Adding to Mistermix’s post, I’m actually very, very troubled by the turn of events the past few decades. I don’t know what to pin the blame on, whether it be overly cautious parents forcing the hands of teachers, lawsuits forcing the hand schools, distortions in the media of how violent society and our schools are, this false notion that life is completely safe, etc. I just don’t know.
I do know that the last time I went to my old High School, the first thing that greeted me when I entered was an ENORMOUS plaque. Not of school accomplishments, not the school history, not sports awards, not even a greeting. Instead, it was an incomprehensibly large list of things you are not allowed to do or have on your person. It was crazy.
If I were growing up today, there is no doubt in my mind I would be in jail by 16. Between the multiple suspensions (kicked off the swim team and out of school for mooning my friends off the back of the bus and kicked out for punching a kid in the face in the library are just two of many things that got me in trouble) and the out of school antics that kids my age routinely engaged in, if I were a kid today I am absolutely convinced I would be in jail. I just thank Allah I was born white and 40 years ago, because if I hadn’t been, I’d either be locked up or shot full of psychiatric pharmaceuticals.
My only hope is that the authoritarianism kids are subjected to makes them so suspicious of authority that it backfires.
arguingwithsignposts
Things like Columbine don’t help, either.
Poopyman
In response to your first paragraph: All of the above.
And I’ve long felt the same way. The older I get the more I realize how much of a shield being white and male in a suburb in the 60’s & 70’s really was.
I was pretty subversive, though. I never got caught doing anything that warranted suspension.
Walker
@arguingwithsignposts:
Columbine did appear to be a real turning point. Anecdotally, that is when the profiling of anti-social teens started happening. Remember the infamous “Voices from the Hellmouth” posts on Slashdot?
Poopyman
IANAP, but I don’t think that’s how it works. My admittedly casual observations lead me to believe that it just makes them worse.
Just Some Fuckhead
Parents are doing a hideous job of raising their kids nowadays between working two jobs and watching television full time. I have a daughter in high school and I want as much discipline as possible. Kids are in school to learn. All the other shit is shit.
Seems like it’s always the folks who don’t actually have children in the public school system that are the ones that spend the most time whining about it.
Incertus (Brian)
When my daughter was in high school in Mississippi two years ago, she wasn’t allowed to have a hair color that wasn’t considered “natural,” so no pink or blue or anything like that. I think most kids understand the restrictions on things like weapons or drugs in schools, even when administrators undercut themselves by freaking out over a plastic knife someone uses to spread peanut butter on bread or one friend passing another some Advil–they recognize when a grownup is being a jackass and often (not always) separate the individual from the policy. I think this is a good thing, though I have no idea what it means for the future.
Jager
When I was in the 7th grade I brought a Beretta .25 caliber pistol to school and stowed it in my locker in my jacket pocket. At lunch time my pals and I ducked out of school, went down to the river and shot off about 30 rounds.
If I’d done that today, I’d be in jail as a convicted felon, my Grandfather (who was a County Judge) and my parents would be in deep shit. I’d be in a cell next to my pal Jack (his dad was the District attorney) who liked to make Molotov Cocktails and one cell down would be Phil who lifted sticks of dynamite from his Dad’s construction company on a regular basis. In retrospect we would have been very valuable to the Weathermen, however they never contacted us, the three of us had the experience they lacked!
Scott
@Walker: I’d say the profiling was not so much of anti-social teens as it was of teens who weren’t of the right social class. You could be a bullying thug as long as you were on the football team or student council. Being bullied would now get you a stern talking-to from the principal…
D. Mason
I actually missed the Ritalin craze by a few years, graduating shortly before it became the go-to solution for “misbehavior” in teens. I went to pick my best friends kid sister up one afternoon at the same HS i had graduated from just a few years before and the kids shuffling out of the building with no imperative whatsoever was like a kick to the gut. It was more like watching the people shuffle out of the office at the end of a long day. It’s creepy.
Walker
Yes, this.
I spent my elementary school years in the 70s in a rural NC town in the “black belt” (rural counties with predominantly black populations). The private schools were awful and served only as an opportunity for rich racists to avoid going to school with the blacks. So the public schools were a mixture of children of affluent (but well meaning) whites, and rural blacks.
I still remember the day (when I was 12) that the principal announced on the intercom for everyone to go straight home because of the gang fight we knew was coming.
If anything, school looks safer to me these days than it did back then.
bleh
This kind of dangerous subversiveness is precisely why, when Real Americans return America to its Real American principles, you and your fellow-traverers will be herded into concentration camps and dealt with appropriately.
This post is going into your Permanent Record.
cleek
worst of all, fear works a ratchet. what we do to alleviate it we never un-do.
now that we have them, we will never not have metal detectors in schools.
mr. whipple
Now there’s a shock. :)
MattF
The whole “shot full of pharmaceuticals” thing is scary and weird. I mean– well, yeah, we had drugs back in the 60’s– but they bubbled up from the bottom of the command-and-control hierarchy, not down from the top.
Scott
And I occasionally go re-read “Voices from the Hellmouth” to remind myself how much worse kids have things nowadays…
Sentient Puddle
WTF
When I was in high school some ten years ago, some of the other guys on the track team pulled this thing on the back of the bus they called (if I remember right) the ultimate sit-up. Some guy would hold a shirt over another guy’s eyes while he was trying to do a sit-up, ostensibly to add resistance. Meanwhile, another guy hovered his bare ass over the guy doing the sit-up, and the first guy, after a little while of holding the shirt in place and some encouragement (“You’re doing awesome, keep it up, keep going”), he’d suddenly pull off the shirt.
If we could pull shit like this, how the hell did you get suspended for a mere mooning?
Comrade Mary
So who else was expecting “neck”, not “face”?
Thank God I went to a Canadian alternative high school in the 70s and 80s. Things may have been very different for me otherwise.
doctorpsycho1960
@Poopyman: “My only hope is that the authoritarianism kids are subjected to makes them so suspicious of authority that it backfires”
That is definitely how it worked for me. I think I first had that insight in the fourth grade.
roshan
OT,
Whenever I hear about constant surveillance by big brother, I’m always reminded about the gem of a movie “Enemy of the State” starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman. And that was over a decade ago. It can be dismissed as Hollywood making up stuff as usual, but I believe that there is a lot of truth about what was shown in the movie. You just have to wonder what’s going on behind the doors when a company like Facebook has 500 million users, have never given a straight answer about the integrity of data they hold and privacy of all those users is up in the air.
brendancalling
i’d be in jail too.
I think your hope is well-placed. Look at kids today, they have no patience for authority. Authoritarianism invites resistance, especially among children, and even more especially among teens. As a kid, I remember that many of my craziest classmates, the ones who acted out the most, had extremely, authoritarian parents.
Adding, the first school administrator who suggests doping my kid had better keep an eye on his own can of soda, cus I’ll drop some LSD in there without batting an eye.
Catsy
I’ll add myself to the list of kids who would almost certainly be in jail if I’d pulled the shit today that I did when I was a kid. No question.
I think the main reason that people think–against all evidence to the contrary–that today’s children are more violent, dangerous, etc etc than they were in days of yore is the same reason people think that it’s more dangerous for children, despite a similar lack of evidence: visibility.
It used to be that the only time you’d become aware of kids doing something dangerous or outrageous was when it was forefully brought to your attention: big stories in the paper or on the nightly news, some big event that was the talk of the neighborhood, or something involving your own children. That’s not true anymore: the interconnectedness of our information society has made most of us hyper-aware of what’s going on outside our bubble in ways that simply didn’t used to be possible. Combine that with a media that’s figured out that sensationalism sells just as well for formerly-respectable news outfits as it always has for tabloids, and an increasingly authoritarian and criminalized approach to dealing with children that stems from overreaction to one-off events, and you get what we have today.
scav
@roshan: Facebook, what do you think Paypal is up to with the home address stuff (home addresses and phone numbers work as database keys to distinguish different individuals/same names), the Goog is another secretive one to keep an eye on . . . take your pick.
AZERTY
I grew up in rural/small town Nevada in the ’70s. Many of us guys would drive to school with guns in our vehicles so that we could leave immediately after school and go hunting. Occasionally, we would open our trucks & cars and show our shotguns & deer rifles to other classmates, all the while standing on a public street and school property. This was very common and normal at the time.
Although I left Redneckland many years ago, I do hear from the void from time to time. A few years ago, friend’s ~12-year-old son, in a very nearby town, was suspended for most of the school year for possessing a small pocket knife. He didn’t brandish it nor did he didn’t even open it. Granted, he was having some problems with another kid and he felt that he needed this knife, possibly to defend himself.
Although many of us took guns to school, we never used them in violence or anger. Any disputes were resolved after school in the nearby cemetery. Fists were the norm and occasionally somebody would escalate by taking his leather belt off, yet most fights were very short-lived. No knives. No guns. And when it was all over, we still got along–sometimes better, sometimes not.
