I think you hit the real reason why network admins get bitter... Incompetent (in IT/networking) business management and (typically) low budgets. I know they are the reason why I get bitter at my users...
Hence "Yes I'd love to fix 'problem X', however management has promised three times to give me what we need to fix that and they never come through.", response "But you should be able to fix X anyways! Your good with those server thingies!" The actually reason doesn't much matter, but I've had this very talk three times today... 'Problem X' requires a File server that was not struck by lightning 3 years ago when it was brand new (& before I was ever employed here). I've argued that it needs replaced for 2 years due to intermittent hardware issues from the strike. I absolutely can't get management to care because it hasn't failed yet (& taken all their data with it). It's been 6 months since that server could even run backup software to copy their critical business data to the NAS, a tape drive, or even a darn external hard drive without errors... You'd think someone else would care, but apparently not.... & the day it fails I'll most likely loose my job as they will blame everything on me....
No, I'm not bitter... Why would I be bitter...?
btw, the IT market here where I live is absolutely horrible... If I could find another job, I'd have long since left and let some other poor smuck deal with this... & sadly for me, I have no nest egg to move elsewhere where their are more (& hopefully better) jobs.
The ones running the show don't care which person wins the role as president... They control both parties... They have for some time as well. It's one of the reasons the two party system is now so entrenched... If you look back 80 years, we had as many as 8 influential parties in the US... Then right around the time of WW1 we polarized into two main parties and we've never gone back to having real contenders from third parties.
It is only really for 'third world' countries... One deal however was inked for a large US school district, however that has been the only exception...
The only comment I'll make here (as I support your arguments in general), is that I happen to work for a school with one of these so-called 'non-existent' site licenses (which is how it refers to itself) for office 2k3. You can in fact get them in the education realm at least and probably other places as well.
Point #2 I have to interject on... Not all of us like/want to code in any way shape or form... The PC & the software that runs it is a tool... I'm fine with configurable tools, but I'm not reprogramming my tools...
This is not in support of MS really, but I've never had to be a programmer to use my PC with windows... Maybe I'm 'lucky', but installing a new piece of software or using a menu to configure things is far easier & less time consuming than some of the things I've had to do setting up Linux systems... God forbid I'm not a programmer & need to figure out why 'X' doesn't work in Linux...
Like at work how the usual install of the printing system fails to detect the network HP printers in the building... Why? Who knows... My research turned up an HP linux module that handles all the HP network printer models we have, yet it doesn't work and getting support from either ubuntu or the module people lead no where and took weeks... I kept being told to look at the code and figure our for myself why the precompiled version in ubuntu wasn't working...
For windows I'd call up HP if I had the same issue, though I never have had such a problem with the windows PC's... Calling them if need be up to talking to an engineer who could help out with the issue... But it would be solved and not by me having to learn how someone else coded a device I had no part in...
That said I use both windows and linux PC's, both at work and at home.
Since the focus is on schools & I'm a sysadmin for a school, let me tell you one thing:
My focus is on simple, because I have 500 users including staff & zero help. I do it all... troubleshooting all the hardware in the building (printers, desktops, copiers, etc), managing the servers (file, print, email, SIS, etc), handling supplies (toner, ink, paper, speakers, etc), and odds & ends (CAO wants a presentation done, state wants report on 'X', etc). On top of that is looking at upgrading old software and technologies, looking at investing in new technologies, handling purchasing of all technology, and implementing both of new and updated items. The pay isn't so great either...
I'm really three, four, or even six jobs rolled into one, because they have no clue what's really going on...
I was recently looking into a place that would take my businesses waste & a google search for my state & PC recycling turned up agreenspan which is on that list. They in particular told me they use outside auditors to verify the recycling process... They weren't very expensive either for ~15 printers & 30 towers they only wanted ~$400. Considering they are driving 100 odd miles to come pick them up from us that is cheap.
Personally I get handed software as the network admin for a charter school district and told this will be new software used immediately by all staff, sans training, testing, or any prior knowledge.
I doubt I'm at the only place where this happens...
While I don't really think I want to work with you... I've been a network admin for going on 4 years now, with another year and a half of consulting before that. On the other hand I never finished my Bachelors degree (ran out of loan money initially after 3.5 years) and later went back for my associates, so I'd have some piece of paper to wave around. If your company was willing to help relocate me I don't care where you are either...
That said... DBA and network admin jobs or more their entry level equivalents are all gone these days. I did consulting to get my foot in the door to getting a admin gig, as tech support and the other methods weren't working out. If no one ever has a way to gain experience (without having to spend alot of personal money to train outside of a job doing 'X'), then of course you'll have trouble finding non-entry level people... Heck I got lucky that my predecessor left and I'd worked consulting for this place before they invited me on when he did since I already new the system. Then again I'm a 1 man IT department for a 400 user facility. I'm it for IT here. I'm the CIO, the network admin, and the tech grunt to name just a few hats I wear... So I don't know how 'lucky' I should say I am to have this job... Have I mentioned I don't get paid well either...?
