What's this country coming to?

[cactusjack]

My wife emailed me this morning about a story one her co-workers told her. It seems the co-worker has an 11 year old child who attends a local jr. high school. Since today is the opening of the Summer Olympic Games, the school administration felt it would be nice to drum up a little nationalistic support for the American athletes. The students were instructed to wear only red, white and blue today. ANyone not wearing red, white and blue today would be placed in ISS (in-school suspension) for the day. In other words, they would be punished for not toeing the party line. My guess is the students would be considered "defiant" as grounds for the suspension.

Having managed to get 3 boys through the public education systems in Utah and Arizona, I understand the term "defiant" as used in today's schools. Defiant behavior is coloring outside the lines, having a difference of opinion, or wearing a baseball cap inside the school after recess. Apparently, it now includes not wearing red, white and blue when told to do so. Look in any one of my sons "permanent records" and you'll see several acts of defiance carefully documented. I would think today's schools have more to worry about, like kids smoking meth or getting molested. Forcing students to wear red, white and blue is ridiculous.

I know a number of members of this forum and/or their spouses are educators. It isn't my intent to offend any of you. You perform one of the most important jobs in our society and are not compensated nor appreciated in proportion to the immense responsibility you carry in our society, and that is a shame.

I started attending school in 1965. My dad always told me "you get in trouble at school, and you'll be in trouble at home". I worked my butt off to keep out of trouble at home. I went to school, I did my homework and I graduated. I never got suspended, detained, or placed in timeout. If there were issues between two students, we didn't do a drive-by on their house that night and riddle their front porch with bullets. We settled things one-on-one, after school, at the baseball diamond. Afterwards, we shook hands and that was the end of it. Nobody was charged with assault. We put up Christmas decorations and sang Christmas carols. We recited the Pledge of Allegiance. We treated teachers and administrators (and every other adult) with respect.

I played little league baseball, hockey and football growing up. These organizations didn't have an "everybody plays" philosophy. No sir, we can thank soccer for that. You went to tryouts, and the coaches observed your abilities and they picked their teams. Everyone was selected for a team, but not everyone played every game. Winning wasn't everything, but there were no trophies for merely participating or coming in 17th, either. If your team lost, you cheered the winners to demonstrate your good sportsmanship. Second place was first place loser. Life isn't fair, and the sooner a child understands that, the better off they are, in my opinion.

All in all, I think we turned out just fine. What's happened in the 30-plus years since?

[jussmatt]

I'm with you fully CJ. While I admire the "USA" spirit... I don't think it should be an "or else" type of situation. As far as teachers are concerned, again, I'm with you there. Parents (most anyway...or society at large) has shifted responsibility of teaching every day life situations to the teachers, yet then set out to tell the teachers HOW TO DO IT!! Too much of a double standard by me. Also, they've taken away any sort of dicipline....REAL dicipline they can dish out....so the kids never really learn responsibility and cause & effect. I don't know...I could go of for days here, but you pretty much said it all Scott.... Like you, I wonder where all the common sense has gone to.... (read the Common Sense Obituary in the General Thread)...

[cactusjack]

(read the Common Sense Obituary in the General Thread)

Yeah, I did. That's what got me thinking about this, Matt.

If I had a kid in that school today, I'd have sent them there dressed like Johnny Cash to prove a point.

[blowndodge]

This just hit you now Scott??? It's the systematic dismantling of the American Values from Extremist that the ignorant voter has placed into office. this no longer troubles me as it's pretty complete at this time in our history and doesn't look like there is no going back. I only hope the best for our kids.

[cactusjack]

Originally Posted by Blowndodge "Darksider"

This just hit you now Scott??? It's the systematic dismantling of the American Values from Extremist that the ignorant voter has placed into office. this no longer troubles me as it's pretty complete at this time in our history and doesn't look like there is no going back. I only hope the best for our kids.

No. But the post about the death of common sense got me to thinkin' some...and sometimes that's all it take.

[Cajunrider]

The ACLU can be a royal pain for a conservative but it seems like they would jump all over this red white and blue clothing business. Don't get me wrong, I am as patriotic as they come, but forcing kids to wear certain colors to avoid punishment borders crossing the line. When my oldest son was in 2nd grade some 25 years ago, he was forced to go out for recess without his jacket on a very cold and windy day as punishment for leaving an assignment at home. We removed him from the public school system and enrolled him in private school when the principal would not acknowledge that the punishment did not fit the crime. I attended parochial school all my life and those old nuns use to wear us out with wooden rulers and cleanse our mouths really well with a bar of soap when they thought we were out of line. And if they called my mom I got it again when I got back home. Oh well, I'm done....

[ringadingh]

Many times if anything is said or done, to a student about their behaviour nowadays, the parents show up with a lawyer. There is no accountability on behalf of the students. How did it come to this?

