We didn’t have terms like nice guy or incel. I was a nice guy. And people rightfully were put off by it.
That being said, I also saw some really bad shit. People saying and doing horrible things and no one seeming to care. One guy said his girlfriend was in my gym class. I made a typical high school comment about how he’s lucky, she looks like beyonce etc…
And he threw a fit that he would never date a “jungle bunny” (WTF), dropped an n bomb and got super hostile. (Turns out his gf and this woman had same first name).
Like, that level of weird 50s style racism absolutely exists and exists more often in the upper classes - the types of school that have a water polo team.
Anyways I’m not really sure where I’m going with this comment (welcome to my posting, amirite?) but while this upsets me it does not surprise me.
Society has made big strides in a short time, but there’s a lot of truly toxic folks out there.
I kind of feel stupid for thinking people who end up siegheiling
at altright events learn the siegheiling in their predatory
men-only-greek-alphabet-clubs in college.
Of course they start in gendered sport clubs in high school.
BTW you could also be in high school and listen to this:
You sound exactly like the judge in the Brock Turner case or dozens of similar ones since. There can’t be consequences for actions because he is such a nice, talented young white man. Look at his swimming times. Look at the good schools he could get into. It would be a shame if he failed to enjoy all the benefits he is entitled to just because he got “twenty minutes of action” or did something else horrible.
Meanwhile we ram thousands of Black kids into the school-to-prison pipeline if we don’t just have the police shoot them.
Response shouldn’t be out of proportion to what teenagers do, but this is also the age where they need to learn that actions have consequences. Otherwise you end up with more Brett Kavanaughs and Donald Trumps who learn early that they can get away with anything forever.
This is some next level projection that has no bearing on anything I have ever said or thought.
No consequences is not the same as teaching. In fact its damn close to its opposite. Of course they should have consequences.
Yes we do have horrible systemic racism in our educational system, which is part of the reason that zero tolerance policies are terrible.
No. It is PRECISELY what you advocated. No real consequences because they need to be allowed to fail in high school. Nothing that might harm their futures. They learn that they can do terrible things, and nothing will happen to them. To do anything else is a “sad little sense of superiority”. Your. Own. Words.
At the same time we have a national policy of encouraging kids who aren’t white of failing right into adult prison before they’re fifteen.
This isn’t “projection”. This is you, you personally, raising up the next generation of Kavanaughs because we can’t do anything to upset these Precious White Children. The racist assumptions are implicit not explicit but no less real.
But I’ll tell you what. Let’s allow you to fail. Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. Where do you draw the line? At what point does it stop being “I’m not mad at you, just disappointed” and start rising to the level of them needing to be accountable for their actions is a meaningful way.
Chanting “Death to America” and passing out ISIL flyers?
Wearing Klan hoods and carrying pictures of nooses?
Screeching Incel hate in the hallways to young women?
Putting up “Kill the Jews” flyers on synagogues?
Wearing “Rape Club” t-shirts as a team?
These are all on exactly the same level. Just as toxic. Just as much incipient terrorism.
Please show your work.
Then the immediate task before the school district, the parents and the community is make sure these students fully understand and appreciate the incredible magnitude of how badly they just failed.
Part of that includes consequences for their actions (i.e. water polo cancelled for the year, some form of community service) to guarantee they know how serious the infraction was. Part of it should ideally also include teaching empathy, perhaps bringing in a guest speaker who can share what it was like to lose family to the Holocaust.
These boys may not be beyond redemption, but they still need to earn it.
You’ve read one a hell of a lot into a few words. And its far off the mark @anon61833566 posted that there should be no second chances and they should be expelled. The biggest problem with this sort of zero tolerance rhetoric is that it does lead to the sort of prejudiced your describing whereby its applied to less priviledged students first while entitled, rich, white boys get extra chances.
