For teachers, there is nothing more sacred than the space of a classroom. While the sanctuary of rooms are sometimes shattered by violence, it remains thankfully rare. That makes the video this week particularly disturbing as physics teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, New Jersey is attacked by one of his students. The other students do not come to the aid of the 62-year-old physics teacher as he is thrown to the ground by a sixteen-year-old student, though one student eventually comes over to tell the attacker to break off the attack. The teacher had taken the teenager’s cellphone.
The student has been charged with assault and the case seems pretty clear from the videotape. The question is whether the teenager will be charged as an adult, which is likely given his age and the violent character of the alleged crime. While New Jersey juvenile courts have exclusive authority over all criminal defendants under the age of 18, prosecutors are allowed to petition for the transfer of minors over the age of 14 who are accused of certain violent offenses.
Here is the video:
Police were called for this!?!? The teacher held back from pounding the snot out of the kid, probably more than I would have.
But I would have contacted the kids parents and had them come in, and I mean RIGHT THEN!! And I’d have settled this one way or the other that day.
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Having dealt with at-risk yuts and cell phones, the teacher’s approach was wrong but not illegal. You have to let them keep their pride. I would just hold out my hand and tell them to give to me and they would get it back after school. And I would wait them out. Eventually the other students would convince the student to give the phone and then class would go on. I always put confiscated stuff in the same drawer in my desk so if I was not there right away the students could get their stuff back. 🙂
At this point the kid needs some time in juvie. And then he needs a new school.
The most disturbing thing to me is how the other students did not immediately come to the aid of the teacher.
When I was in school, male teachers had a paddle hanging on the wall. They had them in elementary school, middle school, and high school. And they used them. Their greatest effect was the humiliation of the teacher spanking you in front of all your peers. Spanking created a respect toward the teacher, and acknowledgment that he had the power. I cannot imagine someone attacking the teacher like this, and if someone did, the best students would be up there in a heartbeat holding the attacker for the teacher to decide what he was going to do to him. Well, now the Democrats have argued that spanking is not civilized, so I guess situations like this video is the result. It probably will not be very long before the students all join in and help the student attack the teacher. They will probably argue that the teacher was violating the student’s Constitutionally protected right to his property. The school will then argue that students don’t have Constitutional rights in the classroom that they are forced to attend. They can’t pray, can’t read their Bible, can’t have guns, and they can’t have cell phones. It’s gonna get messy.
Throwing the kid in jail ISN’T the LONG term answer.
I love the look I get when I talk to a younger adult after telling them that I don’t own a cell phone. An even better look is when they ask me, “Why don’t you have a cell phone?” and I reply, “Why would I?”. They don’t know how to answer that question.
Just another demonstration of our irreversible decline.
Ironically, it was a cell phone video that provided the evidence necessary to call for a full ban on cell phones in the classroom.
I’m curious to know what the parents of this charming young man have to say about his behavior and also what the student body had to say.
The first thing that will be said if we try to take phones away from students is “what if there is a school shooting, they won’t be able to call for help!” Blame that one on the security mindset where we’ve been conditioned to accept the rare worst case scenario as an excuse for all sorts of behavior.
The worst part of this is that if the kid isn’t put in jail for the rest of his school career, he will sue to be let back into the school. And win. My home town in Wisconisin had a 13-year old girl stab another girl. She sued to have her permanent expulsion overturned. And won.
Violent criminals need to be removed from society permanently. Let’s hope this 16 year old doesn’t see freedom until he’s much older.
Every classroom should have one of those shoe holders that go over the door, and kids should be required to turn the phone off and deposit the phone in there for the duration of class.
Aridog, As you know, we have both travelled the same logical path. I was merely using hyperbole to make a point. And, you’re Meathead!
Nick said …
He’ll be Archie Bunker before you know it.
Hey, you sayin’ I’m Archie Bunker? 🙂
For those unfamiliar w/ Paterson, NJ. It is a wasteland of poverty and crime, thanks to Dem control for decades. But, we should note this man is a physics teacher. So, these students are not your gangbangers. I surmise he is book smart, but not very people smart, in dealing w/ student misconduct. And, although this school is ranked 308 out of 328 schools in NJ, these kids are the cream of this dysfunctional school.
The 62 year old teacher might have his own adult offspring or grand kids. They need to run down each student in the room here, off campus, and beat them to pulps on the ground. Especially the smiling one. Burn the school down.
It’s funny. Isaac got a taste of what it’s like in the inner city vis a vis a school. So, a liberal man is pretty conservative when it comes to dealing w/ out of control youth in schoo. Maybe he needs some other experiences. Maybe a job working in a government bureaucracy, or a job as an inner city cop. He’ll be Archie Bunker before you know it. like Isaac, I was a liberal coming out of college in the 70’s. I worked for the govt. and saw that it was a wasteland. I worked in the inner city and saw how depraved the Democratically controlled big cities had made formerly functioning black families and culture. Reality is a mofo!
Is this real?
Something is horribly wrong with this picture. If this is the way teachers are disrespected something has gone upside down. That child (now adult) should have been expelled from school long since for prior misconduct.
Having reflected on this, the teacher could have avoided the problem. Not that the kid is absolutely in the wrong. However, instead of grabbing the phone, the teacher should have requested that the kid hand it over and if the kid refused the teacher should have sent him to the office to let them deal with it.
This brings up another shortcoming in the education system. Teachers are expected to take care of any and all circumstances. Somehow, not being able to win against a young thug like this is held against the teacher. Discipline should be the job of the school as a whole and not left entirely to the teacher. Send the kid to the office and confiscate the phone until the end of the year. The problem would soon stop. Ah, but the lawyers, the vacuous tools in the wings.
Darren
This is another example of the inequality of education in the US. However, this is an area that has to do with the local school board. We were lucky enough to be able to live in a school district which is in the top five in the state. Our son’s education was equivalent to the best private school. He is now on full scholarship $45k a year in a good university, due primarily to this school. I taught at the other end of the scale where gunshots are heard at least once a month. In my son’s school if a kid causes problems he is out. The parents want it that way. The area is very wealthy. They understand the formula, time lost to the class due to bad apples is time lost to the student’s advantages in life. If a kid is caught texting the phone is gone for good. The top third of the school is equivalent to the top 10% in an average school.
Where I taught, the parents have lawyers in the wings ready to sue the school district for any perceived infringement of their child’s rights, whatever they are alleged to be. The school district pays because it is cheaper than contesting it in public with the likes of Al Sharpton in the wings, etc.
We live in a society that values rights and individual freedoms and this is something that should be sacred. However, we live in a society that works both ways. We need leadership that can differentiate between the reality of rights and the necessity for cooperation.
I think that some punishment needs to be handed out to the rest of the students in the class for standing by and doing nothing. It almost looks like they are enjoying and collaborating with the crook.
If the teacher had fought back, it would have been his job, lawsuits, perhaps jail. Perhaps it is time to protect the teacher by levying the harshest penalties possible on kids that have this little respect for teachers, etc. Also, there should be no cellphones, off or on, allowed in classrooms, whatsoever. Every classroom has a land line. Every school has a front desk. Cell phones should be checked in at the front desk and if found, confiscated permanently. How many lost $500 iPhones will it take to get the message? Not many.
I have to agree about the cell phones. In my view they are detrimental to the education process and a source of distraction. Yet, trying to pry these away from students is going to be met with great amounts of resistance from both the students and their helicopter parents.