are the product of a crazy, violent society.

was addicted to wrestling on TV. He'd watch that nonsense all night long and come to school the next day and try out some new moves on his classmates. And once we helped his parents realize what was going on, they took the TV wrestling shows away and he turned out to be a really nice kid.

but it is sad when a teacher is afraid to defend themselves to the point of letting a child break their ankle and hurt their knee.

I'm describing the situation, not excusing it.

Many things play into this:

The trans-generational hopelessness of inner-city life
The cultural cultivation of rage as a chronic emotional state
The glorification of violence in popular entertainment
Realistic shoot-em-up video games that lower inhibitions
Increasing stress due to economic factors

and lots more.

n/t

about the specifics before I rained down judgment on anyone.

But she could spot problem parents at 50 yards.

A friend of mine opened a wine-tasting room in her gallery so that no one under 21 could walk thru the door.

"The child’s parents say the allegations are ridiculous"

"The child’s parents say their son is now on medication and getting help."

Okey-dokey.

When I was a kid, my parents believed the reports of other adults regarding my behavior-- teachers in particular. The same was true for my friends.

Nowadays, it seems like every teachers can't tell parents about their child's bad behavior without this reflexive denial on behalf of their little angel.

during parent-teacher conferences, we heard about it at home.

The one time I misbehaved in school enough to get sent to the "bad chair" (which faced a corner of the classroom), I didn't tell my parents, because I knew I'd get extra time at home.

"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect
their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently
inhabit taverns and have no self control."
Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb1
"New" menace to society

In 1898, newspapers in England warned of the menace of "hooligans" and of a "dramatic increase in disorderly behaviour". The Times reported "organised terrorism in the streets".2 In every decade of the 20th century there were similar media panics.

Meanwhile, at the start of the 21st century, politicians have (once again) revived and stoked public fears of juvenile misbehaviour. A new Anti-Social Behaviour Act has given British authorities extraordinary liberty-eroding powers.

Mainstream journalists often parrot government press releases. Then, for "balance", they question whether or not governments should interfere in how parents raise children (a side issue at best). They tend not to question the belief that there is some kind of new, unique, escalating menace which requires urgent action.

They don't question the idea that this is part of a distinctly modern malaise – so unlike the good old days, when young people had more respect...
A time of lawlessness & disrespect

"When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint".
Hesiod, 8th century BC

"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
Plato, 4th Century BC

"The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint... As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
Attributed to Peter the Hermit, AD 12743

In April 1738, the press covered a report from a British Government committee which had been set up to "examine the causes of the present notorious immorality and profaneness."4

In the 1800s, hordes of teens and pre-teens ran wild in American city streets, dodging authorities, "gnawing away at the foundations of society", as a commentator put it. In 1850, New York City recorded more than 200 gang wars fought largely by adolescent boys.5
The Golden Age

"Juvenile delinquency has increased at an alarming rate and is eating at the heart of America"
US juvenile court judge, 19466

In 1992 the Wall Street Journal published two lists, ostensibly of the biggest problems in schools in 1940 and 1990 ("as identified by teachers&quot . The 1940 problems were listed as: talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, improper clothing and littering. The 1990 problems were: pregnancy, suicide, drugs, alcohol, rape, robbery and assault.

By the time the Journal printed the lists, they'd appeared in hundreds of media publications, books and political speeches. In 1994, a Yale professor demonstrated that the "1990" list was from a 1975 survey in which principals (not teachers) were asked about crimes (not general problems). The sociologist, Barry Glassner, points out that when teachers have been asked about problems in schools, they respond with items such as parent apathy, lack of financial support, absenteeism, fighting and too few textbooks – not rape and robbery.7

But the lists "confirmed" common beliefs – that morals are breaking down, that everything is going to hell, etc.

---------

So we are right on track and nothing much has changed.

"Everyone is out of step but my Johnny" mentality has been with us a very long time.

Julie

who've done that. Maybe not as much as today, I'll grant that, but it certainly happened frequently enough long before that, possibly even from the time of the first parents. My parents were teachers who began their careers fifty years ago and they've dealt with parents like that from the very beginning, NOTHING was the kid's fault. They remember knowing parents like that from their own school days in the forties and fifties, etc., and so on. It's nothing new.