What’s changed? I’ve puzzled over this question for years and I’m no closer today.
Catsy
This. My kid starts fourth grade today. He is almost 10, and in the last year I’ve definitely noticed a change in his demeanor when we’re disciplining him. It’s not the usual adolescent rebellion against structure crap, although that’s part of it–there are times that I can tell that he knows or at least suspects when we’re full of shit. There’s this look on his face like, “seriously? You’re giving me crap about /that/?”
jacy
@Just Some Fuckhead:
As someone who has got kids in all level of school from college to kindergarten, I’ve got to disagree. There is smart discipline and there is stupid discipline.
My daughter is in college now, but when she was in high school, she spent a day in detention for wearing the wrong color jacket. It was cold and she couldn’t find her school color sweatshirt, so she wore a pink one. Nothing offensive, no brand labels, no phrases, nothing. But it was pink and not blue, so she spent the day in detention. Not only did she not learn anything in class that day, but it let her know that the people at her school did not care about education, they cared about power. And this was a public school. I can give you tons of other instances along this same level. Sure half the girls in her senior class had babies before they were 18, but they damn sure didn’t wear the wrong color sweatshirt to class.
Now my two youngest are in private school, where they get a demerit if their bangs touch their eyebrows, a demerit if their shirts come untucked (try teaching a kindergartner to keep his shirt tucked in), and someone comes in with a ruler in the morning to make sure everyone’s socks come to the approved height.
That’s all bullshit of the highest order as far as I’m concerned, and don’t get me started at the rules that go beyond appearance, or I’ll spend the whole day in a black mood.
How many minutes of classroom education time are wasted on petty bullshit? Hell, if I had gone to a school like that, I would have been out of there and getting my GED so fast it would make your head spin.
Poopyman
@bleh: When they come to get us we won’t be found.
Capri
Can somebody make up their minds? Are parents these days oblivious to their kids because they are either working or watching TV or are they helicopter parents scheduling every second of spontaniety out of their kid’s lives? Parent bashing has been around as long as parents have, but any time somebody posts a “parents these days” slam I take it as a load of crap.
Until last year, I’ve had kids in public schools for the past 17 years. In my district, it was Columbine that did it – that’s when all the doors were locked and visitors had to sign in and out and zero tolerance went over the top.
IMHO, a lot of it is driven by nusty parents, the school administrators are just trying to keep them off their backs. In the summer after 9/11, my daughter was in a band that was scheduled to do a European tour. Parental fears about flying and going to Europe (9 months after the towers went down) forced the school to cancel and instead the band did a bus trip of Canada.
Pancake
Hmm. This post certainly helps to explain a great deal about the present.
aimai
Well, the larger and more diverse the school population is, and the more difficult it is to throw out the slow learners and the dangerous outsiders, the more repressive the “total institution” has to become. A long time ago–oh, come on, you all remember back to the start of the last century?–not everyone got a public education, what education people got was much shorter, you could be pulled out or thrown out for lots of reasons (sex, pregnancy, etc…). Over at Digby’s place Dennis what’s his name just put up a bunch of school films including Blackboard Jungle, I’d put in “Up the Down Staircase” as well, and of course “To Sir With Love.” These are all movies about da good ol’ days.
And before that in my husband’s parents day, of course, they were sending the children of immigrants to the new highschools to sit in classes of 70 at a time, in shifts. Those kids were regulated, and expected to be regulated, to a fare-thee-well.
I can’t say whether things are better or worse. I do think that the extension of the national security state and the general tendency of americans to be litigious (which is the flip side of the corporate/authoritarian resistance to apologies and negotiations) as well as the huge emphasis placed on herding and controlling children to funnel them onto the “right path” has made schools, like prisons, primarily places where children are warehoused instead of educated.
But there’s always been this tension. Read Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” or “Learning to Labor” or any other sociological study of modern schools. Bring enough types and classes of people together, at an impressionable age, without enough money for individual attention and you are going to get a sausage factory, with all the ugliness and confusion that sausage making entails. In the case of the US and especially the Southern US the failure to educate large swathes of children is a feature, not a bug. Always has been. Before the Civil war in South Carolina only 1/4 of all children received an education. Public schooling, even segregated public schooling was never a popular or well funded thing in the South, compared to the North and West, and we’re still living with the legacy of the contempt of the oligarchs for an educated populace.
aimai
Poopyman
@Comrade Mary:
It takes two decades to get through Canadian High schools? No wonder they’re kicking our ass!
Larry Signor
I’m confused. Balloon Juice bloggers and commenters seem to be as anti-authoritarian as any demographic I have encountered. The young people come by it honestly. Just look around at America.
NonyNony
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I really, really hope that’s snark.
Walker
@jacy:
If you don’t mind me asking, why do you willingly pay for your children to go to a school like that? Are the publics that much worse?
Nemo_N
I blame videogames and japanese cartoons.
Mark
It’s worse than you think – Montgomery County, Md., has decided that its teachers are too fat. So it’s requiring them all to participate in a health challenge. Schools that lose the most collective weight get prizes. Teachers get mandatory weigh-ins and collective physical fitness.
It seems that schools have been socially engineering the lives of children for so long, it doesn’t seem odd to them to do the same thing to adults.
cmorenc
@John Cole:
I’d like to think so. However, at 40 you’re a bit too young to have come of age during the “Woodstock generation”, when a huge portion of then-late teens/twenty-somethings were seemingly overtly anti-authoritarian, rebellious, and libertarian-leaning, and the Vietnam War left a huge number of returning soldiers disillusioned with trusting or submitting to authority. Look how that turned out thirty years later once they got absorbed with jobs and living in bourgeois suburban life, and started having kids of their own and started feeling threatened for the well-being of their own kids by all the feral things other people’s kids seemed to bring to society and schools.
What the younger hippie/counterculture folks said thirty to forty years ago has turned out to be true: don’t trust anyone over 30. Or, as cartoonist Walt Kelly’s archtypical swamp-possum character Pogo said: “we have met the enemy, and they are us” – meaning in this case that far too many of this young generation’s anti-authoritarian rebels turn into tomorrow’s key supporters for anti-libertarian authoritarian measures.
beltane
@brendancalling: Friends and family of mine who attended Catholic school tell me that the authoritarianism of the nuns instilled a sense of solidarity among the students against the PTB. Our kids, like the children of authoritarian regimes past and present will inevitably find ways to circumvent the authorities.
NonyNony
@Mark:
Check to see who their insurance company is. I’d bet it’s less about social engineering and more about the fact that they’re paying way too much for premiums on health insurance and are trying to find ways to bring them down.
There are private, self-insured companies here in Ohio who are doing the same thing. It’s all about the health insurance costs.
me
I probably would have been suspended now for doing something, 15 years ago and it was computer related, that I thought then was harmless and the teacher thought was slightly less then harmless. The only punishment was a stern talking to.
Hugin & Munin
Aimai: While Discipline and Punish is a fascinating study of the subject, I would hesitate to call it a ‘Sociological study.’ Really, I would consider it more of a philosphical history, if anything.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
John, call me crazy, but I think kids who punch other kids in the face in the library or anywhere NEED to be tossed out of school and thrown in jail for a while. For their own good as well as society’s.
And naturally, being the violent delinquent that you were, you ended up in the military like thousands of other similar kids. That gives one such confidence in the mental state of the troops.
scav
oh, and speaking of discipline and education (or the lack thereof) can somebody smack BP upside the head, tell it to pull up its socks and learn from bloody experience? With Neighbors Unaware, Toxic Spill at a BP Plant
burnspbesq
@D. Mason:
“I actually missed the Ritalin craze by a few years, graduating shortly before it became the go-to solution for “misbehavior” in teens.”
You obviously don’t have the experience of being the parent of an ADD kid, so I’ll say this as gently as possible.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
jrg
Wow. No way that helped breed contempt for authority.
Yep. How many years ago was it when MADD and the nanny-staters got Reagan to raise the drinking age to 21? Yeah, that’s worked out well… Hardly anyone in college drinks anymore. /sarcasm.
andrea
I was in high school in the mid to late 70s; a fellow swim team member and I mooned other drivers from the back of the bus on the way home from a meet. But, upper middle class school in one of the better districts in that neck of the woods, and girls will be girls?
KG
I think what really drove us over the edge was the adoption of zero tolerance policies. I remember them coming in vogue when I was in high school and college during the mid to late 90s. People decided that it was easier to live in a black-and-white world rather than deal with shades of grey or technicolor. I always thought it was stupid, stupid, stupid… but I was also smart enough to learn at an early age that if you were going to do something crazy/stupid that the goal was “don’t get caught.”
If I was going through high school today, I’d probably be suspended or expelled for telling an administrator where to go, how to get there, and what to do when he got there.
