Public Schools stopped disciplining kids long ago. Fear of retribution, legal action, and a mountain of headaches from all angles. Why would anyone want to teach these days?
To me it is definitely telling that the US Supreme Court found it constitutional and legal to administer corporal punishment by drawing analogies with prisoners in a jail. As in the pg essay “Why Nerds are Unpopular”, primary school is essentially a prison for the kids, a glorified day care center to keep them out of trouble while parents can work.
But elsewhere in many districts if the parent doesnt care then there are literally no consequences for children who disrupt classes, that don’t backfire badly on those who would try to make those consequences.
Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you, has already demonstrated a willingness to use violence against you and has a room full of willing accomplices. I hope that anyone foolish enough to try it has good healthcare.
> Good luck trying to administer corporal punishment to a young man who is bigger, fitter and stronger than you
Why are teenage boys bigger, fitter and stronger than the teachers? Maybe because ~75% of teachers are women? There's value in the ability of physically-capable adult males to quietly intimidate adolescents. There's value in well-rounded men who can provide classroom instruction but maybe also coach the boxing/powerlifting/wrestling teams. The next time Mr. Smith puts some bass in his voice and tells you to sit down and stop disrupting class, there should be a voice in the back of your head that says "I should do that, because he just might uppercut me into the stratosphere". I suspect that students aren't learning the principle of "Fuck Around and Find Out" from ANY authority figure in their daily lives. Our society as a whole seems to have forgotten the importance of male role models IMO...
>a guy who 'might uppercut me' sounds like a great male role model
On average, men are more likely to aspire to be Thor or Captain Marvel than they are to be Rick Moranis's character in Ghostbusters. They are more likely to take guidance from a larger, stronger, and more assertive man than otherwise. The military has already figured this out, just look at the stereotypical Drill Instructor for an extreme example of the concept. Do you dispute this, or are you simply speaking of what works/doesn't work for you as an individual? A single anecdote doesn't really tell us much about what society-wide initiatives we should pursue.
Also, Andrew Tate is already out of jail and currently under house arrest.
Sure I dispute it, but that's not my point. You want schools to teach children the values of the society they will go on to contribute to. If you want them to internalize the idea that guys with big arms and gravelly voices have more authority than little women or effeminate academic types, then your idea has merit. That's what we did in the past. If you want them to value competence, then your idea is absolute garbage.
I'm very happy we've moved past the point where you have to have a pair of testicles to be taken seriously as an authority figure. Obviously, some really hide-bound institutions like the military haven't completely internalized that, but then, that could be why militaries underperform. Russia, for example, has a very macho military, and (surprise!) it sucks.
In my experience and I bet yours too, authority arises from respect rather than violence, but it is lost when an authority figure becomes the victim of violence without a sufficient response.
I don't agree with the grandparent: tiny and physically unimposing women are absolutely able to keep the respect of a classroom. What you're missing, though, is the necessity of escalation at the rare times when students try to initiate violence. Having senior teachers around who can drop what they're doing and run into a neighbouring classroom is important, and it's important to have at least some big, burly, and/or male teachers in the mix as a last ditch way to stop a violent student.
Rephrased: maintaining authority is easier with the backing of a system, and that system must make confrontation a losing prospect, otherwise it rewards aggressive and violent students by letting them do whatever they want. This is harder when 25% of the teachers at a school are men and none are near an incident. It's harder when the school bans effective punishment and response. It's harder when there's an established culture of disrespect. It's harder when students are legally required to be there and have no other alternatives.
I agree with a lot of what you've said, but as a large, physically confident man, I would hate to have a job where I'm required to occasionally wrestle with people.
I think when you've got to the point where your wrestling ability is a relevant criterion as a teacher, the system is already completely dysfunctional, and we need to take a broader look at the problems that young people face.
You can't put a bandaid on that by just trying to recruit muscular specimens, and hoping that they are also decent teachers. I had a physics teacher who was a great rugby player, and I can tell you, it was not good for my understanding of physics.