We were raised on the "double the trouble" rule.

Whatever discipline was given by the teacher or the traffic cop we could expect a double dose at home.

If you were actually innocent and tried to show proof then more was added on. They assumed that if we were innocent this time it just means that somebody missed something else we did.

Of course, as with most people who went thru this crap, it never actually improved my behavior in the long run. It just made me resentful & angry for a while, and it never really stopped me from misbehaving, either.....which is sad, because I was usually a good kid.

It's an extreme even worse than the "my child is an angel" syndrome......at least a far greater percentage of those kids still turn out decently(although, of course, Republican wing-nuts will claim that it's the exact opposite even though some of them are guilty of the same thing, or even BOTH problems).

I particularly like the attitude: "You can't hold me responsible because I have kids, etc"

Uh? Children as convenient excuses. Nice.

And sadly, for local news, it does the best job, IMO.

And a little surprised, but it's a smaller market and an unreliable poll that just might have been Freeped!

The city itself is very blue. The congressman is Emanuel Cleaver, who is head of CBC and gave a wonderful speech at the convention. And the suburban area where I live is fairly blue. We've voted for Gore, Kerry and Obama. But the further you get away from the urban core, the redder it gets, especially in Kansas. Missouri is a little better but still has its fair share of wingnuts. Claire McCaskill will probably win the KC area but not in a slam dunk as you would expect because her opponent is such a nut. I live here and can't believe she is not ahead by 30 or 40 points.

I would imagine many metro areas across the country have similar political structures.

from behind. It was like being sacked--didn't see it coming and she got me right in the lower back. I couldn't walk right for quite awhile.

Little kids can be incredibly strong.

They leave class and then leave the building. Pretty scary.

so I've had to teach him not to run at me the way he did when he was a toddler. I actually do it the same way I train puppies - if he grabs my arm too hard or pushes into me I'll make say "ouch" louder than I need to so it sinks in. He's a good boy and empathetic "I'm sorry mommy" etc ...

I am against corporal punishment but teachers should at least be able to hold kids down to restrain them if they are out of control. I'm not sure if they are even able to do that anymore.

I always ask before directing their hands on the pottery wheel, or anything that needs direct guidance.

The child who sandbagged me wasn't even a student of mine, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was about 80 pounds and very stocky. Other adults said she had a habit of doing this, just silently coming up from behind and basically tackling someone with no time to brace yourself. I think the child had other issues going on too.

Lay a finger on a child and you will get fired, even if you are merely restraining them or defending yourself.

But in situations like the one in the OP, many districts don't allow teachers to restrain kids. Where I work, we can, but many of my co-workers are not willing to do so because of their fear of a lawsuit.

It may be a problem in a FEW areas. But this isn't true for the majority of schools and in fact, from all of what I've seen over the years, the opposite extreme is quite a bit more prevalent. Sad, but true.

I don't doubt that Fox News posts legitimate, agenda-less news stories sometimes, and maybe this is one of those articles, but then again maybe it's not. The takeaway seems to be that over-regulation is the real bad guy here (the teacher was afraid of losing his job for defending himself against an aggressive student). I'm sure a lot of people reading this will also be thinking this is what happens when school authorities aren't allowed to use corporal punishment. And maybe that what the 6-year-old really needs is a good swat, not medication, because of course mental illness is something liberals made up to allow people to avoid personal responsibility.

The day they tell us to do that is the day I walk out.

WDAF isn't owned-and-operated by NewsCorp.

A lot of people just don't think when they see stuff like this. They just regurgitate various propaganda pieces fed to them by family, friends, pundits, etc. I've seen it so many times, it's not funny.

