7 ms·

‘There Were Fists Everywhere.’ Violence Against Teachers Is on the Rise

52 points by malshe 3y ago

malshe 3y ago
Paywall removed: https://archive.ph/jSODZ https://archive.ph/jSODZ
cypher69 3y ago
Public Schools stopped disciplining kids long ago. Fear of retribution, legal action, and a mountain of headaches from all angles. Why would anyone want to teach these days?
- Scalene2 3y ago
  What exactly do you mean when you say "disciplining"?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Corporal punishment or shaming in front of others https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_i... Other ways included a time out, suspension or talk to the parents where parents grounded them, or punished them somehow. All that has been phased out in most places for various reasons. Although nearly half of the US states still allow it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/18/19-states-still-allow-corporal-punishment-in-school/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/... To me it is definitely telling that the US Supreme Court found it constitutional and legal to administer corporal punishment by drawing analogies with prisoners in a jail. As in the pg essay “Why Nerds are Unpopular”, primary school is essentially a prison for the kids, a glorified day care center to keep them out of trouble while parents can work. But elsewhere in many districts if the parent doesnt care then there are literally no consequences for children who disrupt classes, that don’t backfire badly on those who would try to make those consequences.
    - jdietrich 3y ago
      Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you, has already demonstrated a willingness to use violence against you and has a room full of willing accomplices. I hope that anyone foolish enough to try it has good healthcare.
      - CapricornNoble 3y ago
        > Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you Why are teenage boys bigger, fitter and stronger than the teachers? Maybe because ~75% of teachers are women? There's value in the ability of physically-capable adult males to quietly intimidate adolescents. There's value in well-rounded men who can provide classroom instruction but maybe also coach the boxing/powerlifting/wrestling teams. The next time Mr. Smith puts some bass in his voice and tells you to sit down and stop disrupting class, there should be a voice in the back of your head that says "I should do that, because he just might uppercut me into the stratosphere". I suspect that students aren't learning the principle of "Fuck Around and Find Out" from ANY authority figure in their daily lives. Our society as a whole seems to have forgotten the importance of male role models IMO...
        pasabagi 3y ago
        Yeah, a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model. You could probably get Andrew Tate in for the job, once he's out of jail.
        CapricornNoble 3y ago
        >a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model On average, men are more likely to aspire to be Thor or Captain Marvel than they are to be Rick Moranis's character in Ghostbusters. They are more likely to take guidance from a larger, stronger, and more assertive man than otherwise. The military has already figured this out, just look at the stereotypical Drill Instructor for an extreme example of the concept. Do you dispute this, or are you simply speaking of what works/doesn't work for you as an individual? A single anecdote doesn't really tell us much about what society-wide initiatives we should pursue. Also, Andrew Tate is already out of jail and currently under house arrest.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    Expulsion and suspension. I know a teacher who works in a school with this problem; state DOE policies puniah schools for suspending or expelling violent children, so instead they are allowed to continue terrorizing their peers and instrucrors.
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  You’re wrong, of course, but not entirely. I’m a teacher at an urban Title I school (over 70% of our students qualify for reduced or free school lunches). Yes, there is a lot of paperwork involved when you need to transfer student to alternative school or outright expel them. It’s only an issue though when you don’t document what’s happening along the way. And of course, documentation is not a bad thing. It would be a bad thing if kids were being run out of schools at the whims of tired, overworked, extremely stressed teachers. On the other hand, the really wacky stuff comes when it’s a special education student. You literally cannot suspend them for more than 10 days in a school year. I was the general education teacher in FBA meetings for three of my SpEd students who brought weapons to school (two knives, one taser). The result was to put them all on a functional behavioral plan which requires weekly reports about whether they are meeting FB targets: of not bringing weapons to school. The plan included that when they did meet their targets, they should be rewarded in certain ways, like being given time on a computer or time to speak with their friends or whatever. So, yeah. Rewards for… not bringing weapons. Now that was crazy.
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  > Why would anyone want to teach these days? Now let me answer this question more directly. It’s actually worse than a lot of people think. There is an intense and overwhelming amount of utter bullshit that gets rolled down the hill starting with Congress, added to by state legislatures, and further reinforced by local school districts. And of course teachers are at the bottom of the hill. When you focus on that, and all the ways that the system is utterly dysfunctional, and not beneficial for students, it can be defeating. But when you focus on your job, which is students, it’s the single most rewarding thing you can do, in my judgment. I was a lawyer for 5-6 years before getting into education. I hated every day of my life. Now I wake up excited to see my students and be with them. It’s genuine fulfillment I never thought I would have in my life. So, if you can withstand all the bullshit, and there is a metric shit ton of it for sure, it’s an amazing job. If you can’t stand up for yourself, or if you can’t deal with irrational requirements imposed by people fully out of touch with reality—-if you can’t, in other words, set aside, or ignore to the maximum extent possible, dealing with other adults, you should definitely avoid it. I can do those things. Becoming a teacher was the single best decision I’ve ever made.