What do you see being on this test of yours...? IT has so many sub categories I think you may find we'd either need alot of specific associations or a very general test... I'm a network admin/network engineer myself, but I can't program myself out of a paper bag without some reference materials... I don't need to program more than once or twice a year, a programming oriented test would discount me automatically...
My own experience from a 'rural big city' (600k people, 4th largest city in PA) was that I made $11/hour doing retail sales during college, $14/hour doing phone support at ones point to... Now as a network admin with 2.5 years of experience specifically in this job and having spent nearly 70k on my college degree... I expect enough to live on and pay back those loans. Doing so requires a minimum of $40k/year here. If I can't afford to live on the wage I make what the heck am I expected to do...?
Having worked with such systems I'd have to say that while they may not be a 'hard coded' table within the program (Though it's actually not to hard to think it is), It could well be a flat file sitting on the piece of big iron that runs everything & is only accessible through programs on the same machine... Their may even be a program that allows you to change such a file... But I'm going to guess it has hard coded limits and such changes would probably break those limits...
Anyways you also forgot they need to track pay as usual, while tracking new minimum wage pay (& overtime), so they can switch back afterward & then calculate the pay difference to reimburse employees.
Having worked with COBOL for 4 years (I stopped dealing with COBOL & CICS back in 2000), I can say that likely their is no 'database' or 'tables', instead you have a series of flat files the interconnected programs use. This was the way the big iron used at the banks & insurance companies I helped did things... Because they had always done things that way & it 'just worked'. Theyed keep one or two programmers on staff to update 'modules' (sub-programs) used for the often changing legal considerations of things like payroll. These guys usually had no idea what the main program itself looked like outside of sheets laying out the required input fields it would take from their sub-programs... It was usually quite a mess...
If the popular vote actually determined the winner of the presidential election (rather than the electoral college) you might have a point.
You may remember the first time GW was voted in their was a good bit of chaos over the fact that he'd won the electoral college, but not the popular vote (until Florida recounted)... The first time it had ever happened, but they made sure to fix that so the masses wouldn't have to know their votes are pointless....
My ex's isn't as distant as one might think... She broke up with me because I was 'to good for her', but she wants me around often enough that I still know what's going on.
Her kids are currently 5 & 8, she's been using those sorts of systems their entire lifetimes. Length varies, though usually they prove impossible to keep in punishment of any sort. Total time between initial behavior issue and final punishment (with the stages in between) is probably near 15 minutes at a guess. Even when we were engaged (we never got married for aforementioned reason) I was never allowed to discipline her kids. And o my first step would never be corporal punishment even if I had been allowed to do that. So I'm not as aware of how long the process is even though I've seen it a number of times in use. Timeouts though are her primary method of enforcement and it utterly fails, I can't recall an instance when it's actually worked in the three years I've been around.
I have mentioned I think parental training is becoming a must for parents though, if they have the training then they will know how to use the discipline tools they have...
As for the rest...
Right now organizations enforce they very same 'gray area' as you call it on parents. Holding a school to it is incredibly easier than holding each parent accountable like that. As is every school employee is mandated by law to be a reporter on abuse, we are required yearly to attend training about what to watch for and are in a great position to know exactly what the limits between 'tool' & 'abuse' are.
It's also not a 'minority', it's a growing epidemic... Let me put it this way... 3 administrators are doctoral level child psychologists. We know all the techniques to 'manage' & 'redirect' kids. Not one of them works on are growing number of problem cases. Part of the problem with these kids is that they respect no one, they care about no ones opinion, and they are completely selfish... Usually you also find that their parents are the same way. All three psychologists agree with me, if we had the option of corporal punishment while they may not respect us, they may at least fear our reprisal and that's something we can work with.
Right now we have chaos and no one has any ideas left for what to do... Nothing seems to work except either A) kicking them out of school (not possible in 90% of cases) or B) providing a punishment sufficient that they don't want it. Time outs and other cooperative measures fail, talking to the kids fails, technique after technique fails. We are out of other tools. Do you want your kids going to a school that can't do anything to stop one student from beating on another? Or where the teachers and staff are abused by students? We have a teacher turnover rate over 50% mostly due to student behavior and the stress it puts on teachers.
And in case you'd like to point out drugging up our kids... Frankly a large number of them are on psychiatrist scripted drugs... It does nothing, more so when half the parents can't be bothered to pick up prescriptions and drugs for their kids and half because the drugs their given just don't work!
