In the brilliant “Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” the Prefect (Jonathan Pryce) of a city under siege by the Turks has brought before him a valiant, heroic soldier (Sting) who singlehandedly took out several Turkish cannons. The Prefect promptly has the stunned soldier executed, contending that his heroism served as a bad example for lesser soldiers who would be incapable of duplicating his feats.
And you laugh at the satirical content of the notion…until you read the following from the preferred news publication of peterdavid.net, “The Week”:
“A California sixth grader was suspended from school for performing cartwheels and handstands in the schoolyard. Eleven-year-old Deirdre Faegre ‘created an unsafe situation for herself and others,’ said principal Denise Patton. She explained that other, less skilled kids might try to imitate Faegre and get hurt. In that case, Faegre said, the school should also ban basketball.”
Suddenly it’s not as funny anymore.
PAD
• 
PAD, how can it possibly be “all or nothing”? For starters, I don’t think you can sue for injuries that occur during a game unless some kind of negligence can be shown (sending a kid out with a cracked helmet, that sort of thing.) I believe that the parents have to sign waivers for atheletes to that effect.
Secondly, can you IMAGINE what would happen if we just “let kids be kids”??? Rollerblades in the hall, skateboard jumps off the roof (which happens anyway but on the weekends when we aren’t there. I’ve seen the videos), backyard wrestling with thumbtacks and neon tubes. It would be like Rollerball.
And yes, that WOULD be very very cool. But…
“PAD, how can it possibly be “all or nothing”? For starters, I don’t think you can sue for injuries that occur during a game unless some kind of negligence can be shown (sending a kid out with a cracked helmet, that sort of thing.) I believe that the parents have to sign waivers for atheletes to that effect.”
First of all, you can sue for anything. A man sued the planet Mars because he said the Martians were interfering with his dreams. So any sentence that contains “I don’t think you can sue” is pretty much wrong. Second, I wasn’t referring to organized sports. I was talking about kids out on the school blacktop during recess playing pick-up basketball…which is what I kind of figured the father and kid were referring to. Should that be stopped?
“Secondly, can you IMAGINE what would happen if we just “let kids be kids”??? Rollerblades in the hall, skateboard jumps off the roof (which happens anyway but on the weekends when we aren’t there. I’ve seen the videos), backyard wrestling with thumbtacks and neon tubes. It would be like Rollerball.”
And that would have some vague relevance to what I was saying if you weren’t taking my simple opinion that kids’ activities shouldn’t be interfered with, especially if they’re not hurting anyone, and going for the good old reducto ad absurdum. Just about every school I’ve seen in the past years has big honkin’ signs up that say “NO SKATE BOARDING. NO ROLLER BLADING.”
As long as specific rules are posted and everyone knows them going in, that’s fine. If this kid had been busted for roller blading, it wouldn’t even have made the local news. What I take issue with is making the rules up as they go. When you do that, then you run into exactly this kind of arbitrary decision making.
Obviously a school doesn’t need to spell out EVERYthing in advance. I doubt there’s any rules against, say, climbing out a window and walking on a ledge. But any reasonable person would say a child seen doing that should be stopped, even if he’s one of the Flying Wallendas (actually considering their track record, especially then.) But this, to my mind, was an unreasonable application of arbitrary decision making.
PAD
In the real world they will be fired and/or have the living snot beaten out of them.
You’re kidding, right?
Try telling the workers at companies like Enron that those who were lying, stealing, and cheating were losing their jobs.
They weren’t.
Until they got caught.
We live in a society that tells you not to do those things, and then, once you get into the Real World, you have to do those things.
So, no, I don’t think we do a good job at all of preparing our kids for Life After Schooling.
I took a course in high school that was college prep – a lit/history course. But, we couldn’t use cliff notes; we’d get in trouble.
So much for preparing for the college way of life. 😉
PAD,
Sorry if I reductoed all the way to ad absurdum. I tok the statement “any manner of physical activity on the premises” at face value.
And while you are absolutely correct that anyone can sue for anything at any time, it is also true that the vast majority of idiot lawsuits go nowhere. On the other hand if (to take the situation in question to a possible extreme)little Deirdre Faegre does a cartwheel into someone’s face and breaks something, they have a case (not a case I agree with–šhìŧ happens–but a case. I doubt that the guy you mentioned collected anything from Mars).
