Teachers and discipline
When Blount County schools (sic) officials asked for help Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office provided a show of force at William Blount High School with more than 50 uniformed and plain clothes officers on the scene after threats of “bodily harm” were made against some students.
Sheriff James Berrong said he and Blount County Schools Director Alvin Hord are taking “a proactive instead of reactive approach” to the situation.
Investigators are pursuing “all leads and information regarding racially motivated threats and graffiti made by students against other students at the high school,” according to a press release.
Honestly, involving the police over threats of violence? Back when I was in school, they never called police. See, our teachers in the 1980s had something teachers today don’t have. They’re called balls. I recall one incident in high school where the assistant principal intervened in a student dispute. A student then punched the assistant principle right in the face. The assistant principle looked the student in the eye, without flinching, and said If that’s all you got, son, you better sit down now. And he sat down.
Heck, I worked in a juvenile prison for a while right out of college. We had no guns, no tear gas, nothing at all like that. All we had were padded rooms and some mechanical restraints, both of which required three days of paperwork to authorize the use of so they were no use at all. Still, we never called the police even when we had full on riots. We did it ourselves. And these were violent criminals.
Teachers are too quick to call the police these days. Kid has a knife, call the cops. Kid has a BB gun, dial 911. Call the five-0 because some kid has over the counter drugs. I guess they’re so damn scared of another Columbine that they don’t want to take chances.
Here’s a newsflash for the teachers, you are expected to maintain discipline at the school. It’s your job. Do your job or go home. Sitting down isn’t an option.
Update: Bubba notes in comments:
But according to the details starting to emerge, the problem has been brewing for several weeks. They don’t say what specific event(s) triggered the law enforcement response, but there was apparently a list with specific names, more than one case of racist grafitti, in one case mentioning a specific date.
So when you have named targets and specific threats and a date, seems like something you have to take seriously. Even if you didn’t care about the kids on the list, think of the school’s liability if it turned out to be a real threat.
I suppose, in the event that targets are that specific, the school is probably justified for involving the law.
April 8th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
I agree they overreact a lot, and probably because of Columbine. When I first heard about this, I thought maybe they were overracting to some kind of schoolyard bully taunts or something.
But according to the details starting to emerge, the problem has been brewing for several weeks. They don’t say what specific event(s) triggered the law enforcement response, but there was apparently a list with specific names, more than one case of racist grafitti, in one case mentioning a specific date.
So when you have named targets and specific threats and a date, seems like something you have to take seriously. Even if you didn’t care about the kids on the list, think of the school’s liability if it turned out to be a real threat.
And with kids having access to their irresponsible parents’ arsenals, I don’t blame the school officials for overreacting.
One thing that is just as disturbing are the reports that the mother of one of the named targets says she has been trying to get the school to do something for weeks. Another student reports that there is a general climate of racism at the school and that it has been that way for years. I guess it would only be a matter of time until something ugly like this happened. Either way, the school officials and law enforcement were right to finally take decisive action to send a message that it won’t be tolerated any more, even if it may have been overdue.
April 8th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Yeah, my question based upon that comment; “Why did it get that far? Who in the admin of the school stood by without smacking down the racist bullies?”
The topic just gets me off onto a rant about needing to get rid of public schools and replace them with companies certified by the state. An inept admin would be replaced, not congratulated for taking decisive action later when a simple “stop that!” months previous would have prevented it in the first place.
/grrr