Just like the Founders and Framers would have wanted!
A kindergartner who threw a tantrum at her small-town Georgia school was taken away in handcuffs, her arms behind her back, in an episode that is firing up the debate over whether teachers and police around the country are overreacting all too often when dealing with disruptive students.
— Wait, this needs to be “debated”? This was a six-year-old girl not brandishing a firearm. Are we really saying we can’t expect our education professionals to control six-year-old girls without the help of trained law enforcement professionals willing to subdue, cuff, and then arrest the little law breaking brats?
Across the country, civil rights advocates and criminal justice experts say, frustrated teachers and principals are calling in the police to deal with even relatively minor disruptions.
Some juvenile authorities say they believe it is happening more often, driven by zero-tolerance policies and an increased police presence on school grounds over the past two decades because of tragedies like the Columbine High massacre in Colorado. Hard numbers to back up the assertion are difficult to come by.
“Kids are being arrested for being kids,” said Shannon Kennedy, a civil rights attorney who is suing the Albuquerque, N.M., school district, where hundreds of kids have been arrested in the past few years for minor offenses — including such things as having cellphones in class, burping, refusing to switch seats and destroying a history book. In 2010, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for inflating a condom in class.
In Georgia, Salecia was accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing books and toys in an outburst Friday at Creekside Elementary in Milledgeville, a city of about 18,000, some 90 miles from Atlanta, police said. Authorities said she also threw a small shelf that struck the principal in the leg, and jumped on a paper shredder and tried to break a glass frame.
Police refused to say what set off the tantrum. The school called police, and when an officer tried to calm the child in the principal’s office, she resisted, authorities said. She then was handcuffed and taken away in a patrol car.
She resisted, did the six-year-old girl. Didn’t recognize the legitimate and ultimate authority of the police to command she stop being a six-year-old girl throwing a tantrum. And so she was naturally handcuffed and taken away in a fucking patrol car.
Naturally. Zero tolerance, you see. If kids aren’t going to act like adults, then we’re going to treat them like adults. Oh, wait —
Baldwin County schools Superintendent Geneva Braziel called the student’s behavior “violent and disruptive.”
“The Milledgeville police department was ultimately called to assist due to safety concerns for the student, other classmates and the school staff,” Braziel said in a statement.
Interim Police Chief Dray Swicord said the department’s policy is to handcuff people when they are taken to the police station, regardless of their age, “for the safety of themselves as well as the officer.” He said the child was restrained with steel cuffs, the only kind the department uses.
He said the girl will not be charged with a crime because she is too young.
Here’s what you do: you fire every last school employee who couldn’t deal with the six-year-old girl’s temper tantrum. Then you mock the police for being giant douches. Then you weep for a country that pretends we need cradle to grave government — and gets exactly what it asks for.
Now, granted, schools have to be careful these days how they handle student behavior lest they face lawsuits from opportunistic attorneys looking to find all sort of “civil rights” violations that they can cash in on; but still: it is clear that we’ve lost our collective minds — and that, just like everything else progressivism has touched, our schools are now little liberal fascist strongholds, where the learning is sub-par but the disciplinary control is truly top notch!
Sigh.
This is totally CYA by the school. This kid needed to be restrained and spanked. Probably suspended or expelled. (Oh, the memories of childhood.) Her behavior is really, really bad and not entirely normal. That said, she is a student and the school has the responsibility to discipline their students as part of teaching them. Sheesh, deportment used to be a class.
But they can’t restrain and spank and expel students because parents will sue. So they go all nanny-state and have the police do it.
We are officially in a police state. They take care of us all. /sarc
Here’s what you do: you fire every last school employee who couldn’t deal with the six-year-old girl’s temper tantrum. Then you mock the police for being giant douches. Then you weep for a country that pretends we need cradle to grave government — and gets exactly what it asks for.
With each passing day, Atlas Shrugged looks more prophetic. We gave the Left what it wanted. A society that turns adults into children under the burden of a thousand regulations impossible to divine. Imagine the legal implications of a teacher administering discipline to a child today, compared to a child acting out in a classroom in the 1950s. There was not even a question of a teacher’s authority sixty years ago. When we insist children raise children, what do you think will happen?
To paraphrase a rhetorical parry out of Atlas Shrugged, what makes anyone think the Left believes school is intended to be about teaching? Raising adults? What makes anyone think the Left is after a stable, growing, prosperous society?
Did George Stephanopolous lose it?
It’s fortunate the out of control little monster didn’t brandish a sharpened pencil or sissors or something.
This is why I plan to quit my job and homeschool my grandkids, should my children – currently in their childbearing prime – decide to get around to providing me one. The loss of income will be great, but the loss of a generation is greater.
[…] at Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldstein has posted excerpts from the reporting on the arrest of a six year old school girl who threw a temper tantrum. She was […]
Well. I would agree except the kid was reportedly tossing furniture around and pulling down a bookcase on the principal.
Considering that school admins are absolutely not allowed to put their hands on a student nowadays, what exactly were they supposed to do? I heard on the radio the kid’s been expelled for the rest of the year.
That kid needs a beating in the worst possible way. I volunteer to do the honors. I don’t really care if the police had to haul her away so mom could come pick up her little Satan’s spawn at the police station.
I’d love to homeschool my kids but I have no choice, I have to work.
Eric, by that time, homeschooling will be officially illegal. There’s a persistent undercurrent of kids being turned down for college NOW!
Sadly, missfixit is right too. The list of things my mother couldn’t prescribe as punishments in AL 10 years ago was mind-boggling:
1. Can’t keep them after school; they’ll miss the bus and can’t get home.
2. Teachers couldn’t restrain students. They could send them to the office. The principal could paddle them, with a permission slip.
