Teacher Beaten by Student - Principal blames teachers

[GabiandVi 34]

if some of those kids had to attend school over seas for a year they would learn some respect.......they still use corporal punishment in most the schools in third world countries just the threat of it keeps most respectful ........yep i know a lot of people are not gonna like what i just said but look at the schools in the usa.........shootings.........beatings........u name it they do in the schools........what is the punishment? most the time send them home to their parents that by law can not stop the child from going anyplace.........or acting at home just like they did in the school.......yes there are abused kids but guess what the ones that are really abused u dont hear from until its too late in most cases.....the youth in the usa has shocked me since we returned home.........i hated the schools in pak because they did not teach us the curriculum that i needed to graduate in the USA high school but it did teach me respect...........sure maybe counseling has its place in raising children but i tell u what looking at my mom and knowing i could get my tonsils removed with out proper surgery if i treated her as i see other kids treating their parents made me think a long time before i ever used the f word to her.......and before anyone jumps on this nope i was not abused as a child i can remember one spanking in my life......well sort of remember it i was pretty young........but there was no room for behaving like i see a lot of kids acting here......it just was not tolerated...and i can honestly say that my younger sisters and brother feel the same way i did at that age....they have never been beaten either but we learned at a very young age what was acceptable behavior and what was not there is just to much attention put on the rights of the kids and consoling and now that im older i am respectful to her because she deserves it....... im sorry if my post offends anyone but it is how i feel about it........................................

I have taught in a very low-income school in the US with 80% of the population on free breakfast/free lunch, and an about 85 to 90% minority population. We had all the same problems as an inner-city school - drugs, guns, knives, gangs, pregnancy, absenteeism, girls selling bjs in the boys' bathroom, an us vs. them attitude by the students toward the teachers, etc. This school still had corporal punishment. My father believed in corporal punishment, so I'm not horrified by the idea. However, it didn't work at our school, probably partly because it was done in such a clinical fashion. There were regulations on the length, width, and thickness of the paddle. There had to be so many adults in the room when the paddling occurred, and it had to be so many whacks according to the offense.

I understood how ineffective the practice was the time one of my students asked me if he could leave class to go pick up his notebook that he had left in the main hall. "I'll take my licks," he offered, meaning, "I'll trade a few whacks of the paddle for a chance to go pick up my notebook now rather than waiting until after class." Now, they hated in-school detention and would have done anything to get out of that.

The problems in schools are very complicated and they are rooted in social attitudes and the bad parenting that results from those social attitudes, but I have to agree with BY here that a large part of the problem that teachers face trying to manage their students is due to the liberal attitudes about "student's rights." Of course, students have the rights that every human being should be granted. But it has become "he said/she said" where any complaint made by students is given the same weight as the word of the teachers. (This has never happened to me, so it is not a defensive response. It is what I have observed that shocked me and contributed greatly to my loss of hope for the future of America.) I actually heard someone say about the third graders who had formulated a detailed plan to, if not kill, seriously harm their teacher for scolding one of them that we should not judge the children until we heard what the teacher had done. It is this attitude that seems to be the norm, not the exception.

I agree that it boils down to a lack of respect, but I don't think that corporal punishment would build that respect. The reason paddling worked in your school and the reason it worked in my day is because parents and society as a whole held the students to expectations of respect toward teachers, education, and authority in general. I'll bet that you, like me, were never paddled. If we had been, it would not have been the pain of the paddle that would have hurt as much as the shame we would have brought to ourselves and our families, or the pain of the disappointment in the eyes of our teachers and parents.

I have also taught abroad, though not in a third world country. The discipline problems we have cannot compare to the ones I faced back home. However, I'm not too afraid of going home to teach, though I'm going to teach in one of the worst systems in the US. (Maybe I'm burying my head in the sand.) I don't want to suggest that I've completely lost my ideological beliefs about what to expect from students and teaching, but I won't be so hurt and disappointed now when I see students squander every opportunity given them. I won't take it so personally when students pit me as the enemy simply because I'm a teacher. I've become much more philosophical. I think a lot of teachers are so disappointed that after having decided to dedicate themselves to teaching because they want to make a difference, they are met with such opposition and antagonism by the very people they wanted to work with to help them make the most of their lives that they try to force students to learn. Or they keep trying to make them see that they are hurting themselves more than anyone else, and they keep getting more and more disappointed and more and more disgusted with their students. This only exacerbates the problem.

