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The craziest part is that most teachers are doubled as law enforcement. If students bully or assault each other? just call the police. Why would we even call t

The craziest part is that most teachers are doubled as law enforcement. If students bully or assault each other? just call the police. Why would we even call teachers to resolve this kind of conflict? Teachers should only teach... not discipline or punishing kids. We should have separate roles for this.

quantified 5y ago
There is a bit of “parent in absentia” needed for the grownups who look after the students. And the kids can do crazy things. Calling the police is definitely not the right way to handle things in a lot of kid situations.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  > And the kids can do crazy things. Exactly why we should involve law enforcement. Kids especially teenagers can be dangerous. Teachers who have almost no training on how to handle violent situation should not be required to handle this. Not to mention, teachers also have absolutely no authority to do anything.
  - quantified 5y ago
    Do you have kids who’ve needed steering? If Bobby cuts one of Suzy’s pigtails, you perp-walking him and printing him, throwing him juvie for 60 days? Of course there’s the possibility of criminal behavior, but most of it is better served long-term by other means. I am speaking from looking a a couple of generations of influence here, both sides of the perpetration fence. There are infractions that need police, but the majority are best handled without. The original comment on this thread conflated bullying and violence with all discipline of all kinds (did not nuance between them). Cops don’t care about bullying anyway, it’s not against the law.
    - ergocoder 5y ago
      > Bobby cuts one of Suzy’s pigtails Yeah, if adult go around with scissor cutting people's hair? That is fucked up. > you perp-walking him and printing him, throwing him juvie for 60 days You came up with a strong punishment just to support your argument. The punishment could be a warning as well unless it is repeated offender. The punishment could be fining a parent. Instead of coming up with a better solution like this, we let teachers handle it. This is why bullying is not often resolved. This is why school has the strange zero tolerance policy. They don't even care about justice. They just want the problem to go away.
staticman2 5y ago
Getting police involved often makes things more dangerous for everybody. It's absolutely not something teachers should be doing except in extreme circumstances.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  This is how much we as a society value teacher's life. Let's throw the shittiest responsibility, potentially dangerous, at the teachers since the responsibility doesn't fall on anybody. Police is the closest one to handle assault and bullying problem. > Getting police involved often makes things more dangerous for everybody I doubt this is true. Some cases are escalated but not most cases. Certainly not often.
  - staticman2 5y ago
    It's a police officer's job to violently tie people up and seperate them from family and community. They aren't the nearest solution to any school problem. Who says educators want the unaccountable police force to assault their students and drag them to jail if there's a bullying problem? Where is this idea coming from? At a minimum, calling someone in with a state monopoly on violence is unpredictable, and you do not know what the police officer will do or if/ to what extent they will hurt people.
waste_monk 5y ago
Probably a "duty of care" thing... if two teenagers are having a knife fight on the basketball court, sure, it's not reasonable to expect a teacher to break that up. Two seven year olds brawling over trivial nonsense? That sort of thing should be easily broken up by a teacher, and in fact involving police would be both a waste of police time that would be better spent on real crime, and also a drastic overreach - that's how you end up with those ridiculous "primary schooler arrested for holding a stick vaguely shaped like a gun" headlines. Teaching as a profession is in an awful state, but involving more police is not the solution. Better pay, student to teacher ratios, and so on would go a long way towards making it an attractive profession again. Also, in my opinion education (even at the tertiary level) has become too "customer service" focused, and many children are no longer taught to respect educators by their parents, which leads to appalling behaviour. There needs to be an overall attitude shift to help repair the teacher-student relationship.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  > Teaching as a profession is in an awful state, but involving more police is not the solution. This is how much we value teachers a society. The responsibility is shitty and potentially dangerous, so we throw it at the teachers. Because involving police during an assault is not the solution? If someone punches me, I would immediately involve police. Kids who punch others should be punished by law enforcement. Teachers have no authority to punish a kid whatsoever.
  - waste_monk 5y ago
    >Because involving police during an assault is not the solution? >Kids who punch others should be punished by law enforcement. It really depends on the situation - in my jurisdiction the age of criminal responsibility is 10 years old, below that age it is not possible to press criminal charges. And for children aged 10 to 14 'the onus is on the prosecution to prove that the young person alleged to have committed the crime had a sufficient understanding of the criminality of their actions. That understanding must amount to the knowledge that the actions were criminally wrong, and not just naughty"' [1]. Again, it would be highly inappropriate to get police involved except in the most drastic circumstances. For older teens, sure, but they generally have the sense to not brawl on-campus / within the school's duty of care. I'm mainly referring to breaking up squabbles between primary to middle schoolers. Teachers should be compensated more for having to put up with this, but I believe it's an unavoidable part of school yard/classroom management. I will note that here in Australia we don't have a police officer stationed in schools as (many? most? of) the USA does, so maybe the cost/benefit changes if you have a dedicated resource and aren't diverting police from useful work off-site. But I still feel it's inappropriate. >Teachers have no authority to punish a kid whatsoever. What would you do, bring back spanking? I agree with you, kids get away with things that would not have gone unpunished when I was a lad, but you have to remember that the goal of the system is (at least in theory) to nurture and educate children. If you keep excluding or eventually expel students they won't get educated, if you on calling parents in to collect their misbehaving kids they might get punished at work or eventually fired for being unreliable (which certainly will make the child's home life more difficult, and if it's a troubled family may actually result in the child being physically harmed), and so on. It's a very tough problem and I don't have a good answer for it. But I do believe that children need to be taught more discipline at home so that teachers can maintain effective control in class, and that this whole trend of parents wanting to be their child's friend over parenting them effectively is very bad for society. [1] https://www.lawsocietysa.asn.au/Public/Publications/Resources/It_is_time_to_raise_the_age_of_criminal_responsibility.aspx https://www.lawsocietysa.asn.au/Public/Publications/Resource...
kelseyfrog 5y ago
Likewise parents should only parent. That is why I call the cops on my kids when they fight. They need to learn that assault and battery are serious crimes that I'm not equip to handle as an untrained person. It's best left up to people who are trained and specialized to deal in the matter.

