Originally published at: California school punished kids for "mess in the gym" by making them sit outside in record heat | Boing Boing
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This leads me to wonder what other questionable* decisions regarding children have been made by that vice principal. 
*harmful, ill-advised, illegal, and/or just plain stupid
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When I was a kid I low-key hated adults for this and still do. They constantly create situations in which perceived transgressions are not only likely but inevitable, then punish children for doing what should have been obvious in the first place. And almost always without any preemptive guidance beyond “don’t”. 99% of the time I hear parents kvetch about their kids (screen time, lack of exercise, etc) it is something completely within their sphere of control (maybe don’t buy them a phone at 10 and send them outside to play?), they’d simply rather complain than be a proactive and nurturing caregiver.
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Apparently the bar for “bad intent” is pretty high, because exposing children to 110° heat as a punishment certainly sounds a bit malicious to me … but no, it seems it was just a simple error of judgment. Good to know. Moving right along now …
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Hey there! It’s OK to make the kids sit outside in the sun on a warm day, plus waterboarding isn’t torture either. /s
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Bar? hahahahahahhaahahahahaha.
good and bad being purely qualitative assessments,
one can say with 100% honesty and certainty that
Charlie fucking Manson wasnt acting with “bad intent”
Nor was Hitler acting with “bad intent”.
edit to continue my ranting:
in point of fact, one could argue that this was done with GOOD intent.
good intent being you intended for a thing to happen and it did, so good for you.
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Spare the rod, spoil the child. /s
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I bet you a dollar that the people involved with the punishment are completely unaware of the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Milgram Experiment
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I’m a teacher, and whoever made that decision should be severely reprimanded, if not let go. Intent doesn’t matter if your judgement put the health of the students in your care at risk. Also, we’re taught that collective punishment doesn’t work, either as a deterrent for bad behavior or a motivator for good behavior.
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I notice two things: First, the remarkably flabby, tone-deaf “no bad intent” and passive-voice “errors were made” boilerplate language (both properly flagged in the post). We’re sorry if some people feel offended. No offense was intended. Perhaps we can all put this behind us now. Thoughts and prayers. (Oops, that one’s from a different standard-excuses list. Note to self: scold the PR director’s secretary. I mean, administrative assistant.)
Second, that the “administrative team” member responsible was the vice principal. In my long-ago K-12 experience, the assistant principal (as the post was called then/there) was in charge of discipline and was often chosen for that job precisely because he (always a he back then) had a streak of bully. (For some reason, ours tended to be driver-ed instructors–probably a local anomaly.)
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Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit on this. This would necessitate a belief that simply eating outside was the punishment. I’m pretty sure had it been 80°F outside, the Vice Principal would have used some other form of punishment. The VP clearly intended this to be a physically uncomfortable experience. I suppose you could argue that intending discomfort isn’t the same as intending to put children in an unsafe situation, but you’d have to be pretty freakin stupid to not know that 112° is unsafe. Legally, the standard would be what a reasonable person would know, not what that VP knew, and I’m pretty confident in saying a reasonable person would know that making children eat lunch outside in 112° heat without shade is unsafe. The VP shouldn’t just be fired. He should be arrested and charged with a crime.
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Communal punishment, no less.
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I agree. Their intent is entirely irrelevant. They are utterly unfit for a leadership position in a school. Perhaps they should apply as a prison guard.
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According to the linked article, one of the students didn’t even know why they were being punished at first. I agree collective punishment doesn’t work, but it sure as hell isn’t going to work if you don’t make it abundantly clear what the punishment is in response to.
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Remember, it’s only a war crime if you’re fighting a war. Schoolchildren are fair game.
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I kinda know Amador County, where this happened. It’s the kind of place where you might expect to see a Trump Store Amador.
111 degree temps means their little stunt was potentially lethal. 
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Pretty sure “Mistakes were made, but there was no ill intent” applied to the kids who left a mess in the cafeteria, too.
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Not a reboing, but my “didn’t this just happen?” alarm went off nonetheless,
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It would be like saying beating somebody with a rubber hose had no bad intentions. The intention was to make them suffer in a way that didn’t leave injuries.
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