This one's a must read (Education/Violence) by Fremdfirma

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

This one's a must read (Education/Violence)

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 19:55
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VIEWED: 585
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:41 AM

Now that the hell camps are crushed, time enough we started looking at the core of the problems they pretended to solve, and this particular bit nails it right over the wall.

Brutalizing Kids: Painful Lessons in the Pedagogy of School Violence
http://www.truthout.org/10080912

This piece hits right on the bullseye, and one comment within brings up an editorial I wrote a long time ago, which if I can *find* - I will post below.

Quote in question?

Quote:
And when money is pumped into the schools, it is increasingly diverted away from addressing real problems such as the need for more teachers, social workers, health workers, teaching aids and safe avenues of protection for kids traveling to and from school. Instead, the money is invested in metal detectors, surveillance cameras, security guards, high security fences and armed police with dogs.

Emphasis mine.

Stand by, for original related editorial.
ETA: trying to dredge up one of the sites it was posted at since the CDRom is no longer readable.

-F

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:48 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

EDIT: Sorry Frem, but my reply turned into a thread topic I'd like to post as an addendum to your post here.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:23 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Found it - imma nuke the original postname, even if some folk might suspect already.
----------------------------------
Death At 3PM

by XXXXXXXX

School lets out at 3pm.
http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/9911_1/vio1.html
http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/9911_1/vio2.html

These charts show without one ounce of doubt, that school is a contributory factor in crime...and here's why, tho no one will admit it.

A student often harrassed by his peers more often than likely...WILL BE ARMED, once he returns home and gets out and about.

But on his way home from school, he will not be, nor will he have neighbor/parental support to back him up...by demanding that our children come to school unarmed (which is rational, and understandable) - we then take some responsibility for protecting them from harm.

The same principle applies at, say...Social Security...the sign on the door clearly indicates you must leave your weapons behind to enter the building, and beside that door is an ARMED guard...the presence of whom I find downright comforting when I have left my weapons in the car.

If I must be defenseless by the rules of the organization I am entering, it is their responsibility, morally...to defend me, period.

The SAME applies to schools...the child appearing at the bus stop to confront six larger kids who are going to kick the shit out of him does so unarmed because it is the schools policy that he not board the bus with a weapon...but where is the school when his safety is now endangered because he is unarmed ?

And on the way home, many times it is a "race" to get "home safe" and more than likely armed....before your aggressors get to you - where is the school then, by who's demands you are unarmed ?

If the school is going to demand compliance with certain rules that cause increased risks to their students (and usually FROM other students) - then the school is going to have to take responsibility for what happens to them....even if it's off school grounds, even if it's after school.

Now, consider well the mindset of the tormented child - the school demands he be certain places at certain times, and unarmed...and his tormenters know where he will be, and that he will be defenseless....and as well most of them know the teachers are going home and the school will not take responsibility for anything that happens after school or off the property.

In the mind of the victim, the school has "set him up" to be abused, and therefore a knowing and willing participant, especially if he's brought it up with them and been told there is nothing they can do after-hours or off the property.

And the sick thing is...the child is correct, the school places him in such situations, and then refuses to take their share of responsibility for what then happens to him.

Yet, now...if it was an adult, a stranger...they might act, but as long as it's students from the same school, they do nothing, how convenient.

What needs be done is to make the school system legally and financially responsible to some degree in cases where harm comes of it, for it is by their mandate the student is in this place, at this time, and not armed - and therefore easier to victimize.
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:28 AM

FREMDFIRMA

In fact, I have found an archive of ALL the original editorials, and this next one I think relates and I shall share it, cause it was written long before the Pullman Quote I use was known to me.

Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.
Philip Pullman - The Subtle Knife

========================
And here is the editorial in question
========================
Love is a Weapon

There's a war going on all the time, one that no one ever seems to see, one that no one seems to notice, or even realize their own participation in.

There are those who wish to do right by their fellow man, to help others, and practice peace, tolerance, and caring, living an ethical life by their own principles and no inflicting harm on any.

Then there are those who wish to exploit and destroy their fellow man for personal gain or amusement.

And worse, there are a great many of people who may claim to be the former, but are actually the latter.

