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.
@Byron “Now dont get your panties in a bunch, I am not calling you stupid just that lame idea.
It is really a shame they dont have a minimum IQ requirement to be able to post on a blog. It would increase the quality. I am not implying you have a low IQ so dont get defensive.”
I think you have made an excellent point here. I am not the issue. My intelligence is not the issue. The issue is the issue.
As you have pointed out a wall that cost hundreds of billions of dollars could not possibly protect Florida. Any wall that would have any chance of hold back a sea level rise of 5 feet would have to cost trillions of dollars.
At that point, reasonable people have to pose the question: are there steps we can take to minimize the effects of climate change and global warming. Doesn’t it make sense to invest in research now? Isn’t it likely to be cheaper to and more effective to invest in renewable energy now? Don’t we have to get off fossil fuel now?
Even if one believes that it makes sense to spend trillions to protect population centers like Florida, what about other population centers. Does it make sense that less well developed areas could spend that kind of money to protect their populations? Of course not – outside of a few dozen industrialized nations that kind of investment is impossible.
Doesn’t that suggest the possibility of mass migrations, failed nation states, unrest, war, economic turmoil.
Doesn’t all that suggest that we cannot protect our populations centers with a wall even if we could afford the wall?
Thank you Byron. You have raised some very compelling issues. We own you a debt for focusing our attention. The issue, the lesson, is that no wall, even if we could afford it, can possibly protect us from global warming. It is more effective and more affordable to take steps now to minimize the effects of global warming.
Elaine, clearly you haven’t been trained in the “Beat ’em, Force feed ’em and Pee’d ’em” method of teaching. :/
Annie –
is a graduate level class taken only by experienced teachers.
Funny…I always thought that treating young children with kindness, patience, and understanding was considered a good thing.
@Byron “My wife is a teacher and I would put her up against anyone I know, she is smart and tough. ”
I am sure your wife is smart and tough. But if you had bothered to actually read my remarks you would know that my comments were not addressed to smart, tough teachers.
My remarks pointed out that some delays in going to the bath room are due to limitations in the facilities or staffing. The teacher has no control over those delays.
Other delays are due to artificial constraints imposed by the teacher.
The point of my remarks were that it is truly tragic that our children are in the hands of people so limited in comprehension that they cannot distinguish those two very different reasons for delay.
BTW, both my parents were teachers. I have nothing but the highest regard for dedicated teachers. I am also sometimes surprised when people in the profession cannot make simple distinctions or understand basic logical inferences.
I do wonder about your idea that paying more would not attract better, more capable people to the field.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth. But I thought that, in the past, you were one of those who believe that free markets offer good solutions. I would really like to here more of your thoughts on why paying teachers more would not lead to a better group of people in teaching. How does that work?
Finally, let me thank you for bringing up my remarks about global warming and building a sea wall around Florida.
It is clear you tried very hard to understand the point of my remarks. And you did get the idea that a sea wall composed of concrete blocks would not work.
You apparently missed the part about the cost of a wall that could not work. Even that very simple wall would cost several hundred billion dollars. Any wall that might possibly protect Florida from rising sea level would have to cost much more – as a wild guess – maybe trillions of dollars.
At that point in the discussion, I think reasonable people would probably realize that dealing with global warming after it occurs may not be feasible and perhaps we should take steps – right now – to limit global warming as much as possible.
As you have so carefully pointed out a simple wall cannot possibly protect Florida. And from my calculations we know that such a wall would cost at the minimum 500 maybe 600 billion dollars. A wall that would have even a slight chance to protect Florida would have to cost – what – a trillion dollars, 5 trillion dollars, 50 trillion dollars?
Doesn’t it make sense to invest in research now to minimize global warming. I think so.
I think the numbers – the cost estimate – for a simple wall that cannot work give us every reason to believe that the only realistic alternative is to do the research now, to do everything now that we can to minimize the effects of global warming.
I just want to thank you Byron for calling everyone’s attention to the dire threat of global warming and reminding us that even a wall that could not possible protect us would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and, therefore, we have to act now to minimize global warming.
Kids who wet their pants in class are humiliated. Other children often make fun of them. What may seem like a trivial experience to an adult can be a big deal/traumatic experience to a child. Elementary teachers should be empathic and understanding of the emotional and physical needs of young children.
Paul, noooo…. Really??
