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When Schools Are the Police
First time accepted submitter Is Any Nickname Left writes "The Washington Post has an article on school systems with their own police forces. It focuses on Texas, which has the highest number of 'School Police Departments,' of which there are so many they have their own trade association. Highlights: 1) Houston fourth-grader stood on a stool so he could see the judge. He pleaded guilty. To a scuffle on a school bus. 2) 275,000 juvenile tickets in fiscal 2009, to students as young as 5. 3) Austin middle school student ticketed after she sprayed herself with perfume when classmates said she smelled. 4) a 17-year-old was in court after he and his girlfriend poured milk on each other. 'She was mad at me because I broke up with her,' he said. I waiting for the Alamo Heights Special Airborne Brigade and SEAL TEAM CROCKETT."
Fuck the police
You have (rightly or wrongly) taken from the schools a lot of their powers in regards to disciplining students. So where the school can not, the parents must. Except, the parents are not fulfilling their obligations in this regard, and the schools can not hold parents thusly responsible.
But the courts can.
Therefore, the school will begin referring your unique snowflake to the courts when their behavior exceeds what little remedies you have left available to the schools.
Did nobody see this coming?
It is indoctrination, the inculcation of the reflex to knuckle under to petty authority. Pedagogy takes a distant second to this primary urge.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Police State training. When our generation are dead and gone, you will have this younger population come after us, raised in this invisible cage.
Go watch Brazil, again.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Education is more important than the kids in school realize. For them it's mostly something that takes way too much time and isn't all that interesting, plus massively uncool. Regardless, they should be forced to get it because by the time they realize just how wrong they were, it will be too late. I certainly wouldn't expect a fifth grader to be mature enough to make such life critical choices on his own.
I read the internet for the articles.
One reason would be that someone who is disruptive at age 13 might still be able to become a productive member of society if given a little guidance and education.
If the anarchist tendencies among us said "hey if they don't want to go to school, don't make 'em" we're going to end up with half filled schools, and an even greater dependency class than we already have in society - because of course, the fact that you have achieved less or worked less doesn't mean you should receive less, the government should rob from the rich to help you.
The social harm done could hardly be underestimated.
Yeah, sure.
Then kids see athletic students in universities getting grades just for being present (or even for not being present) as long as they are on the team. And then they see these athletes earning more than underemployed engineers.
Sure, that's going to show them the importance of education!
Blame the helicopter parents and their ravenous lawyers. Grab a kid to break up a fight? Law suit. Yell at a kid to break up a fight? Law suit. Make a kid feel sad for any reason (little johnny just wanted to stab someone, is that so bad?)? Law suit.
There's a serious lack of law in a state where a school needs to run their own police force.
There's a serious lack of public moral in a state where voters allow the previous two issues to exist.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
"Forced education" has given most industrialized nations literacy rates far in excess of 90%. Stop talking hogwash. It strikes me that your lack of rational powers may in fact be a sign that you are a victim of a terrible education, or possibly terrible genes, or possibly, you're just a self-important moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And at the other extreme, I have heard news stories about: A kid gets arrested for having a butter knife in his lunch box. A kid gets busted for possession of Tylenol. Another kid gets in trouble for sharing cupcakes. Kids getting sanctioned for holding hands in the hallway. The schools crack down so hard on these miniscule infringments that they MAKE THE NEWS. With schools worrying about all this crap, we wonder why they're not learning to read and write??
The best indicator we have of success is education. You will either provide decent education (note, this isn't warehousing, baby sitting, crowd management, or child processing, but education) or you will pay for a significant percentage of your population being incarcerated, and your economy being in shambles.
Time and time again, the very same children failing in public school environments, have excelled when placed in legitimate institutions committed to providing a safe, comprehensive, committed environments for children to learn. The failure is not in the children, it is in the public schools. The list of failures is nearly endless. Providing so little funding that schools resort to having fast food on their campuses leading to unhealthy diets high in sugar and fat, leading to poor physical and therefore mental performance (exacerbating attention disorders and chronic sleepiness in classes.) Insufficient funds for meaningful PE, art instruction, music instruction, computer science instruction and extracurricular activities make students less interested in their course work and curricula, provides them with insufficient opportunities to develop healthy social behavior, and in poorer communities where both parents work to feed their families, leaves children vulnerable to gangs and negative influences (those drugs mentioned above.)
