Excessive violence in schools

[temporal1]

gov should not be in place of husbands, fathers, or god.

gov school teachers+schools should have standards and boundaries. (should be allowed to have boundaries.)

social workers and psychiatry, even police, health care, churches, have other necessary roles, the roles of gov school teachers+schools should be distinct, and limited.

children need distinct boundaries, they do best when adults are not confused.

[Josh]

The school district has its own police who made the arrest, so yes, the school district is entirely responsible for law enforcement in this setting.

The district’s budget is $7b, $20k per student. That’s adequate.

[Ken]

My superintendent told me Thursday that there is a bill in the Colorado legislature that would make it more difficult to suspend and expel students. I think bills like these come with good intentions, but it makes it harder for schools.

There are alternative schools in the area for high-conflict kids, but it takes a while to put students in them and the closet one is twenty miles away. Students with developmental disabilities that have IEPs (Individual Education Program) are legally almost impossible to expel.

and

if only schools+teachers would have refused to be dumped on from the start, gov schools might still be worthwhile.
the die was cast, decades later .. “what a mess!”

schools need to be allowed to set BOUNDARIES for admission. people value what they personally invest in.
before my time, students and their families SACRIFICED to get formal education.
when i was young, there were standards+expectations to be met to enter public school.

Now we are starting to get to the crux of the matter. In this particular example, these two kids involved in this attack have been arrested and will likely be expelled from the school system and incarcerated. This is a particularly egregious example because of the age difference of the victims, but this sort of thing happens hundreds of times per day across this country. This is the grand experiment we have been on in this country more than any other.

We have built a pipeline where we take kids straight from school to prison. Is it working? Were these 14 or 15 year old kids "deterred" by the severity of the criminal justice system in Florida? Obviously not. And then what. How long of a sentence will they actually serve for simple assault with no weapons involved and no injuries? Maybe a year? What happens when they get out at age 16 and now have a felony record? Are they going back to school? Highly doubtful. The drop-out age in Florida is 16 so they don't have to. Is anyone going to hire them with a criminal record? What do you think? So what is left? Who is going to take them in? Maybe they don't really want to turn criminal but the street gangs might be the only ones providing them with safety and community. And so what have we done? We spent a huge amount of time and effort to grow two new criminals and turn them back out onto society.

And the fact of the matter is that this isn't even cost-effective. The marginal cost of incarceration in this country is about $40,000 per inmate. Florida pays $9,983 per pupil for K-12 education. So it is 4-times more costly to incarcerate a child than to educate him. And this is only the cost of prison itself and doesn't include all the other law enforcement and criminal justice costs from police, police stations, jails, courts, attorneys, parole officers, etc. If you include the whole criminal justice system costs it is possible that the total cost of criminalizing kids is 10-times higher than educating them.

Why is prison so much more expensive than education? Simple math. Average class size in this country is 21 students per teacher. In some schools and regions it is much higher. Add in all the other staff like principles, counselors and such and we maybe get that down to 15 students per paid staff member. In prison the average staff ratio is about 5 inmates per correction officer. Plus schools are only open 8 hours per day so you only need one shift of teachers per day. Prisons operate 24/7 so you need three shifts of corrections officers per day plus 6 more shifts on weekends when schools are also closed. Plus every holiday and all summer. Then of course you have things like prison hospitals and medical staff that cost more money. And prisons cost more money to build than schools on a per-inmate versus per-student basis. A prison for 500 inmates might cost 3-times more to build than a school for 500 students.

That is what we do now. We incarcerate a vastly higher percentage of our youth and young adults than any other country on earth. And we spend vastly more money per prisoner to do so than we spend to educate the remaining children that we don't incarcerate. Does that make sense? Does that turn them into better citizens when they end up getting released at age 25 or 28 or 30? Think about it.

Now for this particular school in question it may be an easy financial calculation. They will lose the $20,000 in state funding if they expel these two students. But then it isn't their problem anymore. The $80,000 that it takes to lock them up comes out of a different part of the state budget. And when they get released at age 16 or 18 with a criminal record and no skills other than the criminality they learned in prison it also isn't their problem.

There are actually better ways. The current trend in school discipline is called "restorative justice" which is kind of a trendy new buzzword in education. And those things always come and go, a few years back it was "growth mindset". But what it boils down to is modeling positive behavior and teaching values and respect for one's self and others. It is actually very much based on general Christian principles like forgiveness and redemption although couched in secular terms. Rather than punishment and isolation (which is what we do now) the approach is focused on teaching values, respect, responsibility, and repairing damage.

Will it work? In theory, yes. Schools that have fully committed to this approach, especially in other countries that have been doing it longer, have seen much better results than the old tried and true punishment and isolation route. But it takes a lot of money and effort to staff up the necessary support to make these things work. And you need buy-in and training for teachers, many of whom are older and jaded and have been kicking kids out of their classrooms for decades and have no interest in learning yet one more new educational fad. So change is very hard sometimes. And also expensive. Maybe you need a 5-1 student teacher ratio to properly deal with some of the most difficult kids, not the normal 21-1 ratio. Where does that money come from? Well, you are going to be paying it anyway and very much more if you toss them out and ship them off to prison to become life-long criminals and wards of the state.