3. Couldn’t stop them from buying “snacks” in the afternoon as treats; the school needed the revenue.
I’m sure it’s only gotten worse.
My guess is that the school was afraid to touch the girl for fear of being sued. Since, like most six year olds throwing a tantrum, she couldn’t be calmed by “reason”, the school called the police.
Instead of the police, they should have called her parents. This likely didn’t happen because school officials don’t seem to regard parents as having a legitimate role in child-rearing. After all, they’re not certified like teachers and usually don’t belong to a relevant union.
Because who needs parents or common sense when we have the government to protect us, even from ourselves. And the occasional rogue six year old girl.
In my experience, the parents wouldn’t respond well to being called. They are inconvenienced by having to leave work to come pick up their child and are mad at the school for “causing” the situation in the first place. The teacher/principal are the ones who take the brunt of the abuse, with the kid usually watching. Good luck ever disciplining that child again.
In my day (get off my lawn!) I was told in no uncertain terms that whatever I got meted out at school, I would get double when I got home. Just the knowledge that it wasn’t an idle threat kept me out of a lot of mischief.
“you fire every last school employee who couldn’t deal with the six-year-old girl’s temper tantrum.”
Like this situation? http://www.abc57.com/news/local/grade-schoolers-accused-of-beating-school-bus-driver-147696135.html? One of those kids (two brothers, seven and eight) deliberately scraped their handcuffs along the police car all the way across the body of it.
I deal with discipline-resistant alternative school children every day in a district where students attending a NORMAL school were suspended en masse for fighting. The ones I deal with are slightly less ‘active’ than the one cited in your article. Calling for police intervention is de rigeur. A drink for me on Friday anymore is too.
There’s an obligation to protect who ever is acting out, who ever is within their range, as well as prevent destruction of property. I’m sorry, but most days, it seems to be a matter of how well chaos can be managed. We are not allowed to lay hands on these kids. The police are.
You are doing heroic work, Rosalind. Don’t let anyone who’s never known the horrors of having to deal with a temper tantrum tell you otherwise.
Oh. And let’s not forget that before we started arresting six-year-old girls? Society was awash in anarchy and chaos, and public schools were dangerous places that routinely left millions dead each year.
One more thing: let me add that of course, a six-year-old girl throwing a temper tantrum is exactly the same as a group of grade schoolers beating a bus driver. Identical. Or at least, I’m incapable of drawing any kind of important distinction between the incidents.
It’s all relative, you see.
I think you’re starting to see the problem!
By the way, for those of you OUTRAGED who may or may not have made it to the end of my post before expressing said OUTRAGE, let me point out that I did write this:
It’s almost as if I could anticipate such responses.
I’m magical!
“That kid needs a beating in the worst possible way.”
Are you sure it isn’t the polity that needs the beating? Keeping Obama in office would do that trick.
On the other hand, there’s:
Q: “Why are those American’s beating their heads against that wall?”
A: “So they’ll feel better when they stop!”
I think this is where a Darwinian evolution of Home Schooling occurs.
Dad: I home school Johnny.
Progressive Bint: That should be illegal! You’re not qualified to teach!! You’re not even in the union!!!
Dad: Kid can recite the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, name all the Planets & Moons in our solar system, and do the math to explain their various orbits.
Progressive Bint: So he’s a bully on the playground.
Dad: Nah, I taught him never to start a fight. But if he’s in one, finish it. Oh yeah…He can also detail the history of the artists paintings currently hanging in the Louvre, can take you piece by piece through the American Revolution, digs Tocqueville, reads at a 10th grade level, can do fractions in his head, stitch a flesh wound, fish, hunt, throw a baseball like Nolan Ryan, and, if I hold onto his heels, he can change out a carburetor on a 67 Shelby Mustang.
Progressive Bint: Well…some college kids can do those sorts of…
Dad: He’s seven.
Progressive Bint: …My Jimmy is also seven ….What time do you start class in the morning?
“You are doing heroic work, Rosalind. Don’t let anyone who’s never known the horrors of having to deal with a temper tantrum tell you otherwise.”
Because I’m not quick to assume a negative, I really can’t determine if there’s a level of snark there or not. A single temper tantrum can be handled (I think). In an enclosed space with 15 other like-minded children, there is often a lightning quick chain reaction. In the case of the school, I would have been inclined to herd the kid into an empty room and let her wear herself out.
Losing our collective minds? I’ll buy that. When dinosaurs roamed the earth, federal dollars weren’t attached to every disorder dreamed up in the DSM-IV. I call your attention so something called “oppositional-defiant disorder”/ODD. If disciplinary control were truly top notch, the kids would react much like I or my own children would have if police intervention were threatened.
“Book her, Mr. Whistles…”
He said the girl will not be charged with a crime because she is too young.
I guess it’s a good thing her seventh birthday wasn’t until next week.
We haven’t lost our collective minds. The lawyers have thoughtfully taken them from us and given them over into the protective custody of the bureaucrats.
I’m sorry, but most days, it seems to be a matter of how well chaos can be managed.
I call your attention so something called “oppositional-defiant disorder”/ODD
Don’t worry. It won’t be long before the nanny state allows you to tranq dart all the kids with some union approved pharmaceutical.
If one of the policepersons wasn’t her functional parent figure, this was a miscarriage of justice that only Nancy Grace could solve.
Heh, when I was six, knowing my parents and my friends parents, this sort of thing would not go over. The police and school personnel would be the one’s who ended up in cuffs.
Just as soon as they were released from the hospital.