[sara..... 371]

if some of those kids had to attend school over seas for a year they would learn some respect.......they still use corporal punishment in most the schools in third world countries just the threat of it keeps most respectful ........yep i know a lot of people are not gonna like what i just said but look at the schools in the usa.........shootings.........beatings........u name it they do in the schools........what is the punishment? most the time send them home to their parents that by law can not stop the child from going anyplace.........or acting at home just like they did in the school.......yes there are abused kids but guess what the ones that are really abused u dont hear from until its too late in most cases.....the youth in the usa has shocked me since we returned home.........i hated the schools in pak because they did not teach us the curriculum that i needed to graduate in the USA high school but it did teach me respect...........sure maybe counseling has its place in raising children but i tell u what looking at my mom and knowing i could get my tonsils removed with out proper surgery if i treated her as i see other kids treating their parents made me think a long time before i ever used the f word to her.......and before anyone jumps on this nope i was not abused as a child i can remember one spanking in my life......well sort of remember it i was pretty young........but there was no room for behaving like i see a lot of kids acting here......it just was not tolerated...and i can honestly say that my younger sisters and brother feel the same way i did at that age....they have never been beaten either but we learned at a very young age what was acceptable behavior and what was not there is just to much attention put on the rights of the kids and consoling and now that im older i am respectful to her because she deserves it....... im sorry if my post offends anyone but it is how i feel about it........................................

I have taught in a very low-income school in the US with 80% of the population on free breakfast/free lunch, and an about 85 to 90% minority population. We had all the same problems as an inner-city school - drugs, guns, knives, gangs, pregnancy, absenteeism, girls selling bjs in the boys' bathroom, an us vs. them attitude by the students toward the teachers, etc. This school still had corporal punishment. My father believed in corporal punishment, so I'm not horrified by the idea. However, it didn't work at our school, probably partly because it was done in such a clinical fashion. There were regulations on the length, width, and thickness of the paddle. There had to be so many adults in the room when the paddling occurred, and it had to be so many whacks according to the offense.

I understood how ineffective the practice was the time one of my students asked me if he could leave class to go pick up his notebook that he had left in the main hall. "I'll take my licks," he offered, meaning, "I'll trade a few whacks of the paddle for a chance to go pick up my notebook now rather than waiting until after class." Now, they hated in-school detention and would have done anything to get out of that.

The problems in schools are very complicated and they are rooted in social attitudes and the bad parenting that results from those social attitudes, but I have to agree with BY here that a large part of the problem that teachers face trying to manage their students is due to the liberal attitudes about "student's rights." Of course, students have the rights that every human being should be granted. But it has become "he said/she said" where any complaint made by students is given the same weight as the word of the teachers. (This has never happened to me, so it is not a defensive response. It is what I have observed that shocked me and contributed greatly to my loss of hope for the future of America.) I actually heard someone say about the third graders who had formulated a detailed plan to, if not kill, seriously harm their teacher for scolding one of them that we should not judge the children until we heard what the teacher had done. It is this attitude that seems to be the norm, not the exception.

I agree that it boils down to a lack of respect, but I don't think that corporal punishment would build that respect. The reason paddling worked in your school and the reason it worked in my day is because parents and society as a whole held the students to expectations of respect toward teachers, education, and authority in general. I'll bet that you, like me, were never paddled. If we had been, it would not have been the pain of the paddle that would have hurt as much as the shame we would have brought to ourselves and our families, or the pain of the disappointment in the eyes of our teachers and parents.

I have also taught abroad, though not in a third world country. The discipline problems we have cannot compare to the ones I faced back home. However, I'm not too afraid of going home to teach, though I'm going to teach in one of the worst systems in the US. (Maybe I'm burying my head in the sand.) I don't want to suggest that I've completely lost my ideological beliefs about what to expect from students and teaching, but I won't be so hurt and disappointed now when I see students squander every opportunity given them. I won't take it so personally when students pit me as the enemy simply because I'm a teacher. I've become much more philosophical. I think a lot of teachers are so disappointed that after having decided to dedicate themselves to teaching because they want to make a difference, they are met with such opposition and antagonism by the very people they wanted to work with to help them make the most of their lives that they try to force students to learn. Or they keep trying to make them see that they are hurting themselves more than anyone else, and they keep getting more and more disappointed and more and more disgusted with their students. This only exacerbates the problem.

