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Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

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Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#3
I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified.

Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)?

Other things I see include judges imprisoning children to increase revenues in private prison systems they have shares in.

How does it feel to actually live there?

Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#4
post #3

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Oth…

Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.

Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#5
post #3

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Oth…

Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.

Yeah, I have the impression this is true in a number of places. It does appear to be particularly pronounced in the US (from the view from my bubble).

I worry that reducing the respect given to teachers will result in fewer outstanding people choosing teaching as a career path.

From the smattering of events I noted above I do get the impression that teachers are operating scared. That they perceive that they are reluctant to make judgement calls that involve any kind of bureaucratic risk (as in the Kiera case). That zero tolerance approach seems to be a symptom of this fear and I have a lot of sympathy for both the teachers and the students. Its seems like a real shame :(

Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#7
post #3

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Oth…

Something happened in the past 10-20 years where teachers became the scape goats of the failing American education system. It might be related to the attacks on their unions and the privitization of education. I'm not totally sure. But regardless of your opinions on education privitization teachers are not regarded with the same reverence in American society that they once were.

Every teacher I know (and that's quite a few) shared this cartoon on FB recently:

http://www.coreyshepherd.com/wp-content/uploads/Grades_Carto...

Sad but true..

Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#8
post #3

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Oth…

You are getting it wrong (disclosure - I do not live in the US).

Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. With 30 million kids in tens of thousands of schools you are guaranteed to get a few cases of something "stupid and abusive from the administrators" daily. After all - a normal school day with no events hardly makes a headline. And with the power of the internet some local news get much more national visibility than decades prior.

Same is with TSA - you will hear of something bad daily, but a lot of people pass checks without problems.

You have to aggregate the news about school authorities, police and federal behavior over a very long time to try and find some meaningful trends (there seem to be some, and not comforting at least)

Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#9
post #3

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Oth…

You are getting it wrong (disclosure - I do not live in the US). Everything you read in the news is outlier in a sort. With 30 million kids in tens of thousands of schools you are guaranteed to get a few cases of something "stupid and abusive from the administrators" daily. After all - a normal school day with no events hardly makes a headline. And with the power of the internet some local news get much more national…

[deleted]

Re: Batavia school board disciplines teacher after Fifth Amendment survey flap

#10
post #3

I worry that sitting here and reading the articles which turn up in HN each day that I am getting a very particular impression about life in America. Between this and Kiera Wilmot I feel genuinely horrified. Am I just seeing outliers here? Am I seeing frightening trend where children are needlessly criminalised (Kiera) or willfully (even if well intentioned) manipulated (my interpretation of this survey debacle)? Oth…

To me it feels much as you have described. These sorts of incidents, while the extreme cases are still rare, are increasingly common. And separate from the extreme incidents, the overall culture of infantalizing children feels quite harmful. I am expected not to send my children four houses down and across a street at the light to play by themselves at the park. My children are 10 and 7.
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