When the oldest daughter was in middle school (5th-8th grades), they had a student mediation program. They asked for volunteers at the beginning of the school year, and any time a kid had a problem they could take it to the mediators (who were representative of all the ages at the school, and mostly the ones who would go on to take debate in high school.)
There were surprisingly few problems, because the bullies were made to answer for their bad behavior in front of their peers*, and the parents were notified afterwards of the mediators decisions.
*Sometimes the bullies were exonerated - because the complainant was determined to have started the fight, or misrepresented the case.
In 2017, lax monitoring is a serious offence just about everywhere. When I was a teacher in the 90s,I knew more than one teacher, tenured teachers, not probationary, who were fired after one screw-up. For most incidents their colleagues were sympathetic, but rules are rules etc.
Although the idea of sending smart, motivated kids to crappy schools in order to help the public school system seems like a good idea in principal, I would send my kids to the best school that I can get them into. In our area, there are no good private schools. our ranch is in two states and several crappy school districts, and it happens that my two kids ended up going to separate districts, mostly to be with their friends. Oddly, the district that my oldest went to spends much more per student, and has better facilities, but also a much lower graduation rate and poorer academic performance. And more violence.
I experienced the whole spectrum of the American education system. I had started out attending school in Japan, but went to a number of US schools when we moved here. I went to a top tier private school that had a large percentage of boarding students, but we moved with my Dad’s job, and I went to a Southern Baptist Church School, which was awful, then Public schools in Dade County, Fl. I ended up Graduating from High School in Austin.
Just no. If circumstances forced me to live in the district in Florida where I went to school, I would home school my kids. I just cannot agree with you on behavioral standards. The standards where I went in Florida were very low, because there were a large number of the students who held the teachers in contempt, and had no impulse control. It does not matter how many kids are sitting quietly taking notes if there are one or two students cursing at the teacher and fighting in the classroom.
The kids with the behavioral problems should have faced some sort of intervention in the first couple of years of school, if not before. A kid who does not see any value in education, and refuses to participate in any way needs a completely different form of instruction than a kid who is motivated and self disciplined.
I’m no longer in the school teaching biz any more. Left for a career in device modification for people with disabilities, and then moved into the software engineering in several fields – most recently for a financial services company. It’s been a weird but rewarding career path, thanks to a good liberal arts education and a lot of fortunate life turns.
I wasn’t driven out due to terrible experiences – the kids were generally respectful, and surprisingly appreciative of my efforts. It simply was my time to move on, and I wasn’t mentally organized enough to be the teacher that I thought the kids deserved. But it was good experience and the interactions with young teenagers were a wonderful training ground for communication with the wide variety of people I’ve since met in the software industry.
The teacher’s testimony was telling. Middle school is a tough environment for everyone, but what is happening in that community is something beyond the ordinary difficulties. Something is really awry when caring people stop caring.
A lot of it depends on the size of the school district. I’ve had kids in Portland Public where there is a network of alternative schools for just this purpose - to remove the disrupting children to a place where they can hopefully build the skills they need, and allow the mainstream students to be protected and succeed. However this particular suburban district didn’t have alternative schools, as far as I know their policy is to “mainstream” all students, no matter what their behavioral challenges are or the effect on other students.
What galled me most was sitting in an office, with a terrified kid, being told that another student’s right to an education outweighs their right not to be called a faggot and a tranny every day.
Sure. Which is why, when we see a story which looks like a teacher or school engaged in authoritarian overreach, we should cap our outrage until we understand the context better.
Too many people with power over educational design don’t understand that “fair and equal” doesn’t mean “everyone gets the same thing”. Fair means that everyone gets what they need.
As a child in Catholic school I hated - hated! - having to sit quietly with my hands folded yet again because a disruptive, uncaring, unsocialized kid was making an ass out of himself, yet again, bringing the lesson to a halt. I rejoiced on the day when we were told he wouldn’t be coming back.
As an adult I realize that the disruptor was probably exhausted, hungry, angry, confused, immature for his age, and so on, and I don’t hold him personally responsible - at least not past a reasonable, child-appropriate degree. His needs simply weren’t being met. It wasn’t possible for him to learn in that setting and in that state of internal need.
Politicians, bean counters and parents need to understand that meeting a child’s needs early and consistently is ultimately less expensive than dealing with the people the neglected children become. And let’s please count security and belonging as needs!