That doesn’t mean that we should expand the idea to all kids. We should actually try to teach them. Which does mean consequences, and does not mean doing nothing. Yes these are entitled, rich, white pricks who have already been given a huge oppurtunities. But I don’t see that simply expelling them is going to turn them into mature productive people.
I never said do nothing. I said teach them how to be better.
Also for what its worth, I have taught and I’m about the last person to give the Kavanaugh’s of the world an easier time. Seriously, you are tilting at windmills here
I will add that I do not actually advocate zero tolerance, merely that I have heard from teachers and administrators alike far too often that they employ “zero tolerance” on ticky tacky minor bullshit infractions while behavior like that of these “fine young men” is for some reason grounds for second chances.
If it’s zero tolerance to suspend for XYZ, surely this sort of fuckery demands zero tolerance and expulsion…based on their standards.
Let’s see if we can clear up any miscommunication.
In U.S. society almost everything is viewed in terms of carrot or stick; reward or punishmnet. If one does good - give reward. Do bad - get punished.
The problem with that is it only works if the person knew how to do better but chose not to, which is most often not the case. But since those are the only 2 options available, we get a situation where the less priviledged get hit with the biggest stick we can find for the smallest offenses, while the more priveledged have nothing happen to them because clobbering them with a stick seems too harsh. Unfortunately this teaches everyone the worst possible moral lesson - that its not what you do but who you are that matters.
I wasn’t advocating for not hitting them with the stick and letting them go because they’re “good kids” (which they clearly aren’t). I was reacting that whole idea.
Instead we need to get them to understand what they are doing and how it affects other people, doing whatever is necessary to instill some self-awareness and empathy. Not because they’re “good kids”, not even primarily because it can help them actually become good adults, but primarily because that is what will improve the lives of the people that will be sharing a society with these kids throughout their adulthood
At one point I was hopeful that all we had to do to see progress was vote and wait for the predominantly middle aged-to-elderly bigots to die off. Unfortunately, they made very sure to create a world that ensures this sort of behavior is not only tolerated, but rewarded, spreading their disgusting corruption for generations to come. At this point it feels like the only option is to move somewhere more civilized and try not to think too hard about what the world is going to look like for the next couple hundred years, because the USA at least is broken beyond any hope of repair.
Not that I’m rich enough to actually do that, of course.
Just fyi, you can cross off Canada on your list of available safe havens. It’s lovely and all, and the healthcare is a great peace of mind (at the price of minor, but noticeable, inconvenience), but the real estate market and other parts of the economy are getting absolutely devastated by off-shore money laundering and parking cash in very pricey dwellings. Think the super-rich ghost-town sections of London or New York where McMansions and McCondos are all owned by shell cops of shell corps of shell corps of hedge funds of LLCs headquartered in the Caymans. Tons spic and span, highly patrolled, utterly empty streets. Typical 2-3 BR homes in metro Vancouver are out of reach for all but the most well-off Double Income No Kids couples or someone whose family has deep pockets.
Maybe a middle ground… ensure all incoming students are given a lecture on what is not acceptable behaviour, with clear examples. And a firm zero-tolerance policy. Otherwise there’s a risk of unfairly catching the ignorant.
And keep a tally where the ignorant come from. Investigate any feeder schools that stand out… probably find a teacher or even a wide culture that needs attention.
Reminds me of when I joined the forces. For the first 2 days you could get away with a lot, even mild insubordination. But day 3 had the lecture on military law. Haircut right afterwards, if memory serves.
What should the school has to do isn’t the no consequence route but bore a no irreversible consequence done. Like a month of suspension and automatically fail the year or have to change school.
Repeating a year isn’t a tragedy and in some case could have positive consequence overall so changing school.
To the specific problem what I see is that WWII veterans are getting older and older so, it’s becoming hard to having one of the to make a show and tell about fighting the nazis…
The supervisory board of the new corporation included […] Joseph Schülein, who was Jewish. Schülein’s later tenure as the company’s owner led the Nazis to deride Löwenbräu beer as “Jewsbeer”.