> as a large, physically confident man, I would hate to have a job where I'm required to occasionally wrestle with people
Sure, that's fair. Not everyone wants to be a bouncer. But nightclubs recognize that they need bouncers, because sometimes patrons get unruly. The school system hasn't grasped that having enforcers on site is a useful symbol to ensuring everyone has a quality experience. I'm saying it's better to have the standby enforcers be of the Sheepdog archetype [1] and serve as regular teachers, than to have security guards fill the role. Now I agree with your next point:
> I think when you've got to the point where your wrestling ability is a relevant criterion as a teacher, the system is already completely dysfunctional, and we need to take a broader look at the problems that young people face.
I'd argue that these problems start in the home/family life of the children. Single-mother households produce a disproportionately high fraction of juvenile delinquents, and we've had a marked increase in those per capita.[2][3] Even asking serious questions about why we have a bunch of single-mother households is outside the Overton window of many mainstream organizations. Usually the only answer put forward is "more government spending".
> If you want them to value competence, then your idea is absolute garbage.
If an instructor cannot maintain sufficient control of their charges that facilitate an effective learning environment, I would argue they are not competent. They are failing to accomplish their assigned task.
> Obviously, some really hide-bound institutions like the military haven't completely internalized that, but then, that could be why militaries underperform. Russia, for example, has a very macho military, and (surprise!) it sucks.
The Russian military is underperforming for a ton of reasons beyond machismo. Corruption being the biggest, IMO. And your hypothesis fails when tested against almost any other machismo-laden western military force, in particular the almost-entirely-male and heavily testosterone-fueled US special operations community.
But the sibling comment highlights the nuance that perhaps my post was lacking: respecting the authority of the females in the organization is a worthy objective but it needs SOMEBODY to enforce it when challenged. It's apparent from TFA that isn't happening.
I guess for me it's a question of 'where you fix the problem'. In many machines, social machines included, you have a variety of stages where you can mitigate issues. Most of those 'solutions' are dirty hacks, and there are a few that will achieve results with a minimum of complexity and effort. I think fixing the extreme socialization problems of teenagers by making a significant chunk of teachers in normal schools double up as amateur MMA fighters is the wrong way to go about it.
On the subject of the Russian military, I do kind of agree, but I also think it's worth thinking about how much the extreme hazing culture of the Russian military contributes to the rot. It's been a repeated theme from the Afghanistan war on, that the violent 'toxic masculinity' of Russian military culture leads to tactical paralysis, a culture of hiding problems and mistakes, timidity at all levels of leadership, etc.
An observation that's been occurring to me with increasing frequency in recent years is that machismo is, in very many roles, a very impractical character trait. In roles where physical strength and physical courage are prized, like special operations, I can see the advantages, but most roles today, military or otherwise, are very technical, and so all the nonsense and communication issues that goes along with machismo is pure baggage.
Expulsion and suspension. I know a teacher who works in a school with this problem; state DOE policies puniah schools for suspending or expelling violent children, so instead they are allowed to continue terrorizing their peers and instrucrors.
I’m a teacher at an urban Title I school (over 70% of our students qualify for reduced or free school lunches). Yes, there is a lot of paperwork involved when you need to transfer student to alternative school or outright expel them. It’s only an issue though when you don’t document what’s happening along the way. And of course, documentation is not a bad thing. It would be a bad thing if kids were being run out of schools at the whims of tired, overworked, extremely stressed teachers. On the other hand, the really wacky stuff comes when it’s a special education student. You literally cannot suspend them for more than 10 days in a school year. I was the general education teacher in FBA meetings for three of my SpEd students who brought weapons to school (two knives, one taser). The result was to put them all on a functional behavioral plan which requires weekly reports about whether they are meeting FB targets: of not bringing weapons to school. The plan included that when they did meet their targets, they should be rewarded in certain ways, like being given time on a computer or time to speak with their friends or whatever. So, yeah. Rewards for… not bringing weapons. Now that was crazy.
Now let me answer this question more directly. It’s actually worse than a lot of people think. There is an intense and overwhelming amount of utter bullshit that gets rolled down the hill starting with Congress, added to by state legislatures, and further reinforced by local school districts. And of course teachers are at the bottom of the hill. When you focus on that, and all the ways that the system is utterly dysfunctional, and not beneficial for students, it can be defeating.