Tax Analyst
Jeez, it’s hard to even relate. I graduated HS at end of January, 1968. Yeah, there were “gangs” then, but none of them had assault weapons. Someone in a gang might have a home-made zip-gun, but mostly they would fight each other with knives and bats and clubs. From my experience that didn’t have any issues with non-gang member students and left us alone. In the years to come later on that all changed, of course. Like I said, it’s hard to relate. I do remember going back to Dorsey around 1985 to watch a JV basketball game between Granada Hills & Dorsey – my nephew was playing for GHS. So I’m a 35-yr old white guy sitting in the bleachers and this black kid comes up to me and asks me “Where you from?”. I really wasn’t thinking about gang shit, so I just said “Inglewood”, because I lived there. He looked a little confused and walked away. Lucky for me saying “Inglewood” apparently had no gang affiliation or meaning or I might have got my silly little white head blown off. BTW – 1985 was a really rough time around that area of L.A. Crack was at it’s peak and so was youthful gun violence.
jacy
@Walker:
We’re in rural Louisiana, where the public schools are barely even schools. It’s not an exaggeration. We picked the best alternative, even though I hate the school with a blue passion, and it’s two towns over. The horrible thing is, even though the academics are miles better than the public schools here, it’s not nearly as good as the public schools my brother’s and friends’ kids attend in Colorado.
But I’ve researched every viable option to death, and for right now, we’re stuck.
Cynicor
Pretty much my only suspension was for punching a kid in the face in the school library in 8th grade. He walked past me and whispered “f–ing Jew”, and I stood up and punched him twice. Being a little nerd, all my teachers gave me serious, stern talkings to about starting fights until I told them what the kid had said to me. He later dropped out of school on his 16th birthday.
stuckinred
Ha, I have always said that if I were black I’d still be Leavenworth! But in my mind, the authoritarianism was at least as bad in the early 60’s. In my high school girls were forced to kneel on the floor and if their skirts didn’t touch the deck they were sent home. Any kind of shaggy hair was forbidden, gym class was patterned after the military and campuses were closed. I left in 66 and when I came home in 69 it had totally changed and anything went.
Ken
Capri @27: “Are parents these days oblivious to their kids because they are either working or watching TV or are they helicopter parents scheduling every second of spontaniety out of their kid’s lives?”
Both, and the mix is absolutely maddening, according to friends who are grade-school and middle-school teachers. There are kids that really need help, but the parents don’t attend conferences, or even answer letters or the phone. Then there are kids who are doing just fine, except the teachers have to waste an hour a week with the parents.
Anoniminous
Are schools institutions for learning or age-related incarceration centers?
Somehow we’ve seemed to morph the former into the latter.
Southern Beale
I can haz John Bolton for POTUS?
Please please please make it so pretty please …. Run, John, Run!
Walker
@jacy:
Ah. As I said above, I grew up in rural NC, and even we heard stories about schools in Louisiana (had a friend in HS that moved from there). You have my sympathies.
stuckinred
@Tax Analyst: My sister went to Morningside and graduated in 68. My brother played hoops at Hawthorne in the mid 70’s and my nieces went there in the 90’s and 2000’s. I remember about 10 years ago my nieces telling me if I wore that blue Pendleton to the Manhattan Beach Mall I’d get shot1 I’ll stay in Georgia, thank you very much.
BARRASSO
I once took an inert hand grenade to high school, imagine the prison time I would get for that now.
Incertus (Brian)
@KG:
I can even understand where the zero-tolerance polices might have come from–possibly a reaction against charges of favoritism toward the children of wealthy or connected families. Make the policy zero-tolerance and then everyone gets treated the same, right?
Only problem is that bad administrators use the policy as a shield to hide behind so they can never be criticized for a decision they make (or don’t make as the case may be). They fall back on the lazy attitude of “it’s not me, it’s the policy” as a sort of ass-covering.
Original Lee
It’s a combination of lawsuits, threats of potential liability, state and federal regulations, and a big mix of different kinds of parenting in the classroom. I think more than ever we have a wide divergence in what the people who have children choose to do with/for/to their children at home, within the same neighborhoods or school districts. There are A LOT of people who think once their child reaches a certain age (generally 10 but sometimes younger), they’ve done their job as parents and it’s only a cruel government that keeps this young person in their home and requiring food, clothing, and transportation. There are also A LOT of people who work two jobs and are doing the best they can to supervise their children long-distance. Let’s not forget helicopter parents, of which there are always a few, permanently indignant parents (ditto), and scam artists (ditto). Homeschooling has pulled a lot of helicopter parents out of the public school system, though.
sven
Like John, there is no way I would graduate high school today. Several of the school districts I currently work with will not allow a student to receive credit for a class if they have more than 3-6 unexplained absences over the course of a semester. This means that regardless of the grade a student earns in a class they will not make progress toward graduation if they fail to attend. I could not have met this requirement. At one point during my Junior year I had 122 hours of detention outstanding, virtually all of it for non-attendance. Despite the slate being wiped clean between school years I had more than 90 hours outstanding at the end of my Senior year. There is no way I would have graduated under the current policy.
I place most of the blame for these draconian measures on the local political process. When something happens at a school that captures the public’s attention the incentive for school board members is to take swift and dramatic action they can sell to their constituents (read parents). The results are policies which are often overly-broad or even counter-productive. Principals and teachers are often frustrated by these dictates but legally required to see them implemented.
Ben
anti-authoritarianism can be great, but I wonder how much teahadism is just anti-authoritarianism by stupid people. That unintended consequence makes me nervous.
Objective Scrutator
I graduated from high school two years ago. I remember being approached by the teacher at one point when I didn’t stand to recite the Pledge of Alleigance (I was working on homework for another class, and was hardly being disruptive or suspicious.). There’s also the time when I had my head shaved from playing with friends, and I was embarrased enough to feel like wearing a hood over my head. Of course, that upset our Orwellian overlords. I could have been hiding drugs in there, had a rigged Deagle on the top of my head, or announcing my intention of joing the Bloods or the Crips.
At least I got away without being punished during those two instances. I remember getting in-school in 8th grade for a day when I sung “I Shot the Sherrif” to another kid. The teacher also cited a time when I crawled under a desk during group projects as evidence that I was a complete pervert. Yes, those really are the reasons I went to in-school.
Children today ought to be raised as wards of the state. Cand parents even be trusted to teach children that murder is wrong? I don’t think so, as you see a motley of murders in America everyday. I still believe that Oloiver Twist had the best plan for raising your children, and the only people standing between making that mandatory for ALL of America’s children are the dirty Hippies that keep invading our PTAs.
D. Mason
@burnspbesq:
No, you’re right, I’m not cruel and selfish enough to bring a child into this shitfest of a society we live in. If I were that kind of asshole I guess I would see no harm in doping the poor little fucker up so I don’t have to pay it any attention though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
WTF? Did you go through a school system, public or private?
And bite me, also too. You are kind of an idiot, aren’t you?
Sentient Puddle
@BARRASSO: One of my third grade classmates did that too. I wonder if you’re him.
Elie
Our country is about raising consumers who are obedient to authority. If we were raising citizens, they would need to know how to think for themselves.
Just another result of the runaway market and corporatism of the last 3 or 4 decades.
stuckinred
@sven: I didn’t graduate. It was very common in the 60’s to give you the choice between jail and the Army so, on my 17th, my old man drove me to the train station, next stop Ft Campbell.
DBrown
Not too many years ago, my ex-girlfriend who is twenty years my junior, was on the bus with her fellow high school sports friends and a bus of Nuns pulled up along side their bus at the stop light. All the girls decided to moon the Nuns and did. My girlfriend told me that rather than get upset, the Nuns just looked on at all the interesting ‘moon’s. Since she was puzzled by their lack of shock or concern, It was rather fun explaining that unique aspect of Nuns behavior in the Church to her… she was surprised and taken back.
cmorenc
@jacy:
Why are the public schools so bad in your area of Louisiana? Is it because:
a) education isn’t highly valued enough to financially support?
b) the area is too poor to be able to afford to give proper support to the schools?
c) the area could better support the schools, but the dominant political powers (not necessarily in accord with majority wishes) deliberately keep them underfunded? If so, for what reason?
d) the majority of people who can afford to send their kids to private schools are the dominant political class and demand to have the minimum tax burden and resources diverted to public schools?
e) other reasons? [Sheer apathy and ignorance?]
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for jumpin in there!
Tax Analyst
@stuckinred:
Yeah, I think I had forgotten about the “Blue/Red” gang thing between the Crips and Bloods. That was careless because I actually managed a business in the area and was aware of the color issue. Since I rarely buy any red clothing I was probably wearing something blue that day. But could there be a more insane reason to shoot someone? I don’t think the stupidity is quite as rampant today, but then what do I know?
John Cole
Just once it would be nice if you knew what you were talking about. I wasn’t a violent delinquent, I hada history with the kid. We both went to the same private school, where he had picked fights with me on a daily basis- tripping me, pushing me around, etc., until one day I was at my locker and he pushed me from behind into the locker and caused a laceration above my eye. I wheeled around and punched him and knocked out his tooth. He left me alone for the next few years.
