators of School Crime and Safety report. Male teachers, city teachers and those at middle or high schools were more likely to be targets.
The magnitude of the problem is difficult to track. Like many states, California's data includes all school employees without separate statistics for teachers.
Recommended expulsions stemming from student assaults or batteries on school employees has grown steadily from 668 in 2000-01 to 1,053 last school year, according to the state Department of Education. However, those figures count students punished for violence against employees, not the attacks themselves.
"Who knows how many didn't get reported," said Chuck Nichols, a safety consultant for the state Department of Education.
In the 33,000-student West Contra Costa school district, the union recently added new safety proposals during contract negotiations.
The teachers want the district to pursue legal action if a student injures a teacher or damages property. The district would also reimburse teachers for injuries or repairs caused by campus assault or vandalism.
The union, which represents about 2,000 teachers, also wants stiffer punishment for students who break the rules.
Teachers can banish students from their classroom the day of an offense and the next day. The union wants to expand classroom suspensions for up to five days to prevent what Mendes calls "the revolving door."
When students violate a rule, such as using profanity, teachers send them to the principal's office from where they often return during the same period.
"All the kids around them see that and they think, 'Gee, if you can get away with it, I can too,'" Mendes said.
Swearing does not amount to homicide. But lax punishment for minor infractions encourages more aggressive acts, Mendes said.
"It starts with children being verbally disrespectful to teachers. It moves into using foul language. And it escalates" to physical attacks, she said.
The district has rejected the safety proposals. Lengthening classroom suspensions might violate student legal rights, said Laurie Juengert, lawyer and member of the district bargaining team.
"The district believes that proper disciplinary action should be taken against students who injure teachers," Juengert said. "However, we have to follow the due process requirement for state and federal law."
Researchers say documenting the problem is the main obstacle to preventing violence against teachers.
Most public education systems do not record or report the information in a detailed manner, said Susan Gerberich, director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Control at the University of Minnesota.
"You're really getting the tip of the iceberg of what the problem may be," she said.
This year, the center embarked on a first-of-its-kind investigation of violence against teachers. Researchers will survey at least 12,600 of them in Minnesota over three years to study what happens to them and why and identify risk and protection factors.
Most studies of campus violence prevention have focused on children.
"There's been very little attention paid to teachers," Gerberich said.
To meet federal reporting requirements, California schools report expulsions related to Education Code violations that include disrupting school events, carrying a weapon and assaulting or battering a school employee.
But few want to admit their schools are violent, and chalking up more expulsions offers little reward for a principal looking for approval from higher-ups.
"They see that as a bad thing," Mendes said. "Well, it is a bad thing that the children are out of school and aren't learning. But it's a good thing for other students who are in the classroom and are learning."
In Oakland schools, state-appointed administrator Randolph Ward ended the practice of dismissing student crime.
The district reported 10 recommendations for expulsions from assaulting or battering an employee in 2000-01, before Ward arrived. Last school year, the district recommended 156 expulsions for attacks on employees; the year before that, 92.
Teachers often shy from reporting abuse out of pride or to maintain the facade of invulnerability, Mendes said.
Once, a teacher casually told her that boys routinely grabbed her breasts in the halls. Another called Mendes after getting elbowed in the ribs by a student.
Neither filed a report.
"'Why bother? Nothing's going to happen.' I hear that from teachers all the time."
Good plan. Yes, I believe vocational school should not be for screw ups. But the cost of running them and insuring them was considered too much for the school district I taught at. But they were far more concerned with keeping teachers salaries high.
Well, IMHO they certainly have their priorities straight! But, it IS possible to do both. Especially in a large district such as where I live. I think it's far more important to get the bad actors out of the schools. They lead and the sheep follow and that's usually straight to jail or the morgue. The kids who strive to learn should be given every chance they can, but the bottom feeding scum needs to be.....removed.
To this I can only say -- Amen.
A good example is the tax return. I think mastering the 1040 Form and Instruction Booklet should be the standardized achievement of every high school graduate because that mastery implies all the useful skills of living in today's contemporary society. Not trigonometry, not Latin, not ethnic studies, not Shakespeare, not liberal studies, etc., etc., etc
Now I agree with you about this and about investment in general. Not just writing a check, but learning how money saved can grow into a nest egg that can fund a business or a retirement. How do you reach the kid who still is stuck learning to play the guitar?
Of course there are those to whom an education should cover many things besides the basics of tax preparation. Trigonometry is not only very useful, but is not all that tough a concept when taught well. I don't know about Latin, or any foreign language although I have found life south of the border to be much more satisfying with a little Spanish. I believe the best education would be in small groups with travel and skillfully laid out problems that include changing a tire and cleaning a fouled fuel filter. (And figuring out that that is why the motor no longer runs.)
Don't get me wrong, I agree about education, that it in is current form is badly broken. I just don't see many students being interested in what we call a "classical education" and at the same time don't see many schools running on the philosophy that we teach what the student requests. How would this work in a military academy? Would the students request the skills to lead and win battles or would they ask why mankind has not found an answer to war?