It all comes down to a total lack of discipline all around. And a vital component of discipline is properly applied violence, when necessary. Properly applied violence always works. All of which went the way of the dodo when parents decided to cede such things to lawyers, libs, and Hillary’s ‘it takes a village’ system.
That’s part of the problem, mc4ever59. The parents ignore the little monsters or insist that there is no way that little Blade or Bliss would ever do that sort of thing. It must have been those other kids who started it.
Teaching regular high school is bad enough, let alone elementary kids. Needy, clingy, whiny and combative tattle-tales for the most part with a few long suffering good kids tossed in who keep their heads down and pray for graduation.
I’m not arguing that the progressive school system sucks. It does.
I’m just saying that if I’m a teacher stuck in a classroom of howling monkeys trying to stab me with their scissors, I’d call the police too. So I wouldn’t get sued.
If I could defend myself, then that would be a different scenerio.
First: kill all the lawyers. (who said that? heh)
Second: overthrow the nanny state.
Good luck on either one of those goals. at this point.
ha ha, one of my kids comes hom and tells me stories about her little classmate “Blaze”, who can’t seem to behave and is constantly getting disciplined.
And by disciplined, I mean walking laps at recess. :)
My son goes to school with a kid named Blade. Talk about asking for trouble.
It all comes down to a total lack of discipline all around.
Welcome to the circular finger-pointing squad.
I attended a school with nuns who wielded brass rules that weren’t employed too often. Hell to pay all around, so support for bad behavior wasn’t found anywhere. Now it’s enhanced.
Retirement in a few years so I can home-school my grandchildren. The answer of state intervention really isn’t something I want to see inflicted, or the social pollution of being raised by a village. Not after what I’ve dealt with.
Rosalind my dad went to Catholic school too. He said one time he had to kneel down on pencils, put his nose on the chalkboard (where a circle was helpfully drawn), and hold two large textbooks in each hand, fully extended like Christ.
:P
I kinda think that’s what we need now.
Working with at risk kids is beyond challenging. My hat’s off to you, Rosalind. They scare me to death.
I sent my kids to parochial school when they were little shavers. Nuns in preschool and kindergarten, lay teachers from then on. Public high school. They’ve turned out great, but we stay involved in their lives and I keep them busy all the time with sports, music and Church stuff.
Leigh my state is so desperate for good math and science teachers at the upper levels, the local college offered me a grant to switch from engineering to teaching high school math, with the stipulation that I work in an “at risk” school district.
I took ONE of their “education” classes and backed right out. You’d have to be a nutjob to want to be in that system.
If you can’t handle a single 6-year-old without calling the cops — and if your school motivates you to handle them this way — both you and your school need to be rethought as part of the system of education.
Simple as that.
Frankly, I’m bummed out that we have people here defending such actions, or at the very least taking a world-weary fatalist approach. I mean, she is six. Six.
This is not the same country I grew up in.
Seems to me working with at risk kids would be a lot more challenging if you didn’t have the luxury of just calling the cops on them when they act out.
YMMV.
“If you can’t handle a single 6-year-old without calling the cops — and if your school motivates you to handle them this way — both you and your school need to be rethought as part of the system of education.”
I don’t know how I would handle that situation without laying hands on the kid. That’s the problem. My 6 year old wouldn’t dare behave like the kid in this story. None of my 3 kids would. But then again, I’ve laid hands on them in the past when it was necessary. Handling ONE kid isn’t difficult — if there aren’t 15 other kids in the mix. And you know, they listen to reason. lolz
Nope. Kid gets paddled now, he runs straight home and tells his parents who immediately lawyer up and sue the school.
When I got paddled I begged the teachers not to tell my parents because the punishment at home would be far worse.
The nuns knew how to handle this shit.
Time was I think, back when I was in elementary school, the parents, teachers, cops and principals (who, strange to say, likely all knew one another) would have colluded to scare the bejeezus out of a particularly recalcitrant kid in the 9 – 12 yr old range, with a wink and a nod that is, by producing a scene with handcuffs and the threat of hauling off to jail. To all but the target monster, this was a knowing fake though. But a 6 yr old? Not a chance.
The nuns who taught us are all in their 90’s now, bh. But they’d still know how to handle this.
Sister David says she needs to see you in her office, mister.
Just the mention of Sister David still scares me. That kneeling thing with a Bible in each outstretched arm? I did that a few times.
Seems the essential problem here is that the state takes parents who would expect a teacher to do what is necessary short of calling the cops on a little kid and puts them in the same group as parents who have their lawyers on speed dial.
Get rid of public schools and let those groups segregate themselves according to their own norms once more.
Seems to me working with at risk kids would be a lot more challenging if you didn’t have the luxury of just calling the cops on them when they act out.
YMMV.
Jeff, no disrespect, but you are a muscle-bound dude. I am a 5’4″ 125 pound blonde gal in her 50’s. They aren’t afraid of me. The little kids bite, kick and scratch. They beat the living shit out of each other on the playground and brag about getting detention. The high school kids bring knives to school and the boys can be 20 years old since they stick around until they get their diplomas, even if it takes six years. Not only are the boys grown men, they are over six feet tall and strong with little to no impulse control. I’m not risking getting killed or raped, thanks.
Calling the cops is an option of last resort. I’ve seen the cops haul kids out of school when I was teaching high school more than once. I’ve heard of them hauling kids out of the middle school, too, but not the elementary school. Evidently, this little girl in Georgia is ahead of her class in the delinquency department.
In seventh grade I was offered the choice of being paddled for a mischievous act or having my parents called. That was easy. And effective.
