Re: Re: Re: Re: Another worthless Baritone player


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Posted by Rick Denney on November 27, 2002 at 16:15:09:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Another worthless Baritone player posted by Joe Baker on November 27, 2002 at 14:36:03:

Unless the student is wearing his web page, the comparison to the tattoo doesn't really apply. And students are not employed by teachers and their relationship cannot be compared to employment. Sophomoric behavior is to be expected from, well, sophomores, but it should not attract the same punishment as it does with adults.

I agree that schools should be allowed to discipline bad behavior. And I agree that any kids of mine would get the same punishment you'd mete out to yours, and maybe worse. I'm not at all arguing that there should be no punishment.

But something about this smells like spluttering reaction from the school board to me, rather than considered punishment. Of course, I only have smell to go on--the article didn't outline what steps were taken that led up to the suspension, if any.

I'm sure it is and always has been not uncommon for school children to draw insulting cartoons of teachers they don't like and post them anonymously on a bulletin board. Most teachers in my experience just laughed it off, unless it was so bad that it deserved punishment for reasons unrelated to the target being a teacher, such as if it used foul or lewd imagery or language or if it threatened violence. 10-day suspensions are not usually imposed on these children, at least not in my experience (even back in the "good old days"). Being grounded for 10 days by the parents--that's another matter. But I suspect most of these were handled in the past between the teacher and the student, using only the art of persuasion. The only difference here is that the cartoon was made public on the web.

But we can't have it both ways. We insist that it's the parents who alone can teach values to their kids, because we don't want the messed up values of the modern educational establishment doing it for them. If the student is disruptive at school, then that disruption should be punished to prevent or minimize its future appearance, and to prevent the interruption of teaching for the other students. Does something on a web site cause such disruption? Does it preclude maintaining a teaching environment in the classroom? I don't know, but my inclination is that it doesn't.

On the other hand, we won't have to speculate for long as to what would have been the response if the teacher had posted insulting things about the student on a web page, so I'll just crawl back into my hole now.

Rick "thinking there's more than meets the eye here" Denney


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