Most of you have likely heard the story of Karen Klein, the bus monitor who was mercilessly teased by some junior high kids a couple of weeks back. If not, here is the story.
I have to say that I am honestly glad that this story has come out and people can see what is at the very core of our problem in schools: children's behavior. This is the main reason why test scores are low and children are going off to college with all sorts of issues.
It all starts in the home and with the parents. Time and again, children's parents take the side of their children and not the instructor or administrative staff. This leads to continued problems both with the student and the rest of the class. In short, parents don't parent their fucking kids and teachers like me get blamed for poor test scores. Granted, I don't have as many issues in high school but I can tell which kids (by the time they get to me) have been coddled by the parents. And it's far, far too many.
Certainly, there are some teachers and assistants (like Ms. Klein here) who need to grow a pair. If a kid pulled something like that on me (and I have worked over the years in junior high), they'd be one sorry asshole in less than a second. But this video does illustrate the limits the schools have on discipline.
In my children's school district, they are very strict. If someone is sent to the office they get one warning and then they are suspended on the second offense. Continued poor behavior leads to expulsion and it's off to the "jail" school. More schools need to adopt this sort of no tolerance policy.
Bottom line, we need to be tougher on kids. Very tough, if you ask me. They have far too much power today and it's most parents (conservative or liberal) that are giving them this power. Either they are too lazy or are working too much or both, but something has to change....now.
My hope is that this incident with Ms. Klein will be the turning point.
2 comments:
Thanks for finally posting something we can agree on.
I'm happy to talk about this for as many comments as you would like, juris. At the very core of our problem as a nation is the issue of children raising children. This is a very deep cultural malaise and one of the outcomes is a complete lack of discipline of children. Parents just don't want to say no to their kids, are too lazy or too busy.
It makes the job of a teacher very, very difficult because they then have to spend more time on behavior issues and less time on instruction.
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