Student Arrested For Classroom Texting 1246
A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after she refused to stop texting during a high school math class. The girl denied having a phone when confronted by a school safety officer, but a female cop found it after frisking her. The Samsung Cricket was recovered "from the buttocks area" of the teenager, according to the police report. The girl was banned from school property for a week, and is scheduled for an April 20 court appearance for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. I applaud the adults involved for their discretion and temperance in this heinous case of texting without permission.
Sounds fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
"heinous case of texting without permission."
I think it has more to do with refusing bit than the texting bit.
What else can you do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WTF?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed it for ya. Seriously, they are in school to pay attention and learn, not sit there an text people.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
You are mandated to shut up, not text or do anything. Lest the cops come in and frisk your ass (and subsecuently finds a not-illegal item).
Poor kids.
Its good they have no rights. This way they can find out early that "rights" are not for everyone. Hell, as time passess, it seems they are for noone.
Call their parents (Score:5, Insightful)
First offense, confiscate the phone and give it back at the end of the day.
Second offense, give her in detention, confiscate the phone and require the parents to pick it up in person if they want it back.
Subsequent offenses, repeat step two. The parents will get sick of this pretty quickly, and she will find herself without a phone.
It's not that hard.
Re:schools have rules for a reason (Score:0, Insightful)
Of course not, but she should have the right not to be arrested because of it.
Re:What else can you do? (Score:2, Insightful)
If they arent disturbing anyone, why is it a problem? It only is going to effect their own grades. Kind of like the people who yell "hush" in a theater, they are causing more of a disruption than the *problem* itself. How long exactly did the teacher spend on this?
The only exception I see is during tests or something where they could pass answers.
Re:Don't they send kids to the Vice Principal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What else can you do? (Score:1, Insightful)
Confiscate the phone while on school grounds and let it be!!!
Are you suggesting that the school staff should have carried out a body search?
My Tax Dollars!!???? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why are my very expensive courts and police being tied up with this nonsense!!???
A Simple suspension and call home to the Parents was seen as going soft!!!???
WTF!!!???? Really WTF!!!!!?????
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:1, Insightful)
Good job by the school (Score:4, Insightful)
This is stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
A 14 year old wouldn't stop texting in class? Leading to a frisking by a law enforcement officer and a court appearance? What the hell happened to "in loco parente" ("in place of parent", means while the student is at school, the school is the parent)? This parent gives you permission to destroy the fucking phone. If you're in shop class, you have quite a few more tools at your disposal to drive the point home, a physics lab, slightly less so. Unless the class was government, there's no reason to involve the men in blue. This was math class. Confiscate, eliminate the problem.
These days, teachers are responsible for students' learning. These students' performance on test scores lead not only to their continued success but to the school getting more funding. Kid thinks her phone is that much more important than learning, kid needs to learn how worthless the phone is so she can fucking pay attention. Only way to do that is to remove the phone from the equation. Shoot the hostage, so to speak.
My daughter will be 14 in 9 years. I will have given her the phone because I wanted her to have one in an emergency, not so she could text her friends in the next room. I will be very sorry for the inconvenience and disruption she will have caused. By the time she gets home, it will be hard for me to correct her behavior because we're so removed from the situation -- I will appreciate it if you could help me out. With the cost per SMS being what it is, you'll be doing me a double favor.
Re:Don't they send kids to the Vice Principal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not anymore. Some parents are only too happy to sue or threaten to sue the district for actually trying to educate or discipline the students.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
Your mandated to be in schools. Your not mandated to pay attention.
Who wants to make the grammar joke?
His statement speaks for itself. That's the joke here.
Aside from the humor, he does make a valid point.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The student was issued a criminal citation for disorderly conduct
If I were to guess, I'd say the student escalated the situation to the point where a disorderly conduct citation was appropriate and warranted. The summary makes for fabulous reading with the whole "heinous case of texting without permission" bit, but there's a whole story (that's not detailed in TFA) around how many times she was told to stop, how she reacted when told to stop, how she reacted when told to hand over the phone, etc.
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is stupid. (Score:1, Insightful)
in loco parente never existed. "in loco parentis" is the correct form. If you're going to be spiffy and quote Latin, please do it correctly!
Re:What else can you do? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they arent disturbing anyone, why is it a problem? It only is going to effect their own grades. .
Oh, I whole heatedly disagree.
Having spent my Junior and Senior year in high school sitting in classes with slack-jawed morons who could barely read at an 8th grade level and whose futures generally involved the question "do you want fries with that?", I can tell you it does more than effect their own grades. The curriculum / classroom changes to fit the lowest common denominator in our public school system.
So instead of kids who want to be there actually being able to learn something, you have an enormous amount of resources / class time going to the morons.
While your grades may not be effected, what you actually learn and therefore your purpose for being there, is.
