Public Schools & The Enforcement of Civility

[roo_ster]

Kids and later, adults, will pay for lessons in civility.  The question is whether the cost of those lessons will be:
1. Below manufacturers cost / subsidized (home)
2. Wholesale (school)
3. Retail (real world, work, etc.)

Those who never learn the lessons will nonetheless keep on paying...


"I’ve yet to meet a parent in public school who ever stopped to calculate the heavy, sometimes lifelong price their children pay for the privilege of being rude and ill-mannered at school. I haven’t met a public school parent yet who was properly suspicious of the state’s endless forgiveness of bad behavior for which the future will be merciless."

There is more than what I have excerpted at the link.



http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1e.htm


Two Approaches To Discipline

Rules of the Stokes County School November 10, 1848
Wm. A. Chaffin, Master

OFFENSE    LASHES
1. Boys & Girls Playing Together    4
2. Quarreling    4
3. Fighting    5
4. Fighting at School    5
5. Quarreling at School    3
6. Gambling or Betting at School    4
7. Playing at Cards at School    10
8. Climbing for every foot over three feet up a tree    1
9. Telling Lies    7
10. Telling Tales Out of School    8
11. Nick Naming Each Other    4
12. Giving Each Other ILL Names    3
13. Fighting Each Other in Time of Books    2
14. Swearing at School    8
15. Blackguarding Each Other    6
16. For Misbehaving to Girls    10
17. For Leaving School Without Leave of the Teacher    4
18. Going Home With Each Other without Leave of Teacher    4
19. For Drinking Spiritous Liquors at School    8
20. Making Swings & Swinging on Them    7
21. For Misbehaving when a Stranger is in the House    6
22. For Wearing Long Finger Nails    2
23. For not Making a Bow when a Stranger Comes in    3
24. Misbehaving to Persons on the Road    4
25. For not Making a Bow when you Meet a Person    4
26. For Going to Girl’s Play Places    3
27. For Going to Boy’s Play Places    4
28. Coming to School with Dirty Face and Hands    2
29. For Calling Each Other Liars    4
30. For Playing Bandy    10
31. For Bloting Your Copy Book    2
32. For Not Making a bow when you go home    4
33. For Not Making a bow when you come away    4
34. Wrestling at School    4
35. Scuffling at School    4
36. For Weting each Other Washing at Play Time    2
37. For Hollowing and Hooping Going Home    3
38. For Delaying Time Going Home or Coming to School    3
39. For Not Making a Bow when you come in or go out    2
40. For Throwing anything harder than your trab ball    4
41. For every word you miss in your lesson without excuse    1
42. For Not saying yes Sir or no Sir or yes Marm, no Marm    2
43. For Troubling Each Others Writing Affairs    2
44. For Not Washing at Play Time when going to Books    4
45. For Going and Playing about the Mill or Creek    6
46. For Going about the barn or doing any mischief about    7

Whatever you might think of this in light of Dr. Spock or Piaget or the Yale Child Study folks, it must be apparent that civility was honored, and in all likelihood, no one ever played Bandy a second time! I’ve yet to meet a parent in public school who ever stopped to calculate the heavy, sometimes lifelong price their children pay for the privilege of being rude and ill-mannered at school. I haven’t met a public school parent yet who was properly suspicious of the state’s endless forgiveness of bad behavior for which the future will be merciless.

[MicroBalrog]

My father, who taught in two school systems (in the USSR and in Israel), had quit a school - at a time where being unemployed was punished by imprisonment in the USSR - after he had been forced to hit a gang member who was threatening him. The headmaster, at the time, asked my father: "What is the problem? He didn't even need a stretcher!"

My father said: "I hit a pupil. I can't stay here now."

[2swap]

Would you seriously want such a school for your child? If you say yes, allow me to to zap you with this regression ray until you are at school age and then will send you to such a school. 

[Boomhauer]

Would you seriously want such a school for your child? If you say yes, allow me to to zap you with this regression ray until you are at school age and then will send you to such a school. 

Well, I sure as hell don't want to send my child to a school like I went to (and it was comparatively mild to some of the wilder schools).

A few of the daily, normal occurences:

We had worthless scumbags running up and down the hall constantly, yelling and fighting.

The real troublemakers that acted up in class were not punished.

There was a lot less learning going on because of the constant disruptions by the mouthbreathers.