Then several years later, we were in the same high school, and he started his bullshit again, pushing me from behind into a table. I punched him in the face, bloodied his nose, and he left me alone for the next three years. We were both suspended for three days.
I’m not sure how you have turned into such a miserable, judgmental wretch of a person, but I really feel sorry for you.
MBunge
“You obviously don’t have the experience of being the parent of an ADD kid, so I’ll say this as gently as possible.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
According to a 2009 study, the prescription of ADHD drugs for 3 to 19 year olds increased by 80% between 1998 and 2005.
If ADHD is as bad as you imply AND as widespread as that increase in drug use implies…how the hell did kids and families ever cope before the diagnosis and the medicine?
Mike
singfoom
I graduated from a private high school in ’96. I was the kid in the trench coat who made napalm for fun and spent too much time on Bulletin Board Systems and generally spent too much time fucking around online.
I’m so glad I was there before Columbine. Fuck, as a prank, my friends and I put down tape body outlines with amputated arms and stuff on the ground in the halls of our High School. That shit would have gotten us expelled like THAT now as far as I can tell.
There were also stupid posters I put up during a Illuminati phase that said, “Those who oppose us will drown in the blood of their own children.” With a border of teddy bears and stuffed animals. Jesus that was stupid, but at least I didn’t go to jail or have counseling. We were just kids fucking around.
Sure, you have to try to identify problem kids, but being all out repressive and authoritarian will just drive the problems underground. I don’t have any kids yet, but I don’t look forward to dealing with any school system for them.
Walker
This has a lot to do with it.
What many people do not realize is that your vote for school board is one of the most powerful tools that you can wield in today’s society. More than any other election, your vote matters, and it has far-ranging effects. Ignore school board elections at your peril.
Corner Stone
@Ken:
Maybe I’m misreading you, but this struck me as a little off.
Maybe those kids are doing just fine for a reason?
Xenos
@burnspbesq: Agreed. The ADHD medicines are amphetemines. If they are given to a child who does not have ADHD then the effect is not to make them ‘doped up’.
The ‘doped up’ children you saw may have been on anti-depressants, though, due to the exhaustion of eating a dozen shit sandwiches every day for 12 years.
kay
@Elie:
Agreed. It’s taken me a while but I’m getting there.
If it’s any comfort, everyone in the juvenile justice/allied-school-punishment-system knows it doesn’t work, but no one knows what to do about it. No clue.
I wish it was turning them into anti-authoritarians. I think it’s just making them turn on each other.
Chyron HR
I remember when I was in high school back in the 80s, and one day I went on a rampage and threw a garbage can at a student from another school.
I’m still haunted by his dying words: “BARF”.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Four years public high school. What’s your point? That violent brats who punch other kids should be tolerated?
Excellent, succinct rebuttal of my point that the military takes in far too many delinquents who have few if any other options. Do you deny this to be a fact? It’s how the war machine meets its recruiting goals, you fool.
Walker
@MBunge:
Diagnosis also increased substantially during that time. Is it over-prescibed? Maybe. But doctors do believe that actual instances of AHDH are on the rise. There are a lot of pet theories, but no real answers.
Similarly, who knows what is causing the rise in peanut allergies. When my sister was growing up with this allergy (in the late 70s, early 80s), it was unheard of. Now schools act as if it is the default position.
stuckinred
@kay: If you haven’t seen season four of the Wire it’s worth a look (actually it should be watched from the beginning), part of the season is centered in the schools and it is heartbreaking.
Felonious Wench
“All I wanted was a Pepsi! And she wouldn’t give it to me! Just a Pepsi!”
The Ritalin craze hit in jr. high for me, as well as the putting kids in mental centers at 12. My friends and I were “weird,” and I watched a couple get sent away. We were protogoths and obviously had issues, you know.
I still listen to Suicidal Tendencies. Ah, the sweet memories of youth.
MBunge
“I’m not sure how you have turned into such a miserable, judgmental wretch of a person, but I really feel sorry for you.”
I’m not sure if it’s an outgrowth of the anti-spanking movement or the cause, but sometime in the last few decades the use of physical violence in any situation has become THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD. The idea that a pop in the mouth is the appropriate response to certain circumstances has become simply inconceivable.
Mike
MeDrewNotYou
I’m reminded of a line from Professor Farnsworth a few weeks ago on Futurama, after learning about creationists in 3010.
“I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”
I’m still young, but I simply have no faith that the future is going to be any better. While I take solace in the Republican’s demographic time bomb helping get rid of BS cultural issues, corporatism and the surveillance state ain’t going nowhere.
Objective Scrutator
Sorry about my absolutely hideous post. Apple and Firefox are failing to render the comment box well.
@John Cole: My Dad had a similar problem in his high school. Punching the shit out of the kid who kept bugging him was the ONLY way he would get some peace and solitude from him. He was never suspended, either. If he were a kid today, he’d be labeled as a Columbine admirer.
stuckinred
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim): Yea, only if members of mensa like you would join up we’d whip them Jihadi’s inside a week,
Amanda in the South Bay
Thank fucking god I graduated from high school in 1997, right before the wave of shootings and zero tolerance bullshit.
Growing up in small town Oregon meant that we could get away with things that would cause administrators these days to shit their pants.
KG
@Incertus (Brian): but “treating everyone the same” was a bullshit excuse even when they first introduced it. Because they way it worked from the beginning was the girl who gave a friend a midol for a rough period was treated the same as the kid who was slinging weed in the parking lot. In a court of law, they would recognize the difference between the two. But in school they are both evil, evil drug dealers.
Incertus (Brian)
@Original Lee:
One of the major factors in my choice to stick it out in college academia at my current level rather than jump to high school for a bit more money is the fact that if a helicopter parent starts ragging me for info about how their kid is doing, I can tell them to get bent. Kid’s an adult now, and I refuse to disclose any academic information to anyone without said adult’s permission.
BB
“My only hope is that the authoritarianism kids are subjected to makes them so suspicious of authority that it backfires.”
Well, part of me thinks this suspicion of all forms of authority is already rampant–and generally corrosive. We see it all the time in debates on global warming, health care, school history text books etc etc.
While critical thinking is great, it is easily confused for critical not-thinking, which is almost as emotionally rewarding, and way, way easier to do.
Poopyman
@singfoom:
Run for school board. Seriously. That’s the one sure way to start to effect change to the school system.
And if your kid does get in trouble? Well hell, his dad’s on the school board.
Elie
@kay:
kay — its our society. WE are going to have to change what we value and who we are.
When?, you ask.
don’t know — don’t know.
jrg
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim): Punching a bully works. I stopped years of abuse in about .5 seconds when I was in 8th grade… After years of trying to get teachers to do something about it.
I’m happy that you’ve had a sheltered life, but stop pretending that makes you better than those of us who had to stand up for ourselves.
kay
@stuckinred:
Thank you. I’ll do that.
I think we are reaching some tipping point in public sentiment, if my personal experience is any barometer. I think what is driving the change is the newer laws relating to sex offenders that apply to juveniles. A bridge too far.
Someone didn’t put a whole lot of thought into that deal. Some massive unintended consequences going on there. I’m not sure we intended to brand sexually active juveniles as “safety threats” for life, but woe to the state legislator who “sticks up for sex offenders”, right?
Incertus (Brian)
@KG: Yeah, I know. It’s a conundrum. Responsible administrators recognize that a zero-tolerance policy is unfair, and if I had my guess, they probably ignore it when necessary. But not all administrators are responsible, and so the policy is meant to restrict them from giving favorable treatment to particular kids. But the policy won’t do that–policy is only ever as good as the people enforcing it. The problem is administrators who view schools as their personal fiefdom over which they hold complete control, and the students are their serfs. But how do you move those fuckers out of the job? They’re usually the ones who want it the most and are willing to do whatever’s necessary to get it.
Jager
In my high school in the 60’s, the administration was still in the 50’s. The dress code restrictions were: No collar-less shirts-anti t-shirt, you had to wear a belt-anti low slung jeans, no engineer boots-the 50’s gang footwear of choice, short sleeves couldn’t be rolled up-anti the Gene Vincent look.
My friends and I were into a modified British look, we all wore London Fog tan trenchcoats. One day the vice principal (the enforcer) pulled me aside and said “what’s the meaning of those raincoats, I’ve had some complaints”. If I remember correctly, I rolled my eyes and said, “ahh, my Mom thought it would be a great coat for this time of year”. The dick actually called my Mom and she basically told him he was nuts.
Omnes Omnibus
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Anyone who gets into a fight is a violent brat? Painting with really broad brush, aren’t you? What about the kid who gets hit and punches back? Is he a violent brat as well?
As far as the delinquents in the military go, I take it that you have not been served, right? I suppose if you define anyone who has been in a fight, ever, as a delinquent, your analysis is spot on.
Michael D.