I agree with what u say u see from what i can tell is when we took the control of the children away from the parents it was a good idea....sort of........it was suppose to help the abused children....but not one that worked as far as i can tell.....as i said before the truly abused children no body knows about in most cases until it is too late....it made the parents afraid of their own children every time a child stated oh really i will call child protective services........unfortunately we now live in a world that the courts take the word of a child over an adult and the adult has the duty of trying to prove that they didn't do anything wrong.........thanks of God i have a mom that cares more about her children than what could happen to her........i have an elder sister that was in school when i was little i remember this really well........she came home one day and mom said ok u do the dishes tonight......she told our mom i dont have to the school said my body is my body and i dont have to do anything with my body i dont want to.......my mom said ok ur right u dont have to do the dishes its ok someone else will

after first i was in shock.........then a few hours later i heard my sister so upset where is my tv? where is my stereo? Where is this where is that and where is my bed? my mom said to her the law states

i have to put a roof over ur head......feed u and cloth u......it does not state i have to give u designer clothing......a tv........a stereo or anything other than the house the food and clothing.......u have lots of blankets and a nice pillow so u have a good place to sleep..........next day my sis did the dishes..........i guess my point is that if parents start being parents then maybe the school can again be the place it was intended to be with out the wars in it

and ur right about being more afraid of the shame it would bring to me and also my family if i was to get into trouble and get a spanking at school............

[Amby 490]

there was a teacher here that the kids hated somuch they jumped him after school and put him in the hospital for a few months. he had to learn to walk again and everything. now he is a principal at another school and people hate them even more!

[GabiandVi 34]

if some of those kids had to attend school over seas for a year they would learn some respect.......they still use corporal punishment in most the schools in third world countries just the threat of it keeps most respectful ........yep i know a lot of people are not gonna like what i just said but look at the schools in the usa.........shootings.........beatings........u name it they do in the schools........what is the punishment? most the time send them home to their parents that by law can not stop the child from going anyplace.........or acting at home just like they did in the school.......yes there are abused kids but guess what the ones that are really abused u dont hear from until its too late in most cases.....the youth in the usa has shocked me since we returned home.........i hated the schools in pak because they did not teach us the curriculum that i needed to graduate in the USA high school but it did teach me respect...........sure maybe counseling has its place in raising children but i tell u what looking at my mom and knowing i could get my tonsils removed with out proper surgery if i treated her as i see other kids treating their parents made me think a long time before i ever used the f word to her.......and before anyone jumps on this nope i was not abused as a child i can remember one spanking in my life......well sort of remember it i was pretty young........but there was no room for behaving like i see a lot of kids acting here......it just was not tolerated...and i can honestly say that my younger sisters and brother feel the same way i did at that age....they have never been beaten either but we learned at a very young age what was acceptable behavior and what was not there is just to much attention put on the rights of the kids and consoling and now that im older i am respectful to her because she deserves it....... im sorry if my post offends anyone but it is how i feel about it........................................

I have taught in a very low-income school in the US with 80% of the population on free breakfast/free lunch, and an about 85 to 90% minority population. We had all the same problems as an inner-city school - drugs, guns, knives, gangs, pregnancy, absenteeism, girls selling bjs in the boys' bathroom, an us vs. them attitude by the students toward the teachers, etc. This school still had corporal punishment. My father believed in corporal punishment, so I'm not horrified by the idea. However, it didn't work at our school, probably partly because it was done in such a clinical fashion. There were regulations on the length, width, and thickness of the paddle. There had to be so many adults in the room when the paddling occurred, and it had to be so many whacks according to the offense.

I understood how ineffective the practice was the time one of my students asked me if he could leave class to go pick up his notebook that he had left in the main hall. "I'll take my licks," he offered, meaning, "I'll trade a few whacks of the paddle for a chance to go pick up my notebook now rather than waiting until after class." Now, they hated in-school detention and would have done anything to get out of that.