  - triceratops 3y ago
    You're a saint. I meant that sincerely.
    - dmvdoug 3y ago
      I'm not, of course, but I appreciate the sentiment. :)
  - inconceivable 3y ago
    sounds like having a law degree and lawyering experience is the perfect background.
  - uxcolumbo 3y ago
    In your view, what are the key (realistic) things to fix this?
    - 3y ago
noworriesnate 3y ago
It’s not just violence against teachers. A local school here has gangs of students from two African countries. There were border clashes between the two nations, and the next day there was a lot of fighting between the gangs. Any ideas on how we could avoid this situation?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- meghan_rain 3y ago
  egypt and israel?
  - SkipperCat 3y ago
    Technically, Israel is part of Asia, not Africa.
  - draw_down 3y ago
    That’s a funny guess. All those Egyptian troublemakers you hear about.
    - zen_1 3y ago
      Google dancing Egyptians. Oh wait, wrong conspiracy theory
Georgelemental 3y ago
This is largely due to misguided "civil rights" rules, that forbid schools from disciplining violent children if there is "disparate impact" (rates of disciplinary action must be exactly equal by race). Of course, the real effect of these policies is that kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods don't get the opportunity to learn and succeed, because a few bad apples make things impossible for everyone else.
- vuln 3y ago
  > because a few bad apples make things impossible for everyone else. A few apples are committing violent acts but _everyone_ else is filming for social media. No one steps in due to liability or whatever reason.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  As Dr. Sowell explains, "when they want to help black people, they want to help those black people who are doing something wrong. That is rioters, ex-convicts, they want to stop schools from disciplining black kids who misbehave in school. I don't hear them concerning themselves with the blacks who are the victims of the people who are doing wrong." https://youtu.be/bpA3Sf6Ffu4 https://youtu.be/bpA3Sf6Ffu4 (6:05)
SkipperCat 3y ago
Social media is not helping. There is a daily stream of videos showing students fighting teachers, themselves and causing mayhem. The videos may be generated by a few, but it changes the Overton window of appropriate behavior in schools and I would not be surprised if it causes a cascading effect.
- diogenescynic 3y ago
  When has censorship ever worked? I hardly think the videos are causing the violence. People have smartphones everywhere now, this stuff is just getting captured more often.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    > I hardly think the videos are causing the violence Don't you remember "happy slapping"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping
    - DoItToMe81 3y ago
      Kids are stupid and this behavior has existed loooong before the internet. Sack tapping didn't appear from the ether when a journalist publicized the name, for example.
  - SkipperCat 3y ago
    There is a difference between censorship and content moderation. The platforms don't allow rape videos, snuff films and Nazi content. They can also take a responsible stand on children engaging in violent behavior.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    > People have smartphones everywhere now, this stuff is just getting captured more often. "Perception is reality". It's like all of those studies that showed from the 90s until COVID crime consistantly was dropping, yet if you asked people they felt like it was worse than ever due to aggressive reporting, esp. by "BREAKING NEWS" crews on local news channels.
rhaway84773 3y ago
So many social issues we’re seeing in the US that have flared up since the pandemic keep being swept under the rug as “mental issues during the pandemic/trauma”. But that raises a very obvious counterpoint. Why aren’t we seeing the same issues flare worsen in the same way in other countries? The entire globe went through the pandemic. And other countries actually had real lockdowns unlike what the US had, which was suggestions at best. It’s reasonable that the pandemic might have exacerbated existing issues, but the fact that we are seeing so many of these issues being exacerbated only in the US indicates that it’s really a U.S. problem, and not a pandemic problem (examples include the rise of gun violence, the rise of vehicular violence, the rise of homelessness, the rise of shoplifting, bad behavior by passengers in airplanes, and as in this article the rise of violence against teachers). It’s a bit of a stretch and looks very much like a hammer and nail situation (although it should still be researched), but at least the chief police officer blaming it on a loss of respect for authority because of the protests has the advantage of explaining why these issues are appearing pretty much in the US only.
- a_bonobo 3y ago
  IMHO, the pandemic has ripped off the mask of living in the US; those in power would see you rather die (from Covid) rather than risk losing a dollar. Other countries have not been as harsh, yes long lockdowns, but also social support and money. Once people saw that those in power would rather see you die than inconvenience them, an entire generation stopped believing in the social contract. After that things fall apart.
  - astrange 3y ago
    This is almost entirely false, since the US had more generous support during COVID than any other country and nobody "in power" wanted you to die except maybe Andrew Cuomo, but instead worked on vaccine acceleration. It's easy to spot incoherent politics since those afflicted just say "people in power", don't say who they mean, and it always turns out to be something the average voter supports. (The average voter doesn't particularly care if you're alive or not.)
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]

52 points by malshe 3y ago

Paywall removed: https://archive.ph/jSODZ https://archive.ph/jSODZ

Public Schools stopped disciplining kids long ago. Fear of retribution, legal action, and a mountain of headaches from all angles. Why would anyone want to teach these days?