But when you focus on your job, which is students, it’s the single most rewarding thing you can do, in my judgment. I was a lawyer for 5-6 years before getting into education. I hated every day of my life. Now I wake up excited to see my students and be with them. It’s genuine fulfillment I never thought I would have in my life. So, if you can withstand all the bullshit, and there is a metric shit ton of it for sure, it’s an amazing job. If you can’t stand up for yourself, or if you can’t deal with irrational requirements imposed by people fully out of touch with reality—-if you can’t, in other words, set aside, or ignore to the maximum extent possible, dealing with other adults, you should definitely avoid it.
I can do those things. Becoming a teacher was the single best decision I’ve ever made.
That's a really difficult question. I thought about it for a while, but I don't think I have any answers that would qualify (given the requirement to be "realistic").
It is super important to keep in mind, though, when thinking about public education that public schools are expected to serve a multitude of functions that are related to education only in the sense that they involve the same children who are our students (nutrition, counseling, social work services, etc.). And that's fine, I guess, if schools are where the social safety net has to catch vulnerable children. But that needs to be acknowledged and factored into how we think about schools.
I’ve taught school for more than 20 years, starting at an alternative high school and following that with a rural high school, middle school, and even some college. What I’ve learned is that a teacher who speaks up won’t have a job (Questioning why it was okay for our male students to go the gym, with administrators’ approval, to play ball with a male teacher who was supposed to be a role model, instead of attending class.). A teacher who doesn’t watch every word they speak (Explaining that in formal writing, one should not use 1st and second person pronouns and being told by a parent that their precious child shouldn’t be taught the word gender, even though that word was never even spoken.)will end up as a target for uneducated parents or those with a misguided agenda. I’ve been in both of those situations more than once and after 20 years of crying for my kids, crying from the stress, and just generally questioning my sanity at staying in a profession that has become the scape goat for all the problems that our society faces, I’ve just grown tired. I try to discourage former students from going into the profession and have watched 3 young gifted teachers leave the profession in the last year alone. I’ve had training on how to properly search a backpack for drugs. I’ve had training on how to do triage on gunshot victims. I’ve had training and drills on how to barricade myself and my students in my classroom in case of an active shooter situation. And I did it all for one of the lowest pay scales in a state that already is woefully underpaying it’s teachers. I did not sign up for any of those things. If I had wanted to risk my life, I would have been a first responder or soldier. So I’m sure someone will ask, “Why did you stay?” There are multiple reasons to stay: job security, retirement pension, and mainly, my students. I love being able to help my kids and I love helping them realize their potential. That said, I’m counting down days until retirement. I’m looking forward to a new career in which I don’t feel like I have a bullseye painted on my back, being able to sleep at night without the stress, and mostly, I’m looking forward to not having to monitor every word I say and bite my tongue around everyone for fear of community tongue wagging. I only have a few years left and the end can’t come quickly enough.
It’s not just violence against teachers. A local school here has gangs of students from two African countries. There were border clashes between the two nations, and the next day there was a lot of fighting between the gangs. Any ideas on how we could avoid this situation?
This is largely due to misguided "civil rights" rules, that forbid schools from disciplining violent children if there is "disparate impact" (rates of disciplinary action must be exactly equal by race). Of course, the real effect of these policies is that kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods don't get the opportunity to learn and succeed, because a few bad apples make things impossible for everyone else.
"when they want to help black people, they want to help those black people who are doing something wrong. That is rioters, ex-convicts, they want to stop schools from disciplining black kids who misbehave in school. I don't hear them concerning themselves with the blacks who are the victims of the people who are doing wrong."
Social media is not helping. There is a daily stream of videos showing students fighting teachers, themselves and causing mayhem. The videos may be generated by a few, but it changes the Overton window of appropriate behavior in schools and I would not be surprised if it causes a cascading effect.
When has censorship ever worked? I hardly think the videos are causing the violence. People have smartphones everywhere now, this stuff is just getting captured more often.
Kids are stupid and this behavior has existed loooong before the internet. Sack tapping didn't appear from the ether when a journalist publicized the name, for example.
There is a difference between censorship and content moderation. The platforms don't allow rape videos, snuff films and Nazi content. They can also take a responsible stand on children engaging in violent behavior.
