Isn't this just a occupational hazard though? Lion feeders have to deal with the fact that their clientele may attack them, shouldn't teachers feel similarly?
This is the entire problem with society, public service, and teachers. the problem is: this should not be an occupational hazard!
teachers are public servants, ergo they are at mercy of the public, get paid through taxes, and most importantly are employed by a public that has the benefit of the position that they cannot be fired or turned down. if your fail at work, you lose your job and therefore your life sucks. if a college student flips off his professor, the professor can have him completely removed from that class. if you do things to disrupt your job and piss off your boss, your pay can be docked and you can lose your job. public school students are not succumb to any of these consequences.
in your example above, the lion feeder can quit feeding the lion to control its behavior, it can sedate the lion, and it can even cage the lion if need be. the public gives the lion feeder everything that he/she needs to make sure he/she is safe during feeding the lion. if a lion keeps killing other lions, other feeders, or constantly trashes things, they can kill the lion, isolate it, and do whatever is necessary to keep the lion itself, its feeder, and the public safe. with the public school system, it is almost impossible to get a student expelled or removed from school, especially if that student has been labeled as "learning disabled", which includes 1/4 to 1/2 of all students now because of the inclusion of ADD, ADHD, and ODD into the "learning disabled" categories.
the problem is that society is saying: "teachers need to protect themselves from students by spending a lot of effort to conceal their personal lives and protect themselves. they need not only to control their students behavior while in school, but also must control their students behavior outside of school, as well as reap the repercussions of bad activity of a students school behavior as well as their after-school behavior."
this is where society has wronged itself and its teachers.
teachers are stripped of more of their disciplinary opportunities every year. they cannot sit kids in the corner because it humiliates them. they cannot send them home because parents pay taxes and have a right to have their kid in school. they cannot hold a kid in for recess because it will stunt his socializing abilities. they cannot hold a child in for detention before or after school because mom or dad have to work. they cannot even make a kid run laps or do push-ups because it will make them view exercise in a negative light. if they assign the student more work, they are simply giving themselves more work because they have to grade the work. the principal has 300 or 3000 kids in his school, so they cant all sit in his office all day. teachers have almost no way to discipline a student, partly because of the law, but mostly because society and parents have stripped them of their tools.
the easy solution to this is to force parents to be accountable for their students. my wife teaches around 60 kids a day (3 classes of 20). the idea that 1 person can control 60 kids is absurd. lion feeders dont feed 60 lions by themselves, and if they do, they definitely have things in place to protect them. now if each parent actually disciplined their child, monitored their behavior, and really PARENTED their children, then you would have a ratio of 1 or 2 parents per child (granted families with multiple children change the ratio), which is vastly better than the odds you give a teacher. parents hold more disciplinary power than teachers, yet we expect teachers to fend off bad behavior of 60 to 100 students? why?
cyberbullying, posting inappropriate material and comments about teachers on the web, and all of the things in between has been turned into "occupational hazard" by the public, when in all
this article vastly undermines the severity of this situation.
my wife is a teacher, and believe me, it is bad out there. she teaches 6th grade mathematics, and she is dealing with the internet, bullying, and humiliation on a weekly basis because of it. fortunately, the kids at her school aren't really old enough to know how to create proper websites yet, or dont have the money to sneak small webcams into the classroom, but their internet usage definitely affects the school environment.
with the prevalence of myspace, many kids are threatening each other and bullying each other over the internet (i still dont see how cyber-bullying is possible, since you can always just "not go to that site", but whatever...). they get caught up in the "he said, she said" game, and say some very awful things. teachers are all advised not to have myspace pages or facebook pages, for if they post pictures of them at the beach, at the bar, or even at home, children can and will spin them so that the teacher somehow comes across in a bad light. and the kids are so resourceful that they dont even take into account what a teacher says about themselves. one of my wife's coworkers had a friend sign her "wall" or whatever in myspace, and the comment left made a reference to a stripper or stripping (something along the lines of "you looked like a stipper that night"), and the kids in her class saw the comment and started telling people around the school that one of the teachers was a stripper. of course, this made it all the way to the parents, and they began calling the school. the kids spun something that someone else said, not even what the teacher said.
they are threatening each other, and posting inappropriate material about each other, which is creating fodder for the classrooms. 5th and 6th grade girls are posting pictures of themselves wearing little clothing, talking about their sexual experiences and knowledge online, and are basically begging to be preyed upon. what is worse is that the parents don't know and don't care. people can dismiss it as much as they want, and believe that it doesn't happen or that it is just a small percentage of kids. well, believe me, it is not. it is much worse than you think.