I gave up on actually showing up for my senior English class when it was the third year out of four that involved reading *the same book* (Fahrenheit 451, which is exceptionally funny since I read it on my own in 7th or 8th grade).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
At some level, citizens have to submit to authority figures. I'm not saying that we have to blindly follow all edicts, but if a cop pulls you over, you should pull over instead of fleeing. If a student is texting during class, she should stop when asked. Lying about it and causing a kerfluffle about it ought to be punishable. The same would be true if she had been passing notes in class and caused a fuss about it.
The self-professed libertarians here who argue that she should be able to do whatever she wants are missing the fact that this is in class. The education of the class would be impossible if anyone could do whatever they wanted.
Re:What else can you do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to the fear of lawsuits, teachers aren't allowed to touch the students and searches can only be done by the school cops. So if a student refuses to turn over the phone and do what the teacher says, they HAVE to call the cops, because at that point it becomes an issue of disruption in the classroom. Most urban schools now have cops on campus during school hours, including the Elementary schools, for just this reason. So it isn't a question of overreacting and calling 911. This is just the normal escalation process for a student who started out disobeying a minor rule by texting and then made the matter worse when she refused to turn the phone over to the teacher. The cops were called because of the refusal, not because of the texting.
It ain't the police state that caused this, it's our lawsuit-happy culture. In the old days, the teacher would've just caned the silly kid on the butt and that would have been the end of it.
Childhood is a form of slavery. Parents and society have an obligation at least try to teach kids as much as possible, even when they aren't interested or actively resist. The consequences of not teaching kids things like using math to figure out if they're being scammed, or how to avoid STDs are worse than the consequences of the coercion.
Re:more to do with the refusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed because, as we all know, refusing to comply or follow orders in a non-military school is indeed a crime against all of society punishable by a sentence decreed in a court of law!
Re:WTF?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed it for ya. Seriously, they are in school to pay attention and learn, not sit there an text people.
There fixed it even more for ya. It has been my experience that in most cases where kids misbehave or do things for attention its usually the fault of the parents for either not taking an active enough role in their child's life or for not properly reprimanding them when they act out.
I never did shit like this in school, and if I had, one call to my mother and my ass would have been in a sling.
Her favorite line "I brought you into this world, I can take you out!"
spare the rod and spoil the child indeed.
Re:Mandated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Without a doubt. I read the complete police report included with the article and she was an unapologetic liar! Furthermore, she is a repeat offender as evidenced in the police report.
"No, I don't have a phone!" "No! I don't have a phone!" "I told you I don't have a phone!!!" "How'd that get up there?"
I know I probably sound like one of those "Get off my lawn!" old guys, but childhood is PRECISELY about developing character and learning right from wrong. This lying crap-weasel needs a huge lesson in truth and respect. If you ask me, they didn't go far enough.
Re:Hang on... (Score:3, Insightful)
Escalation (Score:4, Insightful)
I've personally been involved in situations where a student's refusal to cooperate lead to the situation escalating far beyond what was necessary. I think sometimes they believe that if they dig in their heels, nothing bad will happen and the adult will let up. They don't understand that digging in just escalates the situation. When I encounter such a student, I usually have to explain the complete consequences of their actions (including ultimately getting cuffed and hauled out if need be), before they relent.
From reading the report, it's pretty clear that the student had multiple opportunities to come clean before being arrested, and refused to take advantage of them. Yes, I agree that arresting the girl was overkill, but the report mentions that the officer had prior [negative] dealings with the student before, so I would suspect that there is a story here that goes back a little farther than "ZOMG STUDENT ARRESTED FOR TEXTING." Arresting the girl was overkill *if* this was her first disciplinary issue. If this is one of a long string of issues, it's a different story. When sane, measured discipline isn't getting through to a kid, it may be a good time to over-react and try to get the kid's attention.
I don't know the kid, and I don't know her history, so I can't judge whether or not the officer was out of line. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where it is, and plenty where it isn't. I've had students get in a disproportionate amount of trouble for similarly stupid reasons, and it usually plays out the same way: a student with a long disciplinary history tries to press their luck over something moronic, and comes up with the short straw.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
As the teacher, how exactly would you enforce the confiscation?
Teacher: Put your cell phone away--no texting in class
Student: No
Teacher: Okay, give me your phone. You can get it back after school.
Student: (Sits on phone) No!
Teacher: That's it. Go to the office
Student: No!
Where would you go next?
Physical intervention? Historically, that would have been the way to go--a smack across the wrists with a ruler and dragged off to the principal's office by the ear. Not really an option anymore though. Assault charges are likely to be filed.
Go in and grab the phone from underneath the student? Molestation and sexual assault charges. Fun!