Yet my daughter who was raised by me, one of “those” parents turned put to be strong, capable and assertive. Go figure. It was disgusting meatloaf from what I recall, no she was not sick. And she likes meatloaf actually, but that day the school meatloaf was disgusting to her. No child should be forced to eat something that grosses them out.
Annie – I can be both sympathetic and empathetic with your daughter about the meatloaf; Not simultaneously, of course. My mother was one of those that drilled into us that when we visited someone we ate whatever they put on our plate. That was usually good advice. However, one time I was served chipped beef on toast and I did not like either the way it looked or smelled. So I refused to eat it. My mother started going ballistic until the lady of the house smelled it and realized it had gone bad. I saved myself from throwing up, but two of my brothers had to hit the head for awhile.
Annie – what was wrong with the hot lunch that she threw it up? Or was she sick to begin with?
Annie – the military does not tolerate special snowflakes. 🙂
Elaine, my oldest daughter, the one who is in the military ( a strong woman, no snowflake is she) recalls to this day her humiliation when her 1st grade teacher forced her to eat her hot lunch, which she promptly threw up. The teacher happened to be the wife of one of the pastors of the Lutheran church I belonged to at the time. They didn’t call me to come and bring her a different set of clothes and just cleaned her up a bit. She had to wear those soiled clothes the rest of the afternoon. When she got home and told me what happened, I called the teacher and gave her a piece of my mind, pastor’s wife or not. She did apologize and later when she became pregnant herself, she again apologized to me. Maybe the thought of someone forcing her child to eat something gross crossed her mind. I know I’ve been harping on empathy, but anyone who works with children and sick people better have that gift of empathy, or else find a job in which they don’t care for living beings.
Noticeably absent, not sure what post got deleted.
That’s New Zealand! There are different realities and stresses everywhere. I doubt “wetting pants in class” makes the top 10 stressors of a kid on the South Side of Chicago. “Getting shot on the way to class” probably tops their list.
Children are not miniature adults. They go through different stages in their development as they mature into adults. We shouldn’t expect six, seven, eight, and nine-year-old children to think and act like adults. Kids are kids. Parents, teachers, and other adults should understand this. Maybe the teachers who can’t manage the students in their charge should find a different profession.
*****
Daytime wetting
http://www.kidshealth.org.nz/daytime-wetting
Key points to remember
Excerpt:
– daytime wetting occurs in about three and a half percent of healthy children
– children list wetting pants in class as the third most stressful event after losing a parent and going blind!
Keebler – not sure which one of mine got nuked either. 😉
Paul:
I suspect that Mr. Keebler never read the novel if his post had to be deleted.
I dont blame him though, I tried reading 2 or 3 Dickens’ novels and could never finish one, I thought they were horrid. Although I do like A Christmas Carol, my favorite character in that story is Scrooge before his transformation.
Yep, Paul. Here’s my contribution: Mike Appleton is correct.
“You have heard from the teachers, but I guess the parents of the special snowflakes know better.” -Paul
What a bunch of gobbledygook.
Paul Schulte, I have deleted a comment in violation of our civility rule. Please comply with the rule or refrain from commenting.
Keebler, I have once again deleted a comment containing a personal attack directed at another blogger. If you cannot avoid such postings in violation of our civility rule, I ask that you not post comments.
on 1, May 19, 2014 at 12:12 amAnnie
By allowing a third grader to wet her pants? Isn’t there a better way to teach needs vs wants? Shouldn’t that be evident?
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Yup Annie!
Schools have fire procedures. Children learn the procedures early in the year. If students happen to be in the bathroom, delivering a note to the office, in the resource room, etc., and the school is evacuated for a fire drill, bomb scare, fire–they are expected to meet up with their classes in the designated areas outside the school. That’s how it worked at my school.
Well, again, IMO, Mike Appleton is one of those with a pretty good handle on this one:
“Teaching children the value of money is important. That can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Charging a child to use a school toilet is not one of them. This is a failure of basic common sense. Enough said.”
Yep. Enough said.
anon2 – as I said to anon, I do not think that Mike, voice of reason or not, knows the full lesson plan. I sure do not. But from what was going on, it appears that wants versus needs was part of the lesson. Needs in a third grade classroom are very slim. There are some things you cannot cut off because it is illegal, so the casual use of the bathroom would become a need for some, but not all.