Robert Heinleins words seem almost prophetic, and for those who haven't read Starship Troopers (published in 1959 I believe), Ill post a brief excerpt that seems oh so relavent today.
From Starship Troopers, Chapter 8.
From Chapter VIII, pp. 90-96:
I found myself mulling over a discussion in our class in History and Moral Philosophy. Mr. Dubois was talking about the disorders that preceded the breakup of the North American republic, back in the 20th century. According to him, there was a time just before they went down the drain when such crimes as murder were as common as dogfights. The Terror had not been just in North America -- Russia and the British Isles had it, too, as well as other places. But it reached its peak in North America shortly before things went to pieces.
"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, home-made guns, bludgeons ... to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably -- or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assult, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places -- these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."
I had tried to imagine such things happening in our schools, I simply couldn't. Nor in our parks. A park was a place for fun, not for getting hurt. As for getting killed in one -- "Mr. Dubois, didn't they have police? Or courts?"
"They had many more police than we have. And more courts. All overworked."
"I guess I don't get it." If a boy in our city had done anything half that bad ... well, he and his father would have been flogged side by side. But such things just didn't happen.
Mr. Dubois then demanded of me, "Define a 'juvenile delinquent.'"
"Uh, one of those kids -- the ones who used to beat up people."
"Wrong."
"Huh? But the book said -- "
"My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit. 'Juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it. Have you ever raised a puppy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you housebreak him?"
"Err ... yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.
"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"
"What? Why, he didn't know any better; he was just a puppy."
"What did you do?"
"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."
"Surely he could not understand your words?"
"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"
"But you just said that you were not angry."
Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up, "No, but I had to make him think I was. He had to learn, didn't he?"
"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn't know that he was doing wrong. Yet you inflicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?"
I didn't then know what a sadist was -- but I know pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he's in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won't do it again -- and you have to do it right away! It doesn't do a bit of good to punish him later; you'll just confuse him. Even so, he won't learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it's a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you've never raised pups."
"Many. I'm raising a daschund now -- by your methods. Let's get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class ...and they often started their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their noses rubbed in it? Rarely. Newspapers and officials usually kept their names secret -- in many places this was the law for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."
(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.)
"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as 'cruel and unusual punishment.'" Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to 'cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment -- and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mecahnism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
"As for 'unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"
"Uh ... probably drive him crazy!"
"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the principal of this school last had to switch a pupil?"
"Uh, I'm not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped --"
"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals -- They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sentence was: for a first offence, a warning -- a scolding, often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested may times and convicted several times before he was punished -- and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation -- 'paroled' in the jargon of the times.
"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called 'juvenile delinquent' becomes an adult criminal -- and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder."
He had singled me out again. "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house ... and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken -- whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"
"Why ... that's the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!"
"I agree. Or a child. Whose fault would it be?"
"Uh ... why, mine, I guess."
"Again I agree. But I'm not guessing."
"Mr. Dubois," a girl blurted out, "but why? Why didn't they spank little kids when they needed it and use a good dose of the strap on any older ones who deserved it -- the sort of lesson they wouldn't forget! I mean ones who did things really bad. Why not?"
"I don't know," he had answered grimly, "except that the time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a pre-scientific pseudo-professional class who called themselves 'social workers' or sometimes 'child psychologists.' It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder -- but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious 'highest motives' no matter what their behavior."
"But -- good heavens!" the girl answered. "I didn't like being spanked any more than any kid does, but when I needed it, my mama delivered. The only time I ever got a switching in school I got another one when I got home -- and that was years and years ago. I don't ever expect to be hauled up in front of a judge and sentenced to a flogging; you behave yourself and such things don't happen. I don't see anything wrong with our system; it's a lot better than not being able to walk outdoors for fear of your life -- why that's horrible!"
"I agree. Young lady, the tragic wrongness of what those well-meaning people did, contrasted with what they thought they were doing, goes very deep. They had no scientifc theory of morals. They did have a theory of morals and they tried to live by it (I should not have sneered at their motives), but their theory was wrong -- half of it fuzzy-headed wishful thinking, half of it rationalized charlatanry. The more earnest they were, the farther it led them astray. You see, they assumed that Man had a moral instinct."
"Sir? I thought -- But he does! I have."
"No, my dear, you have a cultivated conscience, a most carefully trained one. Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not -- and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind. These unfortunate juvenile criminals were born with none, even as you and I, and they had no chance to acquire any; their experiences did not permit it. What is 'moral sense'? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. This truth is mathematically demonstrable, everwhere verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everything we do.