Ignore it? May be a possibility in a few cases, but my guess is that if something has already escalated to this point, then this student is a much bigger classroom disturbance than just in this instance.
Not being there, it's hard to say what the exact circumstances were, but it's quite easy to assume that the girl was being very belligerent and very disruptive. Not having any other real options of dealing with the problem, calling in the cops is probably the best option--most high schools will have at least one dedicated officer who's always on campus.
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
Actions have consequences.
Yes and consequences of this action should be either detention or in school suspension.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
Time for reductio ad absurdum. "Seriously? That guy didn't obey the cops when they told him to rape his sister. He deserved to get shot in the forehead at point-blank range." See how absurd an appeal to authority sounds when taken to extremes?
You are right that actions have consequences; in school, those consequences rarely, if ever, escalate beyond detention---suspension if you've gotten three detentions in a row. Unless there's a lot more to this story, calling the cops because a teenager wouldn't quit texting is just plain abuse of power. Now if the teenager wouldn't quit interrupting the teacher by texting the teacher, it might be construed as harassment, but again, the right answer is to confiscate the phone, give the student detention, etc.
Either way, the teenager would have to be doing something a lot more disruptive than texting for arresting her to be an appropriate punishment. That's just plain nuts.
Re:Don't they send kids to the Vice Principal? (Score:1, Insightful)
An AC writes:
"No, because in today's world the brat's parents would sue."
Cite an example of this ever happening for similarly-mundane infractions.
Re:This is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
In this day and age.. "in loco parente" has been crushed by all the parents suing schools and teachers..
We must be in soviet russia. (Score:1, Insightful)
I was under the impression that in this country minors were protected from searches on a non-violent nature without a parent present....
I can understand had this been a weapon but a cellphone? If that were my kid I'd be ripping that cunt cop a new asshole and setting the phone on vibrate.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
cream wobbly writes:
"They felt the need to involve the police because they had no way to remove this pupil otherwise. School personnel have been stripped of their powers of apprehension. You can't detain a school pupil any more -- they have to leave class of their own accord."
Strawman. There's nothing in the complaint about the student being asked to leave, much less refusing.
Re:Escalation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My Tax Dollars!!???? (Score:2, Insightful)
If the girl doesn't leave, and the teacher shouldn't call the campus police, that leaves very few options:
1) Leave the girl alone - this is highly undesirable, as her behavior will continue to harass the remaining students, and foster the idea that classroom disruptions are okay. I would not have my tax dollars spent on an (even more) ineffective education system.
2) Physically remove the girl from the classroom - this is extremely undesirable, as the teacher/school can be slapped with a lawsuit that will cost us orders of magnitude more tax dollars in defending the case, than the cost of having the campus police remove the girl and setting an example.
Re:You reap what you sow (Score:4, Insightful)
What old TV sitcom do you think we're watching here?
Re:What else can you do? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Mandated (Score:4, Insightful)
It probably goes like this. 1) School officer has no legal authority to "frisk" students without their conent. (If they try, they risk a law suit), 2) Student refuses to consent to frisking, and refuses to cooperate. 3) Police are called, at which point school has no more say in the matter 4) Police are pissed off at having been called, and decide to charge student with disorderly conduct and being a pain in the ass.
At step 2), we don't know why the school couldn't handle this internally. I'm sure that they would have if they could have. No school principal / board wants this kind of publicity if they can avoid it!
We don't know this, but I suspect that this girl has a long history of being disruptive and uncooperative at school. The school has probably tried all sorts of other things in the past, to no avail. The principal probably (very bravely IMO) figured that calling the police might actually get through this girl's thick skull that being a disruptive pain in the ass is a REALLY BAD IDEA. And it might get her parents' attention as well.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally she is forced to have a little accountability for her actions.
It's still a bit harsh for the actual offense, arbitrary accountability isn't going to curb her immaturity, she's just going to think "The adults here are idiots." And rightfully so, criminal charges for this are ridiculous even given her troubles.
Treat teenagers like adults they act like adults. Don't and they will always act like little children.
Given some adult idiots and their cell phone behaviors (like, say, talking about sex lives on a crowded bus), I wouldn't say this is acting like a child, I'd say this is acting like an adult with a cell phone.
Re:Mandated (Score:1, Insightful)
Treat teenagers like adults they act like adults. Don't and they will always act like little children.
If you are going to treat teenagers like adults, then you should give teenagers full adult rights. That includes the right to turn down state coerced attendance in a public school system. As an adult, I'm not obligated by the state to spend 6 hours a day doing something which I consider to be a waste of my time, so if we treat her as an adult, maybe we should afford her the same right to choose how she spends her time.
Well, you can't beat them any more... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
And that would require appointed judges rather than elected dribbling nutcases. Do you think that will change any time soon?