Children are naturally curious and want to know. It takes an environment of trying to force kids into being the little automatons that governments and businesses so desperately want in their workforces and electorates to kill off the desire to learn. The state isn't interested in intellectually developed, informed and empowered civilians. Such people are a nightmare for Government. They have opinions and know how to voice them, they see trends and make informed conclusions and demand that their representatives tow the line. Government hates that. Much better to create an ignorant, superstitious public who get's their truth out of the little black corporate box in their living rooms and does what Fox news tells them to.
I agree there is a small percentage of special needs children, children acting out because they are being raised by monsters, children with medical conditions which make it hard or impossible for them to function normally in a class room. These children for the most part need special education to succeed, but significant information now available says that they indeed can lead productive, happy, contributing lives giving to society rather than simply taking. Until we're willing to spend as much on our children (as a society) as we do on pets, none of this should be a surprise. Over the last 3 years we secretly gave 1.2 trillion dollars to banks (half of them in other countries.) We've lined the pockets of wealthy and greedy men, and continue to do so. Our representatives refuse to tax the wealthy, while Rupert Murdoch stood up in public and said "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, TAX ME ALREADY!!!" Our schools just look like the rest of the train wreck, that's all.
Texas does lead the way in stupid however. Their government has been hijacked by the profoundly ignorant, and they're demonstrating what the decent into a police state looks like. Don't deal with the underlying causes long enough, keep addressing the symptoms, keep using magical thinking as your foundation for making decisions, all the while hoping the messiah will magic all your problems away, and you get Texas. The real problem is that a very large number of poorly educated people in this country think Texas is the model for the nation, and it scares me to bottom of my soul.
Punishments are much more frightening before you've experienced them. All this will do is trivialize getting in trouble with the law, and show kids it's not the end of the world. As someone who's spent his share of time in prison, I know it made me much more willing to bear that burden again if the cause was right.
Mod parent up. I used to do and think exactly that way as a kid. Once you've been punished a few times, it loses a lot of its power and instead of being avoidance therapy, all it does it give you a very granular lesson on risk vs reward.
Plus, the minute you get labeled as one of those kids, you end up getting punished without offense fairly easily, so there's definitely a mindset of "If I'm going to do the time, might as well do and enjoy the crime."
Apart form letting parents abdicate any and all responsibility for their children, the worst mistake we've ever made in this regard is treating kids like retards and cattle. Just because you're 10 doesn't mean it doesn't affect you and change you like it would an adult treated the same way.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It is NOT lazy teachers, you self righteous asshole.
It is parents like yourself who do not raise their kids to have respect, that are a problem. When parents sue the school for disciplining their kids, when parents refuse to discipline their kids, and when parents refuse to support teachers; then what do you expect to happen.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Isn't it a good thing we have money for the police state but not for a lower student:teacher ratio?
If we herded all the students into one giant room, think of the cost savings, one teacher per room, no need for administrative staff and such. Just cops ready to write tickets (and generate revenue).
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
Are you being snide? I should kick your ass for that...
As an inhabitant of the USA, I think the biggest problem is the strong individualistic streak that we have. It seems like there are a lot of people who just get caught up in things and don't think of anyone but themselves, and culturally this is being reinforced. They want to be involved in everything, be the center of attention and have the world revolve around them. Short sighted people want immediate gratification and respect, and fuck you if you don't give it to them.
Most people here aren't like this though, just enough to make the rest of the world think we are a bunch of violent, impatient jerks.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Can someone explain to me, why the USA is so violent?
A few thoughts: Culture clashes from a melting pot of immigration, anti-socialism sentiment leads to poverty for bottom of society (and hence violence), a culture of accepting violence but not sex/drugs (think in terms of censorship - television, supreme court rulings, can't sell sex toys in Alabama, not enough escapism for some people, etc.).
Probably more... you could write a PhD thesis on this question.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.