Scalene2 3y ago
What exactly do you mean when you say "disciplining"?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- EGreg 3y ago
  Corporal punishment or shaming in front of others https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_i... Other ways included a time out, suspension or talk to the parents where parents grounded them, or punished them somehow. All that has been phased out in most places for various reasons. Although nearly half of the US states still allow it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/18/19-states-still-allow-corporal-punishment-in-school/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/... To me it is definitely telling that the US Supreme Court found it constitutional and legal to administer corporal punishment by drawing analogies with prisoners in a jail. As in the pg essay “Why Nerds are Unpopular”, primary school is essentially a prison for the kids, a glorified day care center to keep them out of trouble while parents can work. But elsewhere in many districts if the parent doesnt care then there are literally no consequences for children who disrupt classes, that don’t backfire badly on those who would try to make those consequences.
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you, has already demonstrated a willingness to use violence against you and has a room full of willing accomplices. I hope that anyone foolish enough to try it has good healthcare.
    - CapricornNoble 3y ago
      > Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you Why are teenage boys bigger, fitter and stronger than the teachers? Maybe because ~75% of teachers are women? There's value in the ability of physically-capable adult males to quietly intimidate adolescents. There's value in well-rounded men who can provide classroom instruction but maybe also coach the boxing/powerlifting/wrestling teams. The next time Mr. Smith puts some bass in his voice and tells you to sit down and stop disrupting class, there should be a voice in the back of your head that says "I should do that, because he just might uppercut me into the stratosphere". I suspect that students aren't learning the principle of "Fuck Around and Find Out" from ANY authority figure in their daily lives. Our society as a whole seems to have forgotten the importance of male role models IMO...
      - pasabagi 3y ago
        Yeah, a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model. You could probably get Andrew Tate in for the job, once he's out of jail.
        CapricornNoble 3y ago
        >a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model On average, men are more likely to aspire to be Thor or Captain Marvel than they are to be Rick Moranis's character in Ghostbusters. They are more likely to take guidance from a larger, stronger, and more assertive man than otherwise. The military has already figured this out, just look at the stereotypical Drill Instructor for an extreme example of the concept. Do you dispute this, or are you simply speaking of what works/doesn't work for you as an individual? A single anecdote doesn't really tell us much about what society-wide initiatives we should pursue. Also, Andrew Tate is already out of jail and currently under house arrest.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Expulsion and suspension. I know a teacher who works in a school with this problem; state DOE policies puniah schools for suspending or expelling violent children, so instead they are allowed to continue terrorizing their peers and instrucrors.
dmvdoug 3y ago
You’re wrong, of course, but not entirely. I’m a teacher at an urban Title I school (over 70% of our students qualify for reduced or free school lunches). Yes, there is a lot of paperwork involved when you need to transfer student to alternative school or outright expel them. It’s only an issue though when you don’t document what’s happening along the way. And of course, documentation is not a bad thing. It would be a bad thing if kids were being run out of schools at the whims of tired, overworked, extremely stressed teachers. On the other hand, the really wacky stuff comes when it’s a special education student. You literally cannot suspend them for more than 10 days in a school year. I was the general education teacher in FBA meetings for three of my SpEd students who brought weapons to school (two knives, one taser). The result was to put them all on a functional behavioral plan which requires weekly reports about whether they are meeting FB targets: of not bringing weapons to school. The plan included that when they did meet their targets, they should be rewarded in certain ways, like being given time on a computer or time to speak with their friends or whatever. So, yeah. Rewards for… not bringing weapons. Now that was crazy.
dmvdoug 3y ago
> Why would anyone want to teach these days? Now let me answer this question more directly. It’s actually worse than a lot of people think. There is an intense and overwhelming amount of utter bullshit that gets rolled down the hill starting with Congress, added to by state legislatures, and further reinforced by local school districts. And of course teachers are at the bottom of the hill. When you focus on that, and all the ways that the system is utterly dysfunctional, and not beneficial for students, it can be defeating. But when you focus on your job, which is students, it’s the single most rewarding thing you can do, in my judgment. I was a lawyer for 5-6 years before getting into education. I hated every day of my life. Now I wake up excited to see my students and be with them. It’s genuine fulfillment I never thought I would have in my life. So, if you can withstand all the bullshit, and there is a metric shit ton of it for sure, it’s an amazing job. If you can’t stand up for yourself, or if you can’t deal with irrational requirements imposed by people fully out of touch with reality—-if you can’t, in other words, set aside, or ignore to the maximum extent possible, dealing with other adults, you should definitely avoid it. I can do those things. Becoming a teacher was the single best decision I’ve ever made.
- triceratops 3y ago
  You're a saint. I meant that sincerely.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    I'm not, of course, but I appreciate the sentiment. :)
- inconceivable 3y ago
  sounds like having a law degree and lawyering experience is the perfect background.
- uxcolumbo 3y ago
  In your view, what are the key (realistic) things to fix this?
  - 3y ago