We had constant fights


Yet, on the other hand, my parents went to school back when there was corporal punishment. And if a child merited that punishment, news got to the parents quicker than the child got home and the child would get whipped again. Huh, they didn't have behavior problems. No yahoos running and screaming up and down the halls, no interruptions during class, far less fighting (and you weren't expelled for having the audacity to be a victim, and you could actually fight back w/o punishment). Oh, and you could carry a pocketknife to school and not be arrested, and you could store your hunting rifle in the school vault. Any "school shooter" would have quickly resembled swiss cheese instead of being allowed to rampage, killing students huddled under desks while the cops mill around outside. The race riots during the integration period were quickly brought to a halt down here in some of the schools by shotgun toting parents.

[41magsnub]

I think there is a happy medium between the school run by the Catholic Sisters of Extreme Discipline and the Lord of the Flies environment I went to school in.  Frankly, it is probably about what my parents went through in the 40s and 50s, at least from a discipline level.

[MicroBalrog]

And yet nobody was ever whipped in any of the schools I went to.  Except for one school I went to, there was nobody running in the halls during classes (I left that one after six months).  There were some acts of semi-delinquency in the public schools I went to, as there always are, but they were dealt with.

I turned out completely all right and so did all the people who graduated with me. (I graduated with Distinction. I speak four languages and I'm learning a fifth. I have served in the military, I have a college degree, and I am now studying in graduate school. All the kids I graduated with are now either successful businessmen or are pursuing careers in academia.)

Oh and for the record: If it is legitimate to compare the morality and decency of different time-frames so disparate as the modern era and 1858 North Carolina, I consider myself (and any given member of this forum) to be the complete moral superior of about 70% of 1858 North Carolina. Combined.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

I turned out completely all right


i think that about me too!  we should make it a poll question

[MicroBalrog]

I turned out completely all right


i think that about me too!  we should make it a poll question

I do think you turned out all right. I'm not even joking in that regard.

[41magsnub]

I do think you turned out all right. I'm not even joking in that regard.

I suddenly have this urge to break out into the Barney theme song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsKO_r76kfQ

[Boomhauer]

And yet nobody was ever whipped in any of the schools I went to.  Except for one school I went to, there was nobody running in the halls during classes (I left that one after six months).  There were some acts of semi-delinquency in the public schools I went to, as there always are, but they were dealt with.

I turned out completely all right and so did all the people who graduated with me. (I graduated with Distinction. I speak four languages and I'm learning a fifth. I have served in the military, I have a college degree, and I am now studying in graduate school. All the kids I graduated with are now either successful businessmen or are pursuing careers in academia.)

Micro- your schools in Isreal and the schools here in the US are probably quite different. Ya'll probably give a damn about eduction. Here, the schools and parents don't.

Ya'll probably don't have certain classes of people that are well protected and heavily supported by the government, to the point where misbehaving members of that class are not punished in school. At least one of these classes heavily frowns upon getting a minimal education and a job- it's "acting white!"

You speak 4 languages. That indicates a strong school system that actually does what it's supposed to do- educate, instead of being a daycare. Here? Our education system often fails to teach people to read or speak English with any semblance of grammatical correctness. Much less worry about other languages. Foreign languages are usually started with a couple of semesters in high school (when it's much harder to learn a language instead of learning it at childhood). Not to mention, the classes are usually a joke. Heck, that goes for most classes.

Many students graduate from American schools without knowing there's more to history beyond Pilgrims killing Indians and Southern whites enslaving black people. WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Industrial Revolution, War of 1812, frontier expansion, Great Depression, Colonial America, etc are all ignored. Let's not even go into what the average high schooler knows of World History.

[French G.]

I can draw a distinct line in society between my peers and (born 1975) and the kids of the 80s just a few years younger. It was acceptable for my mother to smack me in a grocery store for reaching for something she told me not to reach for. "I'll give you something to cry about" was no idle threat, children were seen and not heard. Elementary school had paddles, used paddles. One kid in kindergarten got drug into the in-classroom lavatory and had his mouth washed out with soap by the asst. teacher. We were duly terrified.

Now there is no discipline and when those kids take over the world it will be quite a mess.

[Boomhauer]

It was acceptable for my mother to smack me in a grocery store for reaching for something she told me not to reach for

I was born in '88, grew up in the 90s, obviously. The time when anti-spanking was the popular theme.

My mom didn't give a damn. If I was acting up, she'd whip me in the store, and if somebody had tried to stop her, she was mean enough to beat the *expletive deleted*it out of them.

I was a very well behaved child for a reason. Teachers appreciated that I was well behaved. And I was targeted by bullies for being well behaved.

[MicroBalrog]

You speak 4 languages. That indicates a strong school system that actually does what it's supposed to do- educate, instead of being a daycare

Ahahahaha. Excuse me as I laugh madly.

