By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The mother of a third grade girl attending Mill Plain Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington is demanding changes in a school room program where students are required to pay to use the bathroom. The program was to be a lesson in money management where students received and worked for Monopoly Money to buy items in the classroom but the teacher required a payment of M$50.00 in order to use the bathroom.
Jasmine Al-Ayadhi told reporters her nine year old daughter, Reem, did not want to pay to use the bathroom and ultimately had an accident, causing her both discomfort and having to endure teasing by other children. In agreeing with the need to teach children the value of money Jasmine said, “Work for your money, to earn it, to buy like a little toy or a little squirt gun or a little ball. When it comes to a bathroom issue, when a child has to pay money to use the bathroom – that’s wrong. It’s inhumane. That’s a health issue.”
Reem said the students in her class earn money by doing things, such as good deeds, being nice, and finishing school work. She said she uses the money to buy treats like popcorn and pizza.
She also said each student in her class has to pay their teacher M$50 dollars in pretend money to go to the bathroom.
On Thursday, Reem was down to her last M$50. She also had to go to the bathroom. She wanted to buy popcorn, like her friends were doing. She said she wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom because she didn’t want to pay. She then had an embarrassing accident.
“When it comes to using the bathroom, having to hold her pee, and if she wants to use the bathroom, you make a choice,” Jasmine said. “OK, if you want to use the bathroom it’s going to cost you M$50, but then you don’t have money to buy popcorn. What do you think a child’s going to do?”
The school gave Reem a change of clothes, a pair of royal blue boy’s basketball shorts. Reem said the other kids made fun of her for having an accident, and then for having to wear boys clothes.
“It didn’t feel so well because I had to wear boy pants and I did get teased,” Reem said.
Jasmine said she talked to the principal on Thursday, who promised to follow up about the issue on Friday. As of Friday night, Jasmine said she hadn’t heard back.
“This is a school,” Jasmine said. “This isn’t a jail. This isn’t a prison. We send our kids to school to learn and to get a good education.”
The school’s spokeswoman released a statement.
“We were made aware of the situation Friday evening. We will investigate as soon as possible Monday morning. We work hard to ensure the health and safety of every child and will make sure we do not have any classroom rule that prevents that.”
A similar incident occurred in Lebanon, Oregon and was reported by news station KATU of Portland, Oregon and the school principal dropped the payment requirement after the story aired.
A pediatrician was consulted and provided an opinion of this based upon his experience. Dr. Bruce Birk is a Portland pediatrician. He says that there’s consensus in the medical community on this issue.
“It would be chaos in a classroom for teachers not to have a system,” says Birk. “Holding in the classroom in between well-established potty breaks has not been shown in any sense of the word to be harmful to kids.”
Yet the message this might be teaching children is something that some parents are going to have much objection to. But not only the parents have concerns, the incident at Mill Plain Elementary could have been interpreted as close to violating state law, at least in the sprit of the law as noted by the state legislature.
In 1977, when bathrooms requiring payment were more common, the legislature enacted a law in the state’s Public Health and Safety code to address the issue of those needing to use restrooms and facility owners demanding payment for their use. The law reads:
RCW 70.54.160
Public restrooms — Pay facilities — Penalty.(1) Every establishment which maintains restrooms for use by the public shall not discriminate in charges required between facilities used by men and facilities used by women.
(2) When coin lock controls are used, the controls shall be so allocated as to allow for a proportionate equality of free toilet units available to women as compared with those units available to men, and at least one-half of the units in any restroom shall be free of charge. As used in this section, toilet units are defined as constituting commodes and urinals.
(3) In situations involving coin locks placed on restroom entry doors, admission keys shall be readily provided without charge when requested, and notice as to the availability of the keys shall be posted on the restroom entry door.
(4) Any owner, agent, manager, or other person charged with the responsibility of the operation of an establishment who operates such establishment in violation of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor.
While many could see this as making a mountain out of a mole hill, one has to ask what kind of lesson a policy requiring payment by nine year old students to use a bathroom teaches children.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
KATU
Revised Code of Washington
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
The only values you can expect public schools to teach are the type of values expressed here by some. If I had to do it all over again, I would home school. We have a friend w/ a PhD in reading. She has 3 boys, 2 were hockey players. Public Schools in Seattle were horrible. She’s one of the people I had read The War Against Boys. She pulled her kids out and home schooled them. She also started a biz, helping home schooling parents. She has to turn away biz. The dirty secret is MANY parents are yanking their kids out of public schools en masse and home schooling.
Malo,
Ayn Rand is cackling from the grave.
In the third-grade.
Nick,
“Karen, As you know, the child had enough money, she went w/ the want[popcorn] instead of the need[pee]. I said earlier I would have a rule that they could borrow the money they need w/ interest. Just like the real world.”
Nothing like the real “little l” world. Trading for piss, with interest. Huxley is laughing.