The problems in schools are very complicated and they are rooted in social attitudes and the bad parenting that results from those social attitudes, but I have to agree with BY here that a large part of the problem that teachers face trying to manage their students is due to the liberal attitudes about "student's rights." Of course, students have the rights that every human being should be granted. But it has become "he said/she said" where any complaint made by students is given the same weight as the word of the teachers. (This has never happened to me, so it is not a defensive response. It is what I have observed that shocked me and contributed greatly to my loss of hope for the future of America.) I actually heard someone say about the third graders who had formulated a detailed plan to, if not kill, seriously harm their teacher for scolding one of them that we should not judge the children until we heard what the teacher had done. It is this attitude that seems to be the norm, not the exception.

I agree that it boils down to a lack of respect, but I don't think that corporal punishment would build that respect. The reason paddling worked in your school and the reason it worked in my day is because parents and society as a whole held the students to expectations of respect toward teachers, education, and authority in general. I'll bet that you, like me, were never paddled. If we had been, it would not have been the pain of the paddle that would have hurt as much as the shame we would have brought to ourselves and our families, or the pain of the disappointment in the eyes of our teachers and parents.

I have also taught abroad, though not in a third world country. The discipline problems we have cannot compare to the ones I faced back home. However, I'm not too afraid of going home to teach, though I'm going to teach in one of the worst systems in the US. (Maybe I'm burying my head in the sand.) I don't want to suggest that I've completely lost my ideological beliefs about what to expect from students and teaching, but I won't be so hurt and disappointed now when I see students squander every opportunity given them. I won't take it so personally when students pit me as the enemy simply because I'm a teacher. I've become much more philosophical. I think a lot of teachers are so disappointed that after having decided to dedicate themselves to teaching because they want to make a difference, they are met with such opposition and antagonism by the very people they wanted to work with to help them make the most of their lives that they try to force students to learn. Or they keep trying to make them see that they are hurting themselves more than anyone else, and they keep getting more and more disappointed and more and more disgusted with their students. This only exacerbates the problem.

I agree with what u say u see from what i can tell is when we took the control of the children away from the parents it was a good idea....sort of........it was suppose to help the abused children....but not one that worked as far as i can tell.....as i said before the truly abused children no body knows about in most cases until it is too late....it made the parents afraid of their own children every time a child stated oh really i will call child protective services........unfortunately we now live in a world that the courts take the word of a child over an adult and the adult has the duty of trying to prove that they didn't do anything wrong.........thanks of God i have a mom that cares more about her children than what could happen to her........i have an elder sister that was in school when i was little i remember this really well........she came home one day and mom said ok u do the dishes tonight......she told our mom i dont have to the school said my body is my body and i dont have to do anything with my body i dont want to.......my mom said ok ur right u dont have to do the dishes its ok someone else will

after first i was in shock.........then a few hours later i heard my sister so upset where is my tv? where is my stereo? Where is this where is that and where is my bed? my mom said to her the law states

i have to put a roof over ur head......feed u and cloth u......it does not state i have to give u designer clothing......a tv........a stereo or anything other than the house the food and clothing.......u have lots of blankets and a nice pillow so u have a good place to sleep..........next day my sis did the dishes..........i guess my point is that if parents start being parents then maybe the school can again be the place it was intended to be with out the wars in it

and ur right about being more afraid of the shame it would bring to me and also my family if i was to get into trouble and get a spanking at school............

[DeadPoolX 9]

The problem with this, as I see it, is that even fewer individuals will wish to become teachers in the future. Why should they? It's not easy to get there -- it requires some extensive education, the pay is lousy, and today there's absolutely no respect from students at all. Worse yet, there seems to be no help coming from school boards or administrations, all of which places the teachers in the aforementioned "us vs them" situation, which can be -- and sometimes is -- extremely dangerous.

While it still might be worthwhile for people to become university professors, college level education doesn't mean a whole lot if you can't get there in the first place. You first need to get at least acceptable marks in junior high, and more importantly, high school. Without teachers in the lower grades to provide this, I can't see America's education system doing well at all. In fact, I imagine it will suffer greatly and the overall level of education will steadily drop as time goes on.