[Cajunrider]

Originally Posted by Ringadingh

Many times if anything is said or done, to a student about their behaviour nowadays, the parents show up with a lawyer. There is no accountability on behalf of the students. How did it come to this?

Liberalism

[socwkbiker]

Originally Posted by Cajunrider

Liberalism

+1

[dakals]

I agree with you Cactusjack!!!! It is crazy to force someone to where red, white, and blue or get ISS!!!!!!! The only thing that i think should be done in school is the pledge of allegiance!!!!! You are in the USA and that stands for our freedom!!!! If you don't believe in the words of the song then get out!!!!! Sorry everyone touchy subject for me!!! I will behave, i will behave, i will behave.

[rksaw]

What has happened in the last 30-plus years? Here is my 2 cents:

1) Parents don't parent anymore...they are very busy trying to earn enough to keep their heads above water and don't have time to spend with their kids. On top of this, many try to be their kids best friends as opposed to being their parents. They don't like being the "bad guy" and coming down on their kids even when the kids deserve it (does anyone remember the news story not long ago about a single mom--I think in Florida--who had absolutely unrully kids that were threatening to kill her and were threatening the reporter filming a story on them?). Didn't we just have a thread about some guy getting fired for not selling a teenager a Hyabusa (sp?)?

2) Administrators and teachers have no authority within the walls of their own schools. They need the students their to collect money from the state, but have no valid way to punish poor behavior. The students are running the schools now and determine what is acceptable behavior. There is a "but everybody else is doing it" mentality, and many administrators and teachers don't have the backbone necessary to say, "so what?".

3) Society is constantly putting down parents and authority figures in general. What percentage of tv show or movies or whatever portray an authority figure who knows what they are talking about and sticks to their convictions and is not some "stupid, old guy who doesn't have a clue"? Not many.

4) In the past, people watched out for each other. We respected our elders and if they said something we listened. If we talked back to mom or grandma, we got slapped across the face. Now I don't condone beatings, but I know that when I got slapped, I certainly deserved it! Civility has gone by the wayside and chivilry is nearly dead. Both need a good resurection!

Okay, I'll get off my soap box before I bore anyone else. I guess you got more than 2 cents worth.
Rich

It's hard for me to say this, because my wife has been a teacher for over 20 years, but our government needs to get out of the school business. Except for refom school. If you can't find a regular school that will have you, you can go to reform school. But this crap that schools can't really be schools because no government institution is allowed to offend anybody is nonsense. If a kid screws up in school the school should have the right to set him straight or toss him out. Lots of American schools have become inefectual little bureaucracies ruled over by petty dictators, but they have no real responsibility to the kids, and the kids have no responsibility to the schools. That would change if people could see what they're paying to actually send their kids to public school. Unfortunately all the costs are hidden from them in various taxes and indirect taxation. If the parents were actually getting a written bill every month, you can bet they'd be more concerned about how their kids were behaving in school.

Because it's a government sacred cow, education in America has gotten out of hand. My wife recently got her master's degree in a particular field of primary education. The greatest part of her studies revolved about the pedagogy of white euro-centric cultural oppression. (Don't feel stupid. I'd never heard of it either.) What this philosophy teaches is that basically all the worlds problems are caused by WASPS, and WASPS trying to teach the rest of the world to be like WASPS without even realizing that they're doing it.

OK, folks. Half the 3rd world is trying to get to America so they too can live like the WASPS. I find it hard to believe that it's because we're doing it all wrong.

But what we're doing in public education? Yeah, that I think we're screwing up pretty badly.

[Cajunrider]

That's the reason many parents are getting over their heads in private school tuition debt. The unruly kid is booted out and replaced by one in the long line on the waiting list. They don't have to put up with it like the public schools feel they do. IMHO, things started turning sour when prayer was removed in our school systems. I'm sure that we will see worse as the years go by. I really feel for my youngest grandchildren. No telling what's in store for them and their kids.

My Libertarian political bias tells me this: Public and private schools are both in the business of education.

Because of "free" public schools operated by the government, Private schools have a tough time competing, and so they are expensive and few in number. They can't compete with "free" schools on the basis of price, and so must compete on the basis of value to survive. By making public school available (even mandatory) to everyone, the cost and availability of really good schooling has generally become prohibitive.

Here we have a few "charter schools", which are really private schools that get public funding, because it's cheaper for the government to charter them (essentially to "rent" them and their services) than to build and operate more public schools. How can this be so? It's because the private schools are so much more efficient, out of their necessity to compete for the dollars to stay in business, than government-run schools which can operate out of the public coffers.

In America we see private schools as primarily for the wealthy, but it is the government that has really made it so. If government was to support the education business instead of dominating it, we wouldn't have the ridiculous situation we see so may places today.

[dantama]

Originally Posted by cactusjack

If I had a kid in that school today, I'd have sent them there dressed like Johnny Cash to prove a point.

The Goth kids would have loved it