The whole point of the authoritarian society is to keep kids from thinking for themselves. They’ve “ruled” them to death. They’ve taken away art and music. They’ve made going to school hell.
Kids don’t want to learn anything.
And that’s exactly what the people stripping the education system to the core want – kids that don’t know anything.
Because then those people can scream things like, “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” and “Who’s funding this mosque?” and have a pretty decent chance of hooking some poor kid who never had a chance in school and who can’t put together in his head the fact that the birth certificate has been floating around all over the Internet for fucking months. He didn’t learn critical thinking – so when someone says, “I don’t have nuthin’ against the Moooslems, but…” the “but” doesn’t ring alarm bells.
Creativity has been so srtipped out of kids’ consciousness that when some hic complains that the government is stealing his money and giving it to the National Endowment for the Arts so they can fund Piss Christ, that kid can’t reason that there are thousands of other works that are more beautiful and that this money is largely well spent. The kid has probably never been to a museum.
So when you say you don’t know what’s going on, here is exactly what is going on – a conscious effort to dumb down society and create generations of apathetic, low information voters who’ll look at Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and all the rest of them and take them seriously.
They don’t know any better. I mean seriously people, this whole Texas schoolbook re-writing was news for what? 2 weeks?! People should be rioting over that shit.
SB Jules
They suspend kids for mooning the entire student body these days?
No sense of humor!
TooManyJens
@John Cole: John, have you ever seen Angus? Based on your history with that kid, I think you’d find it amusing.
fucen tarmal
i went to a high school immediately after about a decade of race/class riots.
we were the recipents of a negotiated peace…
the cheerleaders were all black
the color guard was all working class white
the school paper was all jewish
etc, every activity belonged to a group, from a particular neighborhood.
we didn’t have a prom queen or a homecoming game/dance, less to fight about, which seemed to be the entire grand strategy behind our education.
KG
@MBunge: shit, that reminds me of two of the things I did in high school that probably would have gotten me expelled in this day and age.
First one, I played water polo. I was something of an enforcer, playing a very physical game. I also tended to talk a ton of shit. The last game I played in high school was a playoff game against a rival. A rival, I should add, that I nearly came to blows with a dozen times during the regular season and summer polo leading up to that game. We lost and were waiting for the bus. Two of their guys go by in their car, slow down and say something. Me, figuring I got nothing left to lose, step of the curb and give the international sign for “fuck it, let’s rumble” by raising my arms out to the side. They stop. My coach steps in, tells me to go sit down and tells them to drive off. Luckily my coach didn’t report it to the higher ups.
The second involved my younger sister. Some jackass was harassing her and she wasn’t sure what to do. She told me about it, and I said I’d handle it. So, later that day, me and a couple of teammates find the guy, corner him and I basically say, “you know my sister? I find out that you are bothering her again, you will have to deal with me.” Again, nothing reported to the “adults.”
Either one of those happening today would have probably meant that I’d be spending my senior year at the continuation school.
Sly
Times have changed and that makes me uncomfortable.
Snark aside, and speaking as a teacher, the adaptive capacity of children is quite incredible to behold. Adults, and the institutions that they run? Not so much. Finding who’s to blame for negative adaptations is pretty much pointless, as there is plenty to go around.
@Capri:
They come in all kinds, most of which are easy to deal with. The problem that a lot of teachers have is that they feel they have absolutely no support from the administration or the district if they have a bad interaction with a parent. This feeling is a lot more intense in non-union districts, because then your job security becomes much less real. But there are ways of dealing with the helicopter and absentee parents, and all shades in between.
The problem parents, however, are the ones who simply don’t care about their kids. Not the ones who don’t have much interest in their kids’ lives because, at the end of the day, if there is a problem, they’ll be there. The ones that are emotionally abusive toward their kids are what keep teacher’s up at night. The one’s who will tell you, “Yeah, I know he’s a piece of shit. What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” when the kid is sitting right next to them.
Physical abuse is different, because a call to the police will get that sorted in a heartbeat and, thankfully, they are extremely rare. Emotionally abusive parents are somewhat rare, but there’s almost nothing you can do about it.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Jeez, just get a room already.
KG
@Incertus (Brian): the way you move bad administrators is by getting involved in local politics. School board, PTA, all that kind of stuff is where the real work happens. The problem is, a lot of people lose interest after their kids are out of school, and the career administrators know they can out live the trouble making parents who actually want logic and reason to govern policy.
jacy
@cmorenc:
I would say it’s probably mostly a combination of A and B. Education isn’t really a priority and there’s a rotten tax base. That’s a simplification, of course, and the underlying reasons are probably very complex.
Being a transplant here and not a native, the shortcut in my head tells me that education on its merits isn’t really that important in this area of the country. Part of that is cultural, part of that is historical, part of it is the division of politics. After all, a good education leads you to critical thinking, discernment, and a questioning of the status quo. Can’t have that, or the whole societal system down here would fall apart.
Corruption is second nature, even out here in the sticks. And people will vote for division over progress every chance they get. Of course that’s a generalization and there are people who really care, but for me, they sure seem to be in the (vast) minority.
sven
@Walker: I agree and as with so many of our policymakers school board members rarely have expertise in the field they are administering.
The tragedy of this discussion is that even for students with legitimate problem behaviors the consequences defined are unhelpful. The punishment model most of us are familiar with, escalating from detention to suspension to expulsion, assumes that students are rational decision-makers. For *some* students the threat of detention may dissuade *some* behavior but for students with severe problem behaviors this is rarely the case. Usually these students have developed unproductive behaviors in a challenging environment (read: their home-life sucks) or have legitimate health issues which overwhelm the rational decision-making process. Using a mandatory suspension can, quite literally, be returning a student to the very environment which is driving the behavior in the first place.
Sly
@MBunge:
Badly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Touche, you little monster.
grandpajohn
@Incertus (Brian): 100% this and I say that as a retired teacher, thank God I retired before this became the rage although the school I retired from does not seem to go to the extremes that some schools do,
although in our district all the high schools and middle schools have a full time police officer stationed at the school along with closed circuit tv for the entrances.
Mnemosyne
@MBunge:
As someone whose ADHD went undiagnosed in grade school, high school, and college, I’ll tell you: by constantly berating the kid for being stupid and lazy and not working up to their potential.
My life would have been a whole lot different if I had gotten the treatment I needed 30 years ago rather than constant, repetitive punishment for not doing things “right.”
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: “Me gustibus. You gustibus. We missed the bus. They missed the bus. “
General Stuck
It’s much easier for teenagers to plot in the digital age.
mclaren
People here have claimed (A) these kinds of insane privacy invasions were typical in the past, and (B) there wasn’t as much violence in schools in the past.
Let me tell you what the junior high and high school I went to were like.
No fences. None. Nothing to keep kids from wandering off campus at any time — we just never did. It was understood you didn’t do that, so we didn’t.
No gates.
No metal detectors.
No locker inspections.
No armed guards.
No sniffer dogs.
No surveillance cameras.
And violence? Get real, people. Kids regularly blew out the boys’ bathroom pipes by flushing M80s down the toilet. They had to shut two of the bathrooms down twice for repairs. No lockdowns, no locker searches, nothing. The attitude among school admins was “boys will be boys.”
I personally saw incidents like the following: one kid who disliked another kid waited until he was bending over to take a drink out of a metal drinking fountain. Then he slammed the other kid’s head from behind, hard, down onto the drinking fountain. Blood everywhere. Smashed in the other kid’s front teeth.
Result?
No cops. The parents got called. The culprit got hauled into the principals’ office and suspended for a month. Don’t know how many thousands of dollars of orthodonture the victim had to have, but must’ve been a lot.
No police, no handcuffs, no cop cars.
Kids regularly got chased off school premises after school hours by bullies. Sometimes smaller kids ran out of classrooms to escape being bullied. School admins did nothing.
This fantasy that kids were little angels in times past comes from delusion and wishful thinking. I witnessed kids getting dragged down off fences they tried to climb to escape bullies and then get beaten with rocks while toadies held them down. Baseball games regularly ended with riots, the PE coaches had to step in and haul the kids off whoever screwed up and missed catching the ball and cost the team the game — usually the littlest clumsiest kid, who was getting beaten up en masse by the rest of the cowards and quislings and bullies on the team. And this was an all-white school in a prosperous suburb.
Less violence back in the “good old days”? Get real.
Yet no school administrator ever demanded to search a locker or tried to do a patdown or suggested calling in drug sniffer dogs.
The insanity is new. Nothing like that gestapo crap ever happened 30 years ago.
When I was in high school and junior high you walked into campus straight off the street. Everything was open. No guards, no goons, no fences, no gates. Today, you walk up to a surveillance camera and press a buzzer and from behind a bulletproof wire-paned glass square set in a bombproof metal door a voice barks from a speaker and demands to know who you are and why you want to enter school premises.
grandpajohn
@Walker:
Well as someone who graduated from school in 55 and taught high school in the 60,s and 70,s, to the best of my memory most of them coped by either dropping out of school or getting expelled for being disrupting influences.