quantified 5y ago

There is a bit of “parent in absentia” needed for the grownups who look after the students. And the kids can do crazy things. Calling the police is definitely not the right way to handle things in a lot of kid situations.

ergocoder 5y ago
> And the kids can do crazy things. Exactly why we should involve law enforcement. Kids especially teenagers can be dangerous. Teachers who have almost no training on how to handle violent situation should not be required to handle this. Not to mention, teachers also have absolutely no authority to do anything.
- quantified 5y ago
  Do you have kids who’ve needed steering? If Bobby cuts one of Suzy’s pigtails, you perp-walking him and printing him, throwing him juvie for 60 days? Of course there’s the possibility of criminal behavior, but most of it is better served long-term by other means. I am speaking from looking a a couple of generations of influence here, both sides of the perpetration fence. There are infractions that need police, but the majority are best handled without. The original comment on this thread conflated bullying and violence with all discipline of all kinds (did not nuance between them). Cops don’t care about bullying anyway, it’s not against the law.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    > Bobby cuts one of Suzy’s pigtails Yeah, if adult go around with scissor cutting people's hair? That is fucked up. > you perp-walking him and printing him, throwing him juvie for 60 days You came up with a strong punishment just to support your argument. The punishment could be a warning as well unless it is repeated offender. The punishment could be fining a parent. Instead of coming up with a better solution like this, we let teachers handle it. This is why bullying is not often resolved. This is why school has the strange zero tolerance policy. They don't even care about justice. They just want the problem to go away.

staticman2 5y ago

Getting police involved often makes things more dangerous for everybody. It's absolutely not something teachers should be doing except in extreme circumstances.