Again, let me be clear–if they just saw this kid doing cartwheels and suspended her it was a ridiculous abuse of power. If, on the other hand, a teacher made the judgement that things were getting out of hand and told the kid to knock it off and she kept right on doing it, secure in the knowledge that mommy and daddy would sue…well, we are making a monster.
Craig says:
“You’re kidding, right?
Try telling the workers at companies like Enron that those who were lying, stealing, and cheating were losing their jobs.
They weren’t.
Until they got caught.
We live in a society that tells you not to do those things, and then, once you get into the Real World, you have to do those things.”
Well, the “until they got caught” pretty much invalidates the “they weren’t” don’t you think?
But even if you take the cynical view that most crooks DON’T get caught, it is a breathtaking leap to say that “you have to do those things.” (those things being lying, cheating, stealing.)
I’m going to guess that you exclude yourself from the list of people who have to behave unethically to get by. My own experience is that people are vastly more often good than not.
Peter David wrote:
> First of all, you can sue for anything. A man
> sued the planet Mars because he said the
> Martians were interfering with his dreams.
Please forgive me for sounding dense, but I have to ask if this is metaphorical, or you’re citing something which actually happened?
If this was a real case, I wonder how the plaintiff served the defendant?, he asked with his tongue in his cheek.
I’m going to guess that you exclude yourself from the list of people who have to behave unethically to get by. My own experience is that people are vastly more often good than not.
My point was that schooling does NOT prepare you for life and what you can expect.
“My point was that schooling does NOT prepare you for life and what you can expect.”
On that we can agree.
A particular example I remember concerns a college football movie that was made in the 90’s (I don’t remember it’s name because I never watched it). During the previews, there was a scene where some of the players were lying in the middle of the road on the lane division line, at night, as cars sped by them; now some real life kids got seriously hurt doing the same thing and blamed the movie producers. I don’t remember how exactly the issue resolved itself in the end, but I do remember reading that, because of this, that scene was cut from the final print of the movie.
That would be THE PROGRAM.
When my friends and I heard about this tragedy we debated about it and come to the only conclusion possible:
Natural selection in action.
“Please forgive me for sounding dense, but I have to ask if this is metaphorical, or you’re citing something which actually happened?”
Absolutely 100% happened.
During my college days, I earned a living by working several different jobs at New York University law school. And I wound up reading a LOT of stuff about various strange cases. And what I remember was that there was this guy who, acting as his own lawyer, filed suit against the inhabitants of the planet Mars.
The judge listened to the guy’s assertion that the Martians were invading his dreams. And the judge calmly issued a restraining order against the planet Mars, enjoining them from coming anywhere near the guy’s brain. The plaintiff, clutching the “injunction” in his hand–the legal equivalent of a placebo–thank the judge profusely and left satisfied.
PAD
Craig,
I said:
“Michael Barone has a new book out, titled “Hard America, Soft America” where he puts schools in the soft category and warns that they leave young adults unprepared for the hard world awaiting them in the workplace.”
You said:
“So we should teach our kids to lie, cheat and steal. That will definitely prepare them for corporate America.
Sounds like a plan:)”
You know, seeing as how most people do not work for corporate America (and certainly not at the upper levels) and seeing as how I did not refer to corporate America in my post and seeing as how most of the people I know who do work in corporate America – gasp! – do not lie cheat and steal and seeing as how the topic of this thread is how we are as a nation seemingly determined to penalize excellence, which you did NOT address, this is simply you going on another rant to suit your worldview no matte what the topic.
Of course, that’s par for the course anymore.
Everyone who all of a sudden thinks it’s all that significant whether the girl was abusng/disobeying rules in this particular case are missing the point. It is the principal’s WORDS that are CHILLING.
The New York Times, coincidentally, had a story in last Sunday’s edition that was obviously nspired by “The Incredibles” titled “When Every Child Is Good Enough”.
Among the interesting tidbits:
“Many parents believe that their children, mostly in elite schools, are being pushed too hard in a hypercompetitivr atmosphere. But other parents are complaining about a decline in programs for gifted children, leaving students to languish in untracked classrooms. Some critics of education believe that boys especially are languishing in SCHOOLS THAT EMPHASIZE COOPERATION INSTEAD OF COMPETITION. No Child Left Behind, indeed.”
“But the basic issue is the same one raised four decades ago by Kurt Vonnegut in “Harrison Bergeron”, a short story set in the America of 2081, about a 14-year-old genus and star athlete. TO KEEP OTHERS FROM FEELING INFERIOR, the Handicapper general weighs him down with 300-pound weights and makes him wear earphones that blast noise, so he cannot take “unfair advantage” of his brain.