I don't see any difference between judges who are appointed and those elected, really. An idiot judge who doesn't drop kick stupid shit is an idiot regardless. If I had a choice, I'd want fewer appointed judges so we could throw them out on their ass when they start acting like we somehow owe unruly, obnoxious kids (and parents for that matter) something because the kid is too dumb to follow a reasonable instruction to put the damn phone away. You seem to be suggesting that electing the judges is a bad idea, but forgetting that the people doing the appointing were elected in the first place? It seems better to give us the option, instead of burying it behind the idiots who are already in office. At least if we vote a judge in, we can vote them out. Most of the time the only way to get rid of an appointment is through a recall-type process, or a new administration - which apparently if you're the wrong administration means trouble [wikipedia.org]
Regardless of the judges, I think when most of us "old" people were kids (in the 80s), it wouldn't have taken the cops. It would have taken much less - say, threatening to mail the phone home to our parents - and pray the school didn't follow through because my parents at least would have kicked my sorry ass for mouthing back to a teacher, made me apologize, and who knows what else. Nevermind anything to do with the phone. It was very, very simple: you don't act like that, especially to an adult.
Re:Laaaawwwsuuuuit (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong.
"Disorderly conduct" is what the cops use when they want to arrest you but can't name an actual crime. Did you honestly not know this already?
Case in point: the cops never saw her use the phone, because they had to frisk her to prove that she had one.
I hate to tell you this, son, but the school and the cops went nuclear way too soon, and have asked for a lawsuit.
Who cares about texting (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a heck of a generalization. If I remember my middle/high school days at all correctly, there's usually not much to do in class. And texting is not disruptive to others... so if you're that bored, why not do something instead of staring at the clock?
I really feel like if teachers would actually focus on education and stop worrying about discipline for discipline's sake, students might actually have a chance at being engaged in lessons.
How much of everybody's time was wasted because the teacher felt obligated to deal with texting instead of math?
Re:Hang on... (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me, but how the heck else do you do deal with the student? She said "No" and remained uncooperative. The teachers have no power to do anything else - they can't touch the student and the "school safety officer" is just an extension of the teachers - no authority and no power. They can't detain the student or physically restrain her.
The other alternative is to just let it continue - there are no other options available to schools today.
Re:schools have rules for a reason (Score:2, Insightful)
1) She lied to an officer. If you arrested everyone who ever did that, you would have no room for the murderers, rapists, child-molesters and kids who send text messages in class
2) Do you really think that sending text messages in class was a legitimate reason to call the cops in the first place?
Seriously, do you people actually believe the things you post on
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:5, Insightful)
oldspewey writes:
"If I were to guess, I'd say the student escalated the situation to the point where a disorderly conduct citation was appropriate and warranted. The summary makes for fabulous reading with the whole "heinous case of texting without permission" bit, but there's a whole story (that's not detailed in TFA) around how many times she was told to stop, how she reacted when told to stop, how she reacted when told to hand over the phone, etc."
Wow.
What could be more germane to an incident report than actions by the student that would warrant an arrest?
"Guessing" that the student did something to warrant an arrest when we have the complaint in front of us (and making no mention of such behavior) is downright bizarre.
What makes you think it would do anything? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. What makes you think it would do much? If a student is _that_ disruptive, to the point of flat out refusing to cooperate or obey in any form or shape, not to mention the attitude to the cops bit, I'd say the parents aren't too involved in her education, one way or another.
Best case scenario: it's some single mom who threw in the towel long ago. You might make the mom unhappy a bit, she'll sob on some friends' shoulder, but she's not going to even know where to start to discipline her daughter.
Second worst: the parents don't really give a flying fuck in the first place. They just hope that their daughter grows up without much attention, like the tree in the back yard. Or that if someone has to do things right, it's the teacher, society, whoever other than them.
Absolute worst: the parents actually are proud of that antisocial behaviour and encourage it. Behind many a sociopathic school bully is a parent who's proud that his son/daughter looks out for number one and puts those losers in their place. Behind many, "bah, learning is for loser nerds. Who needs it?" attitudes is some parent who slipped through school on the exact same attitude, and still rationalizes it as the right thing.
2. If she refuses to leave class or stop, what are you going to do? Let her sit there and keep making a point of being a git until the parents get there? Even if the parent immediately drops everything and comes over, you're realistically looking at another hour fucked up before they actually get there.
I know people, heck, work with people where the dad commutes half way across the country, the mom commutes two cities away, and either of them can't get home in less than two hours even if they wanted to.
Re:Lying is not a crime... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lying is not a crime.
Yes it is. It's called fraud. And as part of their education children are taught that lying has consequences. When they reach adulthood the consequences may be more severe.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Dear god (Score:2, Insightful)
Lying is not fraud (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes it is. It's called fraud. And as part of their education children are taught that lying has consequences. When they reach adulthood the consequences may be more severe.