"But the instinct to survive," he had gone on, "can be cultivated into motivations more subtle and much more complex than the blind, brute urge of the individual to stay alive. Young lady, what you miscalled your 'moral instinct' was the instilling in you by your elders of the truth that survival can have stronger imperatives than that of your own personal survival. Survival of your family, for example. Of your children, when you have them. Of your nation, if you struggle that high up the scale. And so on up. A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive -- and nowhere else! -- and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.
"We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race -- we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relations. But all moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation: 'Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.' Once you understand the problem facing that cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing.
"These juvenile criminals hit a low level. Born with only the instinct for survival, the highest morality they achieved was a shaky loyalty to a peer group, a street gang. But the do-gooders attempted to 'appeal to their better natures,' to 'reach them,' to 'spark their moral sense.' Tosh! They had no 'better natures'; experience taught them that what they were doing was the way to survive. The puppy never got his spanking; therefore what he did with pleasure and success must be 'moral.'
"The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand -- that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their 'rights.'
"The results should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature."
Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'?"
"Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If the chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
"The third 'right' -- the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is ismply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives -- but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."
Mr. Dubois then turned to me. "I told you that 'juveline delinquent' is a contriction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue -- indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be, a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents -- people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.
"And that was the soft spot which destroyed what was in many ways an admirable culture. The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights' ... and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure."
Don't suspend them. Call the police and put them in jail. That kind of abuse is WAY over the line.
That's it?
I got 3 days once for saying "F#@# this." too loudly(meant to say it under my breath). This was in the mid 90's.
Teachers in TX are not unionized. I know that is not true of all, and probably most states. Yes, teacher unions are powerful where they exist. I don't see much evidence that they exist for benefit of teachers, tho, so much as for the benefit of those who run the unions. (I am not denying that they get teachers higher pay etc, but I believe that they do this in order to keep themselves in power--I do think they have done terrible harm to the education system in this country).
Thank you for your prayers.
Oh, and I think I have to join the teachers union when I start teaching in FL. I don't think it will be very helpful to this radical, Christian Republican however! :)
I used to get very discouraged when sending kids to the office. Sometimes they were great and dealt harshly with them, but it depended on which principal they got. Some would give them a warning and send them right back. Now, I tended to deal with problems in class if possible (I can be pretty mean!) but sometimes you just have to get them out of the classroom or you will not get any teaching done (I teach biology, and you cannot have them acting like jerks during labs). But, when they come right back after 15 minutes, with a smirk on their face, the other kids know that the teacher's authority is pretty shakey.
And, I think our school was pretty strict from the stories I hear from other teachers.
Ya'll, there are bad teachers out there and bad schools, but do pray for us all. It is a pretty thankless job. I do it because I love the kids, and I do think I can have an impact on some of them. Oh, and I like to have my summers off! ;)
susie
I'm glad we agree how easy, straightforward, and rewarding learning can be when there is a willing learner and a willing, able teacher. The difficulty arises when forcing someone to learn what they don't want to learn -- that is, imposing his will on another, which is indoctrination and not education. So predictably, there will be resistance -- just as we see the resistance against the mainstream media imposing their values and desires for our education on us, because they presumptuously, know better what they think we ought to know.
Schools should be a free marketplace of ideas -- in which willing buyers match up with willing sellers. So your question, which should be taught, war studies or peace studies illustrates the underlying problem of our schools and universities -- by unilaterally deciding what is the politically correct curriculum, when properly we should have a choice and the exercise of choice is the highest attainment of learning. Not learning that which is forced upon us.
I have heard that male teachers are especially vulnerable to taunting by students. Outside of schools, male adults are used to defending themselves. Inside schools, male teachers are prohibited from touching students in practice. Female teachers in practice can actually fight back, and usually she will not be disciplined by administration. If a male teacher tries to fight back against a misbehaving student, he is blacklisted by administration and dragged into civil court by the misbehaving student, who of course is usually a jailhouse lawyer type waiting for a teacher to respond to one of his or her provocations. I have heard that school administration offices have files full of complaints against teachers for physical abuse... virtually all of them male, and virtually all of them containing stories which go somewhat like the male teacher stepped in between two or more fighting students and attempted to restrain the larger one by holding him or her. School administrators do not want trouble of any kind, so rather than deal with the problem, they blacklist the teacher and call another substitute from the list. Unions are not concerned about substitute teachers, where most of the problems occur, because substitute teachers are equivalent to scabs in their view-- untouchables. Misbehaving students zero in on male substitute teachers as the most vulnerable and most accessible chink in the public school jailhouse walls.
One successful civil lawsuit settlement is the misbehaving student's fantasy. and ticket to freedom from classes, to coasting and partying on other people's money for a few years, and to high status among their peers as a successful school rebel and teacher-destroyer.
A byproduct of this climate of violence without consequences is that smaller, unpopular, and more emotionally or physically vulnerable students are beaten up without mercy and without any effective legal recourse. [And everyone certainly should know what that can lead to.]
My sister-in-law is also a high school teacher in St. Louis with the same stories. It's pathetic.
More money won't help things either.
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