> People have smartphones everywhere now, this stuff is just getting captured more often.
"Perception is reality". It's like all of those studies that showed from the 90s until COVID crime consistantly was dropping, yet if you asked people they felt like it was worse than ever due to aggressive reporting, esp. by "BREAKING NEWS" crews on local news channels.
So many social issues we’re seeing in the US that have flared up since the pandemic keep being swept under the rug as “mental issues during the pandemic/trauma”. But that raises a very obvious counterpoint. Why aren’t we seeing the same issues flare worsen in the same way in other countries? The entire globe went through the pandemic. And other countries actually had real
lockdowns unlike what the US had, which was suggestions at best.
It’s reasonable that the pandemic might have exacerbated existing issues, but the fact that we are seeing so many of these issues being exacerbated only in the US indicates that it’s really a U.S. problem, and not a pandemic problem (examples include the rise of gun violence, the rise of vehicular violence, the rise of homelessness, the rise of shoplifting, bad behavior by passengers in airplanes, and as in this article the rise of violence against teachers).
It’s a bit of a stretch and looks very much like a hammer and nail situation (although it should still be researched), but at least the chief police officer blaming it on a loss of respect for authority because of the protests has the advantage of explaining why these issues are appearing pretty much in the US only.
IMHO, the pandemic has ripped off the mask of living in the US; those in power would see you rather die (from Covid) rather than risk losing a dollar.
Other countries have not been as harsh, yes long lockdowns, but also social support and money.
Once people saw that those in power would rather see you die than inconvenience them, an entire generation stopped believing in the social contract. After that things fall apart.
This is almost entirely false, since the US had more generous support during COVID than any other country and nobody "in power" wanted you to die except maybe Andrew Cuomo, but instead worked on vaccine acceleration.
It's easy to spot incoherent politics since those afflicted just say "people in power", don't say who they mean, and it always turns out to be something the average voter supports. (The average voter doesn't particularly care if you're alive or not.)
If your reply were correct, then why did so many millions of Americans die? You've about a million Covid deaths, and about a hundred million cases. By number of deaths the US is number 1 by far (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/). The internet is full of stories were working class people got Covid because they had no other choice, here's a random citation:
>Californians in manual labor and in-person service occupations experienced disproportionate COVID-19 mortality, with the highest rates observed among male, Latino, and Black workers; these occupational group should be prioritized for prevention.
Cause there was a pandemic. Nobody dying is not a possibility.
The best you can do is protect 80+ people, who are far more at risk than anyone else. Staying home is a middle class fantasy though. You can't just keep the entire country home or you'll run out of food and the sewers will fail in a week. Not to mention many people don't want to do that and would rather take the death.
Nevertheless, the US gave out approx $2400/month in CARES Act unemployment support, which is more than anyone else.
Lockdowns in the US were both less effective and more destructive. I agree that lockdowns aren't primary driver in this case, but nearly every Western Country decided that in person education was an essential service and one of the most important things to lock down to preserve.
If I were to Hazard a guess at the primary cause, it would be the normalization of physical violence and property destruction a legitimate mean of protest or expressing one's anger. Despite the enormous gains of the Civil Right Movement, nonviolent protests and Democratic action are now commonly believed to be a futile because they did not result in a completely egalitarian society.
Without faith in shared institutions, there is no Civil Society.
I don't think other countries don't have the same problem.
For example, people I know in Serbia who work in education complain about kids being worse every year and not being able to do anything about it. Kids hitting teachers and such. I think similar policies are in place there as well, it's very hard to put any kind of disciplinary action against kids.
I've also heard from friends in Netherlands who complained about slow decline of the education system.
Now, these are all anecdotal, so maybe it is all middle age people complaining about new generations, but I sort of doubt it.
Btw, I don't think the pandemic is a cause of it, to me it's social media. I think pandemic just accelerated how much social media is central to kids' lives.
There may be a few reasons - US just happens to be the center of attention, both good and bad. Who know, maybe others countries with similar lockdown policies had worse results. The media might not report on it, though.