I'd hate to have to deal with the crazy, insane, violent youth of today. Did someone put something in the water or something?

it seemed to me that the class of 1979 was a bunch of thugs, and same with the class of 1981. I was class of 1980, and we were a bunch of drunks. Every reunion we pound down the beer and brag about how many kegs we had at our graduation party. The class of 1979 was so bad though, that they hired a bathroom monitor for my senior year to control the hazing. The typical hazing was to put the kids head in the toilet and flush it. Or so I heard - it never happened to me. I saw some other kids get doused in the drinking fountain, and the victim took it pretty well, mostly laughing about it. But on homecoming day, the class of 1979 had a toilet right on the stage in the auditorium and during the "festivities" (in which selected sophomores were usually called on stage to play silly games (I remember one, for example, where we had to carry oranges under our chins, hop across the stage on a pogo stick and then transfer the orange to another sophomore of the opposite sex, without using our hands (again, although I say our, I did not get called up, but I spent much of the day dreading it, especially since my sister was a senior)). Anyway, during the festivities a group of them, rushed the sophomores and grabbed on and dunked him right on the stage. That is, in front of the principal and all the teachers.

We smoke pot,
We drink beer,
We're the class
that's never here!



Peace,

Ghost

Now it seems like you hear about an incident every other week - not to mention the violent bullying and teen suicides - I could go on and on.

And get off my lawn!!!!

I don't believe it. No way in hell.

and, given that he was a teacher, he probably didn't for fear of lawsuits or loss of license, then it's most certainly possible.

that the older generation were convinced that we collectively were totally ill-mannered, disrespectful, and in general no where near as well behaved as they were.

This has been a common theme since the proverbial Adam and Eve.

Read the first couple of chapters of "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder to know that kids beating up teachers goes back a very long way.

However, that said, TV can very much influence behavior. I recall when my oldest was in first grade, the teachers complaining that they'd never had kids doing karate kicks at each other before Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I've gotten into many flame wars here on DU over this topic. But I stand by what I have seen over 30+ years. We are exposing kids to far too much violent media. The evidence is on playgrounds all across America every day.

Another huge problem is that the vast majority of kids have TVs in their bedrooms. And that's been going on for a good quarter century now. My two grown sons are 25 and 29, and I think they were the only kids they knew without their own TV. We were the only family I knew that only had one television set.

My point is that ill behavior on the part of the younger generation has always been a problem, at least according to the older generation. And while it may well be worse these days, violence in schools is not a new thing. Again, I recommend to one and all to read "Farmer Boy". You'll never again think that such things are brand new.

Oh, and in about 1962 I listened to a tape of a lecture made about five years earlier about gang violence in schools in NYC.

how the teacher had to defend himself with some sort of livestock whip, because he was smaller than the bullying student. That would have been 1860's in upstate New York, if I remember correctly.

The reason the teacher has to defend himself with the whip is because they bullying boys -- there were several of them -- took great pride in making sure that no teacher ever completed a term of teaching at that school. They'd beat him up. And the last teacher, they beat so badly he died. And that teacher was a friend of the one with the whip.

I really wish everyone who thinks problem kids in schools are a recent occurrence would read at least those chapters.

And you do have the time frame and location correct. Almanzo Wilder lived in Malone, NY, which is very far north, almost on the Canadian border.

And a 6yo sent him to therapy? And he's a teacher? He's lawsuit shopping in my opinion.

Last edited Sun Oct 7, 2012, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

It is pounded into our heads to keep our hands off of kids. Many teachers are lawsuit paranoid. Parents do indeed file lawsuits.

A mentally unbalanced classmate hit a teacher with a chair and fractured her wrist. Violent kids have almost always been around. Of course "Scotty" was a sturdy little boy and "Mrs. Jones" was close to retirement. I'm a little surprised that a male gym teacher couldn't outrun the little monster, but not that a teacher was assaulted by a student.

Too many parents are not qualified to be parents.
And the overpopulation problem would be solved by strict standards for would-be parents.
And yes, that would stomp all over people's freedoms, but some freedoms are destroying the planet, and I suspect we'd be better off as a species with a benevolent dictatorship.
Of course that will never happen, and so the human race is doomed to extinction as a failed evolutionary experiment.

The reason they can't fight back (physical weakness, legal restraints, social pressure, etc) doesn't matter.

You are a bully for using their weakness to inflict pain for your own enjoyment. That kid needs help.