The Israeli education system is inferior to the American education system in the core purpose of producing properly educated children. I speak Russian from birth, which was reinforced by my father at home (he's a former Russian teacher), I learned Hebrew in school. English and French were taught to me at home and reinforced by school, and my parents got the drift and moved me to a private school for my last four years of it, which operated on the English, rather than the Israeli curriculum.

We have several protected classes – who in some way replicate the status of US inner-city black (it's them you mean, right?) - new immigrants, Orthodox Jews, and some others. In public school, history focuses on History of the Jewish people and various Zionist stuff, but happily I never listened much in these classes, and really only got an interesst in history from my father's library and the private school I went to.

But the quality of our teaching is not what we're on about here.

We're talking about the ability of a school to turn children into adults who are sociable – who do not commit crimes and who hold down jobs, or at least don't rely on welfare.

Israel may have problems with welfare – mostly because we're offering it and because of the despicable political behavior of the Orthodox Jewish parties and leftist -  but we have a rapidly-diminishing violent crime rate on par with European countries, and are a far safer country than you'd think from the way the Western media portrays this place – even if you do count terrrorism.

It's clear that one does not need to have canings and OMG DISCIPLINE to turn out decent human beings.

[RevDisk]

Two Approaches To Discipline

Rules of the Stokes County School November 10, 1848

OFFENSE    LASHES
1. Boys & Girls Playing Together    4
11. Nick Naming Each Other    4
12. Giving Each Other ILL Names    3
20. Making Swings & Swinging on Them    7
21. For Misbehaving when a Stranger is in the House    6
22. For Wearing Long Finger Nails    2
23. For not Making a Bow when a Stranger Comes in    3
24. Misbehaving to Persons on the Road    4
25. For not Making a Bow when you Meet a Person    4
26. For Going to Girl’s Play Places    3
27. For Going to Boy’s Play Places    4
32. For Not Making a bow when you go home    4
33. For Not Making a bow when you come away    4
36. For Weting each Other Washing at Play Time    2
37. For Hollowing and Hooping Going Home    3
39. For Not Making a Bow when you come in or go out    2
40. For Throwing anything harder than your trab ball    4
41. For every word you miss in your lesson without excuse    1
42. For Not saying yes Sir or no Sir or yes Marm, no Marm    2
43. For Troubling Each Others Writing Affairs    2
44. For Not Washing at Play Time when going to Books    4
45. For Going and Playing about the Mill or Creek    6
46. For Going about the barn or doing any mischief about    7

Beating me for the length of my finger nails or failing to say "Sir" (mind you, I am a pathologically polite person)?  Not while I am breathing.  If anyone committed assault against me for any of the above mentioned activities, I would defend myself as I saw appropriate to the situation.  Which is to say, with overwhelming brutality. 

Minors are entitled to self-defense, just like anyone else.  Regardless of the fact that folks often forget or deliberately ignore this.

[MicroBalrog]

I happen to agree with Revdisk on this issue. With the caveat that I'd do the same if you assaulted members of my immediate family (for example, any children I may happen to have in the future), but I expect he would, too.

[makattak]

Would you seriously want such a school for your child? If you say yes, allow me to to zap you with this regression ray until you are at school age and then will send you to such a school. 

Yes, I would.

You can zap me with that regression ray. My preferences at the time would not match up, but having the knowledge I have now, I would wish I had such a school.

Mind you, I was a very well behaved child, anyway. Spankings were not verboten in my parents' house, though.

There are MANY things I would have hated as I grew up that I very much wish would have been available to me then.

For example, a school like that would also very likely teach me Latin and Greek at a very young age. I am proficient in Latin now, but I effectively have no chance of becoming fluent in any other language because my mind is incapable of that now.

Children's preferences are based on incomplete knowledge. This is why adult preferences are substituted because they are based on more complete knowledge.

You want to zap my back to the past? Sure thing- I'll take that strict discipline code so long as I get the type of education that came along with it. (And, yes, I do believe they are more than simply correlated.)

[roo_ster]

I turned out completely all right


i think that about me too!  we should make it a poll question

 

Oh and for the record: If it is legitimate to compare the morality and decency of different time-frames so disparate as the modern era and 1858 North Carolina, I consider myself (and any given member of this forum) to be the complete moral superior of about 70% of 1858 North Carolina. Combined.

I'm sure you do.


I think some folk are missing the point: Lessons in civility WILL be taught. 

They can be at the home with firm, loving method.  They can take place at school if the home is inadequate.  Usually, this is with less regard for the child and more regard for the school.  Lessons can be taught out in the world.  Many times these are rough and have zero regard for the "student."  At best, the student will not get a job.  At worst, the lesson is the last they learn as they are beaten/shot to death for lack of civility.