Then perhaps you aren’t the best option as a teacher? To borrow from Eastwood, a man’s gotta know his limitations.
I have no idea why you’re on about high school kids and knives, either. This was a six-year-old girl. Unarmed. Who, even at 5’4″ 125 lbs, I’m sure you outweigh by 80-90 lbs and tower over.
Besides which, you all seem studiously to be missing the point — namely, that we moved away from discipline that worked (and a corresponding idea of the family that set the groundwork) and moved toward the surreal spectacle of a six-year-old girl requiring cuffs and a squad car and paper work and etc., because she was doing what six-year-olds have always done.
B Moe at 2:00;
Absolutely. I remember a story my Grandma told me from when she was a girl in Jersey City. She was on the corner talking with some friends after school when along came a beat cop, complete with artfully twirled nightstick. Which he used to rap them all across the ass with the warning that they better not still be around when he made his way back.
She told her parents, which got her another ass beating. Because if the cop felt she needed a whack, then she must have been doing something wrong and deserved it’
Different country. Hell, different planet.
I was extending that thought. I honestly think they can’t handle single 6-year-olds. My rethought is to get rid of public schools because every bit of educational nonsense (from the public union work rules to the social promotion to the zero tolerance to… arresting little kids) seems to sprout there and then spread.
…because she was doing what six-year-olds have always done.
Maybe at your house. I brooked no temper tantrums with my kids.
My point was that this is not a new problem. The inmates have been running the asylum since the late 70’s. There is little you can do with kids like this girl other than expell her from the school. She is creating a nuisance, wasting the teacher and her classmate’s time and creating a hazardous learning environment. Would you want her in your child’s class or even in his school?
The article says that the principal did try to subdue the girl and was unsuccessful. That was when the police were called. It’s hard telling where the girl’s parents or guardians were or if someone tried to contact them.
See, that I don’t even understand how that’s possible without a great deal of explanation.
Either that principal is a quadraplegic or a moron or the rules that have slowly been put in place creates the functional equivalent.
Jeff, I get what you’re saying. It’s not the kid’s fault, per se. She is just doing what comes naturally to six-year-olds.
I would add that it’s what comes naturally when they’ve been left to raise themselves. I fault first the parents who have evidently rewarded (by failing to punish) this type of behavior in the past. If the kid didn’t know it would work, she wouldn’t have done it. Six is plenty old enough to know that this behavior is wrong. She probably was confused that it wasn’t working at school too, increasing her frustration and influencing her to double-down on the misbehavin’.
Children who have parents that act like parents instead of buddies don’t act this way in public and certainly would stop when confronted by an authority figure (teacher). Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer “parents” with kids in the public schools. Until these non-parents step up to the plate, the government run schools will continue their death spiral.
We do live in a world where up is down and left is right is wrong.
mc4ever59, OT, but Jersey City reminded me. There is a really entertaining book called “Five Finger Discount” about a girl (the author) who grew up in Jersey City and all of the graft and payola her parents participated in, including getting first pick of the swag at the police station where her mother worked.
Edumacators don’t get the kind of training at “subduing” little kids that my folks had picked up by the time I was six. Plus, if I wound up with a bruised arm or a lump on my head trying to fight somone who outweighed me by 100 pounds or more, there was no army of DFACS lawyers ready to spot said injury the next time I was out in public and light the witch-hunt signal.
Naturally!
OT: but speaking of a species of declared crime, bizarre prosecution and potential punishment, Judge Jessica Recksiedler has recused from the Zimmerman case.
At the risk of my own mental health, I’d like to point out once again that this girl was a girl of six.
Whom the cops were called on.
And who was cuffed and taken to the station in a squad car.
Six.
Six.
Six.
See, that I don’t even understand how that’s possible without a great deal of explanation.
Generally, you are not allowed to put your hands on the little darlings. I don’t know the rules at this particular school district, so whatever he or she did to subdue the girl would be pure speculation.
Six.
So what would you have done, Jeff? Short of calling the cops?
I would have not called the cops.
On the girl.
Of six.
So we have established that you would not call the cops. What would you do?
Thanks, Leigh, I’ll look for it. That used to be a helluva town. I hear you on not brooking temper tantrums. Heh, at my house growing up- aka ‘Soviet HQ’- if you rolled your eyes they’d roll your head.
Some thoughts….
“public” school =” government” school. What could go wrong?
Blame, or more importantly, the problem, starts with the parents. Discipline, respect for themselves and others, many other things are supposed to start at home. But too many parents can’t be bothered. “What did you learn today?” “Let me take a look at those textbooks”. Showing up for PTA. Getting to know their kid’s teachers and keeping communications open.
Two + generations of kids handed over to the state. Again, what could go wrong?
Those are negatives.. So? What would you have done?
As I stated, I would have herded her into an empty room & let her wear herself out.
Not to excuse, but to include all the information: the child couldn’t be subdued and couldn’t get a fix on the parents, so the police were called.
Oops. Should read ‘..subdued and the school couldn’t get a fix on the parents..’.
Who is “we”?
I wouldn’t have called the cops. The options available to me other than that would seem nearly limitless!
I think part of the issue there, leigh, is that it’s not a police matter. Just like not being able to boot your computer for some reason can be a real pain in the ass at work. You need a solution but it’s not a police matter.
I’m just imagining watching a neighbor’s kid and they throw a temper tantrum. I simply can’t imagine calling the cops. It wouldn’t even occur to me.
That’s the royal “we”.
So, tell me what you would have done with a six year old berzerker trashing your classroom?
mc4ever59, heh. I grill my youngest about school everyday and am friends with all his teachers and coaches and the chief of police. I love small towns; there’s nowhere to hide!
