Just finished reading this article, Teen to return to regular classes at Livingston High School after school lunch beer mistake, and I found it interesting for several points.
01. Kids who bring alcohol to school on purpose don't report it to the teacher, they hide it. I know. When I was fifteen I would sneak my parents' leftover Zima's in Sprite bottles and drink at school. I didn't say, "Oops. I accidentally brought this to school." I did it on purpose and therefor kept it under wraps. There was one teacher who was on to me, but could never prove it. Everytime he tried it was really only Sprite. So, it was a crazy time during my teens and not one I'm proud of. Point is, you don't alert teachers if you're up to no good.
02. Suspension doesn't teach the kid a lesson, it only hurts them in the long run. So many of my friends in high school ended up being slapped with suspension. I myself had to serve in-school & Saturday suspensions from time to time. In-school suspension was pretty much detention during school hours. You were missing your classes and you sat around in silence. All it did was to form resentment for authority and make a kid say "Fuck it" about school. Much the way normal home suspension does. Saturday detention made you give up your Saturday morning for sleeping so you could be policed, at school, doing homework. Again, it only formed a resentment for authority. A lot of kids were repeats, always ending back up in Saturday or in-school suspension, never learning the "lesson" that the superintendents and principles thought they were supposed to be learning.
03. Alternative School is just for "fuck ups" that nobody wants to deal with. If you don't deal with them now, no one will. Alternative school is for kids who are abused at home, so act out at school. Kids who have learning disabilities, are slow learners, or simply just need to be taught a different way than you are teaching. But you don't want to deal with them so instead of passing them to get them out of your grade like what used to be the practice, they are sent to Alternative School. Where they will never get therapy from their abusive home or the thing that happened to them, will never learn how to read, will never learn math, etc. So good job education system for shoving the real problems under the rug.
04. Besides the fact that all three punishments handed this kid are overkill... for anyone, much less a student without a record, who anyone using logic would know he was telling the truth.
05. I am very lucky that I do no have children of my own, or that I am not currently a child. This story reminded me very closely of myself when I was ten & eleven. When I was seven I wanted to attend school with my two friends. They attended a private, Catholic school. I didn't understand at that age that I would be a grade ahead of them or that Catholic (& private school) kids are much more mean and cruel than public school kids. So, I said I wanted to go and forgot all about it.
Apparently there's a waiting list and such, and by the time I was ten my mother announced that I'd finally been accepted. By that time I had grown apart from one of those friends and had also realized I would be in a grade above the other one, so of course I didn't want to go. But once my mother got something onto HER track, it was really hard to derail her.
So, I switched schools and was in private brat school hell for two years. There's no need to go into the horrors here, as that's not really what this entry is about. The point is, that I was so miserable that I was a shambles. At my other school I was always dressed and ready for school without any problems. But for those two years I dreaded going so much that I slept badly and was such a scatterbrain that I was rarely ever ready for school. This caused me to never know where my own coat was. So, on winter mornings I'd just grab the first available jacket and run out the door.
These jackets usually ended of belonging to my father. I am reminded of all the times from telly shows, films, or mothers I have met who talk about all manner of things that end up in their sons pockets. It's like that, only instead of tadpoles, sticks and twine, my father had cigarettes, lighters and bullets.
Do you realize how badly people would freak out of a ten year old girl in an oversized coat showed up at a school today with cigarettes, lighters and bullets in ALL of her pockets?! Yeah, a lot.
None of it was intentional. I was not intending to smoke or blow up the school. My dad just happened to never learn how to clean out his pockets & he was a smoker and hunter. On more than one occassion cigarettes would fall out of those coat pockets at school. Luckily my teachers were level headed enough to know that I was telling the truth when I said it was my fathers coat.
Also of note that in high school the vehicle I was allowed to drive was my dad's pick up truck. Like his pockets it was jammed full of an arsenal to take out any school. Luckily that was never on my mind or on the minds of my fellow students. There were bullets, a pistol, shovels, pick axes, machetes, knives, fish stringers, etc. So many things to be used as weapons and most of it in the bed of the truck in easy grabbing reach for any passerby high school student while it was sitting in the parking lot.