What the hell are you talking about? Fraud [wikipedia.org] is deception motivated by the intent to damage another party or for personal gain. Lying [wikipedia.org] is an intentional declaration of an untruth, but may have many many different underlying motivations (or none at all).
Here's an example to distinguish a lie from a fraud:
Yes it is. It's called fraud.
Assuming that you know you're full of shit (and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt), your statement above is a lie. However, it does not constitute fraud.
Re:Mandated (Score:4, Insightful)
Consequences that are way out of proportion like the relevant case are tyranny.
On the other hand, as I'm fairly confident that this will go nowhere, it makes for a good story when she's older.
Re:schools have rules for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between playful misconduct and willful disobedience. Historically the former was handled with detention and the latter with corporal punishment. Since corporal punishment has all but been made illegal what tool do you use?
So the only choices to deal with the willful disobedience of a minor are physical beating or arrest by the police? Who the hell modded that insightful?
Re:Mandated (Score:4, Insightful)
There. Fixed that for ya.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
If I received a forced pat down followed by attempted removal of objects from under my underwear, I know *I* would be engaging in some disorderly conduct.
They went waaay overboard. An escalated response on her part was justified. I rather doubt they had permission to strip search their students.
Re:was the texting disruptive? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, at least in the schools I went to, sleeping in class wasn't allowed either, and thats not disruptive.
Still, I'd see it as a preventive step. Texting in class isn't a big deal, but texting during an exam (which often happens in the same room, under similar circonstances) can have pretty dire consequences.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Bizarre, but quite common. Most people, when presented with some sort of outrageous action by authorities, will rationalize some explanation where the authorities were correct, and refuse to be swayed from it. That's one way authorities get away with as much as they do.
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
"No."
"Ok, then you're suspended, leave school."
"No."
If someone disregards the authority of a teacher, what makes you think they'll suddenly start respecting it when the punishment is upped?
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in what most people call a 3rd world country (but we are delusional about it and call it "In ways of development"), I'm currently aspiring for a master degree, have 10+ years of work experience, and I think that the biggest problem in this nation is not drug cartels, is the lack of education for the general public.
While the elementary education is mandatory by law, the reality is that just a tiny fraction of the population here actually learns to read and write. I agree that 10 years of education makes your mind work in a very "deterministic" way, but I can't imagine a worse way.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Strawman. There's nothing in the complaint about the student being asked to leave, much less refusing.
Well legally they can't ask the student to leave (where would they ask her to go? During school hours teachers are your legal guardians), they can ask her to stop texting and put the phone away (and according to the police report that's what the teacher did.) Other than asking a bunch of times there's not much else the teacher can do. The police wouldn't have arrested the girl had she just stopped texting, listened to the teacher and didn't lie to the police. Plus right at the beginning of the report the officer admits to knowing the girl from previous negative conducts (which aren't detailed in the report.)
I agree with the GP that the police shouldn't have been involved, though the teacher really can't do anything to discipline the child other than call the police.
Re:What else can you do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fire the teacher AND the cop (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the problem was that they were supervising and disciplining the child, just not the way you thought best. Unless you give the "proper" way to do it when someone flouts the rules and refuses to leave when asked, I have to presume you don't know what you are talking about.
not arrested for texting. (Score:4, Insightful)
The student was not arrested for texting. The student was arrested for refusing to turn over the phone and lying to the instructor and the police officer about it.
Had this student turned over the phone to the instructor, there likely would have been a small punishment, perhaps confiscation of the phone and detention. Now this kid gets a juvenile record (purged at 18), a court appearance, and will perhaps learn a lesson...
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the article, and the redacted transcript, and there's no sign of them issuing her with a detention, or a suspension. Besides which, when a child is suspended you call their parents and request for them to pick them up, not kick them off the grounds (duty of care).
In the end it's the parents you escalate to in a situation like this, not police. There's a whole process beyond that, including a school pscyh councilor, more suspension and then expulsion before you anything like this should happen.
Re:Mandated (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree.
In this day and age, kids seem to be getting overdoses of "it's a free country and I want my rights", giving them absurd senses of entitlement over anything and everything.
Seriously, society has gone mad. The concept of individual rights has been twisted into some disfigured unrecognizable mass of idiocy. We can't spank our kids any more, which is why the current generation is such a rabble of unruly, apathetic, self-centered brats. On the other hand, civil liberties are so far gone that we can't protest outside of designated protest zones.
Kids need spankings. It's worked for thousands of years of human behavioral evolution. Governments need checks. Demonstrated over thousands of years of human social evolution.
People, its time to pull our heads out of our asses.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know which country you're from, but the country that I'm from (and where this incident took place) was founded by people who refused to submit to authority figures. Even had a whole war and everything over it.
