BetterMost, Wyoming & Brokeback Mountain Forum
The World Beyond BetterMost => Anything Goes => Topic started by: souxi on September 13, 2006, 08:20:19 am
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I,d like to ask you lot a question re bullying if I may. I,ve posted this topic on another message board I use and stired up quite a hornets nest. My daughter has just started senior school.she,s 12. A new kid, from her old school, was having a maths lesson. Now apparantly, the kids were told to line up afterwards in alphabetical order. Now whether or not the poor kid was so nervous he didnt understand or maybe he just got it wrong, I dont know, BUT, as "punishment" she MADE the poor kid do 10 pressups!! in front of the entire class, who of course laughed at him. He meanwhile was in floods of tears. :'( AND she had the gall to say it was a joke!! FFS. Now IMO, I think thats bullying. It was all about power..she did it because she could, and the kid couldnt answer her back. It was his first day for crying out loud! Discipline in school yes of course..teaching kids to respect their teachers, yes of course, BUT making the kids terrified of them NO. I,m appalled I really am. Some people think I,m being too soft and some people agree with me. What do you lot think?
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Hmmm, this is an interesting question souxi. First of all I can understand why you feel strongly about this. It certainly seems excessive to use a military-styled punishment on a 12 year old on the first day of senior school. As it turns out, the punishment was embarrassing and humiliating and it is this fact that is controversial, but you'd have to know that humiliation was the objective before it could be assumed to be bullying. Of course it is also fair to question whether push-ups are a reasonable punishment in the first place. Personally, if I were this child's parent (or a classmate's parent for that matter) I would want my child to learn from this experience and not to be emotionally or socially damaged from it, so I would want to ensure that any humiliation was an accident and that punishments were consistent for all students. If either of these is not true then I would expect an apology from the teacher and school. Just MHO.
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I,d like to ask you lot a question re bullying if I may. I,ve posted this topic on another message board I use and stired up quite a hornets nest. My daughter has just started senior school.she,s 12. A new kid, from her old school, was having a maths lesson. Now apparantly, the kids were told to line up afterwards in alphabetical order. Now whether or not the poor kid was so nervous he didnt understand or maybe he just got it wrong, I dont know, BUT, as "punishment" she MADE the poor kid do 10 pressups!! in front of the entire class, who of course laughed at him. He meanwhile was in floods of tears. :'( AND she had the gall to say it was a joke!! FFS. Now IMO, I think thats bullying. It was all about power..she did it because she could, and the kid couldnt answer her back. It was his first day for crying out loud! Discipline in school yes of course..teaching kids to respect their teachers, yes of course, BUT making the kids terrified of them NO. I,m appalled I really am. Some people think I,m being too soft and some people agree with me. What do you lot think?
Souxi,
I have some very strong opinions about this one. It's only my opinion, BUT I think that physical punishment and humiliation have absolutely no place whatsoever in a school environment (or any environment for that matter - again just my opinion and a whole different can of worms). There are plenty of other options for punishment that do not damage a child's self-esteem...time outs and writing essays and doing extra homework come to mind just off the top of my head.
Furthermore, the incident sounds like an honest mistake on your child's part, not even willful disobedience. WTF was this teacher thinking? If it were my child, I would file a complaint with the principal/admin/whomever that teacher reports to and demand my child be placed in a different class with a teacher who respects the students, which is just as important as the children respecting the teacher.
-Lynne
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Souxi,
It sort of makes me wonder how that teacher might react if a child presented a real discipline problem. My heart goes out to the boy who had to endure the humilation of his classmates on the first day of the new school year. (And then we wonder why some kids just don't like school.) Even though your child wasn't the victim here, next time she could be. I think a brief note to the school principal (headmaster) expressing your concerns is in order.
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Souxi - I misread that it was your child's classmate, not your own child. I still stand by my ideas, tho. It could be your child next time.
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I agree. I think it's way too much for an honest mistake. Now, if the kid was purposely acting up and taunting her, then it would be more appropriate.
I remember once when I was in the 6th grade, the teacher had a very strict rule about no talking during lessons. I hadn't heard something he said and asked the student next to me what it was (in a whisper). He had me stand up and say what we were talking about. I told him, and the other student corobberated it. And he still said that because I broke his rule (I should have raised my hand and asked him to repeat it, he said), the whole class would miss recess that day. I was already unpopular enough, and that didn't help matters. They gave me crap about it for weeks afterwards.
On the other hand, I remember this classmate in the 9th grade who was always willfully being a goofball in my Algebra class. That teacher had a strict rule about cracking gum and blowing bubbles with it during lessons. She sat in the desk right in front of his and blew this huge bubble right in his face one day. He asked her if she had forgotten about his rule, and she goes, "No." So he made her stand up in front of the room with her wadded up bubble gum on the end of her nose for the rest of the class. A bit much. But I'll tell you what - she never blew a bubble in his face again.