I was not the only person with such things in the back of their pick up. I, however, was the only girl borrowing a pick up truck for the woods supplied with a hodge podge of things in the bed of the truck. A few of the boys had gun racks inside their cabs with shotguns visable. Nobody cared. We lived in the country. No one wanted to use any of their truck weapons to take out students. Then Columbine happened and my school started implementing stricter policies.
Do you know how that ended up? All those kids with access to weapons & no intentions of hurting anyone had to leave all that at home (by that time I was driving my mom's crappy Ford Taurus, the only thing scary in there were her religious statues stuck to the ledge of the odometer department). We had to change our style of dress. The teachers were always ready to suspect you were going to kill everyone. They hired two security guards who grossly abused their power. Kids were beaten, had their heads slammed into cars, verbally assaulted, threatened, tormented, lied about, forcibly put into situations so they would get expelled. Fear mongering led our quiet, country school to gladly hand over all of their power to two highly incompetent cruel bullies. And that was then end of everything nice.
I'm not saying kids should bring guns, weapons, alcohol or tobacco to school. I'm not saying kids shouldn't be safe. But good intentions do pave the road to hell. In trying to keep our school safe, it ended up being turned into a prison with sadistic wardens. It also in effect turned the kids into villians and the staff into potential victims all because of something to kids did half a world away because of what? Their parents didn't have time to deal with them? Their teachers didn't have time to deal with them? They were just bad seeds?
The school world we have now is a result of two people. Two people not even in your own town. An event that happened fifteen years ago. That's like Mount St. Helen's erupting in 1980 and right after everyone's afraid of volcano's and so nobody goes to state parks anymore or goes outside without tons of protection and pre-emptive measures. Mount St. Helen's will erupt again, but nobody knows when and no one can stop it. You could cover it up or plug it up, but it will only erupt faster. Tightening your hold on kids is only going to make them break out of your control faster. Treating them as the threat while strangling them to protect them is not helpful for anyone.
01. Kids who bring alcohol to school on purpose don't report it to the teacher, they hide it. I know. When I was fifteen I would sneak my parents' leftover Zima's in Sprite bottles and drink at school. I didn't say, "Oops. I accidentally brought this to school." I did it on purpose and therefor kept it under wraps. There was one teacher who was on to me, but could never prove it. Everytime he tried it was really only Sprite. So, it was a crazy time during my teens and not one I'm proud of. Point is, you don't alert teachers if you're up to no good.
02. Suspension doesn't teach the kid a lesson, it only hurts them in the long run. So many of my friends in high school ended up being slapped with suspension. I myself had to serve in-school & Saturday suspensions from time to time. In-school suspension was pretty much detention during school hours. You were missing your classes and you sat around in silence. All it did was to form resentment for authority and make a kid say "Fuck it" about school. Much the way normal home suspension does. Saturday detention made you give up your Saturday morning for sleeping so you could be policed, at school, doing homework. Again, it only formed a resentment for authority. A lot of kids were repeats, always ending back up in Saturday or in-school suspension, never learning the "lesson" that the superintendents and principles thought they were supposed to be learning.
03. Alternative School is just for "fuck ups" that nobody wants to deal with. If you don't deal with them now, no one will. Alternative school is for kids who are abused at home, so act out at school. Kids who have learning disabilities, are slow learners, or simply just need to be taught a different way than you are teaching. But you don't want to deal with them so instead of passing them to get them out of your grade like what used to be the practice, they are sent to Alternative School. Where they will never get therapy from their abusive home or the thing that happened to them, will never learn how to read, will never learn math, etc. So good job education system for shoving the real problems under the rug.
04. Besides the fact that all three punishments handed this kid are overkill... for anyone, much less a student without a record, who anyone using logic would know he was telling the truth.
