Excessive violence in schools

[Josh]

A problem facing parents in America who send their children to public schools is that their children may be subjected to senseless violence; for example, this last week a 3rd grade girl was brutally beaten by multiple teenaged boys in a bus. Her 10 year old brother attempted to intervene, which earned him a beating too.

Please exercise discretion before viewing the video in the link below.

https://rivercitypost.org/9-year-old-gi ... orida-bus/

The local CBS affiliate is also reporting:

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/miami/news ... homestead/

The school’s response?

Miami-Dade County Public Schools released the following statement that reads as follows, “The safety and wellbeing of our students is of the utmost importance.

The school district goes to great lengths to promote values of restraint and respect, as well as using social media responsibly. We ask that parents reinforce those principles at home.”

After the beaten children’s parents went to the TV news and the news reported on it, the school district did decide to press charges and arrested the offenders, who were age 14 or older.

I think non-violence is important, but I’m also unwilling to stand idly by when children are being abused. I am also especially disturbed when there is racialised violence. Were these children targeted for violence because of their race? Should children of that race expect to be able to go to school without violence or should they accept being beaten just because of the colour of their skin?

[Josh]

The parents sought help before this happened; the New York Post reports:

She told the outlet that school administrators are overwhelmed by spiraling violence inside and around the school — and their response was to advise her to enroll her three children elsewhere.

The heartbroken mom noted her two older kids have also been bullied during their brief time at the school — and counselors and administrators have done nothing to address her complaints.

So the answer from the school seems to be “You aren’t welcome here”, go elsewhere, and when they didn’t, their children were savagely beaten.

[Ken]

Getting guns out of the hands of children would be a big first step. More than 6,000 children were killed by guns in 2022, many of them in schools.

You willing to support that?

As for the rest? This is happening in DeSantis country. Maybe he should stop his ridiculous "stop Woke Act" and stop wasting time censoring books in every classroom in the state, looking for CRT under every carpet, and tracking girl's menstrual cycles. And instead start dealing with real problems facing Florida like school violence and youth violence.

I don't know how he plans to make the case for getting nominated for the presidency if he can't manage his own state.

[Josh]

Getting guns out of the hands of children would be a big first step. More than 6,000 children were killed by guns in 2022, many of them in schools.

You willing to support that?

What I described above involved fists, not guns.

As for the rest? This is happening in DeSantis country. Maybe he should stop his ridiculous "stop Woke Act" and stop wasting time censoring books in every classroom in the state, looking for CRT under every carpet, and tracking girl's menstrual cycles. And instead start dealing with real problems facing Florida like school violence and youth violence.

I don't know how he plans to make the case for getting nominated for the presidency if he can't manage his own state.

Ken, what plan do you propose to reduce racialised violence like in the example above? And how politically tenable do you think it would be?

[Ken]

Getting guns out of the hands of children would be a big first step. More than 6,000 children were killed by guns in 2022, many of them in schools.

You willing to support that?

What I described above involved fists, not guns.

As for the rest? This is happening in DeSantis country. Maybe he should stop his ridiculous "stop Woke Act" and stop wasting time censoring books in every classroom in the state, looking for CRT under every carpet, and tracking girl's menstrual cycles. And instead start dealing with real problems facing Florida like school violence and youth violence.

I don't know how he plans to make the case for getting nominated for the presidency if he can't manage his own state.

Ken, what plan do you propose to reduce racialised violence like in the example above? And how politically tenable do you think it would be?

I'm not sure what makes is "racialized". Older bullies are beating up younger kids. That happens with kids of all races. Is there some reason not mentioned in the coverage of this incident to believe it was inspired due to racial hatred?

This is Dade County so it is a huge district. Without knowing anything about what programs they actually have in place, what they probably need is an escalating series of alternative disciplinary schools. Those kids should never be back into the regular classroom. At least not anytime soon. But instead should be put into some sort of highly regulated alternative disciplinary school setting where they can continue to get a rigorous education while learning how to be good citizens. Those were common in Texas, I don't know about Florida. We used to call them reform schools. Sure you can toss them into prison but all that will do is teach them how to become better criminals so when they get out at age 18 or earlier they will be more dangerous predators with no marketable skills.

All that costs a lot of money to do correctly and effectively, because those sorts of schools require a MUCH higher student teacher ratio. Maybe 5 to one instead of 25 to one. On the other hand, actual prison costs even more so it is probably more cost effective to institutionalize these kids into a disciplinary alternative school rather than lock them up in prison. It comes out of different budgets, education vs. corrections. But it is all tax dollars.

There should also be stricter school attendance requirements for kids like these. So that the parents don't just pull them out of the system to be "homeschooled" and then the kids just run feral with no supervision. Which I promise you often happens with troubled kids. Even though no actual homeschooling actually happens and what you really have is a feral 14 year old dropout with no supervision and up to no good.

I'm also not sure there is an increase of violence in schools relative to decades past. We are in a pandemic-related bubble of this sort of thing as kids lost 1-2 years of socialization that takes a long time to rebuild. But youth violence is actually very far down compared to say the 1990s. Social media and cell phones amplifies individual events far more than used to be the case when our only national news was the nightly news and newspapers. 20-30 years ago no one would have ever even heard of this incident. Probably not even in Dade County. But that doesn't mean there is actually more youth violence happening today than in the past.