I guess I'm from a fairly long line of people where a quick bit of discipline enforced by rigid punishments worked. Always. Then again besides my parents I studied under my uncle who was a marine special forces hand to hand specialist who ran a dojo when he was discharged (he has diabetes, so was seen as unfit for active duty, something he was not happy about).
Corporal punishment though comes with the same sort of warnings, with all the same chances to correct behavior. However Where I live before people got all up in arms over corporal punishment as child abuse (& only child abuse), it didn't have to happen just when you got home. I was given a paddling a time or two in a parking lot.
My ex uses time out and similar things... she can't get her kid to stay in their room or even a corner unless she's standing their keeping him form leaving. He doesn't calm down he just whines and pouts... She can't take more than 30 minutes of this before she gives up in utter frustration...
Their is a local program in my area called mothers for mothers (apparently fathers don't matter to them) which links young mothers with older mothers (with grown kids) and acts as a support network. It works wonders when people use it, however some of the most needy for it never hear about it and they also lack alot of older moms for the program. If something similar was taken in as a government agency it could be done much better in terms of recognition and participation. I'd say that would do wonders toward fixing them problems with parents...
I can speak a bit on wages for schools & vacation time...
Salaried positions at schools (Teachers, most admins, etc) are what is known as 'prorated', they don't seriously get any more vacation that you, their salary is just spread out to cover over the fact that they don't work those days, making it look like they get paid for them.
I should also note that not all teachers get paid for the summer (It varies by district) If they don't get paid over the summer they make more during the year (less prorating, so more pay per paycheck). Would you want to have to find a part time job each summer that you can live on? Many teachers were I work need one to get by over the summer 'break'.
That's just wrong. Parents love their children. They "care" about them. The problem is that the parents need education. Why aren't they coming? The same reason the ones that showed up didn't know why you wanted them there, only they were brave enough to blow you off. Figure out why the parents don't understand, and fix that. Just complaining "parents don't care" is both false and counter-productive."
They don't give a rats ass about their kids... The ones who did show up & didn't understand why we wanted to talk to them said things like "I don't care how or what you teach them, that's not my job it's yours!" & "Why do I have to be here?!? I have better things to do than to hear about what my kids are learning! I'm not involved in that!" We are their daycare for their revenue stream (we get more and more kids of parents who don't have jobs & live off of the state... by having more kids from unprotected sex). This is from a city of ~600,000 people, so it's not even that large compared to plenty of other cities...
We as a school have continually tried to get greater parental involvement in education and we have a core of very involved parents, but most don't even read the notes sent home every Friday & that we implemented a plan that they were meant to be signed off on by the parent and returned on the next school day. Roughly 1/3rd of parents complied and that was to sign their name on part of the school notices and simply send them back with their kids....
I've suggested before we need parental education (& I'm not the only one), but neither the government nor the school boards seem interested in doing that...
BTW I work for a charter school, kids don't even have to go here... In fact it takes more effort on the part of parents to send their kids here. The idea for the charter school is that we take in the kids regularly left behind in public schools and give them a better chance at success. Instead we get more and more parents who bring kids that were kicked out of public schools here & the parents decide we are another daycare after their undisciplined brats get kicked out of regular schools...
Ok first, I'm not a damn teacher... I work in a school, and frankly your not a teacher either (most likely)...
When a kid can seriously injure and in fact hospitalize (broken wrist deflecting keyboard) a teacher @ 6 years old then I damn well do equate the to... Not a thing can be done to that kid and frankly I'm not paying for his meds to sedate him like you suggest, his mom as you may be able to guess is a welfare case... Though funny thing is a few staff members are aunts and uncles to him, you'd think they could do something but nope... He spent less than 25% of his time in class this entire last year, but was never punished for anything because he couldn't care less about any non-physical punishment (another classmate slapped him once and it was the only time I'd ever seen him shut up). This classroom is next to my office, so I got front row seats at how effective the 'proper behavioral techiques' were... which is not at all... corporal punishment is effective on the other hand and after two years here I'm all for it.
btw psychologists can't medicate anyone. That would be psychiatrists (aka med school 3 classes on psychology separating them from general practitioners). I've had twice as many psych classes as them minoring in it (I majored in CIS, and minored in psychology).
Now welcome to the real world, were corporal punishment does correct bad behavior and all the kind shit in the world won't ever make those kids care while they abuse adults and no one does shit. 'Because their kids', it's the excuse for everything... I even got to the point were I was talking about the school with my parents and I started to say 'because their kids' and my parents interrupted and promptly said how they'd do things right and provide some discipline. They weren't talking about fancy behavioral techniques I can assure you... Go take your happy 'no one should ever hurt each other' shit elsewhere, cause it's a fancy illusion. We are animals, and among themselves they establish hierarchies based on violence, lack of response on their level leads to more bad behavior because it's not a response they can deal with in their conceptualization of the world.