This would ultimately lead to a breakdown in society. Without sufficient education, we wouldn't have many of the professions or technology we take for granted today. This would be, in essence, a new "dark age" in Western Civilization, only it'd strike the United States first and foremost (if it'd hit any other nations at all).

That would be extremely bad for everyone in this country. Not only would it mean limited education and knowledge for a new generation, but many missed out and lost opportunities. Those people who did have an education -- and manage to use to their advantage -- would essentially become the modern equivalent of "warlords" or "tribal leaders," enforcing their will and law however and whenever they could. People would follow them too, since they would have the intelligence and the resources to make things happen. Where as the uneducated, while perhaps good at using their fists or manual labor, would lack the capability to do very much.

Maybe the future I described sounds implausible or like some sort of science fiction paranoia, but it's certainly possible considering the path we're currently on today. Maybe this wouldn't come to pass anytime soon (such as our lifetimes), but just because this might not happen in the next 50 or 100 years doesn't mean it couldn't happen at all. Even if this future I describe is unlikely, wouldn't it be better to try and avoid it, rather than sit here and wait to see if it actually happens? By then it'll be too late for the U.S., so maybe we should start becoming proactive, instead of being so reactive and afraid of what children are doing and saying. We're adults -- we make the rules; not kids. They obey us, whether they like it or not and so long as we're not abusing them or asking them to do something criminal, we're in-charge. It's about time we reminded them -- and in fact, the entire country -- of that.

Edited April 11, 2008 by DeadPoolX

[Heracles 417]

The problem with this, as I see it, is that even fewer individuals will wish to become teachers in the future. Why should they? It's not easy to get there -- it requires some extensive education, the pay is lousy, and today there's absolutely no respect from students at all. Worse yet, there seems to be no help coming from school boards or administrations, all of which places the teachers in the aforementioned "us vs them" situation, which can be -- and sometimes is -- extremely dangerous.

While it still might be worthwhile for people to become university professors, college level education doesn't mean a whole lot if you can't get there in the first place. You first need to get at least acceptable marks in junior high, and more importantly, high school. Without teachers in the lower grades to provide this, I can't see America's education system doing well at all. In fact, I imagine it will suffer greatly and the overall level of education will steadily drop as time goes on.

This would ultimately lead to a breakdown in society. Without sufficient education, we wouldn't have many of the professions or technology we take for granted today. This would be, in essence, a new "dark age" in Western Civilization, only it'd strike the United States first and foremost (if it'd hit any other nations at all).

That would be extremely bad for everyone in this country. Not only would it mean limited education and knowledge for a new generation, but many missed out and lost opportunities. Those people who did have an education -- and manage to use to their advantage -- would essentially become the modern equivalent of "warlords" or "tribal leaders," enforcing their will and law however and whenever they could. People would follow them too, since they would have the intelligence and the resources to make things happen. Where as the uneducated, while perhaps good at using their fists or manual labor, would lack the capability to do very much.

Maybe the future I described sounds implausible or like some sort of science fiction paranoia, but it's certainly possible considering the path we're currently on today. Maybe this wouldn't come to pass anytime soon (such as our lifetimes), but just because this might not happen in the next 50 or 100 years doesn't mean it couldn't happen at all. Even if this future I describe is unlikely, wouldn't it be better to try and avoid it, rather than sit here and wait to see if it actually happens? By then it'll be too late for the U.S., so maybe we should start becoming proactive, instead of being so reactive and afraid of what children are doing and saying. We're adults -- we make the rules; not kids. They obey us, whether they like it or not and so long as we're not abusing them or asking them to do something criminal, we're in-charge. It's about time we reminded them -- and in fact, the entire country -- of that.

I think you hit the nail on the head there with that post. In many ways it is already happening here. The US is now ranked 25th in the world in terms of student education performance.

A lot of the good teachers are either retiring or quitting. The younger ones seem to quit after a few years. Good luck trying to recruit a teacher let alone a good teacher in a bad county. Not going to happen..

The warlords situation is also already happening. Just look at how many gangs and drug rings are prevalent throughout the United States. How many 'no-go zones' already exist in the US. I never heard of these things until I came here.