WRT schools, especially public schools, they do the child no service by letting him get away with poor behavior.  Frankly, the above list as SOP would be preferable to letting loose a mob of un-civil, un-educated sociopaths on the rest of us.

Of course, most kids from halfway decent parents need no such stern rule.  Such kids are not the problem.  It is the kids from households with no father to lay down the law and a multi-generational welfare leech as a mother.  Kids from that background would benefit from just such a rule.  We would, too, but that is almost incidental. 

[MicroBalrog]

For example, a school like that would also very likely teach me Latin and Greek at a very young age.

Have you read the source JFRuser is linking to? Most of the schools at the time did not teach Latin, Greek, or anything past the "Rule of Three" - something John Taylor Gatto goes on for a long degree.  A school like that would "very likely" teach you very few things.

I'm sure you do.

30% of North Carolina residents were slaves. Other guys in North Carolina either owned said slaves, or assisted in various ways in the maintenance of the slavery system. In 1858, it was illegal in the South to mention the idea that the slaves should be freed. Censorship and physical violence were the rule of the day not just against slaves, but for free people who dared to wish these slaves fee.

Poke at any aspect - any aspect of 1850's Southern culture, and you will get at something that is derived from slavery because of the role slavery played in Southern economy and society.

With few exceptions - for example, there were slaveowners who acted to end slavery, like Thomas Jefferson - slaveowners are subhuman scum.

I don't know anybody on this forum who owns other human beings as slaves or condones slavery. Do you?

Let me restate my case: every single person on this forum is the total and complete moral superior of people who either tolerated slavery in their community, or participated in it themselves. Slaveowners are not persons.

I am a complete and total moral titan as compared to people who owned other people as slaves, and so are you.

[RevDisk]

WRT schools, especially public schools, they do the child no service by letting him get away with poor behavior.  Frankly, the above list as SOP would be preferable to letting loose a mob of un-civil, un-educated sociopaths on the rest of us.

Of course, most kids from halfway decent parents need no such stern rule.  Such kids are not the problem.  It is the kids from households with no father to lay down the law and a multi-generational welfare leech as a mother.  Kids from that background would benefit from just such a rule.  We would, too, but that is almost incidental. 

It is not the government's job to raise people's children.  It is the responsibility of the parent. 

I have no problem with the government sanctioning the parent for the actions of their kid if their kid acts out of line.  In extreme cases (Insert all necessary "use bloody common sense" clauses here), I have no problems with the government taking their kids if the situation is THAT bad.  Yes, I know, way too many folks treat public schools as a useful way of attempting to dump all parential responsibility, and then try to blame "the system" for when their lil darling precious gets shot for home invasion or whatnot. 

Beating the tar out of kids does not necessarily make them decent people.  If the only form of parental guidance a child experiences is "pain and suffering", I'd be very surprised if the kid didn't turn into a sociopath.  I know more than one childhood associate that did in fact end up that way. 

Corporal punishment ain't the issue.  Like anything else, the extremes are bad.  Parents need to be responsible and teach their kids to be decent human beings.  Every kid is different.  Some kids honestly could use a whack upside the head.  Others need things explained to them in logical terms.  Others need to be shown by example.  Again, there isn't any magic solution.

[MicroBalrog]

WRT schools, especially public schools, they do the child no service by letting him get away with poor behavior.  Frankly, the above list as SOP would be preferable to letting loose a mob of un-civil, un-educated sociopaths on the rest of us.

1.There are ways to punish poor behavior other than whippings. Amazingly I've managed to teach children without whipping them, and so has my father, and so has my late sister.

2. On a daily basis on APS there are threads about school personnel suspending children and young adults based on them touching a prescription drug, peeking into children's bedrooms, stripsearching them, violating their privacy, stealing their stuff, reporting their parents (or the children themselves) to law enforcement. Even the little amount of authority modern public schools have they manage to turn into an Orwellian nightmare. You want me to trust these people to physically assault children?

IF we decide to allow public schools to exist, an outcome I would need to be persuaded about, in no situation can we empower unelected, appointed government agents to randomly dispense violence to our children as a form of education.

[Dannyboy]

English and French were taught to me at home and reinforced by school, and my parents got the drift and moved me to a private school for my last four years of it, which operated on the English, rather than the Israeli curriculum.

Dude, after all this time, I never knew you spoke French, as well.  I thought you spoke Arabic.

[MicroBalrog]

Arabic is far too hard for me. :D

[Vodka7]

Ugh.