If you want to prove me wrong come here, I'll let you have all the fun you want as the kids abuse you...
I had actual corporal punishment as a child. It was not physical abuse. I hardly look back on it as good, but I know I deserved it. & frankly it works. I've seen these 'alternatives' and they don't do jack unless the kid is willing to cooperate. Problems with discipline are specifically uncooperative ones... Hence they fail...
The problem with us having done away with it is that we as humans only certain things motivate us to change behavior... Would you like to guess how many of those ways are now 'abuse' because people used them wrong? This is like throwing away knives entirely because people use them wrong. The idea is not to through away the tool, but to make sure people know how to properly use it & what the consequences are when it's used wrong.
I didn't take driver's ed & no I've yet to have kids... Instead the only woman I've ever wanted to marry came with two before I meet her...
& Your example shows that few people have any clue what corporal punishment is. Corporal Punishment is after the fact and isn't done in anger... Plenty of us who had actual corporal punishment growing up have heard the old 'this will hurt me more than you' lines because it's true... Not that we believe it as kids, but when controlled violence is used not in anger but as a direct punishment to bad behavior it's 'corporal punishment'. If as a parent it doesn't hurt you to have to resort to such a thing then something is wrong with you. But as humans we simply don't respect someone who can't back up a command. Going to your room doesn't help when you can't keep the kid from coming back out as soon as you leave them there... 'timeout' is the funniest thing I've ever seen... It's reminiscent of the playground 'invisible chair' punishment that kids laughed off when I was a kid... I can keep going, but my minor was in psychology... I know perfectly well most of those don't work. Knowing a painful experience awaits them for bad behavior plan & simple works... Though you have to know how to use it for it to be effective...
& I think you need to meet the parents of today... They are 18 year old moms barely out of school themselves who may or may not have a support system (grandparents, other relatives) to back them up... They don't meet with other parents... Hell they probably still go out on dates with every bad boy they can find for that matter... & by the time their kid enters school they will most likely have 1-2 brothers and sisters from at least as many different daddies with the 'family' on welfare... Even those that do stay together have all sorts of issues and no clue how to be parents... It leads to alot of things like these little girls leaving their kids at home by themselves or worse forms of neglect & abuse... The only reason I say it needs to be government mandated is otherwise these kids would never got to it... And the whole thing will repeat another generation...
Parents are the first & most important role models in a childs life... This is why everyone keeps saying 'get the parents involved!'. Schools are 2nd or third down in effectiveness, church/religion vies for those spots with school. Usually though the trend has been for parents to dismiss school as daycare and what we see is a direct result of that. Kids take in the impression of school their parents (as primary role models) give them which is 'it doesn't matter' & so act as if it doesn't matter. Schools often try very hard to reverse this, but not every child will respond to their efforts... But if the parents would reverse their attitude it could have a huge effect on the kids!
To get an idea how bad the level of apathy is, my school did a parent/teacher conference twice last year with parents... The attendance rate of parents to either meeting was 60% and we gave free food and drinks offered multiple days over a wide range of time (teachers were having 12 hour days here), and any other incentives we could think of... Not one of them lives more than 5 miles away, so no one could complain of distance from the school... Even of the parents that did come, only maybe half even understood why we wanted to talk to them and let them know why they are so important to the process of learning for their kids... Parents just don't care is the bottom line. They don't care how their kids will be in the future, they live for themselves and to hell with their kids. Oh sure, some will say they are doing it all for their kids... But when you look they are doing it for that new car out in the driveway, while their kids come to school in threadbare clothes.
Having seen the numbers of kids who are considered 'special ed' (or more specifically as needing special attention and qualifying for certain programs at the state & federal levels) for being 'emotionally troubled' roughly 1/5th of the entire student body where I work is in that block...
Of course I don't agree with the state coddling these kids either... Most don't understand life is hard, few peoples families are perfect... Some of these kids come from 'normal' homes, some of these don't... But either way they are given special attention and lax enforcement of the rules... In most cases I think this is the opposite of what they need, these kids tend to need more rigid rules to be enforced and more discipline... They learn nothing because they roam the school most days refusing to do anything...
Most of the times you see parents hitting kids it's not an attempt at discipline and are the times it shouldn't happen. Corporal Punishment is not randomly swatting your kids around. That most parents don't understand what discipline is or how to use it only suggests more to me that we need state mandated parent training, probably once a year until their kids are 18. Why? Because in the old days parents would hang around with other parents and naturally learn what works when raising kids. These days we've lost all of that. People are so dissociated with one another their is no working support mechanism... & it shows.
