How about people with a whole brain? Are they insulted? School discipline has been a problem since it became politically incorrect to use it. Don't look for things to improve in government schools.
Those three Aiken schools are simply playing a numbers game with discipline ("Schools stand up to trouble," Feb. 21). Anyone who works in the system knows the real deal, and it is insulting to anyone with half a brain.
The administration has decided not to refer as many students for expulsion. What does this mean? Student behavior hasn't improved; in fact it has gotten worse. Students will realize there are no consequences for poor behavior and will steadily disrupt the learning environment. This will result in lower test scores and reduced learning. To borrow a familiar phrase, they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The real losers are the students who are interested in learning while the incorrigibles of the school run the show.
Quit worrying about statistics and deal with the students who are disrupting school. Soon the others will get the message that discipline is the first priority, and not smiling for the newspaper.
Robert Snell, Aiken, S.C.
Comments
How about people with a whole brain? Are they insulted? School discipline has been a problem since it became politically incorrect to use it. Don't look for things to improve in government schools.
Amen to tha patriciathomas amen to that.
So true PT. It is a shame that school teahcers and administrators now have to pay for liability insurance against being sued for disciplining some little rough neck hoodlum. Send them to alternative school for being disruptive, but expel and jail them them for any felonious behavior such as attacking a teacher.
I remember when "federal desegragation of our schools" was the salvation of public education. Forty years of chaos. Give everyone the same opportunity. Yes, to fail and become dependent on welfare. How can anyone trust the US government?
As I've said before, if you beat these students to their knees with a big leather strap, or a stick -- what you use doesn't matter -- and humiliate them completely, they will learn to behave, and if they don't then you can arrest them and ship them off to Siberia. I wonder if the Russians really would take them. No doubt they need to get some work done moving snow and ice around out there in the middle of nowhere. We don't have to tell them that when we drop hydrogen bombs on the middle east we're going to install big fans to blow the fallout into Siberia.
When too many parents, teachers, principals, county-level administrators, board members and school board attorneys are more concerned with positive publicity, position-retention and suit-avoidance than they are in helping students habituate civilized behavior, the efficacy of the school as an environment for promoting scholarship and citizenship is undermined. We all will suffer the consequences of this undermined efficacy in the forms of reduced academic standards and higher crime rates. Mr. Snell is correct: we must deal with disruptive students- for their own good and our own.
Confucius once said,"A people without shame are a people lost." We have no shame.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2012. All Rights Reserved.
