So if you don't believe in hitting women, how could you approve of hitting children? They're completely defenseless. ...women aren't.
You say that you don't normally condone hitting kids, but you're condoning it right now. ..I don't get it. ...Sometimes it's ok?




Ya, I did actually. My my mom has hit me, and more than just on my butt. My dad has too, and with more than just his hand.

I am NOT condoning abuse in any way. I have kids who have never been disciplined and they are running amuck. Someone has to do something. Education has gone downhill ever since they removed corporal punishment from the schools.

I have done everything I can do for this kid. I am not his mother and I can't take him to a shrink. He has to learn about consequences before it is too late. It may sound bizzare to you but a good old fashioned butt smacking may actually wake him up. Who knows? As long as the public is against it, then we have nothing to turn to. Detention just isn't cutting it.

Then all you hear is how the schools are failing the kids. How bad the teachers are. How can we help them if we have no way to punish them? We need something to get their attention. And it better be soon.

Is it the teachers'/principals' rights to physically punish the kids though, or is it their parents'?

What do you do when you cannot depend on the parents to do their job?

I don't think people understand just how "no child left behind" has tied the hands of the schools. You have to try and fix the kid rather than expel him. I am not "trained nor equipped" to do that with 30 other kids to worry about. It isn't just my district. This law has been set up to destroy public education. You can't teach undisciplined, unruly, out-of-control kids whose parents think they are just "expressing" themselves.

What can you do?
....physically punish another's child?

That's not a teacher's responcibility...it's the parents decision.
A teacher's responcibility is to do their best to teach children.




It's obvious that it's this new law that's increasing problems. Kids are misbehaving because there's no punishment anymore. ...that doesn't mean a new, physical punishment should be added, though.

Teachers can't teach with no respect or discipline.




Not adding anything new. Just putting something back that used to be effective.

It's not a teacher's job or right to physically discipline a child that's not theirs.

Then don't put them in my care for 7 hours.

Would you babysit someone's child for 7 hours and not be allowed to phisically pick up the child and put them in time out? Not be allowed to smack its hand? What if it was hurting another child? Would you do something physical then?

Could this attitude be what is wrong with today's children?

Would you smack a 2-year-old's hand before it stuck a key in an electrical socket? That is physical punishment. You are saving its life by phisically punishing that child.

Maybe we are harming more children by being afraid to harm them. We are setting them up to fail. We are not proparing them for society and the rules that go with it.

Some children can be reasoned with.
Some children are responsive to conversation.
Some children respond to time out.
Some children respond to grounding or having things taken away.

What about the children who learn from none of these? Then what? Do we just let them destroy themselves or do we look for something that shocks them. Do we do something we really don't want to do but as the old saying goes, "It is for their own good."

So you're not willing, as a teacher, to have a child in your care without physical punishment being an option? ...I know you're doing this right now, but you obviously don't want to be.




If I ever found out that a babysitter was using physical punishment on my child, they'd have some physical punishment of their own coming to them from me.




Smacking a child's hand is a lot different than using physical punishment in schools. ..If all you want is to be able to smack your students' hands, nothing will come of it. ...I know that's not what you're talking about, though. ..So fair comparisons are in order.



I really hate to say this Sadie, but I'm aftaid that "teachers taking out their rage on children" is aimed at teachers like you. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not calling you a bad teacher or anything like that. You seem to be in an unreasonably tough situation. And I'm positive that you try harder than most to teach to the best of your abiltiy....but you also seem to be at the end of your rope, and ready to snap.
I've read quite a few posts from you where you're just venting about how frustrated, fed up, and angry you are at the unruly children and lack of discipline in the school. You're obviously tired of the crap, and becoming resentful and angry.
I'm sorry for saying that, but that's how it's coming across time and time again.
It seems that the only solution you seem to want is physical punishment to be allowed.
...How about wanting a change in the rules so you're allowed to suspend and expel kids as you should be allowed? There's a lot that could be changed to drastically improve the situation without involving physical punishment.

How can it be okay to put physical punishment on the table to so many overly stressed teachers?

All children are different. You can reason with some, then there are the ones who never hear a word you are saying.

A lot of the children today are taught nothing in the home. Mom and Dad both work so they try to buy their childrens love to make up for their
neglect. The kids today are given too many materialistic things, they have no concept of the labor it takes for their parents to give them so much.

I do believe a child should be corrected when they misbehave. If parents will not teach their children anything why should anybody else have to put up with their insolence?

Sadie made a very valid point -- prisons are filled with inmates (someone's child) who believes they can do anything and have everything they want anyway they can get it with no consequences. Why? They were never taught every action causes a reaction.

Teachers are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Their thousands of dollars education only makes them nose wiping babysitters.