noworriesnate 3y ago

It’s not just violence against teachers. A local school here has gangs of students from two African countries. There were border clashes between the two nations, and the next day there was a lot of fighting between the gangs. Any ideas on how we could avoid this situation?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
meghan_rain 3y ago
egypt and israel?
- SkipperCat 3y ago
  Technically, Israel is part of Asia, not Africa.
- draw_down 3y ago
  That’s a funny guess. All those Egyptian troublemakers you hear about.
  - zen_1 3y ago
    Google dancing Egyptians. Oh wait, wrong conspiracy theory

Georgelemental 3y ago

This is largely due to misguided "civil rights" rules, that forbid schools from disciplining violent children if there is "disparate impact" (rates of disciplinary action must be exactly equal by race). Of course, the real effect of these policies is that kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods don't get the opportunity to learn and succeed, because a few bad apples make things impossible for everyone else.

vuln 3y ago
> because a few bad apples make things impossible for everyone else. A few apples are committing violent acts but _everyone_ else is filming for social media. No one steps in due to liability or whatever reason.
ETH_start 3y ago
As Dr. Sowell explains, "when they want to help black people, they want to help those black people who are doing something wrong. That is rioters, ex-convicts, they want to stop schools from disciplining black kids who misbehave in school. I don't hear them concerning themselves with the blacks who are the victims of the people who are doing wrong." https://youtu.be/bpA3Sf6Ffu4 https://youtu.be/bpA3Sf6Ffu4 (6:05)

SkipperCat 3y ago

Social media is not helping. There is a daily stream of videos showing students fighting teachers, themselves and causing mayhem. The videos may be generated by a few, but it changes the Overton window of appropriate behavior in schools and I would not be surprised if it causes a cascading effect.

diogenescynic 3y ago
When has censorship ever worked? I hardly think the videos are causing the violence. People have smartphones everywhere now, this stuff is just getting captured more often.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  > I hardly think the videos are causing the violence Don't you remember "happy slapping"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping
  - DoItToMe81 3y ago
    Kids are stupid and this behavior has existed loooong before the internet. Sack tapping didn't appear from the ether when a journalist publicized the name, for example.
- SkipperCat 3y ago
  There is a difference between censorship and content moderation. The platforms don't allow rape videos, snuff films and Nazi content. They can also take a responsible stand on children engaging in violent behavior.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > People have smartphones everywhere now, this stuff is just getting captured more often. "Perception is reality". It's like all of those studies that showed from the 90s until COVID crime consistantly was dropping, yet if you asked people they felt like it was worse than ever due to aggressive reporting, esp. by "BREAKING NEWS" crews on local news channels.

rhaway84773 3y ago

So many social issues we’re seeing in the US that have flared up since the pandemic keep being swept under the rug as “mental issues during the pandemic/trauma”. But that raises a very obvious counterpoint. Why aren’t we seeing the same issues flare worsen in the same way in other countries? The entire globe went through the pandemic. And other countries actually had real lockdowns unlike what the US had, which was suggestions at best. It’s reasonable that the pandemic might have exacerbated existing issues, but the fact that we are seeing so many of these issues being exacerbated only in the US indicates that it’s really a U.S. problem, and not a pandemic problem (examples include the rise of gun violence, the rise of vehicular violence, the rise of homelessness, the rise of shoplifting, bad behavior by passengers in airplanes, and as in this article the rise of violence against teachers). It’s a bit of a stretch and looks very much like a hammer and nail situation (although it should still be researched), but at least the chief police officer blaming it on a loss of respect for authority because of the protests has the advantage of explaining why these issues are appearing pretty much in the US only.

a_bonobo 3y ago
IMHO, the pandemic has ripped off the mask of living in the US; those in power would see you rather die (from Covid) rather than risk losing a dollar. Other countries have not been as harsh, yes long lockdowns, but also social support and money. Once people saw that those in power would rather see you die than inconvenience them, an entire generation stopped believing in the social contract. After that things fall apart.
- astrange 3y ago
  This is almost entirely false, since the US had more generous support during COVID than any other country and nobody "in power" wanted you to die except maybe Andrew Cuomo, but instead worked on vaccine acceleration. It's easy to spot incoherent politics since those afflicted just say "people in power", don't say who they mean, and it always turns out to be something the average voter supports. (The average voter doesn't particularly care if you're alive or not.)

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]