Jacen: Such "teens" need to visit the Gym Coach and get their head kicked in! In our High School trips to the Gym Coach, as recommended by teachers for misbehavior, were a figurative 'death sentence'... lots of kids panicked and withdrew from the school before they set foot in Gym after school! As more discipline is taken away from teachers, there is a greater proportional amount of misbehavior by students, in my opinion. I fully support the right of teachers to kick the crap out of such idiotic students!
We were more concerned about the way the gym teacher always tried to watch us while we changed. Different generations, I suppose. When I was in grade school, the thing that terrified us was a call home. Too many kids anymore just aren't concerned about that. Either they have their parents wrapped around their little fingers (I'm sure this kid's mommy completely bought the "test anxiety" excuse), or the parent/s simply don't care. Discipline begins in the home.
Well said. And then within their friends, you'll always hear them say this: "Oh my, Johnny is so bad. He's gotten suspended like 10 times last year! I don't know what I'm gonna do with him!" Then you see Johnny walk by in $120 sneakers, $25 t-shirt, $30 pants, and a $300 iPod. Yeah, way to set him straight mommy.
Variant : "I can't understand why my poor little Timmy is sooo tired when he comes back from school. And his teachers say he is always sleepy during class. They must be bad and uninteresting teachers." Real explanation : Little Timmy is watching TV every night from afternoon to 2 o'clock in the morning.
It all comes down to one thing: accountability. Kids today just aren't held accountable. Mostly it is their parents, but sometimes even teachers are guilty of this transgression. If you never have to answer for anything, what is there to fear?
Teacher friend of mine talking about a recent encounter at the local HS: This mom is in the office reaming out the administrator because her daughter's brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee got towed from the teacher's lot. And anyway, she says, it's not her daughter's fault because she (mom) was the one who told her (daughter) to park in the teacher's lot. Administrator: "You told your daughter to park her car in the teacher's lot?" Mother: "I certainly did. Do have any idea how much those Grand Cherokees cost?"
I find this funny because the senior lot at my high school had way [way] nicer cars in it compared to the teachers lot.
That's probably right...accountability! responsibility! proper behavior! What needs to happen is to generate such "accountability" in the classroom through respect. Short of beating the crap out of misbehaving students, expelling them, or giving up on them, there is an alternative that is rarely discussed: School Uniforms! You'd be surprise how much rebellion in the classroom is short circuited when boys are expected to wear short sleeve collar shirts w/ ties and girls to wear blouses w/ like ties. Parents are normally thrilled at the prospect. Schools that have moved to a student "uniform" policy report generally positive behavior once implemented and singular disruptive behavior is negated. Just my thought... but short of student punishment which many teachers cannot engage in, school uniforms may be the best option.
I remember hearing this debate a couple years back. If I recall, the results are a bit scattered. Some places report positive results, others don't. Overall I think it's safe to say that more than just a change in clothes is needed to change the attitude of students.
Uniforms aren't the answer. I've gone to two Catholic schools (K-8) and went to a public school for high school. I thought there was more crap in the Catholic schools with uniforms, then there was in the public school. Most public school kids dress up with a t-shirt and jeans, and they normally aren't the problem. The problem are the very few who need to carry way too much bling or dye their hair five billion different colors and ripped up jeans. Making these kids wear uniforms won't change their attitudes. What will change their behavior, is stronger punishments. A little slap in the wrist won't mean anything to them. They all become buddies with the VP and guidence people, so they know exactly what buttons to press. At the school I went to, the troublemakers were all friends with the hall monitors. Do you think that they were going to get yelled at? No way. The one hall monitor the one day started talking in Spanish with the one kid who was picking on this Polish kid, who probably understood very little English. I highly doubt he told the kid to quit (I understand some Spanish, and the words I expected weren't said). If schools can increase their strictness in terms of following the rules, everything is cool.
Well them perhaps combining school uniforms with a well-enforced disciplinary policy that pulls no punches. Turn schools around. Like the Joe Clark* model. Make teachers subject to the same uniform and discipline standards of students. Reward achievement; heavily discipline misbehavior. Lock down schools. Make the school work. Move outward in such effort; penalize parents for misbehaving students by calling them at work repeatedly to pick up their delinquent charges. You'd be surprised how effective that last step actually is! Any effort to improve schools needs to be a collaborative effort involving several steps! *former New Jersey high school principal.