Also, strawman alert: Nobody argues that you have the right to flee a cop who pulls you over.
I'd like to know why she was asked in the first place. Texting, last I knew, was a both a silent and solitary activity. It's not disruptive to the class. It might be disruptive to the girl's learning, but that'll be her problem to deal with when it's test time.
Further, a teacher is not an authority figure. Nor is a teacher a babysitter, day-care provider, surrogate parent, or any of the other things that the school system is forcing them to be. Their job should be to teach, nothing else.
No, perhaps she shouldn't have lied. But according to the article, she didn't cause the "kerfluffle," the teacher and cops did. None of this would have happened if the teacher would have just continued teaching instead of getting all hung up about one student not paying attention in class. The teacher was the one who caused the disruption by calling the cops and making a big scene over it. But of course, the simplest solution--expelling the student from the classroom--wouldn't have satisfied the teacher's power trip nearly as much.
Again with the bad analogies. Yes, passing notes is disruptive because it involves distracting other students in the class.
I don't know if I'm a libertarian or not (sounds like you were out to deliberately offend them?), but again, nobody is arguing that anarchy should reign in classrooms. Students who are being actively disruptive (and not just annoying the teacher through inattention) should be removed from the classroom, end of story. Students who habitually fail to pay attention in class will learn the hard way that it doesn't work out for them in the long run anyway. Issuing criminal charges against them is not exactly the most efficient way to get the point across.
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
So, given that my point what "none of that works if the child doesn't cooperate" do you have any suggestions that don't require exactly that?
Detenion: Refuse
Suspension: Refuse
Parents: Withhold the contact
councilor: Refuse
I understand that these are routes that went untried, but I think it's misguided to assume they would have had a different result given the attitude of the child in question.
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid I was a fairly well behaved boy, one of the other kids I grew up with was not. He was spanked regularly because he frequently acted out and was violent and destructive.
Now, true, he was not helped, he's still a moron, BUT, my desire to avoid a similar fate lead me to be very well behaved. There are some kids that can't be helped, but that doesn't mean that making an example of them can't yield fringe benefits.
Re:What else can you do? (Score:3, Insightful)
what if you tell the student to leave the class and they refuse?
Suspension
what if you give them a detention and they don't show up?
Suspension
what if you give them a suspension and they DO show up?
You call the cops because the kid is TRESPASSING. You know, an actual crime.
What you DON'T do is have a cop come in and arrest a kid on trumped up charges when they have committed no crime.
If you do something in my home (a place that I am the boss) that I don't like, or you disobey me, I am well within my rights to ask you to leave. If you don't leave, I would THEN call the cops and have you arrested. Calling the cops and having them arrest you on trumped up charges BEFORE you have commited a crime that you very well may not commit is NOT the right thing to do.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all - I am not (in all likelihood) paying for her college education. As a property owner, I am paying for her highschool education. She wants to make offensive art in art class or write erotica in creative writing, I have no objection to her doing so, but if the teacher says pay attention and get off the damn phone, then gee, sucks to be you.
I have no sympathy for boredom or dishonesty, nevermind dishonesty fomented by boredom.
Pug
Re:more to do with the refusing (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the parent was trying to say that she did not warrant punishment, just that it shouldn't be a "criminal" case. As annoying and obnoxious as she may have been, it does not warrant having a criminal record! This type of situation should have been dealt with at the school level (suspension, etc) but not in a criminal case.
There are kids that get physically assaulted by other students in high school and all that happens is maybe a suspension the first 3 or 4 times. For these kinds of assaults to get mere administrative punishment and a texter to get a criminal record is absolutely STUPID. It pisses me off when people complain about problems not being dealt with while big important ones get completely ignored.
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mandated (Score:5, Insightful)
Research on behavior modification shows that punishment (like, say, spanking) results in escape and avoidance behaviors and usually results in people reverting to the unwanted behavior once the source/threat of punishment is taken away. Positive reinforcement for wanted behaviors (and removing the reinforcement in response to unwanted behaviors) is more effective, longer lasting, and generally results in a more psychologically healthy individual.
And, just for some anecdotal evidence, I worked for 3 years in a group home for abused and emotionally disturbed children. The ones who were physically beaten seemed to have learned from their parents not how to behave properly, but that anger and violence are the way to respond to someone who does something you don't like.
Re:Mandated (Score:2, Insightful)
So children can be arrested for disorderly conduct when they commit the heinous crime of disturbing the tranquillity and serenity of the typical high-school classroom by the extremely uncommon and disruptive behaviour of sending a text message, obviously. It's not like America has enough people in prison already, we could always use some more.
Re:more to do with the refusing (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have to call the police just because you have a 'disruptive' student silently texting, you won't get much teaching done either, and should be looking for a new profession.
Re:What else can you do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
For the same reason they probably have on site day care. Times have changed.
