We have been following the general trend toward criminalizing conduct in America and particularly the use of criminal penalties in our schools (here and here). Now, a study by Texas Appleseed shows Texas schools routinely using criminal misdemeanors against unruly students.
The widespread use of criminal citations included a six-year-old child. The tickets were issued for a wide range of conduct usually handled by a call to the parents, including disrupting class, leaving school early and schoolyard fights. Dallas schools are particularly known for their use of criminal citations.
There is little discussion or apparent concern over the criminalization of our society and schools. We are now turning on our children — using the criminal system to educate them on their responsibilities.
Source: CBS
“You are correct. And what is wrong with being an HVAC repairman or an electrician or a welder.”
When I was 16 a friend of my Father’s offerred to get me apprenticed into the powerful Electrician’s Union. My father who had dropped out of school in the 9th grade, yet read Camus and other intellectuals, refused to hear of it. His son was going to go to college. Well now I have a College Degree, an Ivy League Masters degree and a post graduate degree. I’ve lived a good and fulfilling life so far.
However, sometimes I wonder what my life would have been had my father taken up his friend’s offer. I hated school and only did what was needed to earn my degrees. Most of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned from living and independent reading of my own choice. As an electrician I would have earned a lot more money, worked less hours, had more time for my family and be a lot more comfortable financially today. Besides I like working with electricity and find the minor stuff I do at home enjoyable. There is nothing wrong with the trades or being an artisan. Some of the smartest people I’ve known in my life, like my father were rich in knowledge, without degrees attesting to the fact of their intelligence.
Chan L:
“The DPR Korea are not religious.”
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North Korea is as religious as they come: they have a leader regarded as a deity to whom they pay unwaivering respect; they are isolated from the outside world and regard it as an evil to be conquered; they succumb to playing the victim even when they are the aggressor. Pretty much sums up the outlook of most every religious zealot I know.
I once read Tootie’s comments, but her outlandish and unsupported charges and the incredible wordiness to say nothing put me off. I agree with her on rare occasion like Mike S does, but it is the laws of chance, not reason, that make this so.
Last year my 1st grader had a run in with a bully that was witnessed by 5 other students. I was told by the teacher and principle if it happened again to ….call the police. This is N. Texas area. My husbands co-worker had a similar situation, same advice. They went so far to talk to the parents of the bully, and the bully’s parents….blamed his kid for bullying the bully. Again, N. Texas.
Featured on this blog, Saginaw High School (my local HS) cheerleader pissed in a fellow cheerleaders drink and watched her drink it. Nothing happened. The parents complained, and the cheerleader was never disciplined, kicked from the squad, arrested, nothing.
I suggested those with children to visit their kids school during lunch and watch. My kids school was run like a very efficient prison. They run the places like prisons and the kids are acting like criminals.
I removed my kids from the schools and teach them at home through a coorespondence school. Those people are nuts, and yes I’d move if I could.
Then ID,
What will they do with the Charles Whitman’s of the World….but then again would there have been the need to be afraid at Kent State when Nixon was coming….gotta….think about that one some more….what student needs to carry a weapon…..on campus…would that then make it ok for an 18 year old in High School to carry a gun……hmmmmmm…………………
Mespo727272:
The DPR Korea are not religious. Having read Tootie’s many posts, she is not a statist/collectivist.
If you believe what you posted you have either not read her works or you do not understand what she is saying.
Bubbha is Laughing is far closer to Kim Jong Il than Tootie is. I would much prefer to live in a land goverened by Tootie’s ideas than by Bubbha’s.
Bubbha is a proponent of force.
JBH,PhD,PE:
“Great idea! A whole country full of people like Tootie surely would be an improvement.
Really. I am not joking. I am not joking about not joking, either.
I find that Tootie shares quite a few of my most important concerns.”
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I found one for you:
http://www.korea-dpr.com/
Walnut:
“You are correct. And what is wrong with being an HVAC repairman or an electrician or a welder.”
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Not a solitary thing. No less a figure than Albert Einstein reminded us that:
“One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.”
RE: James M. January 13, 2011 at 1:55 pm
“And we’ll have a whole country full of people like Tootie.”
Great idea! A whole country full of people like Tootie surely would be an improvement.
Really. I am not joking. I am not joking about not joking, either.
I find that Tootie shares quite a few of my most important concerns.
Tootie
1, January 13, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I knew a cop who told me that if a kid had a baseball bat in his car in the parking lot at school, the cop would have to arrest the kid for a federal crime
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why would you arrest a kid for having sports equipment in his car at school?
Mespo727272:
You are correct. And what is wrong with being an HVAC repairman or an electrician or a welder. Those are good jobs and pay very well. Every time I call the HVAC guy he is here for 20 minutes and charges me $150.00.
And a good machinist? The sky is the limit.
The kids across the street cant understand 2+2 but they can take an engine apart and rebuild it from memory. They don’t like school because they are not good at book learning. But they are excellent at tackling real problems.
We need to end the idea that everyone has to go to college to get ahead. It is false and it leads to frustration and failure. All jobs are necessary and if done well there is no shame in being an auto mechanic or welder and much money to be made.
Sorry about the vituperation.
Walnut:
You raise an interesting point and one thatI’ve advocated as a member of a local school advisory board — albeit a little less forcefully. I think kids who currently don’t appreciate an academic education should be offered a vocational alternative. My father was a school vocational director for many years and he would always tell me about how the kids are just as motivated but in a different way. The basics still need to be taught academically, but last week when my hot water heater went out, I needed a competent plumber, not someone who could explain linear regression.
rafflaw:
I tried to tell ’em.
Gyges:
I’ll forgive you.
But I don’t think public schools create a public prone to higher incarceration rates. Unless it is that public schools create deranged and sociopathic government officials and lawyers apt to create a totalitarian police-state when they grow up (which is surely criminal behavior).
Now that might be getting closer to the truth.
if the little sons of bitches don’t want to take advantage of a free education, throw their little butts out of school and make them go to work or to a technical school.
Make school a place where the children who want to be there can thrive without the distraction of a few bad apples.
The problem with public school is that people do not understand the value because it is “free”. Maybe if they had to pay a little bit and could be kicked out they would take it seriously.
Change the posturing and the environment will improve.
Mespo, I agree with you, but I just wish the good Nuns that I had would have read this years ago. It would have saved me a lot of pain and agony!
I think we have a worrisome confluence of bureaucratic calcification of disciplinary policy and a general loosening of parental control over their children coupled with a growing segment of parents who care too little or not at all. Undoubtedly, the behavior of school children has declined, but the schools’ attempts at zero tolerance policies and occasionally unlawful denial of basic rights in response only brings out more frustration and more violence. Some matters can be diffused with a more humanistic approach as opposed to a disciplinarian approach. Discipline is critically important, but to be accepted it must be perceived as fair. When it’s not, you get the morass that we now have.
Tootie,
You’ll have to forgive me for thinking you think public school leads to higher incarceration when you say:
“I knew a cop who told me that if a kid had a baseball bat in his car in the parking lot at school, the cop would have to arrest the kid for a federal crime.
This is only because the feds have butt into education. “
Gyges: It might interest you to know that the Asia I referred to in my post exists OUTSIDE the USA. And the book I referred included students who were in compulsory systems.
Our high incarceration rate has more to do with dangerous extremist cops and rabid out-of-control legislators who are creating a police state.
Unless you are suggesting that US schools are creating a nation of offenders.
That would not surprise me. After all they are largely union employees and tend to be members of the Democratic Party.
James: Don’t be a coward, explain what you mean.
A Y
Eugene McCarthy? I miss the connection – not unusual for me.