I don't know how bad the situation is in USA, but here, in France, everything started to go down when public schools began using Piaget's "constructivist" theory. The same theory is in use on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For the non-specialists, according to constructivism, the student must "construct" his own knowledge. It means the teacher doesn't give a lesson anymore. Instead, he must find a way to interest the student and make him discover knowledge all by himself. Die hard "constructivists" even consider authority as intrinsically fascist, because they think it's forcing knowledge into the heads of (supposed) pure and innocent children. They believe in the "natural" way of learning things : do as you please, marvel at the world, and let knowledge dawn in the students' minds. In other words, official teaching methods, by themselves, don't allow authority. "Constructivism" doesn't make any difference between freedom and anarchy.
The problem is that often, when schools attempt things like this, they get sued by parents. I don't mind the idea of uniforms at all. I wear a shirt and tie every single day to school. My idea of a dress down day is rolling up the sleeves when it's hot outside. You can call a parent at work and tell them to come pick up their kid, but the bottom line is, some of them just say "nope. Can't do it." The basic fact of it is that all of the things you suggest aren't likely to be much help until discipline is established at home. The irony of it is that if discipline were established at home, many of the things you suggest wouldn't be needed.
Bingo! Unfortunately, the troublesome kids don't have parents who know how to guide their kids the right way. Many of them work, or simply aren't around and don't care. INT...uniforms won't change anything. If you put uniforms on monkeys and send them to school, will they follow the rules? No, they won't, because they don't know how to act. It's the same thing with kids. If kids don't know how to shut up and listen, there's no way uniforms will prevent them from telling the teacher to go do something that involves curse words.
Same here, but the problem ain't the cars, it's the drivers. Have you been near a HS around lunch time lately? It's like Day of the Locusts meets The Gumball Rally.
You are correct about the teacher's role in accountability. Unfortunately that role is denied teacher's in all too many cases even if they are willing to accept it. They are not allowed to enforce behavioral standards themselves but must send the student to the admin. Now if the teacher, and the student are lucky, the administrator will enforce the rules. But even then, the student sees the teacher as having no authority and reacts accordingly. Worse yet, the admin will give a little lecture and send the kid back to the classroom. In either case the result is the kid realizes the teacher is not a threat to their continued bad bahavior.
Piaget is garbage. Children, from birth, are ego-centric to the max. They have to be to let their needs known. The only way they can transition out of that mode is if the adults in their lives show them how. To assert that children will "construct" their own world in a way the fits into society in a positive fashion is sheer idiocy of a level equal to raving lunacy...or worse. Children need 4 steps to learn well, all of them must come from adults: 1. Receive a specific task. 2. Hear/see how to perform that task. 3. Be given a definite timeline in which to perform the task. 4. Enforcement of the time and quality reasonably expected. The problem most parents/teachers/kid run into is that steps 2 & 3 are overlooked or under-emphasized and they jump from step 1 to step 4. Bottom line: gotta do all of 'em.
bingo! I'd also add that kids today aren't taught ANY respect for others. I'm not talking about old-fashioned 'respect for authority,' either--I don't want to raise obediant little sheeple. I'm talking about basic regard for others. I took my son swimming a couple of weeks ago, and a girl from his bus stop and her much older brother were there without their parents. She's a couple years older than him, so about 8 or nine, and the brother is in middle school. They were both being really 'familiar' the way kids are these days. I'm glad they're not scared of me, but the girl has a tendancy to be bossy and inappropriately smart-ass, and I finally reminded her that I was her parent's age, to which she replied "You're not MY parent," which is about the attitude of a lot of kids--'Hey, why should I listen--or even respect--you, Mr. Adult?'
That's a really good point. Kids might be expected to listen to certain adults, but they haven't been taught that they should at least show respect to all adults, no matter the situation.
I don't know anyone in my school who doesn't think our teachers should get paid more than they do. They put up with our sh!t in class when we whine about not wanting to have a test and our random things to try and get them off topic. At the same time though they act like another set of parents listening to us when we're upset, helping us with problems, and giving up all their free periods before big tests and finals to spend their time working with us if we don't understand.
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to bungadiri again." I just wanted to acknowledge in public that I will be stealing bunga's line and using it at every available opportunity.
Not very Christian of you Wanker...stealing? By the way, in recognition of DC United/Chelsea game, your new name is Wanker! No one questions that some teachers are underpaid, but this thread is about misbehaving students...paying teachers more won't fix that problem!