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I think you hit the real reason why network admins get bitter... Incompetent (in IT/networking) business management and (typically) low budgets. I know they are the reason why I get bitter at my users...
Hence "Yes I'd love to fix 'problem X', however management has promised three times to give me what we need to fix that and they never come through.", response "But you should be able to fix X anyways! Your good with those server thingies!" The actually reason doesn't much matter, but I've had this very talk three times today... 'Problem X' requires a File server that was not struck by lightning 3 years ago when it was brand new (& before I was ever employed here). I've argued that it needs replaced for 2 years due to intermittent hardware issues from the strike. I absolutely can't get management to care because it hasn't failed yet (& taken all their data with it). It's been 6 months since that server could even run backup software to copy their critical business data to the NAS, a tape drive, or even a darn external hard drive without errors... You'd think someone else would care, but apparently not.... & the day it fails I'll most likely loose my job as they will blame everything on me....
No, I'm not bitter... Why would I be bitter...?
btw, the IT market here where I live is absolutely horrible... If I could find another job, I'd have long since left and let some other poor smuck deal with this... & sadly for me, I have no nest egg to move elsewhere where their are more (& hopefully better) jobs.
The ones running the show don't care which person wins the role as president... They control both parties... They have for some time as well. It's one of the reasons the two party system is now so entrenched... If you look back 80 years, we had as many as 8 influential parties in the US... Then right around the time of WW1 we polarized into two main parties and we've never gone back to having real contenders from third parties.
It is only really for 'third world' countries... One deal however was inked for a large US school district, however that has been the only exception...
The only comment I'll make here (as I support your arguments in general), is that I happen to work for a school with one of these so-called 'non-existent' site licenses (which is how it refers to itself) for office 2k3. You can in fact get them in the education realm at least and probably other places as well.
Point #2 I have to interject on... Not all of us like/want to code in any way shape or form... The PC & the software that runs it is a tool... I'm fine with configurable tools, but I'm not reprogramming my tools...
This is not in support of MS really, but I've never had to be a programmer to use my PC with windows... Maybe I'm 'lucky', but installing a new piece of software or using a menu to configure things is far easier & less time consuming than some of the things I've had to do setting up Linux systems... God forbid I'm not a programmer & need to figure out why 'X' doesn't work in Linux...
Like at work how the usual install of the printing system fails to detect the network HP printers in the building... Why? Who knows... My research turned up an HP linux module that handles all the HP network printer models we have, yet it doesn't work and getting support from either ubuntu or the module people lead no where and took weeks... I kept being told to look at the code and figure our for myself why the precompiled version in ubuntu wasn't working...
For windows I'd call up HP if I had the same issue, though I never have had such a problem with the windows PC's... Calling them if need be up to talking to an engineer who could help out with the issue... But it would be solved and not by me having to learn how someone else coded a device I had no part in...
That said I use both windows and linux PC's, both at work and at home.
Since the focus is on schools & I'm a sysadmin for a school, let me tell you one thing:
My focus is on simple, because I have 500 users including staff & zero help. I do it all... troubleshooting all the hardware in the building (printers, desktops, copiers, etc), managing the servers (file, print, email, SIS, etc), handling supplies (toner, ink, paper, speakers, etc), and odds & ends (CAO wants a presentation done, state wants report on 'X', etc). On top of that is looking at upgrading old software and technologies, looking at investing in new technologies, handling purchasing of all technology, and implementing both of new and updated items. The pay isn't so great either...
I'm really three, four, or even six jobs rolled into one, because they have no clue what's really going on...
I was recently looking into a place that would take my businesses waste & a google search for my state & PC recycling turned up agreenspan which is on that list. They in particular told me they use outside auditors to verify the recycling process... They weren't very expensive either for ~15 printers & 30 towers they only wanted ~$400. Considering they are driving 100 odd miles to come pick them up from us that is cheap.
Personally I get handed software as the network admin for a charter school district and told this will be new software used immediately by all staff, sans training, testing, or any prior knowledge.
I doubt I'm at the only place where this happens...
While I don't really think I want to work with you... I've been a network admin for going on 4 years now, with another year and a half of consulting before that. On the other hand I never finished my Bachelors degree (ran out of loan money initially after 3.5 years) and later went back for my associates, so I'd have some piece of paper to wave around. If your company was willing to help relocate me I don't care where you are either...
That said... DBA and network admin jobs or more their entry level equivalents are all gone these days. I did consulting to get my foot in the door to getting a admin gig, as tech support and the other methods weren't working out. If no one ever has a way to gain experience (without having to spend alot of personal money to train outside of a job doing 'X'), then of course you'll have trouble finding non-entry level people... Heck I got lucky that my predecessor left and I'd worked consulting for this place before they invited me on when he did since I already new the system. Then again I'm a 1 man IT department for a 400 user facility. I'm it for IT here. I'm the CIO, the network admin, and the tech grunt to name just a few hats I wear... So I don't know how 'lucky' I should say I am to have this job... Have I mentioned I don't get paid well either...?