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I myself felt bullied by the teacher once. It was my first time learning government that day and all of a sudden he tells me with a very stern face, "We'll be doing a test and if you get one answer wrong, you fail this class permentally. i was bewildered and furious and then he goes off, "I'm just kidding." I was so pissed.
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Assuming the kid made an honest mistake -- or even if he was acting up a little, but not so much your daughter even noticed it -- the teacher was incredibly cruel, I think. Humiliating a new kid to tears on his first day at the school? That's sadistic. My sons started at a new school last year in the middle of the year. If a teacher would have done something like that to them, I'd have been so mad I'd consider switching schools.
I remember in second grade one other girl and I started working ahead on our reading assignments while the teacher was still explaining the lesson. We both were excellent readers and didn't need the explanation. But the teacher spotted us, called us up to the front of the room, cried "You each get an N for the day!" (N was the worst grade at that school) and scrawled a huge N across each of our papers.
I've never forgotten this. I thought that was pretty bad.
But at least she didn't make us cry, and at least she didn't make us do some humiliating physical thing that would have everybody laughing at us, and at least we weren't new, and at least it wasn't the first day.
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Thank you for all your replies guys. You should see some of the replies I,ve had on the other message forums I use!! Some people can see my point and others think the poor kid is being mollycoddled and should show some backbone etc. I was trying, allbeit unsuccessfully to point out to them that just because you CAN do something, it doesnt mean you SHOULD. IMO she did that because she COULD. Its kind of a power thing you know? Just because she is in a postition of authority and she COULD do it, she did. She went IMO way too far. Being in authority doesnt give you the right to do these things just because you can, you only do it if it,s the right thing to do, and IMO that wasnt. She abused her position. The punishment she gave out, did not fit the "crime". For crying out loud he was only 12 years old and reduced to tears on his first day at school and some people seem to think thats ok!! Anyway, I,ve given up trying to get them lot to see my point of view because now it,s descended into a row and that wasnt the idea. Thanks again guy,s at least I got sane replies on here lol. ;D ;D
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Depending on the kid involved and his reputation at the school, this can either be a minor or major incident. We all bloom as individuals at different times in our lives. I spent my formative school years being a very quiet and shy kind of guy and was made a semi-willing social outcast for it. Once you develop a reputation in early school years, it can be very hard to shake as you travel with the same group of people into your later years of school. All it takes is a few loudmouths to tear down efforts at breaking out of an earlier reputation unless you make extremely dramatic personality changes that cannot be ignored.
If this guy already was considered on the unpopular side of the social scale, these kinds of incidents can only reinforce the negative social status he already deals with among his peers. Having the faculty participating in this can have long term emotional consequences for him. It is actually amazing how much of our personalities and response mechanisms to stress and bad situations can be formed over the early part of our lives. Repairing the damage early is a far better prospect than dealing with the long-term consequences of things like depression and anxiety, relationship difficulties, etc.
I am not sure what the answer to this specific situation is other than to be on the lookout for similar behavior in the future and then taking action, even if the parents of the kid involved do not. The best teachers I had in school treated students with respect and the assumption students were mature enough to act like adults in the classroom. When individual students failed, they were dealt with privately in an effort to prevent disrupting the rest of the classroom.
Programs in many schools today to intervene in bullying and also identify students having problems coping seem more robust than in the 1970s and 1980s when I was in school. I don't want students to be coddled (and I think some parents go over the top in defending their children), but a positive learning environment is going to be more productive and effective for everyone.
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It's hard to imagine something like that happening in the US, other than in gym class. We have to keep in mind that, that kind of punishment is common in schools outside the US. Being punish at all for honest mistakes is humiliating for any kid, whether it be standing in the corner with the dunce cap or made to do push ups. When I was a child in school in Thailand, we actually got hit on the hand with a cane when we would get answers wrong.
I do think the teacher went too far, but I'm curious to find out if the teacher realizes that. When she said it was a joke, did she sound like she was trying to console the boy? or was it more a brush off attitude? I wonder if she might realize she'd gone too far when the boy started crying. I think that's where you as a parent come in. You might try and have a talk with the teacher and see if that kind of thing is to be expected from her. Parents have to take more active role in schools and actually give input on how they expect their children to be educated.
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It's hard to imagine something like that happening in the US, other than in gym class. We have to keep in mind that, that kind of punishment is common in schools outside the US. Being punish at all for honest mistakes is humiliating for any kid, whether it be standing in the corner with the dunce cap or made to do push ups. When I was a child in school in Thailand, we actually got hit on the hand with a cane when we would get answers wrong.
I do think the teacher went too far, but I'm curious to find out if the teacher realizes that. When she said it was a joke, did she sound like she was trying to console the boy? or was it more a brush off attitude? I wonder if she might realize she'd gone too far when the boy started crying. I think that's where you as a parent come in. You might try and have a talk with the teacher and see if that kind of thing is to be expected from her. Parents have to take more active role in schools and actually give input on how they expect their children to be educated.
Starbie - interesting factoid about school discipline in Thailand! What a barbaric concept to my way of thinking - physical punishment for getting an answer wrong?!?