Is it the case that kids in other countries don’t want to hit teachers because they are raised better, or they would like to hit them, but they know the punishment they’re getting is not talking with Care Solace, “a company that uses an online portal and phone line to link students, parents and staff” but a more severe punishment.
US is a big country with large cities and rural areas. Maybe it got worse in Nevada but better in rural Montana. But reduced violence somewhere makes for an extremely boring headline. So we would not be discussing it at all.
Because you put personal “freedoms” above everything else and are more and more losing the concept of a collective and a shared set of norms that come with it.
The concept of free speech and all that is meant to say - the people will take the personal responsibility to participate in decision making without the government interfering, and now it has devolved so much that you lost any collective substrate and any idiot has a right to an opinion without being called out for it
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 97.1 ms ] threadhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_i...
Other ways included a time out, suspension or talk to the parents where parents grounded them, or punished them somehow.
All that has been phased out in most places for various reasons. Although nearly half of the US states still allow it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/...
To me it is definitely telling that the US Supreme Court found it constitutional and legal to administer corporal punishment by drawing analogies with prisoners in a jail. As in the pg essay “Why Nerds are Unpopular”, primary school is essentially a prison for the kids, a glorified day care center to keep them out of trouble while parents can work.
But elsewhere in many districts if the parent doesnt care then there are literally no consequences for children who disrupt classes, that don’t backfire badly on those who would try to make those consequences.
Why are teenage boys bigger, fitter and stronger than the teachers? Maybe because ~75% of teachers are women? There's value in the ability of physically-capable adult males to quietly intimidate adolescents. There's value in well-rounded men who can provide classroom instruction but maybe also coach the boxing/powerlifting/wrestling teams. The next time Mr. Smith puts some bass in his voice and tells you to sit down and stop disrupting class, there should be a voice in the back of your head that says "I should do that, because he just might uppercut me into the stratosphere". I suspect that students aren't learning the principle of "Fuck Around and Find Out" from ANY authority figure in their daily lives. Our society as a whole seems to have forgotten the importance of male role models IMO...
On average, men are more likely to aspire to be Thor or Captain Marvel than they are to be Rick Moranis's character in Ghostbusters. They are more likely to take guidance from a larger, stronger, and more assertive man than otherwise. The military has already figured this out, just look at the stereotypical Drill Instructor for an extreme example of the concept. Do you dispute this, or are you simply speaking of what works/doesn't work for you as an individual? A single anecdote doesn't really tell us much about what society-wide initiatives we should pursue.
Also, Andrew Tate is already out of jail and currently under house arrest.
I'm very happy we've moved past the point where you have to have a pair of testicles to be taken seriously as an authority figure. Obviously, some really hide-bound institutions like the military haven't completely internalized that, but then, that could be why militaries underperform. Russia, for example, has a very macho military, and (surprise!) it sucks.
I don't agree with the grandparent: tiny and physically unimposing women are absolutely able to keep the respect of a classroom. What you're missing, though, is the necessity of escalation at the rare times when students try to initiate violence. Having senior teachers around who can drop what they're doing and run into a neighbouring classroom is important, and it's important to have at least some big, burly, and/or male teachers in the mix as a last ditch way to stop a violent student.
Rephrased: maintaining authority is easier with the backing of a system, and that system must make confrontation a losing prospect, otherwise it rewards aggressive and violent students by letting them do whatever they want. This is harder when 25% of the teachers at a school are men and none are near an incident. It's harder when the school bans effective punishment and response. It's harder when there's an established culture of disrespect. It's harder when students are legally required to be there and have no other alternatives.
I think when you've got to the point where your wrestling ability is a relevant criterion as a teacher, the system is already completely dysfunctional, and we need to take a broader look at the problems that young people face.
You can't put a bandaid on that by just trying to recruit muscular specimens, and hoping that they are also decent teachers. I had a physics teacher who was a great rugby player, and I can tell you, it was not good for my understanding of physics.
Sure, that's fair. Not everyone wants to be a bouncer. But nightclubs recognize that they need bouncers, because sometimes patrons get unruly. The school system hasn't grasped that having enforcers on site is a useful symbol to ensuring everyone has a quality experience. I'm saying it's better to have the standby enforcers be of the Sheepdog archetype [1] and serve as regular teachers, than to have security guards fill the role. Now I agree with your next point:
> I think when you've got to the point where your wrestling ability is a relevant criterion as a teacher, the system is already completely dysfunctional, and we need to take a broader look at the problems that young people face.