ergocoder 5y ago
This is how much we as a society value teacher's life. Let's throw the shittiest responsibility, potentially dangerous, at the teachers since the responsibility doesn't fall on anybody. Police is the closest one to handle assault and bullying problem. > Getting police involved often makes things more dangerous for everybody I doubt this is true. Some cases are escalated but not most cases. Certainly not often.
- staticman2 5y ago
  It's a police officer's job to violently tie people up and seperate them from family and community. They aren't the nearest solution to any school problem. Who says educators want the unaccountable police force to assault their students and drag them to jail if there's a bullying problem? Where is this idea coming from? At a minimum, calling someone in with a state monopoly on violence is unpredictable, and you do not know what the police officer will do or if/ to what extent they will hurt people.

waste_monk 5y ago

Probably a "duty of care" thing... if two teenagers are having a knife fight on the basketball court, sure, it's not reasonable to expect a teacher to break that up. Two seven year olds brawling over trivial nonsense? That sort of thing should be easily broken up by a teacher, and in fact involving police would be both a waste of police time that would be better spent on real crime, and also a drastic overreach - that's how you end up with those ridiculous "primary schooler arrested for holding a stick vaguely shaped like a gun" headlines. Teaching as a profession is in an awful state, but involving more police is not the solution. Better pay, student to teacher ratios, and so on would go a long way towards making it an attractive profession again. Also, in my opinion education (even at the tertiary level) has become too "customer service" focused, and many children are no longer taught to respect educators by their parents, which leads to appalling behaviour. There needs to be an overall attitude shift to help repair the teacher-student relationship.

ergocoder 5y ago
> Teaching as a profession is in an awful state, but involving more police is not the solution. This is how much we value teachers a society. The responsibility is shitty and potentially dangerous, so we throw it at the teachers. Because involving police during an assault is not the solution? If someone punches me, I would immediately involve police. Kids who punch others should be punished by law enforcement. Teachers have no authority to punish a kid whatsoever.
- waste_monk 5y ago
  >Because involving police during an assault is not the solution? >Kids who punch others should be punished by law enforcement. It really depends on the situation - in my jurisdiction the age of criminal responsibility is 10 years old, below that age it is not possible to press criminal charges. And for children aged 10 to 14 'the onus is on the prosecution to prove that the young person alleged to have committed the crime had a sufficient understanding of the criminality of their actions. That understanding must amount to the knowledge that the actions were criminally wrong, and not just naughty"' [1]. Again, it would be highly inappropriate to get police involved except in the most drastic circumstances. For older teens, sure, but they generally have the sense to not brawl on-campus / within the school's duty of care. I'm mainly referring to breaking up squabbles between primary to middle schoolers. Teachers should be compensated more for having to put up with this, but I believe it's an unavoidable part of school yard/classroom management. I will note that here in Australia we don't have a police officer stationed in schools as (many? most? of) the USA does, so maybe the cost/benefit changes if you have a dedicated resource and aren't diverting police from useful work off-site. But I still feel it's inappropriate. >Teachers have no authority to punish a kid whatsoever. What would you do, bring back spanking? I agree with you, kids get away with things that would not have gone unpunished when I was a lad, but you have to remember that the goal of the system is (at least in theory) to nurture and educate children. If you keep excluding or eventually expel students they won't get educated, if you on calling parents in to collect their misbehaving kids they might get punished at work or eventually fired for being unreliable (which certainly will make the child's home life more difficult, and if it's a troubled family may actually result in the child being physically harmed), and so on. It's a very tough problem and I don't have a good answer for it. But I do believe that children need to be taught more discipline at home so that teachers can maintain effective control in class, and that this whole trend of parents wanting to be their child's friend over parenting them effectively is very bad for society. [1] https://www.lawsocietysa.asn.au/Public/Publications/Resources/It_is_time_to_raise_the_age_of_criminal_responsibility.aspx https://www.lawsocietysa.asn.au/Public/Publications/Resource...

kelseyfrog 5y ago

Likewise parents should only parent. That is why I call the cops on my kids when they fight. They need to learn that assault and battery are serious crimes that I'm not equip to handle as an untrained person. It's best left up to people who are trained and specialized to deal in the matter.