This thread reminded me of an incident in 3rd grade in Roman Catholic school. I was talking in line when I shouldn't have been and the male (non-priest) teacher thumped me on the head hard with his class ring. It didn't bother me that much because I liked him as a teacher. Needless to say, however, my mother had a cow. The principal (a nun, Sister Mary Eileen) went ballistic -I can still hear her voice in my head. 'Mr. Totten, you DO NOT EVER strike these children!' It stuck with me because I was always a bit fearful of the nuns - they somehow managed to instill a lot of respect, fear, awe by their very presence.
About the idea of 'mollycoddling' ... I guess I don't think defending your child against an uncaring school authority figure falls in that category, especially when they're young. It's a parent's responsibilty to protect the child. You have to pick and choose your battles, of course. Ideally, you can demonstrate how to handle conflict effectively and they'll learn from you so that as they mature they'll be able to handle situations themselves.
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It's a parent's responsibilty to protect the child. You have to pick and choose your battles, of course. Ideally, you can demonstrate how to handle conflict effectively and they'll learn from you so that as they mature they'll be able to handle situations themselves.
I've got quite a bit of first-hand experience with this, actually. My older son is briliant -- he gets perfect grades on all subjects, scores in the 99th percentile on all the standardized tests, was reading at a 12th grade level in fourth grade, has a better vocabulary than the president of the United States (OK, so that not a very high bar). He's also outgoing, good looking, assertive, charismatic, culturally savvy, socially fearless. So in many ways he's easy.
But behaviorally, he can be a huge pain in the (neck). I have gotten calls from every day care provider, classroom teacher, principal, gym, music and art teacher he's ever had. Sometimes on a weekly basis. He was supended from school in kindergarten. I never know what advice to give to the teacher about how to handle him, because he's just as difficult at home. (For the past year or so, he's been doing a little better, but he's still very very challenging at home.)
I don't know that I've ever disputed a teacher's complaint, or tried to claim "My son would never do such a thing." Because I know he would. I know he'd be tough to have in class -- a breeze academically, but one of the hardest kids to handle behaviorally. So even if my son has a completely different account of an event -- and he almost always does -- I tend to side with the teacher unless there's really strong evidence to the contrary, and even then I don't usually make any fuss about it. If my son complains, I remind him that in the real world he'll have to work with bosses he doesn't like, and sometimes he has to learn to get along with teachers he doesn't like.
But his teachers have always used discipline methods such as detentions, trips to the principal, isolation, etc. Never anything humiliating. My son would be hard to humiliate anyway; he's extremely thick skinned (one reason he's hard to control). But still. He did start at a new school last year and even he was a bit nervous. The example of the kid driven to tears on his first day, when he's trying really hard to like his new surroundings and make a good impression on his classmates, still makes me really mad.
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Wow, Katharine. Thanks for sharing about your son. I have no first hand parenting experience myself - I live vicariously through my friends who almost all have children now. Also, just what my parents did or didn't do and the many ways the trauma of growing up influenced/inspired/scarred me ;).
I have to wonder if your older son is just bored because he's so intelligent and advanced and that's why he acts out? (I'm sure you've thought of this, of course.)
I was a similar child academically but didn't act out as a rule because I was too intimidated, being the child of a ridiculously overbearing mother. She kept transferring me from school to school - I went to 6 different schools from 1st thru 9th grade. In 10th grade, I finally stood up to her, said absolutely not ever again; so I was at least able to spend high school in one place.
This is only relevant because Mom insisted I skip 5th grade which was pretty useless because the work still wasn't challenging. Furthermore, from a social standpoint it was an absolute nightmare for me. I had to take up tae kwon do to keep from getting my a$$ kicked on the playground pretty much on a daily basis. The only redeeming factor was that I was getting old enough to involve myself in extracurricular activities to keep the boredom at bay....Childhood...it's amazing any of us survive it, huh? :)
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It's hard to imagine something like that happening in the US, other than in gym class. We have to keep in mind that, that kind of punishment is common in schools outside the US. Being punish at all for honest mistakes is humiliating for any kid, whether it be standing in the corner with the dunce cap or made to do push ups. When I was a child in school in Thailand, we actually got hit on the hand with a cane when we would get answers wrong.
I do think the teacher went too far, but I'm curious to find out if the teacher realizes that. When she said it was a joke, did she sound like she was trying to console the boy? or was it more a brush off attitude? I wonder if she might realize she'd gone too far when the boy started crying. I think that's where you as a parent come in. You might try and have a talk with the teacher and see if that kind of thing is to be expected from her. Parents have to take more active role in schools and actually give input on how they expect their children to be educated.
When I was in the Third grade here in Texas, I had a teacher who would assign 20 questions a night. We had to copy the question and then answer them. If you missed one you would one swat with a board on your behind...one swat per wrong answer. She would a whole production out of it...she'd make you lean over your desk and rub the board all over your behind before she hit you. There was a boy who jumped up and ran out of the class. We never saw him again.