it is a parent's responsibility to know what their child is doing on the internet. those who say that it is "too much work" and that their kid is "smarter than i am" are full of it, because we often do meet the parents who put in the work, who monitor their children properly, and who properly look after their children and prevent this kind of behavior. we know that parents can handle it because there is still a small percentage out there who do it right. the rest of them need to look at themselves, and not their children, and certainly not the teachers.
teachers get paid a small amount of money to do a ton of work. my wife works 10 hour days, gets a 15 minute lunch, and is not only expected to be the one to educate them with the material that the school board deems appropriate (which grows larger every year), but yet she is expected to be their moral educator as well; a job she gladly does. most of them take pride in their work, and believe me, they hate giving out bad grades and low test scores because it makes them look bad. the problem with education these days is not the school, nor the teachers, nor the funding (believe it or not). it is the parents. parents have stopped being accountable. they have stopped checking their kids homework, monitoring their activity, and disciplining their children. they make excuses for their children (ADD, ODD, ADHD...), and often laugh at the behavior that their child is displaying. parenting in america has become a dismal affair.
i dont think DRM was ever the problem. labels are losing money because we now have a pay-per song system, and we as consumers can hedge our costs with quality.
i don't need to spend $15 on a cd anymore. i just need to spend $2 for the 2 songs that are good. that is a huge loss.
the problem is also the fact that we are getting rid of the ever-so-rich rock icon. it has become harder and harder to become rich just from album sales, and with the advent of the internet, there are more bands out there to choose from than ever. rock stars are making less money, as are the corporate execs who demand the high salaries. musicians are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the glory days are over, and that a $100k salary is good for a musician these days. corporate execs are struggling to keep that huge amount of income that pays for the mansions; look at the copyright extension!
i've never had a problem with DRM. i don't download music illegally either. i just pay for what i want and get rid of the rest. that is where they are losing their money. plus, if i lose my cd, i don't have to go out and buy another. i have a backup sitting right next to my computer.
"A group of people willing to give it a five star rating just because someone else didn't, willing to back up every design, engineering and marketing decision that Amazon made, willing to defend the Kindle with their last dying breath."
With this quote, they surely meant to say 'Apple', and not 'Amazon'.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't this just a occupational hazard though? Lion feeders have to deal with the fact that their clientele may attack them, shouldn't teachers feel similarly?
This is the entire problem with society, public service, and teachers. the problem is: this should not be an occupational hazard!
teachers are public servants, ergo they are at mercy of the public, get paid through taxes, and most importantly are employed by a public that has the benefit of the position that they cannot be fired or turned down. if your fail at work, you lose your job and therefore your life sucks. if a college student flips off his professor, the professor can have him completely removed from that class. if you do things to disrupt your job and piss off your boss, your pay can be docked and you can lose your job. public school students are not succumb to any of these consequences.
in your example above, the lion feeder can quit feeding the lion to control its behavior, it can sedate the lion, and it can even cage the lion if need be. the public gives the lion feeder everything that he/she needs to make sure he/she is safe during feeding the lion. if a lion keeps killing other lions, other feeders, or constantly trashes things, they can kill the lion, isolate it, and do whatever is necessary to keep the lion itself, its feeder, and the public safe. with the public school system, it is almost impossible to get a student expelled or removed from school, especially if that student has been labeled as "learning disabled", which includes 1/4 to 1/2 of all students now because of the inclusion of ADD, ADHD, and ODD into the "learning disabled" categories.
the problem is that society is saying: "teachers need to protect themselves from students by spending a lot of effort to conceal their personal lives and protect themselves. they need not only to control their students behavior while in school, but also must control their students behavior outside of school, as well as reap the repercussions of bad activity of a students school behavior as well as their after-school behavior."
this is where society has wronged itself and its teachers.
teachers are stripped of more of their disciplinary opportunities every year. they cannot sit kids in the corner because it humiliates them. they cannot send them home because parents pay taxes and have a right to have their kid in school. they cannot hold a kid in for recess because it will stunt his socializing abilities. they cannot hold a child in for detention before or after school because mom or dad have to work. they cannot even make a kid run laps or do push-ups because it will make them view exercise in a negative light. if they assign the student more work, they are simply giving themselves more work because they have to grade the work. the principal has 300 or 3000 kids in his school, so they cant all sit in his office all day. teachers have almost no way to discipline a student, partly because of the law, but mostly because society and parents have stripped them of their tools.