There are two schools of thought on the basic nature of humans.
On the progressive-left it is “known” that all humans are born good and only become troubled due to the influence of a corrupting society. Thus punishing the little girl is wrong as she is only acting that way due to the larger society. The society around her must be changed so that her basic goodness will not be thwarted.
The other view is that children are born as little self-centered barbarians who must be taught to be civilized humans before they become physically large enough to pose a threat to all others who come in contact with them. This teaching is called parenting and successful societies have always been the ones that rewarded and encouraged that effort.
I, be an inauthentic woman, am going to have to leave for a while to pick up my kid and take him to CCD.
BBL.
I can imagine the very first step would be to use my public union to change the rules involving dealing with temper tantrums rather than making sure I never paid a nickel for my pension.
If the child is acting out in a way that is dangerous and destructive, then by all means I would expect a teacher to subdue the little darling. If that involved dragging her out by the hair and pinning her in a corner with a sack over her head, so be it.
Any parent that threatened to lawyer up would be encouraged to explain to the parents of every other student in the classroom why their little darling should be allowed to threaten and harm them. They should further be encouraged to explain to every taxpayer (and potential juror, btw) how their little darling should be granted free rein to destroy District property.
In short, I would discipline the child appropriately, and relied on the District to back me up in any legal entanglements that might result. If I could not count on the District to provide such support, I would not work in that District.
This really isn’t that hard, people.
This is sort of like the UN dealing with Iran or North Korea, isn’t it? Nothing but sternly worded letters until shit just suddenly starts blowing up — and it wasn’t the UN who did it.
As to what would I have done? Well, probably sit on them. Not necessarily literally, but if it was necessary, then I would for their protection, my protection and the protection of the other children in the room. It would be rapidly clear that I am much bigger and stronger than the berzercker. Once things started flying and being broken it would seem clear that there is an inherent danger to the other children in that classroom who the teacher is also responsible for and as much physical restraint as is necessary to control the bersercker to protect the others children should not result in civil or criminal charges being brought against the teacher. And yes, that child would not be allowed back in the classroom. Ever.
But then again, I am not a teacher. Oh, and recall Walker!!11!!1!!!
Squid, that sounds like a good plan. (No, really)
Of course jobs are plentiful and it’s really easy to sell the house and relocate while making a killing in the process. So that part may not be viable.
I don’t work as a teacher and have probably the best set of managers that I’ve had in my working life and yet it’s been more than once that I’ve taken a firm stand as directed only to find myself abandoned when the heat gets turned up (the customer is always right, even when they’re wrong). So even if you thought the District would back you, it’s far from a sure bet.
Lest anyone should think I’m talking out my ass, I should probably add that my dear mother was a classroom aide for at-risk classes at her area high school for 7 or 8 years. She took the self-defense courses; she kept her hair cut very short. She retired to the lake with my father a few years ago, and if asked will admit that she doesn’t really miss it one bit.
She generally had two or three issues early each school year, where physical threats against her were met with a cold smile and a promise that such actions were a Very Bad Idea. Threats of legal action were met with the same attitude. The “Bad Kids” generally had a lot of respect for the rosy-cheeked, fat old lady, once they learned that she couldn’t be pushed.
If my fat old mother could handle strung-out 17-year-olds, then I find it hard to believe that “highly qualified educational professionals whose
inflatedminiscule paychecks andunsustainable gold-platedstingy benefits don’t even come close to matching the value they provide” can’t handle a 6-year-old. But hey — if blaming lawyers and administrators helps you sleep at night, don’t let me stop you.To the main point of the post; I would not even consider involving the police over a six year old child. Period.
What would I do? Drag her ass to the principal’s office, and inform the secretary to contact her parents. And keep trying until they were contacted. If ‘in addition to’ was necessary, then whatever it takes.
But I would not be taking shit off of a six year old, allowing her to endanger other children, or calling the cops.
FWIW, I’m a contract worker. No bennies, no pension & have to buy my own HC. Sweetie says at least once a week that I need to find some other job before I get hurt or have to deal with a lawsuit. I’m looking.
And STILL, we have no explanation of what to do with a little monster brat trashing your classroom, potentially hurting other kids, and you CAN’T PUT YOUR HANDS ON HER.
I’d like some concrete examples of what to do. If I were in that position, I would have to bodily restrain her and move her to another location. Then, I would probably be sued and lose my job.
But at least I wouldn’t be a pansy ass government stooge right? I’d just be out of work.
And I’m getting sick of this “she’s just doing what 6 year olds do”
no the fuck she isn’t. She’s doing what little brats do, who have had no parenting, and have been allowed to be raised by the government.
Clear the room, shut the door, bill the parents.
If you have to restrain her to protect the other children, do it, then fight for your job if you’re met with PC pushback. Use your union clout. If you’re fired, write an op-ed. Raise a stink at a school board meeting. Go to the town council. Get on the local news. Expose the idiocy of the system wherein there’s no middle ground between “tell the student to stop” and “having the kindgergartner arrested and hauled off in cuffs.” Don’t be part of the problem.
Watching conservatives pretend there’s nothing to do but pass the buck to law enforcement is enough to make me absolutely despair.
Six-year-olds sometimes throw tantrums. Now, I know it never happens to you or leigh, being the bestest of all possible parents, but trust me, it happens from time to time out here in the world of suspect parenting — and we suspect parents still don’t call the police when we’re met with the surreal specter of a kindergartner throwing a tantrum.
In fact, we have all sort of strategies to deal with them that leaves law enforcement entirely out of the equation.
We must seem like aliens to you people, I realize. But, well, embrace our Otherness.
