Saturday, December 31, 2016

School Discipline, Crime Rates, and Implications.

As a practitioner (I'm a school-house cop), I've had great experience in the impact that discipline plays on the education process.  And the impact that the lack of discipline plays on the education process.  This morning, two articles come to my attention that speak directly to the problem of classroom discipline as it affects education and society at large.

The first is a study completed in 2008, before the Obama administration.  We're just now seeing the implications of eight years of Obama education policy
The increase in homicide among black youth, coupled with a smaller increase or even decrease among their white counterparts, was consistently true for every region of the country and nearly all population groupings of cities. The pattern also held individually for a majority of states and major cities. 
The second is an article from earlier this week.
The idea that such street behavior does not have a classroom counterpart is ludicrous. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age. The lack of socialization that produces such a vast disparity in murder rates, as well as less lethal street violence, inevitably will show up in classroom behavior. Teens who react to a perceived insult on social media by trying to shoot the offender are not likely to restrain themselves in the classroom if they feel “disrespected” by a teacher or fellow students. Interviews with teachers confirm the proposition that children from communities with high rates of family breakdown bring vast amounts of disruptive anger to school, especially girls.  It is no surprise that several of the Christmas riots began with fights between girls.  School officials in urban areas across the country set up security corridors manned by police officers at school dismissal times to avoid gang shootings. And yet, the Obama administration would have us believe that in the classroom, black students are no more likely to disrupt order than white students. Equally preposterous is the claim that teachers and administrators are bigots. There is no more liberal a profession than teaching; education schools are one long indoctrination in white-privilege theory. And yet when these social-justice warriors get in the classroom, according to the Obama civil rights lawyers, they start wielding invidious double standards in discipline.
As a law enforcement officer in general, and a school-house cop in particular, I'll have to ponder this set of circumstances at more length.

6 comments:

Robert Fowler said...

I blame the liberals for taking corporal punishment out of the schools. Since we are close to the same age, I know you remember someone (maybe you) getting a swat or two for some infraction. We didn't die from it and it usually corrected the behavior. Of course back then, the punishment at home was usually as bad if not worse. Another problem is too many so called parents are trying to be buddies with their progeny instead of being parents.

Just to clarify one thing. I believe a good swat on the ass is a good character builder. Beating a child, as in abuse should be punished a lot more than it is.

Anonymous said...

Look im no spanking Nazionale either way, but do believe that if a child needs to be swatted, it should be done by parents, a teacher has no business swatting a child

Old NFO said...

When there is no father figure, and baby momma is barely out of her teens herself, there is NO discipline taught or learned...

les1 said...

Swatting by teachers has been done for centuries, and worked well. Now they are supposed to control classes by force of personality, or command presence and that only works so long until the bluff is called. We got licks from the 3rd grade up, I don't remember any in earlier grades. If your folks found out you really got it. In athletics you got licks for every d or f. There was a structure to it and it was witnessed. I only remember it being abused once, in the 5th grade and the teacher disappeared pretty soon. You would walk through an empty hall and listen to the sound from the classrooms of only teacher speaking. Now the halls are full of kids running all around and the classrooms are chaos. By the way, no school police back them, the ultimate thing was to get sent to the principal's office.

Flugelman said...

Heh, mine was not the Principal but rather the Vice-principal. A man of small stature but big on presence. A retired Marine you never, ever wanted to visit.

El Capitan said...

I got a large wooden paddle across the posterior more than once in the 6th and 7th grade. Coach Thomas and Principal Blankenship weren't mean or abusive, just one or two solid licks depending on my level of knuckleheadedness. I honestly don't think word ever filtered to Mom & Dad. It was usually cut & dried. Kid mouths off, kid gets swats, matter was over.