And this excuse of it's an isolated incident is wearing thin. Isolated means happening every few years. Not every month or so. What is going on when a kid actually thinks they have the right and power to beat up an adult, a teacher, and then post it on youtube. I don't blame the kids though. It is the adults to blame who let them get away with this. It is the adults to blame who like this principal say that the teacher provoked the student. What in the hell are the principals, superintendents, administration, police chief, mayor, governor, house of reps and federal congress members doing in these cities??? But what can I say when people continue to vote them in.

People give me ####### about brining up Australia but that country is light years ahead in so many areas it is not even funny any more. The reason I bring it up is because I have lived there for most of my life so I can see and compare what works and what clearly does not.

Edited April 11, 2008 by Boo-Yah!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Is anyone here actually pretending to have the absolute solution to fixing the (many) problems prevalent in inner city areas?

Boo - you can fixate on this incident all you want, and you can drop the "isolated incident" misquoting because I actually think this is very typical in cities like Baltimore and Newark.

[panamania79 2]

The beating of a high school art teacher by a student has prompted city and school officials to call for more resources to deal with classroom violence.

Jolita Berry, an art teacher at Baltimore's Reginald F. Lewis High School, was beaten Friday in an attack that was recorded on a cell phone camera and posted to the Internet. Berry says the attack began when she told a female student to sit down. She says the girl's friends cheered her on as the girl struck her in the face.

Berry says she is afraid to return to the classroom.

Teacher's union president Marietta English said her office receives two or three complaints a day of assaults on teachers.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said the problem is getting out of hand and stern discipline is needed. State Schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick called for increased character education, community partnerships and parental responsibility.

City schools officials say the student involved in the attack on Berry has been suspended.

The video showed up on the Website MySpace.com.

Berry says the principal told her that telling the student she was going to defend herself triggered the attack.

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0408/510097.html

Interesting don't you say #6

That's it,blame everyone else for acting stupid.....................only in the USA. :angry:I bet thay're going to sue the school now.

Edited April 11, 2008 by panamania79

[BJZags 17]

I don't. But we have tried the appeasement understand their feelings BS for years now and all it continues to do is produce more violent kids. I don't need a study to see that..

Edit: And that is reality. Whether someone like you accepts it or not.

A big factor in my father retiring from teaching when he did was lack of support from the administration over a similar incident. When a junior-high student pulled a switch-blade on dad after he told him to pay attention in class, he dis-armed the kid and took the knife away. Unfortunately for dad, he bruised the kids arm, and dad got sued. Not much help from the union, and NO help from the school board.

[Heracles 417]

I don't. But we have tried the appeasement understand their feelings BS for years now and all it continues to do is produce more violent kids. I don't need a study to see that..

Edit: And that is reality. Whether someone like you accepts it or not.

A big factor in my father retiring from teaching when he did was lack of support from the administration over a similar incident. When a junior-high student pulled a switch-blade on dad after he told him to pay attention in class, he dis-armed the kid and took the knife away. Unfortunately for dad, he bruised the kids arm, and dad got sued. Not much help from the union, and NO help from the school board.

It is funny you say that because I thought to myself if this female teacher had defended her self the parents would probably have sued. The unions back home would be on strike daily until the school / state did something to protect the teachers. Probably the only time I support unions when injustices like this go on.

Of course if the student had stabbed another kid, in your dads case, then it would be the teachers fault. The education and legal system needs a serous overhaul here. Needs to be show the year 2008. The schools boards seem to fail to comprehend that they are not a customer service agency. Much like any management team, they need to support their staff.

I don't know how people do it here.. And of course nothing changes.

[Zee Bee 61]

It is sickening reading something like this. How are children supposed to get an education when teachers are afraid of being attacked? I wonder how many teachers at that school are going to let bad behavior slide for fear of being attacked. Compund all this with the fact that these kids are more likely not to finish high school or go to college and you have a recipe for disaster.

There are just too many issues to deal with, especially the fact that these are inner city kids. Probably being raised by a single mother who has no time to teach them how to behave or too doped up on whatever they are smoking to care. Add to that the lack of good role models, drugs in their surroundings along with gang warfare, and probably some kind of abuse.

And now you have this stupid phenomenon of kids videotaping fights to put them on the internet. Ugh. Its just all around sickening.