the easy solution to this is to force parents to be accountable for their students. my wife teaches around 60 kids a day (3 classes of 20). the idea that 1 person can control 60 kids is absurd. lion feeders dont feed 60 lions by themselves, and if they do, they definitely have things in place to protect them. now if each parent actually disciplined their child, monitored their behavior, and really PARENTED their children, then you would have a ratio of 1 or 2 parents per child (granted families with multiple children change the ratio), which is vastly better than the odds you give a teacher. parents hold more disciplinary power than teachers, yet we expect teachers to fend off bad behavior of 60 to 100 students? why?
cyberbullying, posting inappropriate material and comments about teachers on the web, and all of the things in between has been turned into "occupational hazard" by the public, when in all
this article vastly undermines the severity of this situation.
my wife is a teacher, and believe me, it is bad out there. she teaches 6th grade mathematics, and she is dealing with the internet, bullying, and humiliation on a weekly basis because of it. fortunately, the kids at her school aren't really old enough to know how to create proper websites yet, or dont have the money to sneak small webcams into the classroom, but their internet usage definitely affects the school environment.
with the prevalence of myspace, many kids are threatening each other and bullying each other over the internet (i still dont see how cyber-bullying is possible, since you can always just "not go to that site", but whatever...). they get caught up in the "he said, she said" game, and say some very awful things. teachers are all advised not to have myspace pages or facebook pages, for if they post pictures of them at the beach, at the bar, or even at home, children can and will spin them so that the teacher somehow comes across in a bad light. and the kids are so resourceful that they dont even take into account what a teacher says about themselves. one of my wife's coworkers had a friend sign her "wall" or whatever in myspace, and the comment left made a reference to a stripper or stripping (something along the lines of "you looked like a stipper that night"), and the kids in her class saw the comment and started telling people around the school that one of the teachers was a stripper. of course, this made it all the way to the parents, and they began calling the school. the kids spun something that someone else said, not even what the teacher said.
they are threatening each other, and posting inappropriate material about each other, which is creating fodder for the classrooms. 5th and 6th grade girls are posting pictures of themselves wearing little clothing, talking about their sexual experiences and knowledge online, and are basically begging to be preyed upon. what is worse is that the parents don't know and don't care. people can dismiss it as much as they want, and believe that it doesn't happen or that it is just a small percentage of kids. well, believe me, it is not. it is much worse than you think.
it is a parent's responsibility to know what their child is doing on the internet. those who say that it is "too much work" and that their kid is "smarter than i am" are full of it, because we often do meet the parents who put in the work, who monitor their children properly, and who properly look after their children and prevent this kind of behavior. we know that parents can handle it because there is still a small percentage out there who do it right. the rest of them need to look at themselves, and not their children, and certainly not the teachers.
teachers get paid a small amount of money to do a ton of work. my wife works 10 hour days, gets a 15 minute lunch, and is not only expected to be the one to educate them with the material that the school board deems appropriate (which grows larger every year), but yet she is expected to be their moral educator as well; a job she gladly does. most of them take pride in their work, and believe me, they hate giving out bad grades and low test scores because it makes them look bad. the problem with education these days is not the school, nor the teachers, nor the funding (believe it or not). it is the parents. parents have stopped being accountable. they have stopped checking their kids homework, monitoring their activity, and disciplining their children. they make excuses for their children (ADD, ODD, ADHD...), and often laugh at the behavior that their child is displaying. parenting in america has become a dismal affair.
i dont think DRM was ever the problem. labels are losing money because we now have a pay-per song system, and we as consumers can hedge our costs with quality. i don't need to spend $15 on a cd anymore. i just need to spend $2 for the 2 songs that are good. that is a huge loss. the problem is also the fact that we are getting rid of the ever-so-rich rock icon. it has become harder and harder to become rich just from album sales, and with the advent of the internet, there are more bands out there to choose from than ever. rock stars are making less money, as are the corporate execs who demand the high salaries. musicians are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the glory days are over, and that a $100k salary is good for a musician these days. corporate execs are struggling to keep that huge amount of income that pays for the mansions; look at the copyright extension! i've never had a problem with DRM. i don't download music illegally either. i just pay for what i want and get rid of the rest. that is where they are losing their money. plus, if i lose my cd, i don't have to go out and buy another. i have a backup sitting right next to my computer.
"A group of people willing to give it a five star rating just because someone else didn't, willing to back up every design, engineering and marketing decision that Amazon made, willing to defend the Kindle with their last dying breath."
With this quote, they surely meant to say 'Apple', and not 'Amazon'.