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."

Comments

What do you expect?

[nharmon]

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?

Re:What do you expect?

[shadowfaxcrx]

Exactly. The real trouble is going to come when zero tolerance policies and cops mix. When I was in school (and it's still happening to day, a couple decades later) they had a 0-tolerance policy about fighting. If you got in a fight, you got suspended. Even if you got attacked, and stood there letting the guy punch you, and didn't throw a punch back, you got suspended.

Carry that forward to a school-police situation, and I can see you being booked on disorderly conduct, if not battery charges.

The whole idea is absurd.

As for taking away schools' ability to discipline our kids, that's bull. We've removed their ability to paddle them. That's pretty much it. They can still suspend, expel, detain, and in many other ways punish the troublemakers.

It's the *schools* that have failed in the discipline department, by applying these ridiculous zero-tolerance policies that are guaranteed to only be a punishment to the innocent victims, while granting a free 3-day vacation to the little shits that start the problem in the first place.

The answer lies not in sending the Brute Squad into the schools, but in schools being intelligent with their discipline. Habitual troublemakers are easy to spot. So quit giving them 20 thousand detentions and suspensions, and start expelling them. And, of course, get rid of the zero tolerance policies, which are really just an excuse for school administrators to not have to do any thinking when dealing with students.

Re:obviously

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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.

Re:Result of Truancy Laws

[Cyberax]

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!

Re:No wonder private schools are booming...

[MightyMartian]

"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.

Re:obviously

[scottbomb]

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??

Re:obviously

[Captain Splendid]

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.

Re:The point of the public schools is not learning

[Necroman]

I believe you are very disconnected from the school system. When you went through school, did you get the feeling that they were just there to beat you down and make you submit?

I went through the public school system (be it 12 years ago), but I was under the impression that the teachers were there to help students learn. You should go talk with some teachers, I can tell you that most of them love teaching children and watching them learn. They love to see them grow. Many teachers do what they do because they enjoy it.

The public school system is there to make sure everyone has an education available to them. Parents that don't want their kids to go through the system are free to home school their children (except for in California, where you have to have a teacher certificate to home school).

As for the public school system, the people above teachers (administration of the system) are going to be a mix of people that enjoy teaching and people with bureaucrat type personalities. Luckily, most students do not need to interact with the administrator all that often.

And the reason kids need to "knuckle under" to the teacher and administration is because you have 1 teacher to 30+ kids now adays. A teacher cannot easily control every single child in the room. One kid being disruptive is going to ruin the learning experience for the other 29 kinds in the room. If the teacher believes that they cannot deal with the kid themselves, they push it up to the administration to deal with. But with all the lawsuits in the past decade, teachers are scared shitless of being sued themselves so they really can't do much anymore.

USA! WE ARE THE NUMBER #1!!!

[TiggertheMad]

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.