There are no easy answers. And certainly no cheap answers. But I would suggest our current school to prison pipeline (which we do more harshly and aggressively than any other country on earth) is not working either.

[temporal1]

Restoration of responsible family units would be Job 1.
Fathers have held roles of authoritative leadership, esp to teach their sons self-restraint and respect for others, to teach the sheer cowardice of bullying vulnerable others, to fear+respect authority, whether school principals or police.

The destruction of family units is COSTLY. Good intentions have devasted social order.

Years ago, a report appeared about how teen elephants need fathers present to avoid social chaos, it paints a graphic picture:

“Teenage elephants need a father figure”
https://www.bbcearth.com/news/teenage-e ... her-figure


For Christians, it’s about God’s design, whether humans or elephants.

Focus needs to return to family responsibility, starting before birth.
Teachers’ unions and politicians are not the answer.

The school district has its own police who made the arrest, so yes, the school district is entirely responsible for law enforcement in this setting.

The district’s budget is $7b, $20k per student. That’s adequate.

Generous.
Throwing good money after bad is never a good idea. But, they will take it, and double or triple it!

How to convince young men they are valuable and necessary in their homes? As husbands, fathers, providers, spiritual leaders for their families? How to convince young women they need their husbands present, to serve them and encourage them, rather than insult them and throw them out?!

[temporal1]

In another recent topic, Voddie Baucham addressed problems in education, at about 8:40 he talks about DOE “leadership.”
Please listen to a few minutes of Voddie on education. This is not a time to trust children with high political leadership!

Competent, well-meaning teachers cannot be expected to ignore the DOE. Not adequately.



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[temporal1]

When our daughter entered 1st grade, one of the first stories she came home with was of a boy pulling his pants down in class, i believe he was under a desk. We went to the school with complaints. Nothing.

We withdrew her and placed her in a small Christian school that required a bit of a drive.

Years later, she was in high school, i think in a psych class, they visited the local jail.
She came home, shaken. She saw the same boy there behind bars.

Over years, that small Christian school has grown+grown, requiring a few moves to larger buildings. i’m happy to say.

The Christian and Catholic schools we’ve experienced have open doors and generous help to students in need of help with costs.
Parents cooperate with uniforms, uniform costs should not be a deal breaker.

Over years, teachers+admin in our family, plus those known through work, church, etc., agree about the prison pipeline.
IT’S A FAMILY/SOCIETAL PROBLEM. Not a school system problem.

Correct diagnosis and remedy are key.
If your car has a flat tire, replacing the water pump 4 times will not fix your tire problem once.

[temporal1]

.. “It is actually very much based on general Christian principles like forgiveness and redemption although couched in secular terms. Rather than punishment and isolation (which is what we do now) the approach is focused on teaching values, respect, responsibility, and repairing damage.”

This sort of “plagiarizing” scriptures is evident in public schools i’ve experienced with my grdaughter in seattle area schools. It’s rather horrifying. Remove Jesus with surgical precision, and call it a day.

imho, it borders on lying to intentionally hide the source. in the least, confusing and empty.

children deserve Truth.

[Ken]

.. “It is actually very much based on general Christian principles like forgiveness and redemption although couched in secular terms. Rather than punishment and isolation (which is what we do now) the approach is focused on teaching values, respect, responsibility, and repairing damage.”

This sort of “plagiarizing” scriptures is evident in public schools i’ve experienced with my grdaughter in seattle area schools. It’s rather horrifying. Remove Jesus with surgical precision, and call it a day.

imho, it borders on lying to intentionally hide the source. in the least, confusing and empty.

children deserve Truth.

Listen to yourself. Are you seriously arguing that Christian principles have no application outside of a church context?

If so, I think most people would disagree with you.

[temporal1]

.. “It is actually very much based on general Christian principles like forgiveness and redemption although couched in secular terms. Rather than punishment and isolation (which is what we do now) the approach is focused on teaching values, respect, responsibility, and repairing damage.”

This sort of “plagiarizing” scriptures is evident in public schools i’ve experienced with my grdaughter in seattle area schools. It’s rather horrifying. Remove Jesus with surgical precision, and call it a day.

imho, it borders on lying to intentionally hide the source. in the least, confusing and empty.

children deserve Truth.

Listen to yourself. Are you seriously arguing that Christian principles have no application outside of a church context?
If so, I think most people would disagree with you.

you’re being ludicrous.
in your own words you described what’s being done. you spelled it out. you even used the word, “couched.”
you may not like my words. that doesn’t make them false.

it seems you don’t like your own reality. i believe that’s a good thing.

[Josh]

The law’s job is to protect children, not to forgive perpetrators.

Our own Anabaptist churches sometimes get this wrong, and focus a lot more on forgiving perpetrators and completely fail to protect victims.

I noticed a lot of ink above worrying about the 15 year old males, but not much concern at all for terrified 9 year old girls. The simple fact is those 15 year olds are already on a path to prison by their own choices. Nobody forced them to beat up a defenceless young child.