Anyone who doesn't believe in punishment should give a teacher a break.
Take 20 to 30 children into your home 5 days a week for just one month.
When you do this, then come back to the table and have a few more conversations on this subject.

Of course no sane person would even consider getting involved because its so easy to point a finger at someone else to blame instead of admitting
to their own shortcomings.

About Bush's NCLB scam.........If the program was so good - why would he use our tax dollars to pay Armstrong Williams to barker and peddle it to the public?

Your frustration is understandable sadie. You are a caring person, and given 20 students who wanted to learn, you would be in seventh heaven.

You are not the problem, it is this administration with it's ways to siphone the good students into private schools leaving behind too many who are unruly and disrputive. It is your own school district which seems to be more interested in $$$ than in children or the conditions teachers have to deal with to teach them. It is parents who refuse to believe their little Johnnie or Jenny would ever do anything wrong.

Your situation sounds impossible to do the job you want to do. And you are right, prisons are filled with someone's children who reached out for help and never got it.

Surely there are better ways to deal with learning than to leave disruptive students in with those who want to learn and are willing to cooperate. How can they possibly cooperate when there are so many distractions?

But it is the school that has to separate students into groups of similar children so the ones who can and will study can do so, and the ones who act like the student you described can get help from people who are trained to deal with such children. Teachers are trained to help those who are willing to learn, they should NEVER be subjected to the conditiions you are living with.

If this country actually cared about children, the NCLB program would be abolished or at least changed so decent teaching conditions would be encouraged. What we have now it sounds like, is warehousing of children until we can put them in the military and use them for cannon fodder.

Chalk another one up for the Rs, sadie. People who don't care about people...

Your situation sounds unbelievably frustrating and heartbreaking at the same time. As someone who cares about children, you must be devastated to see so many kids headed in the wrong direction, and seemingly, the school doesn't care.

When are we actually going to care about our kids?

Double post. Someone please delete this.

Ya, and some people are just fucked up and can't be helped. You said so yourself, Dee. One of Sadie's students could end up in prison...would that make it her fault? No. .... Some people simply can't be helped. .. And some aren't helped enough.





Anyone who doesn't believe in punishment, or physical punishment?

And what exactly are you trying to say Dee?...that people who don't approve of physical punishment being allowed in schools aren't able to admit to their own shortcomings? What the hell is that suppose to mean?


Teachers have chosen this profession because they love and want to help teach children.
It is not fair to ask those who do not, to take on that responcibility, simply because they do not want physical punishment being allowed into the picture. We're not saying that we don't want punishment to be administered, we're saying that we don't want physical punishment.


I think that the one main reason Sadie's school in particular is being over run with misbehaving kids is because the school is allowing it. Rules have changed which are allowing kids to do what they want with no chance of punishment. If a student can rip a sink out of the wall and not be immediately expelled and charged for damages, then there's not only something wrong with the student, but the school as well. This does not mean the teachers are at fault, it means the school's/district's practices are. To blame only the sturdents for this is not right.

There is a federal law. "All children have the right to an education in the public system." If we expel them we are denying them this right. Their right is being taken away when they are expelled.

When I chose this profession we still used corporal punsihment as a deterent. It was taken away.

What punishments do you believe are in order? What can teachers use? It isn't just my district allowing this to happen. It is everywhere.

When one of these unruly students harm your child I do not want to hear you utter one word about, "What were the teacher's doing? How did they LET this happen!" It wasn't the teachers. The teachers have NO rights. All 12 year old children are equal to us.

Corporal Punishment In Schools?
Joane A., South Norwalk, CT

Punishments in schools today need some change, some form of improvement. Punishments are supposed to be feared and effective. They must be sufficiently painful to keep kids from repeating what they did. The forms being practiced in schools today are too lenient and should be replaced with corporal punishment. (A form of punishment where the child can be spanked and whipped.)


http://teenink.com/Past/1997/8772.html

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Mr. Price said he initially encountered resistance. “I was cursed out so much, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “And I’m talking about the parents.”

But gradually, the tenor of the school turned around, he said, for the better. He designed what he called the school’s “discipline ladder,” beginning with a warning for a first offense and escalating through push-ups, detentions and isolation from the other students during the school day.

Finally, there is the fifth rung. At that level, in consultation with parents, students can choose among corporal punishment, having their parents “shadow” them through a full school day, night school or outright suspension. In 8 cases out of 10, Mr. Price said, the students choose the paddling, although this is allowed only a few times.

“If it’s not changing their behavior, then we figure the pops aren’t working and we try something else,” Mr. Price said.

Mr. Price said he definitely believed there was a “cultural factor” behind the persistence of corporal punishment in some parts of the country after it has disappeared elsewhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/educa ... 1317268800