That’s my first thought, too. No doubt this school has other problems compounding it (money, I’m guessing), but it just seems like the worst possible plan to concentrate all the puberty in one place, where everyone is both not a girl and not yet a woman. That way you get all of the confusion, and none of the context to make sense of what you’re changing from or to. It’s no wonder a lot of the behavior this teacher talks about is directly sexual, and probably a lot of the other behavior is linked to that too.
So? The NRA wants everyone to be armed. The students would have open carry, if these shmucks had their way. I think the NRA deserves about as much clout, as much respect, as NAMBLA these days.
Also, Americans seem to be delighted to get someone fired. At least from my POV as an outsider, reading blogs, comments, etc.
As a German, it’s certainly one of the things that startles me most often, reminding me that Americans are far more different from Europeans in general and Germans in particular, despite coming mostly from the same stock and sharing millennia of history.
“I want that person fired”, “That person should be fired”, etc, for stuff that should be handled and resolved far earlier. And I see that from all sides of the political spectrum.
That and the general higher tolerance for violence as a viable means to resolve conflicts and the higher level of friendliness and politeness.
I have this dream where schools aren’t run by Little Hitlers or are Schoolyard Somalias (or even worse, both at the same time).
Can someone please tell me that is not such a crazy idea? I’ve been though both the Little Hitler and the Schoolyard Somalia school systems (and yes, for a long time I had both together) and they didn’t work.
People really don’t get how they enable bullies. The bully has 100% of the problem, and will accept 0% of the responsibility for damage done, and so any responsible people within range have to take responsibility, including the victim, as well as outside parties. The responsible thing for outside parties to do it blame both parties equally (because they have a hard time imagining malice in others, and don’t want to), and the bully doesn’t mind that really, while the victim just got doubled down on. Once by the bully, and then once by the whole damn system.
It takes a real strength of character to trudge through it non-violently. I really do feel for your terrified kid, and yourself.
In some cases this can be the most galling flavor of see-no-evil.
There are the ones who aren’t really interested in the problem at all; and just want to make it stop bothering them with the minimum effort that won’t incur some sort of liability. (The “HR approach”)
Then there are the ones who don’t care because, even if they don’t agree with the specifics of a bully’s target choices; they don’t really have a problem with bullying as a phenomenon.
As unpleasant as those are, though, it’s only the bleeding heart this-couldn’t-possibly-be-sadistic-infliction-of-violence-for-its-own-sake-because-I-can’t-imagine-that ones who might actually conclude that a bully is a friend you just haven’t made yet and demand more contact between the bully and the target as a ‘solution’. Yes, it’s a real risk; and no, they don’t ever seem to react well to the suggestion that their willingness to try to empathize with the aggressor’s no-doubt-troubled-circumstances is depraved indifference to the well-being of everyone else, not a humane approach.
You left out one option, though: The one who do see a problem with bullying, but see it as the victims’ responsibility to “man up” and right back, because this-sadistic-infliction-of-violence-is-triggerd-by-the-so-called-victims. It’s not “real violence”, but if it were, the victim would fight back or at least not be bothered by it, so doing something about it , much less punishing the bully, would destroy the wonderful career possibilities of boys-being-boys.
True enough. The one virtue(relatively speaking) of those ones is that they are exactly as unhelpful as the others; but, unlike the others, probably won’t punish you if you do eventually try fighting back.
The bleeding hearts almost always will; and the HR types often do, unless you are quiet enough about it that ignoring it is the path of least resistance.
They flavor you mention are probably the most ideologically repugnant; but, unfortunately, not always the worst in terms of practical outcomes.
I have frequently felt–and said–that even the best of middle schoolers are unreconstructed barbarians. It’s the age and the hormones at work. Anyone that teaches middle school almost has to, by definition, be a saint. My daughter tells her boys when they complain, “Oh, be quiet! They volunteered to teach YOU!”
That said, INMSHO, the invention of the separate “middle school” is one of the worst ideas of educationists EVER. “Junior high” was bad enough, but it was often in or near the high school, where the high school kids could remind us that we were still, in their eyes, children, and miserable behavior was not to be tolerated. Furthermore, when I was in junior high, some of the teachers taught in both places, and the result was that they expected us to behave like the older students, and we complied. Conversely, many of my classmates in high school, and later my daughter’s in high school, came from K-8 schools where students in the upper grades were expected to behave as role models for the younger students, and this also had a positive effect on them. Isolating children of that age together does nothing but encourage and promote the kind of behaviors that are inspired by the imaginations and raging hormones of the age group. The middle school needs to be abolished once and for all. and preferably replaced by the K-8 system.