No, don't bother telling me which one you are, or think you are, or pretend to be - I don't much care.

For every one of them that harms someone, there may be one of us, healing the hurt.

For every kid in gym class being mentally battered by the coach, there might be one of us teaching him geometry.

For every kid beat down by bullies, there might be one of us about to step in.

For every child abandoned by their own family, there might be one of us stepping into that role and teaching them better things.

You see, it's easy to build something physical - and just as easy to smash it down.

Friendship, knowledge, ethics, morality and most of all, Hope.
Hope that not everyone is out for only themselves at anyone else's expense - these are our 'weapons'.

You can take a mans wallet, but it's a lot harder to take his ethics from him, and you cannot take his knowledge.

And while the society we as a species have created fully caters to and supports those who live only for themselves, and act in a manner almost sociopathic...that society isn't going to last.

The foundation of any human (and therefore transient) society is in it's future generations, it's children...and while those who exploit, ignore, demean or harm them...may well convert them into the same, the tide is turning on them.

Many more children these days are learning that it is not necessarily a dog-eat-dog world, nor does it have to be, and are learning that they are the power that can change it.

And in turn, they will give this knowledge to their friends, and unto their children, and eventually, the exploitative, self-serving, socipathic nature of our society will change.

You can hurt someone in only a second, but it takes time to help them.

Our society is based on instant gratification and as a species we lack patience in our nature, therefore it is only the civilized amongst us that dare to overcome that nature and aspire to better themselves above the savage who would simply take what he wants, without care to the consequences.

Anything built with care and patience will outlast that which is not, and much that our kind builds is such work - one foul act cannot overcome years of friendship, one harsh word cannot overcome years of kind ones, it is our armor against your world, and it works very well.

We continue to grow, and grow unified, while they continue to cut each others throats for the sake of a lifestyle that leaves no legacy behind but a feeling of relief when they finally pass to whatever fate awaits them.

And some day, some day soon - there will be more of us, than them.

Some day there won't be any of them left.

Is that not something worth striving for ?
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 12:36 PM

DREAMTROVE

School should be a community in itself, and not a form of incarceration and indoctrination.

I've been overworking myself lately, but I'm seriously considering designing an alternative.

I think the child should have the right to be in school or at home at any point during the day.Not only does the system fail to recognize the 3-5 gap, it fails to recognize that for many children, "home" is not always a place that they feel safe. School should provide one, and not just from 8-3, but whenever it is needed.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 1:54 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Of course, all of this presupposes that we'll actually FUND the schools in an effort to improve them in any meaningful and/or lasting way...

It's funny, because I often use public schools in my rants about why we pay for things for others to use. I point out that I have no kids, and not much chance of even having any, so why should I pay taxes that pay for schools?

My point isn't that I shouldn't have to pay those taxes. The point is that we ALL agree to pay these kinds of things, in an effort to make things better for our future generations than they were for us. That's the ideal, at least.

And I'd be happy to pay MORE taxes if we were getting the absolute best schools in the world, the best teachers money can buy (why are billion-dollar bonuses the only way to keep CEOs around, but cash bonuses are deemed NOT a good way to reward fantastic teachers?), the best teaching tools, the best HELP for our children. Not mine. Yours. ALL of yours. Because the world we leave them is the one they'll have to live in.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:16 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Ideally, anyone (not just schoolkids) should be able to walk around their neighborhood without fear. Also ideally, the folks in the neighborhood should be able to create, by themselves, an environment safe for all folk minding their own business. If the people are forced by the government to give up their ability to provide a safe environment, it's incumbent upon the government to take responsibility for everyone's safety. Too bad the government can't uphold their responsibility in lots of places.

Now, this doesn't excuse the people from doing whatever they can, within the strictures of the government, to make their neighborhoods safe for all who are doing no wrong.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:06 PM

DREAMTROVE

More money doesn't get you a better product. It brings in more corruption. Look at what's happened to higher education since the cost went through the roof. When I went to my local college here, the tuition was $675/semester. Now it's $16,000/year.