Simms – you are not the only one with a problem with how the mother handled it. She did not give the school time to rectify the mistake, and she also made the terrible mistake of publicizing her daughter’s name. What was she thinking?
Annie:
As predicted, your story about your child’s cruel kindergarden teacher is exactly why I oppose tenure. Luckily, since this took place at a Lutheran school, you had the choice to take your child out of that school, and the teacher was eventually fired. (A little late for my taste, but at least it finally happened.) In a public school, it takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to fire a teacher with cause. So if this was a public school, that teacher would have remained as long as she liked, and they would tell you to pound sand. She would have had many more yeas abusing kindergardeners, and if you didn’t have a charter school nearby, where would you go?
Karen, You will raise a great son. Just you saying you realize boys need to rough house, play fight and sometimes real fight, shows you’re not a helicopter mom.
Karen, In Raff’s town of Skokie it’s just like the 60’s, kids play pick up baseball games, mow lawns, shovel snow, etc. It is just a wonderland.
No allowance. What the kids did in the house as far as chores went they did because all members of the family were expected to contribute for the good of the family. My kids did earn money later on in jobs they had. My children are grown now and continue to do wonderful things for each other and myself, as I continue to help them out as I can with the grandkids.
Karen, As you know, the child had enough money, she went w/ the want[popcorn] instead of the need[pee]. I said earlier I would have a rule that they could borrow the money they need w/ interest. Just like the real world. We really don’t have all the info we need on this teacher’s out of the box program. But, for those just taking personal shots, that doesn’t matter. I’m not sure some even know the topic.
When I was a kid, we always saw kids and dads mowing the lawn. I can’t remember the last time I saw that – everyone uses “landscapers.” I say that in quotes because I swear none of the landscapers I see know how to properly trim a bush or a tree anymore. And I see adults throwing newspapers from cars. I hope there are still opportunities for kids to make money and learn a work ethic. Maybe the opportunities are there, but different.
Karen, There is a must read book for any parents of boys in public school. The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Somers was written a few years ago. She details, in disturbingly real studies and examples, how the female teacher domination and attempts to control normal boys, has created a generation of underachieving boys. The author is a former feminist who sees the war being conducted to suppress boys in order to elevate girls. It’s sickening. I’ve recommended it to at least a dozen parents of boys who have complained to me about their boys being tossed aside in public school. When you’re a PI, you get lots of questions and requests from friends. Same w/ being a teacher.
Nick:
I hope I can teach my son a good work ethic, and to help out the elderly. We can’t depend on the schools alone to teach values and responsibility.
http://youtu.be/Kwo_JKGIIlA
Karen, do you agree with this guy?
Annie:
“the first lesson was that one works for free for the good of the family, because we love them.” That is a good lesson – that everyone has chores for the good of the family. Did you not do allowance money, or pay for extra jobs?
Annie – congratulations on the birth of your grandson. I hope your daughter is doing well.
It’s not a competition to see who is more empathetic, men or women. But there has been a huge emphasis in recent years on stifling the innate instincts and behaviors of men, perhaps too much. There is inherent value to traditional male values of protecting and providing for the family, and their absence in single parent homes is keenly missed.
There have been some very interesting studies on the cultural feminization of the American male, benefits to quintessential male instincts, and the stress and other issues that present when one subverts male behavior.
For instance, young male children make friends by playing rough. Let a bunch of them loose, and before you know it, they’re playing tag, dog piling, and play fighting. But today, that tends to be frowned upon. And without that physical play, those children have few other means at that stage of their mental development to make a connection. It can also be harder for boys to sit still quietly for long periods of time. Now they are often misdiagnosed as AD/HD. Female children develop self control and communication skills, statistically speaking, at a much more rapid rate. That is one of the differences that are so fascinating.
So it can be a valid point that the high divorce rate, and lack of male teachers, can contribute to a gap in balanced male and female influences on children, both of which are important.
No one called anyone “rat excrement” Karen. Could you point out where this occurred? Could it be that the descriptive term “baloney” was used to describe someone’s very flawed premise, but not the person himself?
It would be much better to have a mature discussion about male role models, the challenges of setting up potty breaks, and how to craft lessons on responsibility than to resort to calling someone rat excrement. That is not interesting, and this could be a very interesting topic.
Annie, you asked why people dislike political correctness. In my opinion, it was a well-intentioned effort that went astray. The goal was to rid the vernacular of unintentionally rude phrases. Many people just had no idea that some words were offensive. But it’s gone beyond that into the realm of complete intolerance and the PC police. I, for one, do not think “African-American” is a good term. We don’t call each other German-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, Italian-Americans. No one else is hyphenated. If “black” is not acceptable, and not really accurate, then can’t we come up with something better than such a mouthful. They are not “African-Americans.” They are Americans.
I think the pendulum has swung too far into PC police territory. I wish it would become more moderate, and we could be much more tolerant, and not police everything people say. People are different. Welcome to the world.