05. I am very lucky that I do no have children of my own, or that I am not currently a child. This story reminded me very closely of myself when I was ten & eleven. When I was seven I wanted to attend school with my two friends. They attended a private, Catholic school. I didn't understand at that age that I would be a grade ahead of them or that Catholic (& private school) kids are much more mean and cruel than public school kids. So, I said I wanted to go and forgot all about it.
Apparently there's a waiting list and such, and by the time I was ten my mother announced that I'd finally been accepted. By that time I had grown apart from one of those friends and had also realized I would be in a grade above the other one, so of course I didn't want to go. But once my mother got something onto HER track, it was really hard to derail her.
So, I switched schools and was in private brat school hell for two years. There's no need to go into the horrors here, as that's not really what this entry is about. The point is, that I was so miserable that I was a shambles. At my other school I was always dressed and ready for school without any problems. But for those two years I dreaded going so much that I slept badly and was such a scatterbrain that I was rarely ever ready for school. This caused me to never know where my own coat was. So, on winter mornings I'd just grab the first available jacket and run out the door.
These jackets usually ended of belonging to my father. I am reminded of all the times from telly shows, films, or mothers I have met who talk about all manner of things that end up in their sons pockets. It's like that, only instead of tadpoles, sticks and twine, my father had cigarettes, lighters and bullets.
Do you realize how badly people would freak out of a ten year old girl in an oversized coat showed up at a school today with cigarettes, lighters and bullets in ALL of her pockets?! Yeah, a lot.
None of it was intentional. I was not intending to smoke or blow up the school. My dad just happened to never learn how to clean out his pockets & he was a smoker and hunter. On more than one occassion cigarettes would fall out of those coat pockets at school. Luckily my teachers were level headed enough to know that I was telling the truth when I said it was my fathers coat.
Also of note that in high school the vehicle I was allowed to drive was my dad's pick up truck. Like his pockets it was jammed full of an arsenal to take out any school. Luckily that was never on my mind or on the minds of my fellow students. There were bullets, a pistol, shovels, pick axes, machetes, knives, fish stringers, etc. So many things to be used as weapons and most of it in the bed of the truck in easy grabbing reach for any passerby high school student while it was sitting in the parking lot.
I was not the only person with such things in the back of their pick up. I, however, was the only girl borrowing a pick up truck for the woods supplied with a hodge podge of things in the bed of the truck. A few of the boys had gun racks inside their cabs with shotguns visable. Nobody cared. We lived in the country. No one wanted to use any of their truck weapons to take out students. Then Columbine happened and my school started implementing stricter policies.
Do you know how that ended up? All those kids with access to weapons & no intentions of hurting anyone had to leave all that at home (by that time I was driving my mom's crappy Ford Taurus, the only thing scary in there were her religious statues stuck to the ledge of the odometer department). We had to change our style of dress. The teachers were always ready to suspect you were going to kill everyone. They hired two security guards who grossly abused their power. Kids were beaten, had their heads slammed into cars, verbally assaulted, threatened, tormented, lied about, forcibly put into situations so they would get expelled. Fear mongering led our quiet, country school to gladly hand over all of their power to two highly incompetent cruel bullies. And that was then end of everything nice.
I'm not saying kids should bring guns, weapons, alcohol or tobacco to school. I'm not saying kids shouldn't be safe. But good intentions do pave the road to hell. In trying to keep our school safe, it ended up being turned into a prison with sadistic wardens. It also in effect turned the kids into villians and the staff into potential victims all because of something to kids did half a world away because of what? Their parents didn't have time to deal with them? Their teachers didn't have time to deal with them? They were just bad seeds?
The school world we have now is a result of two people. Two people not even in your own town. An event that happened fifteen years ago. That's like Mount St. Helen's erupting in 1980 and right after everyone's afraid of volcano's and so nobody goes to state parks anymore or goes outside without tons of protection and pre-emptive measures. Mount St. Helen's will erupt again, but nobody knows when and no one can stop it. You could cover it up or plug it up, but it will only erupt faster. Tightening your hold on kids is only going to make them break out of your control faster. Treating them as the threat while strangling them to protect them is not helpful for anyone.
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