Things have totally collapsed. Salaries, ironically have gone down. But if you want to see money really corrupt something, check out medicine. You know why we don't have cures for AIDS and Cancer? Not curing them are trillion dollar industries. Many scientists have proposed solutions that cure both, and even proven this in monkeys, but these sorts of treatments are banned. No, I'm not talking about cockamamie snake oil stuff that you see on conspiracy sites, but mainstream biotech firms who have drugs proven to block HIV. One company says they can make a patient HIV free in 8 days, but the WHO will not let them implement this treatment anywhere, without combining it with the standard AZT cocktail, which they say counteracts their drugs.

Sorry, I digress.

You want to cure education? Take the money out. Zero it. Volunteer staff facilitators assist students and secure the school, while students learn from the vast resource we are currently using. It's already been proven that Wikipedia is 9 times as accurate as any encyclopedia, that random data aggregators are easily twice as accurate as the CIA, but this is nothing compared to what the actual applied mind can find out. We're still paying for textbooks that we know will be not only out of date but inferior to information that can be found online. We pay educators to lecture what could be read on a cell phone... Oh, I could rant on this topic for a while. But I'm actually game to try this one. As soon as the Christmas season is over.

I agree, that funding or private schools would be great, and have argued the point, but I'm beginning to suspect that it would just bring corruption. The voucher program would probably be sufficient, but I see that Obama has said that school choice vouchers will remain available to people already enrolled, but new entrants will not be accepted, and the program will terminate as current students graduate, and that all students receive a public school education. Obama sends his children to private school.

I see Utah has their own program. Byte, care to comment on that?

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 6:57 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Dream makes good points here, simply funnelling money in won't do it - the school my niece goes to got a large grant and then cut salaries and positions while putting that money into a surveillance system with over a hundred cameras.

Violence and chicanery actually INCREASED, and one assistant administrator was quietly asked to resign when he was found yanking it to tapes he made of the cameras in a third floor bathroom - of course, that's supposed to be a secret, as are the cameras in there, but I don't rightly give a damn.

Our current system is pretty badly broken, and pouring money into a failure that will be spent in all the wrong places isn't a solution.

Think on this, I'd make a pretty good history teacher - but I've not the money or inclination to put myself $110,000.00 USD in debt and waste years of my life "learning" something I already know to get that join-the-club card to "prove" I'm a "team player" and willing to suffer and submit, oh hell no.

Make a damn good guidance counselor too, since I treat our youth with actual respect, and technically I'm not - but there's the socrates club, isn't there ?
And yeah, I guess you could call it non-profit, since not only don't it make me money, I actually paid for one kids application to a tech school cause he's got real potential in appliance repair.

Remove the expensive qualifications and take the money out of it - you'll wind up with folk with a real passion for educating, but unfortunately you'll also have to deal with their biases.

No system is perfect, but it's time we started examining other models, long past it.

-F

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:55 PM

DREAMTROVE

Frem,

A few comments from the "it's always worse than you think" dept:

1. The school in Iowa where I was recently got a huge grant which they applied for in order to upgrade their technology dept. Well, it came with an earmark that said that it could not be used to do anything that might change the balance of education including a long list of stuff and among that was spending anything on computers. Ultimately, all of the money went for creating a covered walkway to nowhere, in a contract given out to a connection of someone in the contracting dept.

2. I actually majored in History. Yeah, after 20 years of randomly taking classes, I actually got a degree, so I could technically be placed above my preferred 5th grade education status. (Okay, technically, I only went to four of those years...) but at some point, in order to keep my aid so I could pay the $675, I needed to take one credit more in a summer seminar. So, there was only one option, and I took it: Career planning. Well, they told me at something-teen I don't remember, I started taking classes when I was twelve, anyway, they told me I had to choose my career.

So, I selected History Teacher. I worked out a plan of everything that I thought would construct a solid understanding of history, or of that which was offered, which meant precious little south of the equator and nothing of east asia. I added in some associated disiplines like philosophy and anthropology...

Anyway, the career planning "staff" which was some branch of the college administration, and not the professor, who was undoubtedly an adjunct, took my plan, and "edited it" and gave it back to me. They had deleted every single history class from my "four year plan" and replaced it with education classes about standard methodology and all so much of "I'm sure there a book on this."

Best part: The school is a teaching school, one of the main ones for NY, used to be called a "normal school" and this is their specialty, where they teach people to teach... nothing.

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