Open season on teachers
I’m a product of public schools and so are my children. We got a great education. I flinch every time I hear libertarian Neal Boortz sarcastically call public schools “government schools.â€? Unfortunately, I’m beginning to understand his disdain.
While politicians fret over academic issues like No Child Left Behind, and educational associations lobby for more money and benefits, not much is being done to protect teachers in classrooms that are becoming increasingly violent.
On Thursday, WKRG News (Mobile, Ala.) reported an attack on a Murphy High School teacher. A student filmed that attack with his cell phone. In early May, CNN featured the video report (linked above) disclosing various teacher attacks.
The losers, other than the teachers, are the students who want to do their jobs and get an education.
Students who disrupt classrooms don’t belong in regular classrooms. They infringe the civil rights of every kid who wants to learn and of every educator doing a job that has to be a calling, because there’s not a lot of monetary reward in teaching.
Punishment should be swiftly delivered to any student attacking an educator. Tolerance encourages the student to become an adult who knows he or she can get away with socially unacceptable behavior.
As with so many other problems today, troubled students are a product of their homes. The only solution rests in early intervention.
It’s not likely that a student manifests troublesome behavior in high school without having exhibited it earlier.
We can pay the big price once that student is close to adulthood, or we can bite the bullet and work on those students with intervention while they’re young. Seems smarter to do the latter. And while we’re at it, we need to work on the parents of those young students. After all, parents deliver the students to the school system. They need to be held accountable.
Two options are community service and anger management classes for these students–while they’re young–and their parents. These and other creative approaches might go a long way towards averting trouble later on.
If that doesn’t work, alternative schools and the criminal justice system are our only options.–Kay B. Day
Word Press, Technorati, Tags, Teacher attacks, public schools, violence, education
Leave a Reply