I'd argue that these problems start in the home/family life of the children. Single-mother households produce a disproportionately high fraction of juvenile delinquents, and we've had a marked increase in those per capita.[2][3] Even asking serious questions about why we have a bunch of single-mother households is outside the Overton window of many mainstream organizations. Usually the only answer put forward is "more government spending".
[1] https://www.mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258200285_Race_Gend...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/252847/number-of-childre...
If an instructor cannot maintain sufficient control of their charges that facilitate an effective learning environment, I would argue they are not competent. They are failing to accomplish their assigned task.
> Obviously, some really hide-bound institutions like the military haven't completely internalized that, but then, that could be why militaries underperform. Russia, for example, has a very macho military, and (surprise!) it sucks.
The Russian military is underperforming for a ton of reasons beyond machismo. Corruption being the biggest, IMO. And your hypothesis fails when tested against almost any other machismo-laden western military force, in particular the almost-entirely-male and heavily testosterone-fueled US special operations community.
But the sibling comment highlights the nuance that perhaps my post was lacking: respecting the authority of the females in the organization is a worthy objective but it needs SOMEBODY to enforce it when challenged. It's apparent from TFA that isn't happening.
I guess for me it's a question of 'where you fix the problem'. In many machines, social machines included, you have a variety of stages where you can mitigate issues. Most of those 'solutions' are dirty hacks, and there are a few that will achieve results with a minimum of complexity and effort. I think fixing the extreme socialization problems of teenagers by making a significant chunk of teachers in normal schools double up as amateur MMA fighters is the wrong way to go about it.
On the subject of the Russian military, I do kind of agree, but I also think it's worth thinking about how much the extreme hazing culture of the Russian military contributes to the rot. It's been a repeated theme from the Afghanistan war on, that the violent 'toxic masculinity' of Russian military culture leads to tactical paralysis, a culture of hiding problems and mistakes, timidity at all levels of leadership, etc.
An observation that's been occurring to me with increasing frequency in recent years is that machismo is, in very many roles, a very impractical character trait. In roles where physical strength and physical courage are prized, like special operations, I can see the advantages, but most roles today, military or otherwise, are very technical, and so all the nonsense and communication issues that goes along with machismo is pure baggage.
I’m a teacher at an urban Title I school (over 70% of our students qualify for reduced or free school lunches). Yes, there is a lot of paperwork involved when you need to transfer student to alternative school or outright expel them. It’s only an issue though when you don’t document what’s happening along the way. And of course, documentation is not a bad thing. It would be a bad thing if kids were being run out of schools at the whims of tired, overworked, extremely stressed teachers. On the other hand, the really wacky stuff comes when it’s a special education student. You literally cannot suspend them for more than 10 days in a school year. I was the general education teacher in FBA meetings for three of my SpEd students who brought weapons to school (two knives, one taser). The result was to put them all on a functional behavioral plan which requires weekly reports about whether they are meeting FB targets: of not bringing weapons to school. The plan included that when they did meet their targets, they should be rewarded in certain ways, like being given time on a computer or time to speak with their friends or whatever. So, yeah. Rewards for… not bringing weapons. Now that was crazy.
Now let me answer this question more directly. It’s actually worse than a lot of people think. There is an intense and overwhelming amount of utter bullshit that gets rolled down the hill starting with Congress, added to by state legislatures, and further reinforced by local school districts. And of course teachers are at the bottom of the hill. When you focus on that, and all the ways that the system is utterly dysfunctional, and not beneficial for students, it can be defeating.
But when you focus on your job, which is students, it’s the single most rewarding thing you can do, in my judgment. I was a lawyer for 5-6 years before getting into education. I hated every day of my life. Now I wake up excited to see my students and be with them. It’s genuine fulfillment I never thought I would have in my life. So, if you can withstand all the bullshit, and there is a metric shit ton of it for sure, it’s an amazing job. If you can’t stand up for yourself, or if you can’t deal with irrational requirements imposed by people fully out of touch with reality—-if you can’t, in other words, set aside, or ignore to the maximum extent possible, dealing with other adults, you should definitely avoid it.