Thank you for at least giving an example. The parents would never pay for that shit, though, and instead the teacher would have to fix it with her own money.
Not that I’m defending the teaching world, don’t get me wrong. Part of the reason I won’t do that job is the unions, part of it is the kids & parents today.
This has been enlightening however, because I realize that I really am in a state of despair over our society, and don’t expect anything to change or get better.
And my kids are 5, 7, and 9 and they never behave like that. So yes, it is completely surreal to me. They did throw tantrums when they were babies, but that was easier to handle. I had to get my boys’ behavior under control before they are big enough to seriously injure me. I’m very small and a single parent, so yes, the thought of my 7 yr old son (who is almost as tall as me) using his bat as a weapon against me is a very scary thought. I appreciate that you find this ridiculous though!
Are 6-year-olds larger, more mature, and older than I’m remembering?
From a teacher’s perspective…
Why don’t teachers take some time out of their political activism schedules and, I don’t know, just spit balling here, do something about that?
They wanted books about two gay unicorns. They got it. They wanted freakish benefits packages. They got it. They wanted to pretend that there are forty different social issues more important that reading, writing, arithmetic, and science. They got it.
They have a track record of getting exactly what they wanted time and time again. If they really wanted it they’d be able to taser one kid a day with no questions asked.
Don’t know if you’ve misidentified a regular grunt-teacher as a school administrator or a higher-up-inna-system or not, bh. The ones I know, with the bulging classes and greying hairs are as genuinely shocked! and horrified! at the conditions as we all are.
Yes, it’s time to finally introduce the vouchers for public schools that’ve been mentioned favorably by astute politicians. This sort of thing doesn’t happen this way in private schools.
Remember that blog post back in the olden days about how many 5 year olds you could take out before they whipped your ass?
Apparently the answer is zero.
If it comes down to letting a child hurt others, hurt themselves, or hurt me, or applying handcuffs… I vote handcuffs.
yea let some one else handle it. profiles in courage.
Imagine, teachers rushing in to justify the handcuffing of a 6-year-old. I’m shocked!
Don’t need Tasers, I think knocking a few teeth out would take the starch right out of the little monsters.
Its not like they are permanent at that age any way.
God, to think that people who think we won’t see the flaws in this argument are teaching our children…
Yes, if it comes down to handcuffs vs. ax murdering spree, by all means, throw on the cuffs. But let’s just assume there are things we can figure out to do between those two extremes.
Or are we too fucking stupid and finished as a society to even pretend to bother any more?
I can empathize with any individual teacher if they have their mind right, jdw, but, as a group, I don’t care to hear complaints. What may be true about any one of them can not possibly be true about all of them collectively.
They’ve gotten what they’ve wanted. Unfortunately for the rest of us, discipline or education never cracked the top twenty for them. With their ongoing attempt to destroy Wisco’s political integrity, I’m more likely to say something nice about your average UAW boss vacationing in the Bahamas.
For a while there, I had a locking doorknob on my daughter’s bedroom, with the lock knob on the outside due to incessant screeching hissy fits. “You can join us again when you can act right.” was my motto. Eventually, she developed new strategies for working Daddy.
from d-day to “scared about 6 year olds” what a long strange trip it has been
I’ll bet the teachers of #WiUnion aren’t much like the teachers I know, that’s for sure.
As far as this 6-y/o child is concerned, after delving into the comments in that AJC link I posted above, the parents are guilty of neglect and aren’t even embarrassed at all about this turn of events. Neither answered repeated cell phone calls because ‘their minutes were UP!’ (they saw the calls coming in, and could have answered, but chose not to: ‘let the school handle this’). Now, they spend all day calling the media, for the attention.
The nature of the ‘tantrum’ wasn’t ordinary; this one, if Richter scaled, would be an 8.9. The kid was out of control, and the parents were shocked!. But not appalled.
And, of course, RAAAAACISTs!…
Oh, yeah. Jesse and Al are expected at any moment.
Just an observation, but one of the problems may just be that there aren’t many men teaching in grade schools any longer.
Word. Sister Leonora still scares the hell out of me and she’s been dead for decades.
My Dad taught middle school and couldn’t wait to retire. Apparently, he was too mean for the job.
Black people arm up with comcealed weapons and “stand YOUR ground” when someone “scares” you and make YOU feel YOUR life is in danger.
Pinata at the University of Memphis
She’s still watching though. And she’s a bit disappointed with your penmanship.
Oh, if she were here, she’d beat my ass. Probably grab me by an ear and drag me off to my doom. I have no doubt.
There is a mistaken idea that all school teachers belong to unions. As Rosalind said downthread, she is an independent contractor. So are a lot of teachers. The teachers are not the problem here; the parents are.
When I said I brooked no nonsense from my boys, I mean it. I didn’t smack them around, in fact, I can only remember spanking my middle son once. I also didn’t shame them, but I let them know in no uncertain terms tht while they could come to me about anything, I was not their friend. I was their mother and sometimes I had to do things that they didn’t like and that was for their own good.
When my youngest child, who was by far the most head-strong of them all, was a bit less than two years old, my mother was visiting us and he started in acting like a snot. Throwing toys and whining and lying on the floor kicking. I stood over him and told him that I was tired of the way he was acting and to go up to his room and take a nap if he couldn’t act right in front of his grandma. He tried to stare me down, then got up, climbed up stairs and got on his bed.
Six year olds who have tantrums are up too late, sick, hungry or spoiled. By the time a child is six just giving them The Look should make them shape up. If I had been teaching that class with the berserker six year old, I probably would have twisted her arm up behind her back, frog-marched her to the office and lost my job. All while the rest of my classroomful of six year olds where crying, throwing up and needing to go home.