Corner Stone
@mclaren: I can’t tell. Is the situation you describe a good scenario to you?
morzer
My memory of school is that, although we had some bullies, generally things were not too bad. Some teachers couldn’t handle classes, and a small group of kids would be disruptive, but, in general, the prevailing tone was a vast apathy on all sides.
I have seen reports of what is called “torturing” teachers, in which a clique systematically sets out to make life hell for their teacher, in the expectation that there will be no effective punishment. I am not sure what the answer is to that, since suspension seems to be what they want.
By and large, I think that we target the wrong things, and fail to go about educating kids the right way, only to blame them when we’ve screwed a lot of things up for their future. As for the great political debate about education, it’s basically hot air, aimed at justifying cheap, bad schools, standardized tests, and a poor future for those outside the elite.
General Stuck
Aside from the overusage of psych meds on kids, which were mostly not available when I went to school in the 60’s, I don’t see all that much difference as far as “authoritarianism” than back then. In fact, if you talk about social mores and restrictions on general behavior there was much more of it back then. Kids have much more freedom to do things we wouldn’t have dreamed of doing, and that can be expanded to society as a whole. And more freedom makes for more opportunity to do more stupid shit.
As far as the search and seizure stuff on school property, that existed back then as from personal experience, I had my locker and car searched several times due to a penchant of stashing Little Kings for later.
As far as cops being given more leeway in general these days to do thugish things, that is society wide and as a result of a very pro police powers increase from our courts, specially the supremes. The same thirty year embrace of wingnuttery the voters of this country voted into power in other areas of American life, such as pro bidness attitudes that have created a broken economy etc…
That wingnuttery has permeated about every nook and cranny of this country, and schools are not immune, but I don’t see this country as being all that more authoritarian on the whole, and there are also more rights afforded across the board from the suspected criminal rights, to abortions allowed, so the police power increase on one hand is mitigated in the other direction in some cases as well, imo.
Specific to schools, I think things like Columbine and other mass killings on school properties by students has made parents and teachers fairly crazy with draconian rules that often are just plain nuts.
Gina
@Felonious Wench: I’m not crazy!! Institution! You’re the one that’s crazy! Institution!
Funny, I recently introduced my son to the fabulousness that was Suicidal Tendencies, The Misfits, and the Butthole Surfers. I don’t put that into the mandatory reports I file for homeschooling with the school district.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@John Cole:
OMG, this is a fucking blog. How do any of us know ANYTHING you write is true? My “delinquent’ remark was also based on your frequent belligerent and violent references in your BJ posts, as well as own statement that you were often in trouble.
Furthermore, it is laughable that you, who cheer-led Bush and the right wing into tragedy and disaster that has killed at least many thousands of people and maimed many thousands more, would call ME a judgmental wretch of a person.
You, who lives off a government pension PLUS your other job long after you stopped working your lazy ass, all because this country worships violence and “soldiers” above all else and who goes about his gardening and pets and cushy life while thousands lie dead and buried and maimed in hospitals without legs and arms and penises partly as a result of YOUR doing, have the GALL to call me a miserable wretch of a person. Interesting view of the world/universe you have.
Well…it doesn’t surprise me. You are self centered and shameless in the extreme. Which is probably why you drink so much.
As I said long ago, and I”ll say again: get your sorry ass to a military hospital and do a few years changing diapers for those you helped destroy, and then we’ll talk about who’s a “wretch.”
Wow. You really are a baboon.
The Commish
In my limited experience the kids of today are as rebellious as ever. And for every new rule the grups come up with, they have some new channel the old man isn’t hip to (chat rooms, then text, then twitter, then who knows what) to share amongst each other how to evade it.
I’m an optimist by nature but what i think is that the current climate of childhood oppression is only teaching kids from an earlier age to watch out for The Man.
Mnemosyne
@Walker:
There’s also a range of severity of ADHD. Mine was mild-to-moderate, so I was able to sit through 50-minute lectures without making a nuisance of myself. My nephew is currently at a specialized boarding school in Montana because his case is much more severe (plus he’s probably bipolar to boot like his father is).
Mild-to-moderate cases can probably be treated with coaching/therapy rather than medication, but what school system has the money to provide its non-troublemaking ADHD kids with that kind of coaching and close monitoring? Much less teachers who are willing to accommodate their “lazy” students? So much easier to put it back on the parents and insist that their kids be medicated before they’re allowed back into the classroom.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
I’d rather have to deal with bullies than crazed gestapo school administrators on a power trip.
It’s easy to deal with bullies. Smack ’em hard in the mouth. They learn not to mess with you.
You can’t do that with school administrators.
Walker
To everyone replying to me on the AHDH thing…
I was responding to MBunge. I am not anti-meds.
gil mann
@D. Mason:
I’m all for not breeding, but what a jagoff thing to say. I’m sure this theoretical child of yours would prefer an imperfect world to nonexistence, and that’s without getting into your assumption that there was ever a better era for child-rearing. Pining for the Industrial Revolution, are ya?
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Glennacious Greenwaldian would have you chucked in jail for that.
Joey Maloney in paradise
@Ben:
This x 1e7. Anti-authoritarianism + intelligence is good; but without the second element you get mindless, directionless hostility. You get James Dean – “What’re you rebelling against?” “What do you got?” – which looked and sounded great on screen, but is really a pretty crappy life plan.
It’s purely reactionary. Live that way and authority controls your life as completely as if you obeyed unthinkingly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Joey Maloney in paradise: Brando, not Dean.
Corner Stone
@mclaren: And I don’t believe it’s an either/or situation and object to that framing.
What about the child or children who can’t smack that bully in the mouth? And why are we asking them to? What about the bully that isn’t just a bully but a murderous psychopath as well?
Joey Maloney in paradise
@Omnes Omnibus: WTFever, my point stands.
I’m at the far end of a teeny little pipe here in tropical paradise; no time to check IMDB.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jacy: As someone who graduated from a sectarian high school, I can assure you that public schools are “easy” when it comes to maintaining order.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
They had to go through me to get to ’em. I wouldn’t tolerate bullies picking on smaller kids. After a while, the bullies learned not to try it while I was around.
For the same reason we have to deal with Karl Rove and the drunk driving C student who formerly infested the Oval Office. World’s full of bad people. You have to stand up to ’em. Otherwise, you become their bitch. The Democratic Party still hasn’t learned that crucial lesson, incidentally.
Oh, come on. Murderous psychopaths are much less common than you seem to think.
List all the students who tried to murder their fellow students in American history. Damn short list.
You stand a lot bigger chance of getting killed by lightning than by a junior high school kid who’s a “murderous psychopath.”
artem1s
I work at a university that had a shooting a few years back and in a state where the conceal carry wingnuts don’t think there is any place they shouldn’t be allow to have a gun. I thank Jeebus every day that my work place is willing to spell out their intolerance of certain behaviors in black and white. some people just won’t get it otherwise.
wasabi gasp
Kids are precious. They should be laminated and tucked away for safe keeping.
asiangrrlMN
@jrg: Too true. I was bullied from first grade until my senior years. My parents did the right thing by talking to teachers and nothing changed. One year, a girl gave me shit every day in one class. I dreaded going into that class. One day, I snapped. She started her shit as she always did. I grabbed her by the hair, yanked back her head and told her I would fucking kill her if she ever bothered me again (and I meant it). She didn’t. I felt bad about it at the time, but in retrospect, it was the only thing I could have done to get her to back off.
Sometimes, the only thing a bully understands is being bullied in return.
@wasabi gasp: Ha! Brilliant. I’ve missed you, dude.
As for all this authoritarian bullshit–it’s just gonna get worse for awhile until we as a society say, “Enough of this bullshit.” I don’t think we’re there yet.
mclaren
@asiangrrlMN:
Goddamn right.
The thing about bullies is they home in like infrared tracking missiles on fear and weakness.
And the funny thing about dealing with bullies is that you usually do not have to actually hit them. Just get in their face and make it absolutely clear that you will take them down if they try to mess with you, and they’ll back off and slink away and look for an easier victim.
Bullies are cowards. Faced with the prospect of a real fight, a bully pisses hi/rself and runs away.
Corner Stone
@mclaren:
I had 4 I can remember just while I was in HS. I mean 4 actual deaths at the hands of another student or recent student. Two or so while I was in middle school and a couple after I graduated. So, let’s round down to 6 in the span of 6 or so years. And that was just related to my one HS.
Had a kid throw another boy out of a second story classroom window onto a parking lot. Had a different one attack a football coach during class to get at the kid he wanted to beat on. Had one waiting in the parking lot with a baseball bat for another kid. Had a girl do a hit and run on another girl.
I’ve seen people die through violent acts.