I can do those things. Becoming a teacher was the single best decision I’ve ever made.
Or they should own at least half a brain
It is super important to keep in mind, though, when thinking about public education that public schools are expected to serve a multitude of functions that are related to education only in the sense that they involve the same children who are our students (nutrition, counseling, social work services, etc.). And that's fine, I guess, if schools are where the social safety net has to catch vulnerable children. But that needs to be acknowledged and factored into how we think about schools.
Other than voting for the right political candidates, what can people do?
And how can we raise the status of teachers - like it is in Finland for example?
What isn't realistic in the short term is to solve poverty, which would help would to improve this situation.
Oh wait, wrong conspiracy theory
A few apples are committing violent acts but _everyone_ else is filming for social media. No one steps in due to liability or whatever reason.
"when they want to help black people, they want to help those black people who are doing something wrong. That is rioters, ex-convicts, they want to stop schools from disciplining black kids who misbehave in school. I don't hear them concerning themselves with the blacks who are the victims of the people who are doing wrong."
https://youtu.be/bpA3Sf6Ffu4 (6:05)
Don't you remember "happy slapping"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping
"Perception is reality". It's like all of those studies that showed from the 90s until COVID crime consistantly was dropping, yet if you asked people they felt like it was worse than ever due to aggressive reporting, esp. by "BREAKING NEWS" crews on local news channels.
It’s reasonable that the pandemic might have exacerbated existing issues, but the fact that we are seeing so many of these issues being exacerbated only in the US indicates that it’s really a U.S. problem, and not a pandemic problem (examples include the rise of gun violence, the rise of vehicular violence, the rise of homelessness, the rise of shoplifting, bad behavior by passengers in airplanes, and as in this article the rise of violence against teachers).
It’s a bit of a stretch and looks very much like a hammer and nail situation (although it should still be researched), but at least the chief police officer blaming it on a loss of respect for authority because of the protests has the advantage of explaining why these issues are appearing pretty much in the US only.
Once people saw that those in power would rather see you die than inconvenience them, an entire generation stopped believing in the social contract. After that things fall apart.
It's easy to spot incoherent politics since those afflicted just say "people in power", don't say who they mean, and it always turns out to be something the average voter supports. (The average voter doesn't particularly care if you're alive or not.)
>Californians in manual labor and in-person service occupations experienced disproportionate COVID-19 mortality, with the highest rates observed among male, Latino, and Black workers; these occupational group should be prioritized for prevention.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
If US support was so amazing as you claim, why do these numbers exist? Why are they so much higher than other countries?
The best you can do is protect 80+ people, who are far more at risk than anyone else. Staying home is a middle class fantasy though. You can't just keep the entire country home or you'll run out of food and the sewers will fail in a week. Not to mention many people don't want to do that and would rather take the death.
Nevertheless, the US gave out approx $2400/month in CARES Act unemployment support, which is more than anyone else.
If I were to Hazard a guess at the primary cause, it would be the normalization of physical violence and property destruction a legitimate mean of protest or expressing one's anger. Despite the enormous gains of the Civil Right Movement, nonviolent protests and Democratic action are now commonly believed to be a futile because they did not result in a completely egalitarian society.
Without faith in shared institutions, there is no Civil Society.
I've also heard from friends in Netherlands who complained about slow decline of the education system.
Now, these are all anecdotal, so maybe it is all middle age people complaining about new generations, but I sort of doubt it. Btw, I don't think the pandemic is a cause of it, to me it's social media. I think pandemic just accelerated how much social media is central to kids' lives.
Is it the case that kids in other countries don’t want to hit teachers because they are raised better, or they would like to hit them, but they know the punishment they’re getting is not talking with Care Solace, “a company that uses an online portal and phone line to link students, parents and staff” but a more severe punishment.
US is a big country with large cities and rural areas. Maybe it got worse in Nevada but better in rural Montana. But reduced violence somewhere makes for an extremely boring headline. So we would not be discussing it at all.