I only taught one year of high school and that was as a favor to a friend, but that was enough for me. I feel sorry for the kids in college who are going into teaching. They’ll all be miserable burn-outs in five years if they last that long.
Just another brick in the wall.
The teachers are not the problem here; the parents are.
so let’s get rid of “public” schools and let the source of the problem solve it. you be kickin the can mam
That sounds great in theory. Not. Most people are not capable of homeschooling their children. I know some people who have ddone it successfully, but they are few and far between.
Public schools have been around practically since we settled the country. I would suggest a return to good old fashioned teachers colleges, not education majors at regular universities.
They both are, to varying degrees, as are administrators, school boards and the governments that run them, generally. Public education has generally failed.
Consider this posting at Snopes. Notice that they don’t claim the exam is a fraud, only that it doesn’t indicate a “dumbing down” of our educational standards. Because, well, it just doesn’t. Sort of like how Obama speaking factual untruths is not lying, because it isn’t.
There’s an option other than public schools and homeschooling. Private.
Feel like throwing some sort of voucher on that? Fine.
Public schools have been around practically since we settled the country
stupid policy is still stupid after 200 + years.
I think many of the problems with public schooling can be traced back to the advent of the Dept. of Ed. (Thanks, Jimmuh!) Thankfully, I had graduated from high school by then. With a lot of the theory based teaching that came into vogue, including not teaching phonics and not relying on rote memorization have really decimated learning.
When I went to college in 1978, we still took essay tests in Blue Books. Later, there were scantrons (multiple choice) and still later, multiple choice on the computer. Is there still an essay portion on the GRE, GMAT or LSAT? Have they added a third section to the SAT to add another 800 points?
I totally agree, bh. Parochial schools are generally not very expensive. I paid about $125 a month for my kids, and the more kids you had enrolled, the cheaper it was. We were poor, too, so we got a discount from the parish.
Imagine this was another product. Imagine we’re talking about how terrible the bread was from the Gov Store. We wouldn’t waste all this time talking about reform. We’d just privatize and be done with it.
True. It’s also readily apparent that democrats hate poor people or they’d be all over vouchers like a cheap suit.
If I had to guess, we were probably past a discount, leigh. We were probably on the full shanty Irish scholarship.
Of course, my ol’ Ma did (occasionally) pay for rent at properties that paid property taxes. Which got spent on something or another over at the public school. Where I wasn’t.
I think many of the problems with public schooling can be traced back to the advent of the Dept. of Ed.
no the problem today is that you can go on line for a small cost learn useful stuff. you don’t need an nea approved loser with salary, pension and benefits to “teach” you.
Back in the day (before my day, but I heard my MIL talk about it) every parish had a school and the school was free to all the children who were members of the parish. Of course, you had boatloads of nuns to teach the little boogers. Now going into a life as a Religious is pretty rare and all the old Sisters are stashed away in homes.
Probably still grousing about us.
Teaching is hard, nr. They aren’t “losers”.
Utter horse shit. Except for the fact that, yes, of course, there’s probably some underlying cause. That it has necessarily to do with parenting? Horse shit.
Kids have tantrums. They test boundaries. They’re kids. And six is still very, very young, particularly if you have a kid who maybe didn’t go to pre-K and isn’t yet acclimated to the structure of school days.
Just another example of conservatives vying for the sanctimony prize. It’s getting old.
By the way, my son? Never wet his diaper, ever. Not after 6 months. I was stern. He knew I wasn’t his friend and he knew what That Look meant. It meant hold that shit in, brother, until I can teach you what a toilet is and how to use it!
Though to be clear, I never hit him. Or shamed him. Or harmed him in any way. Or embarrassed him unduly.
I just did it with my mind.
But then, I’m, like, a super being. So you might have had different results, what with your ordinary children and your ordinary parenting. Don’t feel too badly about it.
The average nun was pretty old already 20 years ago. I wonder what the numbers are like now. We did have a number of lay teachers back then already though. Over half? Even if it’s just a nun/principal and a lot of lay teachers focusing on the lessons rather than story journals about gay otters fighting global warming, that’d still be close enough.
Towards that other thing: Is teaching hard? I can think of quite a few harder.
The only one being sanctimonious is you, Jeff.
Kids didn’t go to preschool or nursery school at all back in the 60s. That’s why kindergarten was originally a half day and was mostly structured play.
Kids will give you what you expect out of them. You expect them to act like little hellians who can run your house like it’s theirs, they will. If you expect them to clean up their rooms and not to backtalk you because there are consequences, they’ll learn. There isn’t a magic age when you decide they need to grow up. You start teaching them boundries and giving them rewards while they are infants.
If you’re teaching AP science, yeah, it’s hard, bh.
They aren’t “losers”.
yea they need “sick notes” from sidewalk docs in wisc.
If you’re teaching AP science, yeah, it’s hard,
especially if you have an edu degree
Pre-school was good for my little blonde tornado. Socialized her quite nicely, while grabbing her interest. She was the top dog in short order, though. She was definitely an alpha, just not at home as that spot was taken.
I’m saying that for every time someone says that teaching is really hard a coal miner gets black lung.
Lots of things can be challenging. Not everyone keeps talking about how challenging it is though. They just go on about their business.
True enough, bh. I asked a bunch of teachers once (and a bunch of nurses another time) why they needed so much affirmation? I mean look at all the coffee mugs and crap that say #1 Nurse or Teacher and all the teacher and nurse related brick-a-brack.
Me, I just checked up on my homicidal maniacs and went home for the day or worked in the lab.