Here in Philly we've been suffering through riots/flashmobs/whatever since early summer.  Short version:  out of nowhere a few hundred kids from 12-21 show up at the same place and turn into criminals.  My store's on South St and I was working the night of the first riot.  (Honestly, riot is too strong of a word for what I witnessed, but later on the kids beat up people, stole and crashed cars, destroyed at least one store, and fought in the middle of the street.)  It scared off the white people for a good month.  Hurt every business in the area at a time where we were already hurting.

Now they've moved on to Center City, trashing our already terrible mall and Macy's and scaring off even more tourists.  We're a poor city and they're making it worse.  The cops have tried everything from writing citations by the dozens to arresting some of them for felony rioting, but nothing works.  All the cops I've talked to have said the same thing--the only thing that stops the riots is that the majority of our transport system shuts down by 12:30.  If you're not moving out of the area by midnight, you're either tripling your commute time or stuck where you are.

Pretty much all summer you could see the cops on every single corner of South St from Front to Broad and there'd still be a hundred kids on each block, play fighting, hitting on girls, blocking doorways, and scaring off anyone who came out to enjoy the night with some shopping, eating, or drinking.  We had to have over half of our staff just manning the doors, making sure they didn't decide to swarm us and destroy our store.  Any customers who needed actual help had to wait till the one person on the floor could help them.

It starts at home where they learn there are no consequences for acting out, continues at school where there are no consequences for acting out, and continues outside of school when they realize there are no consequences or the consequences are so severely delayed or crippled that it's pretty much the same thing.

I've had a 54-year old man arrested for stealing a keychain.  What kind of man is going to steal a three dollar novelty keychain?  What kind of 54-year old would risk jail for something so utterly unnecessary?  How do you get to that age with such a warped idea of risk and reward?

Anyway, here are some links to what Philly's next generation has been up to, if you can stomach it:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/04/national/main6267141.shtml
(Note, 15th and Chestnut is Center City Philly.  The kind of area you'd take your family to for shopping if you were on vacation.  This would be like 150 kids rioting on 7th Ave and 46th St in NYC.)
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/84677867.html
(Great quotes)
http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/06/13/news/doc4a336314c62d5221076254.txt
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/06/06/4214406.htm
(This was the first one, the one I was working during.  8,000-10,000 is an overestimation from what I saw, at least for the South St area, but it was certainly over 1,000.)

Summer's coming and I am NOT looking forward to dealing with this again.

[RevDisk]

Solely due to the fact that Philly is in Pennsylvania, it has respectable firearms laws.  That is the only plus.

No offense, dude, but the rest of the state is quite content to let Philly implode.  It is not the most pleasant town, which is a shame because it has a lot of history and parts of it are quite nice.  Center City was starting to clean up.  If South Street turns into a war zone, the economy in Philly will take a fairly decent hit.  It's been part of Philly's attempt to reclaim parts of the city from the suck.

Good luck and be careful.  Why not move west?  It's a lot calmer an hour out.

[roo_ster]

30% of North Carolina residents were slaves. Other guys in North Carolina either owned said slaves, or assisted in various ways in the maintenance of the slavery system. In 1858, it was illegal in the South to mention the idea that the slaves should be freed. Censorship and physical violence were the rule of the day not just against slaves, but for free people who dared to wish these slaves fee.

Poke at any aspect - any aspect of 1850's Southern culture, and you will get at something that is derived from slavery because of the role slavery played in Southern economy and society.

With few exceptions - for example, there were slaveowners who acted to end slavery, like Thomas Jefferson - slaveowners are subhuman scum.

I don't know anybody on this forum who owns other human beings as slaves or condones slavery. Do you?

Let me restate my case: every single person on this forum is the total and complete moral superior of people who either tolerated slavery in their community, or participated in it themselves. Slaveowners are not persons.

I am a complete and total moral titan as compared to people who owned other people as slaves, and so are you.

How very Progressive of you, to claim for yourself the moral stature countless others labored after for centuries.

It is very easy to be "moral" when "being moral" is enforced by gov't violence, as it it currently is WRT slavery in both our countries.  Personally, I think it cheapens any claims contemporaries have to moral stature due to current lack of a slavery institution.

Also, very few folks actually provided the support you think was so prevalent, unless one subscribes to the "any economic activity anywhere effects commerce" argument as found in Raich.  (Which would net most northern and southern abolitionists as economic actors and thus supporters of slavery.)  Faulty history and logic, Professor Zinn.

Then, there is the easily-punctured "poke any any aspect," which only requires one example to refute...