Re:Mandated (Score:4, Insightful)
So its a criminal offense to text during class? I must be missing something...
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a distinct line of difference between abusive beatings...and corporal punishment. It certainly seemed to work well with my generation, and before.
I know I'd certainly not turned out as well without it when I was raised. THAT was about the only thing that would get my attention. I wasn't a bad kid...but, mischievous. I didn't get that many spankings, but, the ones I got I deserved, and it certainly modified my behavior in a permanent fashion.
I guess if I were a kid today....rather than strike my behavior up to just 'being a boy'....they'd just drug me...
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe school administrators should be allowed to search the contents of electronic devices as that is a violation of privacy, however they are well within their rights to use things like immediate suspension. The real problem is they can't do any of that crap anymore without the police because of all the stupid ass lawsuits where dumbshit parents run out and get lawyers to defend their little spoiled brat kids. My parents repeatedly went to bat for me when I was getting screwed, but they never once came to my rescue when I was in the wrong. This is more of that bullshit entitlement mentality. This is why there are "School Resource Officers" in schools, to protect from stupid ass lawsuits. If it wasn't for little twits like this we wouldn't have such a screwed up education system where the administration has to worry more about tiptoeing around and getting the police to handle every stupid incident.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
I see your studies, research and science, and raise you 10,000 years of what worked. Positive reinforcement works *as well*, it's not a binary choice where one excludes the other.
For me I got Nintendo if I ate my vegetables. I got a spanking when I set off a firecracker in my neighbor's dog house.
Sorry, spanking works. I don't give a shit what some band of idiots greedy for research grants say.
I was spanked, my parents were spanked, their parents were spanked. It works, and has worked, since forever.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the part that confuses me...
Why are police involved at all? Is it common to have police enforcing school policy? What is this, China? Oh wait.. I bet China doesn't do that...
What part of this was criminal in any way?
Re:What else can you do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, wait, were you saying that you were about to give a bad analogy?
Re:Mandated (Score:1, Insightful)
There are a couple of things going on here. Let me begin by saying here that extensive research on these topics has been conducted in both social and developmental psychology - neither of which involve counseling or psychotherapy in any shape or form.
First, the data shows time and time again that using physical aggression (spanking) in an attempt to punish physical aggression actually makes subsequent physical aggression more likely to occur.
Second, punishments like spanking are very difficult to use effectively because the act of spanking is rewarding to the spanker. Not only does it quickly stop the offending behavior, but it also allows the spanker to believe something has been accomplished. They are effectively doubly rewarded for spanking which will make them more likely to spank again in the future. Spanking recipient are more likely to make the same behavior covert rather than simply stopping using the behavior. Effectively a loop develops in which spanking elicits more aggressive behaviors, which in turn results in even more spankings that further reward the spanker.
Third, the base temperament of your acquaintance likely made him a more difficult child to handle with regardless if spanking is used or not. This more difficult temperament makes it more likely yet that the child will be spanked due to the inherent rewards spanking offers to the person doing the spanking.
Spanking certainly is an emotional topic and we often base our opinions on its value and effectiveness based on the exact same type of reasoning that leads to many other incorrect beliefs. Examining the data clearly shows that spanking is less effective than other forms of punishment (modeling desired behavior and rewarding towards it are more effective yet) and in fact does more harm that good, but without having the data to analyze we base our opinions on casual observations. This is exactly what the thousands of generations before us did for spanking, medicine, and other forms of fabricating explanations for the phenomenon they witnessed.
Casual observation may establish that such things are factually correct, but statistical analysis shows this to be wrong in many cases. Were casual human observation anywhere near 100% correct there would be no need for research in the sciences.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue that there's as much evidence to suggest that this is where things were headed regardless as there is to a believe that that similar appeals to authority would have been effective.
Fraud? (Score:2, Insightful)
What baffles me the most about this case was the rigamarole everyone went through to determine that she had a phone. Why did it matter? If the teacher saw the phone, that's the end of it. Give the pupil the appropriate punishment. (detention, suspension, saturday school, etc) Why did it have to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she did in fact possess a phone? What if she had passed the phone off to a friend before the officer arrived? Would they have then had to let her go unpunished? The incident originally wasn't about her committing a legal crime, it was about breaking school rules. When you're talking about breaking school rules you don't need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to get a "conviction".
Re:Mandated (Score:2, Insightful)
The AC was half-right. Your friend is actually sounds fairly lenient in individual punishments and likely doesn't see himself as an asshole. But, he does work to restrict people's freedom to use drugs as they see fit.
He himself may not publish misleading propaganda equating pot with crack, or confiscate vehicles from casual pot smokers, or jail people whose only crime was to make their own alcohol, but he's part of the same industrial machine and has to be considered as an interchangeable, equally-guilty part in activities that he ignored, if not participated in.