I'm coming in late on this, but...
What do you see being on this test of yours...? IT has so many sub categories I think you may find we'd either need alot of specific associations or a very general test... I'm a network admin/network engineer myself, but I can't program myself out of a paper bag without some reference materials... I don't need to program more than once or twice a year, a programming oriented test would discount me automatically...
My own experience from a 'rural big city' (600k people, 4th largest city in PA) was that I made $11/hour doing retail sales during college, $14/hour doing phone support at ones point to... Now as a network admin with 2.5 years of experience specifically in this job and having spent nearly 70k on my college degree... I expect enough to live on and pay back those loans. Doing so requires a minimum of $40k/year here. If I can't afford to live on the wage I make what the heck am I expected to do...?
Having worked with such systems I'd have to say that while they may not be a 'hard coded' table within the program (Though it's actually not to hard to think it is), It could well be a flat file sitting on the piece of big iron that runs everything & is only accessible through programs on the same machine... Their may even be a program that allows you to change such a file... But I'm going to guess it has hard coded limits and such changes would probably break those limits...
Anyways you also forgot they need to track pay as usual, while tracking new minimum wage pay (& overtime), so they can switch back afterward & then calculate the pay difference to reimburse employees.
Having worked with COBOL for 4 years (I stopped dealing with COBOL & CICS back in 2000), I can say that likely their is no 'database' or 'tables', instead you have a series of flat files the interconnected programs use. This was the way the big iron used at the banks & insurance companies I helped did things... Because they had always done things that way & it 'just worked'. Theyed keep one or two programmers on staff to update 'modules' (sub-programs) used for the often changing legal considerations of things like payroll. These guys usually had no idea what the main program itself looked like outside of sheets laying out the required input fields it would take from their sub-programs... It was usually quite a mess...
If the popular vote actually determined the winner of the presidential election (rather than the electoral college) you might have a point.
You may remember the first time GW was voted in their was a good bit of chaos over the fact that he'd won the electoral college, but not the popular vote (until Florida recounted)... The first time it had ever happened, but they made sure to fix that so the masses wouldn't have to know their votes are pointless....
My ex's isn't as distant as one might think... She broke up with me because I was 'to good for her', but she wants me around often enough that I still know what's going on.
Her kids are currently 5 & 8, she's been using those sorts of systems their entire lifetimes. Length varies, though usually they prove impossible to keep in punishment of any sort. Total time between initial behavior issue and final punishment (with the stages in between) is probably near 15 minutes at a guess. Even when we were engaged (we never got married for aforementioned reason) I was never allowed to discipline her kids. And o my first step would never be corporal punishment even if I had been allowed to do that. So I'm not as aware of how long the process is even though I've seen it a number of times in use. Timeouts though are her primary method of enforcement and it utterly fails, I can't recall an instance when it's actually worked in the three years I've been around.
I have mentioned I think parental training is becoming a must for parents though, if they have the training then they will know how to use the discipline tools they have...
As for the rest...
Right now organizations enforce they very same 'gray area' as you call it on parents. Holding a school to it is incredibly easier than holding each parent accountable like that. As is every school employee is mandated by law to be a reporter on abuse, we are required yearly to attend training about what to watch for and are in a great position to know exactly what the limits between 'tool' & 'abuse' are.
It's also not a 'minority', it's a growing epidemic... Let me put it this way... 3 administrators are doctoral level child psychologists. We know all the techniques to 'manage' & 'redirect' kids. Not one of them works on are growing number of problem cases. Part of the problem with these kids is that they respect no one, they care about no ones opinion, and they are completely selfish... Usually you also find that their parents are the same way. All three psychologists agree with me, if we had the option of corporal punishment while they may not respect us, they may at least fear our reprisal and that's something we can work with.
Right now we have chaos and no one has any ideas left for what to do... Nothing seems to work except either A) kicking them out of school (not possible in 90% of cases) or B) providing a punishment sufficient that they don't want it. Time outs and other cooperative measures fail, talking to the kids fails, technique after technique fails. We are out of other tools. Do you want your kids going to a school that can't do anything to stop one student from beating on another? Or where the teachers and staff are abused by students? We have a teacher turnover rate over 50% mostly due to student behavior and the stress it puts on teachers.
And in case you'd like to point out drugging up our kids... Frankly a large number of them are on psychiatrist scripted drugs... It does nothing, more so when half the parents can't be bothered to pick up prescriptions and drugs for their kids and half because the drugs their given just don't work!