So, maybe it’s just me but I seem to remember it being not uncommon. But I admit it’s anecdotal to a specific area.
stuckinred
@mclaren: Very very few people really want to fight.
maus
If they’re not given a framework for how to think, they become teabaggers, assigning “authority” to the things they don’t like, and with blind submission to the authority that protects their “values” and “rugged individualism”.
stuckinred
@Corner Stone: damn dawg
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: I moved from the Chicago suburbs to Fairfield County, CT in 6th grade. I was young for my grade so I was a little on the small side. I also played the violin (rather well, if I do say so myself). As a result, people tried shit. I got in one fight a week on average for the rest of 6th grade and almost all of second. I lost a large number of them, but eventually kids noticed it wasn’t fun to start something with me. I fought back, and, the next day when both of us showed up for school with black eyes, they didn’t look as tough as they thought they would. I learned to aim for eyes and noses, so I left a mark. By eighth grade, it stopped; kids who fight back aren’t fun to bully.
Corner Stone
And my larger point I think is that I disagree with the idea that forcing a child into a state of absolute fear and rage is the solution to this issue. Or is in any way beneficial.
IMO, it doesn’t seem to be really helping matters.
I hear and understand the stories people have about coming through a situation after dealing with a bully. And I wonder if the child who was never bullied is somehow less ready to deal with the world for not having been pushed to those actions?
Sheila
Though I believe we are far too hard on our children beginning at birth, I’m not sure that punching a kid in the face is something teenage kids “routinely engage in”, at least I hope not.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone:
Probably not, but how will you eliminate the bullying? I think some of it is simple animal behavior, striving for dominance. You know, like I-Bankers.
Jager
Kids have always been pretty good at sorting things out, most bullies stop when they get called out because they are really chickenshits at heart. When I was a freshman in HS, a bully punched a friend of mine in the face so hard it broke his jaw. My friends and I were incensed because it was a pure sucker punch thrown after a Park Board summer dance, no words exchanged, just the punch. The next week I called the bully out, bloodied his nose and generally punched the shit out of him. He stopped being a bully immediately and I went all the way through highschool and never had to fight again. The bully’s “tough” friends all gave me nodding respect and the bully couldn’t look me in the eye for the next 4 years. I understand he is quite a good dentist today.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Just looking at your examples from a cold hard statistical point of view, I can say with certainty that they’re way out of line with the median for violence. And not just in America, but planet-wide.
The most violent city on earth is Caracas, Venezuela. It had a murder rate of 233 people per 100,000 in 2009. By comparison, Los Angeles has a murder rate of 12.4 per 100,000, while New York has a murder rate of 7.3 per 100,000. (2008 stats, I believe.)
You describe 6 murders over the course of 6 years in (guessing here) a population of, say, 1000 in your entire high school. That’s 1 per year out of 1000, which equates to 100 per 100,000, or a murder rate 8.3 times that of Los Angeles, and 14.3 times that of New York.
Just back-of-the-enveloping here, I guesstimate the murder rate you describe at your high school works out to roughly 2.5 standard deviations away from the mean. That’s 2.5 sigmas on the high end.
Sounds extreme. Never heard of a murder rate that far above the mean without all sorts of red flags going up — police task forces, city council investigations, school board emergency meetings, the whole nine yards.
Are you absolutely certain 6 people were killed deliberately by other students in your high school over the course of 6 years?
shep
Movement Conservatism. And it doesn’t matter much what social problem you’re talking about.
Daulnay
@Elie:
Catsy
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
I’m, sorry, I had a hard time hearing whatever point you might have had over the deafening roar of your emo butthurt.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hunt them from helicopters. It’s the only way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Catsy: He doesn’t approve of John Cole, John Cole’s past, or his decadent lifestyle.
maus
@mclaren:
While I’m not so sure that
is the case, my high school had ~3000 students so it’s possible for him to have a particularly bad example, especially if gangs were involved.
Original Lee
@mclaren: I grew up in a rural area on the edge of a small city suburb. Just in the 4 years I personally was in high school, 2 students deliberately killed 2 other students (separate incidents). One was a rape-murder. The other was a flat-out premeditated murder (by a kid who was later diagnosed as a sociopath). There were also 2 accidental deaths involving DUIs. There were 800 people in my high school.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Doesn’t sound sporting.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Catsy:
ooh, you used “butthurt.” How bloggerifically trendy and hip of you.
The folks whose butts were, you know, actually hurt and or blown off in John’s various groovy and very butch wars would be interested in your groovy, with it, use of the word.
and “emo” in some sort of derogatory fashion. Does this indicate that you generally disdain the acknowledgement of emotion? Sure you’re not a Beckian?
Corner Stone
@mclaren:
Yes, I’m pretty sure they meant it. And I’ll say our HS pop at the time was somewhere north of 5000, without being too specific.
I remember being a freshman and accidentally stepping on a Senior’s shoe in the hall. He followed me up the stairs, past the teacher and into my classroom so he could tell me he would kill me if I ever did that again. He didn’t make good on the threat, obviously, but since he didn’t finish high school I can’t say he would not have. He and his partner were executed by their drug dealer boss for being light. I’m not counting him as one of the total.
I’m not counting the kid who jumped off the railroad tress into the river and was found two weeks later, or the girls who OD’d off a bad batch, or the stud shortstop who got drunk and drove up an exit ramp onto a freeway, or the kid who videotaped himself blowing his head off with a shotgun, etc.
Like I said, it’s anecdotal not data. I’m not going to get too specific so take it or leave it as you like.
Catsy
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Almost as cute as deflecting criticism by focusing on a person’s choice of idioms. One might almost think your argument didn’t have a leg to stand on!
Whoops, sorry. That turn of phrase is probably out of bounds as well, for being disrespectful to all of our soldiers who’ve lost limbs to IEDs. Let me see if I can come up with a more respectful and appropriate way of describing the extent to which you are full of shit. I’ll get back to you.
You’re the one who seems to be fighting the good fight against the use of unapproved idioms and verbiage. Does this indicate that you generally disdain the use of metaphors, or do you simply augment your douchebaggery by being dumb as a fucking post?
Whoops, sorry: my use of “post” in that last insult was disrespectful to all of our veterans who were wounded while standing post.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: My high school of 1000 had no murders (IIRC no deaths at all), so that helps even things out.
hilzoy
I don’t think I would have made it out of high school now. — I never had problems with anger. I was one of the least violent kids imaginable — especially in school where in addition to everything else I was considerably younger than my classmates. And yet …
Sometime around 10th grade, this guy began to torment me. He literally chased me down halls. He tried to grope me. He told everyone that we were sleeping together, this when I was 14 and no one had so much as asked me out, nor did it seem likely that they would do so in the near future. Besides all this, it seemed fairly clear to me that this wasn’t about me, it was somehow about my Dad and the fact that this guy wanted to get into Harvard and somehow thought that going out with me would “help”, and that this, oddly enough, was how to get me to go out with him. (He was really insane on the subject of college.)
One day I was working in the cafeteria, doling out chocolate pudding. I forget what he tried to do to me, but I told him to go away, and when he didn’t, I said: look, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to dump this chocolate pudding on your head. He didn’t. I did.
I was called into the headmaster’s office. If I recall correctly, when I explained what had happened, I did not get into any further trouble, beyond being told not to do it again.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Whaddya want, a cookie? Be careful as Jrod might find out you have one.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: May have one? Please?
morzer
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
I personally am quite proud of my simian ancestors. So leave the fucking baboons out of it, ok?
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Catsy:
you didn’t offer criticism in any coherent form; just insults.
fuck off
Omnes Omnibus
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim): Pot, meet kettle.
Catsy
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim): I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the argument you’re making. So let me see if I understand the train of events.
1. John, in the OP, writes an anecdote about how he once got kicked out for punching a kid in the library. No other surrounding context.
2. With no knowledge of context or circumstances whatsoever, you make a sweeping statement about how kids who punch other kids should spend time in jail, and make an equally sweeping and insulting statement about how it’s unsurprising that John ended up in the military like other violent delinquents.
3. John points out that the punching incident was self-defense after enduring a long stretch of physical bullying, and that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
4. Others point out the somewhat obvious fact that getting into a fight does not mean one is inclined to violence–and that standing up to a bully is often the only way to stop the bullying.
5. You shit out this absolutely blisteringly stupid comment wherein you tear into Cole for stuff that happened more than six years ago and trash pretty much every aspect of a personal life about which you know next to nothing, and segue into a massive non sequitur guilt trip about dead and wounded soldiers which has absofuckinglutely nothing to do with the subject of our contemporary educational environment, and which stands in stark contrast to the insulting generalizations you were just making about violent people ending up in the military.
Great bouncing cherry-flavored gummi Christs, just riddle me this: are you trying to make a point that exists somewhere in the real world, or write the plot to a JRPG? Because I don’t think I could follow this parade of Palin-level gibberish with a fucking strat guide and a walkthrough.
burnspbesq
@MBunge:
I’m not arguing that ADD hasn’t been over-diagnosed. I don’t know the data.
I know that for my kid, the medication changed his life, and unambiguously for the better. Ask any parent who has seen it.
