Funny you say that as I recall a moment way back in 2nd grade where I’m sitting at the lunch table with friends when a teacher pulls me away into the hall and starts yelling at me for “flipping her the bird” from a distance.
Being 8 years old I had no idea what she was accusing me of and started to cry thinking I had done something awful. The incident obviously imprinted on me enough to remember it almost 40 years later.
Teachers/administrators of grade school children: I don’t care what happened, these are kids we’re talking about. How about you act like the adult and stop calling the cops for every perceived slight or disrespect?
17 or 18 years ago on a touristic causeway I was working on I watched a family spend a full half hour plus enjoying the sights with a child/teen with down syndrome made to walk 20 ft behind them by herself so people wouldn’t think they were together as the lady whom i’m guessing was the mother stated it was embarrassing. I felt like pointing out to her what she should truly be embarrassed about but didn’t see how that wouldn’t just make things worse and left it. these people are for real unfortunately.
But…but…that’s the point of Zero Tolerance! We can dispense with having to use such antiquated concepts as ‘common sense,’ ‘judgement,’ or ‘discretion!’
This is a crazy situation the administration have caused.
How about, instead of coming up with policies that have to be followed to the letter, we focus on getting resources into classrooms, get distractions out, and let the professionals get on with their jobs.
To be fair, zero tolerance caught on because exercising common sense, judgement and discretion turned out to have fairly significant biases. Zero tolerance was meant to make the consequences of difficult behaviour the same regardless of the perpetrator.
As always, our only choices in such situations are between which type of injustices bother us less.
i was always amazed in K-12 how badly admins/teachers would harass the “weird” kids.
i never dared to day it out loud, but it always seemed egregiously stupid to trump up a reason to suspend someone you suspect has severe anger issues… after all, they are eventually coming back, and if you convince them no amount of good behavior will protect them they might act out.
There are numerous times where I felt that my public school mainly hired adults that had no business being around children. Like the time the gym teacher brought out the shortest boy to the front and explained to the rest of the class that not everyone matures at the same rate. (WTF)
For what it’s worth I was very well versed in all the four letter words and obscene gestures when I was in 2nd grade (8 years old I think?). I may have caused more than one teacher to think that all kids are little monsters.
I would say there’s a truly vast gap between “ don’t know how to effectively integrate them into the classroom community.” and “call the cops on them.”
The first one is just someone who isn’t fully qualified for their job, but that could probably be remedied. The second is someone who has no business being in any position that has any institutional authority over anyone, under any circumstances, ever again.
Yet it still had the same biases as before. It’s almost like you can’t solve institutional problems without fixing the institution (or abolishing it, but I think the ayn-caps and reactionaries will not understand and will just abolish schools for the poor instead)
It’s somehow funny in a sick way. But is this a consequence of a failure of the education system? Calling the policy on this can only be done by an exceptionally stupid teacher who seems only be able to follow rules without thinking. I sometimes have the impression - right or wrong - that the tendency to follow rules unthinkingly is quite prevalent in the USA.