I guess I'm from a fairly long line of people where a quick bit of discipline enforced by rigid punishments worked. Always. Then again besides my parents I studied under my uncle who was a marine special forces hand to hand specialist who ran a dojo when he was discharged (he has diabetes, so was seen as unfit for active duty, something he was not happy about).
Corporal punishment though comes with the same sort of warnings, with all the same chances to correct behavior. However Where I live before people got all up in arms over corporal punishment as child abuse (& only child abuse), it didn't have to happen just when you got home. I was given a paddling a time or two in a parking lot.
My ex uses time out and similar things... she can't get her kid to stay in their room or even a corner unless she's standing their keeping him form leaving. He doesn't calm down he just whines and pouts... She can't take more than 30 minutes of this before she gives up in utter frustration...
Their is a local program in my area called mothers for mothers (apparently fathers don't matter to them) which links young mothers with older mothers (with grown kids) and acts as a support network. It works wonders when people use it, however some of the most needy for it never hear about it and they also lack alot of older moms for the program. If something similar was taken in as a government agency it could be done much better in terms of recognition and participation. I'd say that would do wonders toward fixing them problems with parents...
I can speak a bit on wages for schools & vacation time...
Salaried positions at schools (Teachers, most admins, etc) are what is known as 'prorated', they don't seriously get any more vacation that you, their salary is just spread out to cover over the fact that they don't work those days, making it look like they get paid for them.
I should also note that not all teachers get paid for the summer (It varies by district) If they don't get paid over the summer they make more during the year (less prorating, so more pay per paycheck). Would you want to have to find a part time job each summer that you can live on? Many teachers were I work need one to get by over the summer 'break'.
"Parents just don't care is the bottom line.
That's just wrong. Parents love their children. They "care" about them. The problem is that the parents need education. Why aren't they coming? The same reason the ones that showed up didn't know why you wanted them there, only they were brave enough to blow you off. Figure out why the parents don't understand, and fix that. Just complaining "parents don't care" is both false and counter-productive."
They don't give a rats ass about their kids... The ones who did show up & didn't understand why we wanted to talk to them said things like "I don't care how or what you teach them, that's not my job it's yours!" & "Why do I have to be here?!? I have better things to do than to hear about what my kids are learning! I'm not involved in that!" We are their daycare for their revenue stream (we get more and more kids of parents who don't have jobs & live off of the state... by having more kids from unprotected sex). This is from a city of ~600,000 people, so it's not even that large compared to plenty of other cities...
We as a school have continually tried to get greater parental involvement in education and we have a core of very involved parents, but most don't even read the notes sent home every Friday & that we implemented a plan that they were meant to be signed off on by the parent and returned on the next school day. Roughly 1/3rd of parents complied and that was to sign their name on part of the school notices and simply send them back with their kids....
I've suggested before we need parental education (& I'm not the only one), but neither the government nor the school boards seem interested in doing that...
BTW I work for a charter school, kids don't even have to go here... In fact it takes more effort on the part of parents to send their kids here. The idea for the charter school is that we take in the kids regularly left behind in public schools and give them a better chance at success. Instead we get more and more parents who bring kids that were kicked out of public schools here & the parents decide we are another daycare after their undisciplined brats get kicked out of regular schools...
Ok first, I'm not a damn teacher... I work in a school, and frankly your not a teacher either (most likely)...
When a kid can seriously injure and in fact hospitalize (broken wrist deflecting keyboard) a teacher @ 6 years old then I damn well do equate the to... Not a thing can be done to that kid and frankly I'm not paying for his meds to sedate him like you suggest, his mom as you may be able to guess is a welfare case... Though funny thing is a few staff members are aunts and uncles to him, you'd think they could do something but nope... He spent less than 25% of his time in class this entire last year, but was never punished for anything because he couldn't care less about any non-physical punishment (another classmate slapped him once and it was the only time I'd ever seen him shut up). This classroom is next to my office, so I got front row seats at how effective the 'proper behavioral techiques' were... which is not at all... corporal punishment is effective on the other hand and after two years here I'm all for it.
btw psychologists can't medicate anyone. That would be psychiatrists (aka med school 3 classes on psychology separating them from general practitioners). I've had twice as many psych classes as them minoring in it (I majored in CIS, and minored in psychology).
Now welcome to the real world, were corporal punishment does correct bad behavior and all the kind shit in the world won't ever make those kids care while they abuse adults and no one does shit. 'Because their kids', it's the excuse for everything... I even got to the point were I was talking about the school with my parents and I started to say 'because their kids' and my parents interrupted and promptly said how they'd do things right and provide some discipline. They weren't talking about fancy behavioral techniques I can assure you... Go take your happy 'no one should ever hurt each other' shit elsewhere, cause it's a fancy illusion. We are animals, and among themselves they establish hierarchies based on violence, lack of response on their level leads to more bad behavior because it's not a response they can deal with in their conceptualization of the world.