The war on drugs is pretty much a scam, where it isn't outright fraud. What that makes people who participate in it is an exercise for the reader, but it doesn't get much better than 'unwitting patsy' and goes all the way up to 'complicit in murder for terrorist goals'.
That DEA officer, like any officer in the various branches of the police, has as his job to enforce the laws that were put into place by congress, whose members were democratically elected by the american people. So I'd say he shares about the same amount of blame as....pretty much anyone?
Re:Mandated (Score:2, Insightful)
Buddy,
Despite how you feel about drugs, it's illegal. It doesn't matter one iota your feelings, there's no "freedom to use drugs as you see fit". Especially since the law states otherwise.
You see, the way the world workss is that the laws are changed to reflect the society it protects. You're view on whether it's right or wrong means you have the ability to perform civil disorder, however you will be facing the legality portion much like everyone else that has taken that route. It's necessary, and done with anything worth fighting for.
Enjoy your fight :)
Re:Sounds fine to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep all authorities are wrong. We don't need facts here.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
If I refuse to turn off my phone during a meeting at work, they can fire me, but they can't criminally charge me.
But I know, this is kids, we've got to fuck them as hard as possible, so bring in the people with guns!
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
America has insane attitudes towards children in criminal justice.
An adult who molests a 8 year old is entitled to a rehabilitation program that's based on a scientific consensus, and a fair trial. A child who molests another 8 year old will be sent to a re-programming center where discredited techniques meant to "cure" homosexuals in the 30s are used.
This is just another case of the same thing. If I refused to stop texting at work, I'd be fired. They couldn't call the police before even taking that step.
But hey, if you're going to fuck your kids to the tune of 12 trillion dollars, why not fuck them in a totalitarian sense too?
Re:The Silent Side of the Coin (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the horrible things I read on an almost daily basis about how children are treated, I'd disrespect authority too.
But then, I don't like fucking children. We're talking about taking people with guns and a legally mandated right to violate your rights, and using those people against children for non-crimes that no police force in the world would be used against adults for.
If I was texting and my boss told me to stop and I didn't, I could get fired. He wouldn't be able to get cops to arrest me for it.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
The price of freedom for police is the law, and there's this perverse attitude that when it comes to kids, police don't have to follow the law.
In ten thousand years, my boss could NEVER get the police to come to my workplace and frisk me because I didn't stop texting after he told me to stop. It's not against the law, for one thing. For another thing, if the administrators hadn't bothered to try any other remedies, then they hadn't met the standard that an adult would be charged under.
We're just fucking kids at this point. Either they're kids and the school has to deal with them, or they're adults and the police have to deal with them and they should be afforded every single protection an adult is granted under the law.
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you carry a gun? Are you a state sanctioned agent legally mandated to assist in restricting the rights of citizens?
Police are serious fucking business. If you're going to be using them to enforce school regulations, then kids deserve full rights under the law. If that were the case, the police could not ask for the phone because no crime had been committed.
Re:more to do with the refusing (Score:3, Insightful)
There are kids that get physically assaulted by other students in high school and all that happens is maybe a suspension the first 3 or 4 times.
Uh, what?
I'm 31 now, so this happened a moment ago, but when I was in Jr. High school I was a mama's boy who didn't know how to stand up for himself. I would get in fights regularly, just minor scuffles really, but nobody ever got in trouble for picking on me. One day a kid actually picked a one-on-one fight with me and I beat the crap out of him and got immediately expelled. Went across town where it all happened all over again, except nobody ever picked a one-on-one with me again. Went to a high school where it happened some more, stopped doing all my classwork, got straight Fs and got expelled some more.
Most kids that pick on, beat up, or otherwise physically harass others never get in any trouble AT ALL. It is part of a pervasive culture of violence supported by school officials who look the other way even when they know who, what, when, where, and how. The why is simple: because they can. Is it a coincidence that all of these schools had sports programs and nearly all of the bullies are jocks? Fuck no, it is not.
Sending children to American public school is child abuse. It is a critical element in the perpetuation of our one-sided system.
Where is the "lieintitle" tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
I read this article yesterday. The student got arrested for not stopping an action after class was stopped and the supervisors where putting school on hold waiting for her to stop doing an action. I don't like police states myself, but I like lame-ass attention-whores trying to pump up their ad revenues just as little.
Being arrested for not obeying an authority is not the same thing as being arrested for texting. mmkay?
Re:Mandated (Score:3, Insightful)
She didn't obey a teacher. WTF did she expect to happen these days?
Today's authorities are incompetently authoritarian. Back when I was in school (no cell phones but...) it would have been detention, or swats.
And how can a society that passes laws against disorderly conduct or "drunk and disorderly" seriously call itself a free country?