Mart
If the district webcam caught me beating off to the Sunday paper Sears bra ad insert; would I go to jail? Life was so much simpler then…
Another thing kids think is regular nowadays that seems over the top to us is roadblocks.
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: And not to belabor this any more than is needed, but the murder rate per 100K in TX in 1991 was 15.3 and in 1999 it was 6.1 according to the link here at NCPA. And the stats for 1991 would be better for use in a comparison.
Ken
@Corner Stone @75: Ah, yes, I should have mentioned the kinds of helicoptering that those parents do. Things like bringing in every graded homework and arguing the child should have received more points; or complaining when the child doesn’t make the first-string team in sports, or debate, or chess (despite, you understand, other kids being better); or – and I found this almost unbelievable, but several people have assured me it happens – trying to get their child diagnosed as special-needs, so the child will get more time when taking tests and other assistance.
It’s very much a squeaky-wheel issue, compounded by the fact that they also squeak to the principal and the school board, and sometimes the directive comes down to just change the offending A- to an A so the parent will shut up. Not that that works, of course; it just compounds the problem, by simple operant conditioning.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Catsy:
You can’t follow it because you’re a fool and a sychophant, Patsy Cakes. But I love that my post got you all stirred up enough to write this humongous comment.
Furthermore, you idiot, the thousands of people who were killed and maimed SIX YEARS AGO are STILL FUCKING DEAD AND MAIMED. Just because you and JC and Barbara Bush don’t want to bother your “beautiful minds” with unpleasant and ongoing results of six year old insanity doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter or that it didn’t happen or that it doesn’t affect the credibility of those who helped cause it.
And by the way, dipshit, 13 MORE soldiers died in Afghanistan over the last three days. But it’s true, since JC now says he’s all left wing, that means they’re still alive and it’s all good. And yeah, I’d like to know what Cole and folks like him are doing or have done to atone; besides living well and getting fat, that is.
Wake up, fool.
Now…go suck on JC’s toes some more. But be careful…the lazy ass might put one of them out of joint, fat and useless as he now is. His government “retirement” check buys a LOT of Twinkies and ice cream, apparently.
Corner Stone
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Why does that sound really freakin good all of a sudden?
Maybe macerate some fresh strawberries and spoon over a scoop of ice cream on top of heated Twinkies.
That sounds dee lish.
Ruckus
@Catsy:
I appreciate the effort. I really do.
The thought though that comes to mind is – who is the patron saint of lost causes? Because you are in the running here.
This sounds like trying to talk a bully out of being a bully. They don’t need any information, any reality, any logic, any reason to be a bully but talking usually just gets the kind of response that your getting. That’s why we have to punch them out.
Of course in this instance maybe just throwing a couple of posting jabs is the best bet. But I’m thinking a 2×4 upside the head is going to be the only way.
morzer
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Sycophant, not sychophant, Madam Former Half-term Governor.
As for me, caramel icecream and sliced bananas.
Catsy
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
No, I can’t follow it because it it pure gibberish that is entirely disconnected from the topic or anything that has been discussed here, and which has your hate-on for John as the only common thread running through anything you’ve shat out on this thread.
And I love it when pig-ignorant, illiterate fuckmuppets assume that writing several paragraphs of content is just as much effort for everyone else as it is for them.
It must be exhilarating to be able to bleat out high-handed nonsense like this free of any comprehension or understanding about who you’re talking to or what their politics are.
No, jackhole, you’re the only one who’s saying that and other strawmen like it. Most of the rest of us are just sitting around scratching our heads wondering what the fuck you’re talking about and what it has to do with violence and privacy issues in the public school system.
The only disrespect being shown to American soldiers in this thread is coming from you: you claim to be arguing on behalf of soldiers while insulting them by claiming that John’s alleged violent delinquency makes it unsurprising that he was one. You don’t actually give a fuck about them and have clearly and repeatedly demonstrated withering contempt for their profession–they and their suffering are nothing more to you than a cudget to use to whack Cole around with.
It’s completely fucking transparent–and everyone here with a functioning brain can see it for what it is. What’s got to be eating your shorts worse than anything else is knowing just how transparent your shameless hackery really is, realizing that you’re basically nothing more than the laughing stock du jour. And all this inane blather about sucking toes and sycophancy and whatnot is just rhetorical window dressing to draw attention away from a level of fail that would embarrrass you if you were actually capable of it.
If you’re a spoof, bravo: you’ve succeeded in entertaining me for an afternoon. If you’re not, well: damn, you can’t teach that kind of stupid; it’s a gift.
@Ruckus:
Not really. Assuming he’s not a spoof, I don’t think he’s actually capable of the coherent thought and self-awareness necessary to learn anything from it. This is for my own amusement, and for the benefit of anyone who might actually be superficially persuaded by the word salad this guy has been shitting out in this thread.
Sly
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Can I touch your halo?
maus
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
You forgot to call us SHEEPLE.
BAA
BAAAA
maus
No really, JC does have a soft-spot for some conservatives (Sully and ilk) still, but we already razz him for it, we don’t need idiots like you vomiting all over the place with smugfuckery.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Sly:
Yes, you may. It’s hanging around my man unit. :P
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Catsy:
wow, you’re pathetic. What’s your investment here that you’re so fired up? Never mind, I don’t care.
My beef is with Cole and my earlier comments were addressed to him, not his lower ward toilet cleaners such as yourself. So again, fuck off. I don’t care what you have to say.
One question though: How does the inside of Cole’s lower cyber-intestine taste? You DO know he doesn’t know or care who you are, right…? Right?
Ruckus
@Catsy:
Do understand I likey. A lot. I’m amused.
It’s just that I always tried to talk my way out of harm from bullies and it always worked. I never had to resort to violence but I did have to threaten a couple of times. I always admire it when I see it done and done well. But I never had the vicious kind of bullies that some here describe. And in freshman year I was voted by my shopmates to be one of 7 to be judged, on stage, as the shortest in the class of about 100. I told them to fuck off, I wasn’t going up on stage, if I got up I would be walking out the door. BTW this was a school scheduled and condoned event. Oh and I also wore glasses. I’ve been picked upon, a lot.
ETA I don’t think this is a spoof. Sounds too much like someone who likes to steal lunch money from the other kids and gets upset when called out.
morzer
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
Must be a damn small halo then.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@morzer:
hater
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
Okay, let’s say a high school population of 5500. That changes the numbers significantly.
Suicides don’t count so you were right not to count the kid who killed himself just jumping off the trestle. The kids getting murdered by an adult drug dealer I don’t think count either, since we’re talking about student-on-student violence.
6 out of 5500 in 6 years equates to about 6 out of 33000 in 1 year or 18 out of 100,000. That’s a lot different. 18 out of 100,000 is 147% of the murder rate of Los Angeles. When we consider that the sample size in a high school is exclusively restricted to the ideal ages for violence, that’s not unreasonable. After all, murder stats for a big city will include infants and old people who essentially never commit murder. You’d expect a sample population consisting only of adolescents age 14 to 18 to have a significantly higher violence rate per capita than the general population. Crime spikes sharply in the 13 to 24 year age range, then plummets below or above that age cohort.
I think the reason your anecdotes sound so horrifying is you had a gigantic high school population. 5000 people is an astoundingly huge school size. In fact, I think your examples suggest that a school that size is too large for the safety of the student population. 1.5 times the Los Angeles murder rate isn’t very far out of line for a population of 14 to 18 year olds saturated with puberty hormones and crammed into a social pressure cooker like high school.
Andy K
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
No, John was right. You just don’t get socialization rituals. Teenage boys fight. Then they grow up and…..They don’t fight- at least not the way they did when they were children, and definitely not for the same reasons.
I graduated from high school in the first half of the ’80s. I was one of the smaller guys in school, 5’9″- 5’10”, 120 lbs, and I could get cajoled into fights easily. Most of the time I got my ass beat, some times I’d put the hurt on the other guy. No one ever got suspended, because that’s what boys do. They’re learning how to test limits, they’re learning about tact, they’re learning about making stands.
But in the past 27 years, I’ve run into a lot of those guys I fought, and we’re cool. Because we grew up. And we’re all pretty well adjusted- whatever that is supposed to mean in such a crazy fucking society as the one in which we live.
BTW, call me a baboon and I’ll wear it like a badge of honor. I’m not egotistical enough about my species to think that there’s anything that makes us much different from our primate cousins. I don’t think there was some giant human in the sky who made us in his image. It’s just happenstance that we could be brilliant enough to come up with something like this.
Andy K
Shit, I shoulda kept reading. That trollage just got worse as the day went on. I can tell who never got his ass beat in school, but instead ran to authority figures for cover, then made voodoo dolls of his perceived enemies once he got home. Grow up, Tim.
DPirate
A kid in my hs brought a homemade two-handed sword to school. It was awesome.
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@Andy K:
Wow. So inaccurate. And stupid.