If you want to prove me wrong come here, I'll let you have all the fun you want as the kids abuse you...
I had actual corporal punishment as a child. It was not physical abuse. I hardly look back on it as good, but I know I deserved it. & frankly it works. I've seen these 'alternatives' and they don't do jack unless the kid is willing to cooperate. Problems with discipline are specifically uncooperative ones... Hence they fail...
The problem with us having done away with it is that we as humans only certain things motivate us to change behavior... Would you like to guess how many of those ways are now 'abuse' because people used them wrong? This is like throwing away knives entirely because people use them wrong. The idea is not to through away the tool, but to make sure people know how to properly use it & what the consequences are when it's used wrong.
I didn't take driver's ed & no I've yet to have kids... Instead the only woman I've ever wanted to marry came with two before I meet her...
& Your example shows that few people have any clue what corporal punishment is. Corporal Punishment is after the fact and isn't done in anger... Plenty of us who had actual corporal punishment growing up have heard the old 'this will hurt me more than you' lines because it's true... Not that we believe it as kids, but when controlled violence is used not in anger but as a direct punishment to bad behavior it's 'corporal punishment'. If as a parent it doesn't hurt you to have to resort to such a thing then something is wrong with you. But as humans we simply don't respect someone who can't back up a command. Going to your room doesn't help when you can't keep the kid from coming back out as soon as you leave them there... 'timeout' is the funniest thing I've ever seen... It's reminiscent of the playground 'invisible chair' punishment that kids laughed off when I was a kid... I can keep going, but my minor was in psychology... I know perfectly well most of those don't work. Knowing a painful experience awaits them for bad behavior plan & simple works... Though you have to know how to use it for it to be effective...
& I think you need to meet the parents of today... They are 18 year old moms barely out of school themselves who may or may not have a support system (grandparents, other relatives) to back them up... They don't meet with other parents... Hell they probably still go out on dates with every bad boy they can find for that matter... & by the time their kid enters school they will most likely have 1-2 brothers and sisters from at least as many different daddies with the 'family' on welfare... Even those that do stay together have all sorts of issues and no clue how to be parents... It leads to alot of things like these little girls leaving their kids at home by themselves or worse forms of neglect & abuse... The only reason I say it needs to be government mandated is otherwise these kids would never got to it... And the whole thing will repeat another generation...
Parents are the first & most important role models in a childs life... This is why everyone keeps saying 'get the parents involved!'. Schools are 2nd or third down in effectiveness, church/religion vies for those spots with school. Usually though the trend has been for parents to dismiss school as daycare and what we see is a direct result of that. Kids take in the impression of school their parents (as primary role models) give them which is 'it doesn't matter' & so act as if it doesn't matter. Schools often try very hard to reverse this, but not every child will respond to their efforts... But if the parents would reverse their attitude it could have a huge effect on the kids!
To get an idea how bad the level of apathy is, my school did a parent/teacher conference twice last year with parents... The attendance rate of parents to either meeting was 60% and we gave free food and drinks offered multiple days over a wide range of time (teachers were having 12 hour days here), and any other incentives we could think of... Not one of them lives more than 5 miles away, so no one could complain of distance from the school... Even of the parents that did come, only maybe half even understood why we wanted to talk to them and let them know why they are so important to the process of learning for their kids... Parents just don't care is the bottom line. They don't care how their kids will be in the future, they live for themselves and to hell with their kids. Oh sure, some will say they are doing it all for their kids... But when you look they are doing it for that new car out in the driveway, while their kids come to school in threadbare clothes.
Having seen the numbers of kids who are considered 'special ed' (or more specifically as needing special attention and qualifying for certain programs at the state & federal levels) for being 'emotionally troubled' roughly 1/5th of the entire student body where I work is in that block...
Of course I don't agree with the state coddling these kids either... Most don't understand life is hard, few peoples families are perfect... Some of these kids come from 'normal' homes, some of these don't... But either way they are given special attention and lax enforcement of the rules... In most cases I think this is the opposite of what they need, these kids tend to need more rigid rules to be enforced and more discipline... They learn nothing because they roam the school most days refusing to do anything...
Most of the times you see parents hitting kids it's not an attempt at discipline and are the times it shouldn't happen. Corporal Punishment is not randomly swatting your kids around. That most parents don't understand what discipline is or how to use it only suggests more to me that we need state mandated parent training, probably once a year until their kids are 18. Why? Because in the old days parents would hang around with other parents and naturally learn what works when raising kids. These days we've lost all of that. People are so dissociated with one another their is no working support mechanism... & it shows.