Recent Comments
Re: “My passage to India”
Rich impressions from the Troop 5 camper. Thank you!
Re: “NY Times expands reporting on Walmart bribery in Mexico”
Why is Costco nowhere to be found in Arkansas?
Re: “UPDATE: 26 reported dead in Connecticut elementary shooting”
Trying to control the methods of doing harm is a simple and practical seeming solution... grasped when we don't know what else to do. The problem is far more complex. It could be beyond us. I hope not but fear so. Certainly, victims are demeaned by thinking simply. Sure, guns are effective and efficacious; too much so. Not many of us should hold one. We damned better know a lot about those of us who would BEFORE they do. Guns are hardly the only means to doing great harm, though. The bottom line, then, is that where there is will, there will be a way. Focussing on the way is necessary but when it's all we can come up with over and over it declines to mere distraction. That a few of our national progeny develop the will to do these things uninterrupted is our problem. We are overly timid when it comes to considering whom we let parent or how we each parent. We neglect those struggling in the role. Is it really not our business, our right, our obligation? If not, then we will continue raising up children in ways they should not go and just twiddle our thumbs, contemplating only the many means of doing harm to one another. It's a complex problem with enormous consequences and it merits more than uninventing gun powder. If we don't raise up children like it's a national prerogative we may as well accept these tragedies as the cost of continuing to do otherwise.
Re: “Police news: Upskirt video, child chaining verdict”
Disturbing. Very likely little surprize among those who've had this guy for a teacher. I don't believe this is his first weird behavior; just the first time to be so weird in the public record.
Nothing against teachers but only a fool believes they're a wholey pure lot. They're like any other professional group; excellence mixed with depravity; lesser of the latter, hopefully. And this is the group the constiuents of the majority of our public school districts in Arkansas license to hit children in their charge with a piece of wood for most any behavaior they don't like. Too much license, I'd say. Injuries occur. Law removes any jeorpardy. And our weenie legislators, regardless of what camp they represent, do too little to really make schools a safer place, while reciting the "it's a local issue" mantra. It's no more a local issue than child abuse, spouse abuse, racial or gender discrimination. Safety for any of our citizens should not be a matter of luck and geography.
Re: “Arkansas's high school graduation rate declining”
We discard minor human beings we don't like. That's fine for some until the heap of discarded people gets the attention of the media or those who really care and have the power to make us feel uncomfortable about our wastefulness.
When our legislators argue that corporal punishment is necessary to maintain order in the classroom so that others can learn, they have pretty much written off the trouble makers. Some of the serious trouble-making that warrants (in our schools, anyway) being hit hard and repeatedly on a private part of the minor child's body include talking back or chewing gum, failing to do homework or just horsing around in class. Corporal punishment is a harsh mistreatment of children that has never been demonstrated to have any lasting positive effect on learning what children are supposedly sent to our schools to learn. Sure, everyone has their tale to tell over the backyard fence about the magical recuperative powers of intentionally hurting a little kid in the name of discipline but that's all it is... anecdotal, at best; no more than myth and folk lore, most often, informally carried down through generations of unenlightened human beings who've always favored the classic, "I was paddled a lot and I turned out fine". Sure. Our schools all turn out nothing but the most fine folks.
Childhood Education, the field that our teachers and administrators represent, has demonstrated, empirically, positive alternatives to cp that are superior in every way. School superintendents know it. Principals and School Counselors know it. Psychologists know it. And those dependent on educators to inform, enlighten and, generally, be the model of modern education, when absent good teachers, are likely to draw more from the superstitions of the past than to apply reason and logic to present day situations within the context of present day values. Educators who support corporal punishment let us down when they opt for doing what they think we want instead of doing what they know to be best for our children. And parent types in our state really love corporal punishment. It is so satisfying to witness misery in the doers of evil deeds like chewing gum in class. It's appalling to think that corporal punishment might really be for the benefit of adults. Challenge it and see the nasty, exagerated protestations.
Hit a child with a board and you've not made him or her feel welcome at school. Maybe the child is not welcome. In the overcrowded classroom, one clown can disrupt learning for all. However, the cp doesn't improve behavior and it likely tells the child that it would be safer to be gone from school. Is that a situation we think logical to persist? Just dispose of the children we're too ignorant or too lazy to train up effectively. But, when they cannot make a living in their little community out in the state, they wind up here, undereducated and angry; maybe entering the pipeline to prison. "Local control" of practices like this result in statewide proplems, therefore school discipline issues should be a state department of education priority and the legislature should be out front with rational solutions to the problem.
Lots of things contribute to school dropouts. We should be working to remedy as many as we can. Some remedies are very expensive. Eliminating corporal punishment and utilizing skills our educators learned in college won't cost anything and very likely will save us a lot (no teacher college teaches corporal punishment as a child management or education technique, by the way).
Public school kids in the 31 states where corporal punishment is prohibited, perform higher academically and are more likely to graduate. There ought to at least be a discussion of the phenomenon. But there isn't. Maybe I should think there's a deal between schools and parents that lets the teachers act out whatever perverted preoccupation they have with stinging the buttocks of little kids as long as the teachers relieve parents of the responsibility for bringing up their kids; if not totally, at least 7 to 8 hours a day. If that seems absurd, then take your stab at it... why is it that we let adults we don't know well hit our kids for minor offenses when we arent' even there... and without any credible proof whatsoever that it does any child any good?
Re: “Lawsuit filed over suspension of 5-year-old for F-word”
And no one has ever demonstrated that punishment does anything but make the punished person angry and resentful and make him or her vow to not get caught when doing the same thing in the future. Punishment makes some of us anxious in the presence of the punishers. So it makes us mad and it makes us avoid those who make us anxious. Punishment does not teach acceptable language.
To teach acceptable language, we first use only acceptable language in the presence of the learners, we reward acceptable language and we give as little attention to the unacceptable language as is possible without ignoring it. We do want to explain to ALL the children present that the language used was unacceptable and why. There are all sorts of teaching techniques which will help children to want to use acceptable language. Even if positively and non-punitively challenging the child for the unacceptable language results only in his or her use of it in future, but outside the hearing of their supervising adult, then as much as punishment has been accomplished... but no harm done.
Suspension from a classroom cannot be replicated as a learning environment unless a teacher is in suspension with the child. Useless as a teaching tool for acceptable use of language, in-school-suspension can only be redeemed by paying for an extra teacher. Neither outcome makes sense. The only justification for removing a child from classmates and a teacher would be disruption to learning by others and then only 1 minute removal per year of age. But save your breath, I already know that most people are delighted by others' misery and to suggest that a child not "suffer" more than 5 minutes is blasphemy. It won't make me wrong, though. Punishment's beneficiaries have always been the punishers. Something righteous feeling about making others hurt when our sense of power and control have been challenged.
This Week's Cover
Quick Links
Special Publications
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Re: “Head Start budget cuts announced”
Used to be, children's rights were not a partisan issue; could count on support from both sides. Sadly, the neglect and maltreatment of children (once they're born) seems, more and more, to be something conservatives can do and still sleep good. "Sins of the fathers" mindset, I suspect... children of "the takers" can just lump it.