Here are some actual stats on the topic: https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/publications/tren ... rrests.pdf

[Josh]

I’m a bit confused.

Why can’t schools simply decide a 14 year old boy isn’t going to beat a 9 year old girl to a pulp?

And, Ken, yes, this is racialised violence. If a 14 year old white boy beat a 9 year old black girl to a pulp, the school district refused to act, and the news media finally got attention in it… there would be WAY more attention and repercussions. But that’s an irrelevant statement, because that kind of violence simply is not happening in America.

[Ken]

I’m a bit confused.

Why can’t schools simply decide a 14 year old boy isn’t going to beat a 9 year old girl to a pulp?

Schools already decided that long ago. I promise you it is against the rules in every school in the country and also against the law. Now what?

What are you confused about? That some kids don't follow the rules? Astonishing I know.

And, Ken, yes, this is racialised violence. If a 14 year old white boy beat a 9 year old black girl to a pulp, the school district refused to act, and the news media finally got attention in it… there would be WAY more attention and repercussions. But that’s an irrelevant statement, because that kind of violence simply is not happening in America.

You still don't know that this was racially motived and not for some other reason. And yes, white kids also beat up black kids all the time. And white kids beat up white kids, and so forth. And if you actually think that white kids face more repercussions for bad behavior, and assaults either in school or outside of school you are completely naïve. Exactly the opposite is true. That subject has actually been studied to death.

Here was one such school bus example exactly parallel except with races reversed: https://pix11.com/news/white-students-c ... ments-say/

[Josh]

And the governor of NY got involved and directed it to be treated as a hate crime.

In the video, the assailants are all of the same race. The victims are also all of the same race. Ken, there is obviously a racial component to this.

My original question is exactly how parents should cope with this. It’s a serious problem if white or whites Hispanic (such as this case) pupils can’t go to school with people of another race without those people targeting them for violent beat downs. What solution do you propose?

[Ken]

And the governor of NY got involved and directed it to be treated as a hate crime.

In the video, the assailants are all of the same race. The victims are also all of the same race. Ken, there is obviously a racial component to this.

My original question is exactly how parents should cope with this. It’s a serious problem if white or whites Hispanic (such as this case) pupils can’t go to school with people of another race without those people targeting them for violent beat downs. What solution do you propose?

We are a population of 334 million people. How prevalent is it that kids are being beaten in school buses? Do you actually know? Taking one video on passed around on social media doesn’t actually make it a growing problem. It might be, but that isn’t evidence of it.

One might also say:

Every single day 16 more children die of gun violence in this country. What solution do you propose?
Every single day 5 children die of child abuse and neglect in this country. What solution do you propose?
Every single day two children die in traffic accidents and about 175 are injured (some of them Amish). What solution do you propose?
Every single night several million children go to bed hungry in the US. What solution do you propose?
Every single night about 2.5 million children go to bed without a home. What solution do you propose?

And one could even say….

Every single night there are hundreds of Amish and Mennonite children who go to bed each night fearful of being physically or sexually abused. What solution do you propose?

Is violence on school buses more prevalent and a bigger problem than any of these? I don’t know. Maybe it is. But one video from Miami showing one single incident certainly doesn’t make the case. If Miami is experiencing a rash of violence on it school buses then it needs to deal with it. They know how. There is no mystery. School security and school bus security is nothing new.

[Josh]

School security and school bus security is nothing new.

Of course it isn’t. At issue here is the Miami-Dade Public School administration explicitly told the parents involved they aren’t going to be secure and to go to another school.

You’ve ranted and raved before how “racist” Southerners set up private schools. But in this case, the public schools are explicitly telling families of the “wrong” race they need to go to another school. And no, this isn’t an isolated incident - this kind of violence has significantly increase in the past few years.

Generally speaking, I perceive your answer for any problems like this always boils down to:

- it’s the fault of guns
- more government spending needed
- it’s the fault of (white) racists
- it’s the fault of religious people
- it’s Trump’s fault
- electing more liberals would fix everything
- it’s the fault of owners of single family homes who don’t want to allow apartment buildings to be built next to them
- it’s the fault of people being allowed to drive private cars
- it’s the fault of not having enough immigrants

But in this case:

- The problem here is fists, not guns
- Miami public schools are well funded, to the tune of $7 billion, which includes an increase of 15% over last year including significant pay increases.
- Miami is run by a Democratic government. This isn’t a Republican government problem.
- People want to live in single family homes so they can escape violence like this.
- Families need cars so they can drive safely away from violence. It’s impossible to rely on public transportation, cycling, etc. in a violent, hostile environment. I would not allow my children to ride a bus if I know they will be targeted just because they are white or Hispanic or Asian, female, and vulnerable.
- Families need cars to be able to drive their children to a safe school. The school administration told them to go to another school.

I can provide plenty more anecdotes. This pattern repeats itself all over the country.