I’m saying that for every time someone says that teaching is really hard
it is hard to “teach” engineering when you suck at engineering.
That’s the sort of thing that Jeff is reacting to, leigh. A more accurate way of putting that is that kids will eventually give you what you expect out of them most of the time.
Jeff finds it frustrating — okay, I’m guessing here — because he’s talking about the way little kids are and others seem to be saying that it’s weird for little kids to act crazy.
From my experience, kids act like little monsters from time to time. That’s when they have good parents. Kinda goes back to Geoff’s comment above. It’s a process of socialization and it just seems a bit false to say that this can be accomplished before half of them are even riding bikes.
It was my bragging about my kid’s not ever having a wet diaper, wasn’t it?
Anyway, I’ll stop the bragging. Wouldn’t want to come across as sanctimonious. Instead, I want to hear how kids are raised properly. You know, by someone who really knows how it’s done.
Thing is, me and my kid are gonna go bond over some hash brownies and XBox. Do you have a parenting newsletter I can subscribe to? It’d be totally cool if I can prevent my kid from being arrested just with a Look!
Meh. I don’t look for affirmation myself. I only interject when something has happened that I might have something to contribute.
Being able to connect with one child – and I deal with K-12 – makes it worthwhile, and there is a satisfying chain reaction there, too. I have to say though, that people who are critical have not seen the combat zone some districts have become. I’m working in my third state now (red state to purple to solid blue) and the differences are stark. This one is the first where any one (a seven year old) has punched me, and no, I didn’t call the police.
A lot of these children behave the way they do because it’s always worked for them, which seems that they are sent to school to either become socialized or Someone Else’s Problem where negative attention getting is raised to an art form.
What bh said: “Seems the essential problem here is that the state takes parents who would expect a teacher to do what is necessary short of calling the cops on a little kid and puts them in the same group as parents who have their lawyers on speed dial.”
Nails it.
I learned The Look from the nuns. It works on those who are receptive :)
Believe me, I know what Jeff is talking about and I agree with him. There are many parts to the story that started all of this discussion, not the least of which is that kids will act like kids. I am saying this girl in the story is not acting normally.
That’s it.
How’s this for a solution: Stop pretending that there’s an absolute right to an education and kick her punk ass out of school for interferring with the rights of the other students.
*shudder* The Look coming from a nun (Sister Philip Ann) was worse than The Look coming from your mom!
I suggested that wa-ay back at the beginning.
Not true. Some of us just don’t think that bringing the police into it is a smart way to correct the sense that the school is a combat zone.
I am saying this girl in the story is not acting normally.
The family of 6-year-old Salecia Johnson lashed out Tuesday over
yes let’s keep rewarding bad behavior
as a not bull conner democrat i think sharpton and his ilk have alot to do with the behavior of “our” wonderful citizens known as calypso louis’ army. the blackkkkkkk
21 Jump Street meets South Park
What could go wrong?
The teachers are not the problem here; the parents are.
the piggy piggy union whore police are the problem – prancing around kindergartens while crimes are being committed
assholes
That school district should sue the parents for the property damage their daughter caused.
bull conner democrats in sweden
Hoisted on Their Own PC Petard in Sweden
That would be a great tactic, Ernst. I’ll bet the parents don’t own anything like real property, though.
When kids are raised by “parents” who would applaud this as something good, empowering and freeing them (the “parents“) and not a spoof, a satire, then placed in a school that gives out lots of carrots but forbids even talking about a small twig, it becomes a wonder if they make it to age thirty alive and not imprisoned.
I’d also sue if the little monster stabbed me with a pencil.
And if the school fired me for picking her bratty ass up and carrying her to the principle’s office before depositing her firmly in a chair, I’d run for school board, just to make their chickenshit go-along-get-along lives miserable.
Or maybe mayor, depending on how much celebrity taking a stand against bullshit earned me.
If you ran for school board on that you could wave the bloody pencil to the crowd at campaign events. (Yes, this does imagine that school board elections have campaign events with crowds.)
I got stabbed with a pencil when I was in first grade. That little chunk of graphite made my first tattoo it did, nice round blue spot on my thumb. Didn’t fully resorb for about 9 years.
Still got a mark on my right forearm. Denise Connolly? 3rd grade?
stabby first graders have to live with what they’ve done for the rest of their whole lives
I showed a manly stoicism in the face of such violence and was rewarded with a kiss from her red-haired friend, Tara. These were days of song and wine.
Stoicism, song, wine, paste . . . and standing quietly in the corner unto exhaustion for some minor infraction of the adults’ picayune irrational rules . . .
Standing in the corner was what i was doing when we were told JFK had been shot.
No handcuffs as i recall.
Don’t think I ever got to stand in the corner. The teachers and adults in my upbringing were all bust your ass now go set down and shut the fuck up types.
Dictionary pages. My 6th grade Math teacher made us transcript entire dictionary pages, selected at her whim by page number, without missing a single word or punctuating semicolon.
I now thank her for that, really.
I remember at least one occasion when a classmate of mine was made to stand in the corner, to the general amusement of all — including him and the teacher.
I think it was 10th grade.
You know to my thinking, alot of this is not letting kids be kid. I am not talking bout the new idea of just letting them do what ever. What I mean is when I was in school at that age we were taken out for play time, 20 minutes twice a day. We did not have kids with ADS or any of the other hosre pucky they call it now. Male, Female… didn’t matter. When we got tired we would sit and listen at the base of a tree to what the teacher had to say, reading from a book or whatever. Today’s teachers and today’s pychobablist no nothing about what kids need. Let kids be kids indeed.