That’s hardly the America of 2004, but TODAY’S CHILDREN DO GROW UP WITH SOCCER LEAGUES AND SPELLING BEES WHERE EVERYONE GETS A PRIZE. On some playgrounds, dodge ball is deemed too traumatic to the dodging impaired. SOME PARENTS CONSIDER MUSICAL CHAIRS DANGEROUSLY EXCLUSIONARY.”
“Children are constantly feted for accomplishments that used to be routine.”
“Fans of competition complain that it’s been de-emphasized for most students. SOME SCHOOLS HAVE DROPPED HONOR ROLLS AND CLASS RANKINGS, and the old practice of routinely segregating smart students in separate tracks has given way to the heterogeneous “inclusion classroom”.
“Competition has long been out of fashion in education schools, as indicated in a 1997 survey of 900 of their professors by Public Agenda, a nonprofit public opinion research group. Only a third of the professors considered rewards like honor rolls to be valuable incentives for learning, while nearly two-thirds said schools should avoid competition.”
“To some critics, that cooperative philosophy is one reason why so many characters like Dash are bored at school. ‘Professors of education think you can improve society by making people less competitive,’ said Christina Hoff Sommers, author of “The War Against Boys” and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise institute. “But males are wired for competition, and if you take it away there’s little nterest to them in school.”
“The movie never quite resolves the issue. In the end, Dash is allowed to race but is coached not to get too far ahead of the pack. The writer and director, Brad Bird, offered a less ambiguous answer in an interview. ‘WRONG-HEADED liberalism seeks to give trophies to everyone just for existing, he said. ‘It seems to render achievement meaningless. THAT’S A WEIRD GOAL.”
>Or, as Crow T. Robot says: “What’s the point of a helmet in skydiving? In case you land on your head?”
Makes perfect sense if, as I was, you’re trained to do a sort of ‘tuck and roll’ as you hit to minimize the force of landing.
>My boss, who happened to be sitting next to me at the time, said “that looked great, don’t do it again”.
Must have been related to one idiot I worked for who was upset when she saw me teaching myself WORDPERFECT (using its built-in tutorial) one of the brand new personal computers we’d just got in the office (16 years ago) during a slack time when there wasn’t much else to do. “That’s not what we’re paying you for.” You’d think a boss would LOVE to see staff learning new tricks on their own initiative whereby they can become more productive, but, no …
> most of the people I know who do work in corporate America – gasp! – do not lie cheat and steal
Ask any personel manager about the percentage of people who either lie outright, or at least seriously misrepresent the fact in their resumes in order to get a leg up in the competition for those scarce jobs. Especially those jobs where the firm has artificially boosted the requirements for applicants.
A California sixth grader was suspended from school for performing cartwheels and handstands in the schoolyard.
The problem with schools today is a lack of the ability to properly discipline the students. She was told over and over again not to perform the cartwheels in areas where students walk, and ignored the requests even after the parents were involved. The school did the only thing they could do, which was suspend her.
This brings up the question of whether or not schools should be allowed to discipline children in other ways, such as spankings. I think that if spankings were still performed in schools, that there wouldn’t be a lot of the problems that schools now face. Of course it wouldn’t solve all of the problems, but it would be a deterrant to some.
Novafan (Bill’s personal pest)
As I clicked the Comments link, I said to myself, “I wonder how many posts before someone brings up Harrison Bergeron?” Myself bet five bucks on 2; I took the bet, thinking he was being overly optimistic. But nope, second reply and there’s Harrison.
You have a well-read readership, PAD. Can I borrow five bucks?
– Z
My personal pest says:
“This brings up the question of whether or not schools should be allowed to discipline children in other ways, such as spankings. I think that if spankings were still performed in schools, that there wouldn’t be a lot of the problems that schools now face. Of course it wouldn’t solve all of the problems, but it would be a deterrant to some.”
There are a few problems here–1. I don’t know that all teachers can be trusted with the responsibility of belting kids. Given the stress they are under what happens if one snaps and just gets medieval on some kid’s ášš? 2- It’s just a matter of time before some parent sues. 3- You know that some parent who is beating the puss out of his kid will blame the teacher and the poor kid will probably back him up 3- It probably doesn’t work, unless you have really really tough nuns doling out the punishment, the kind of nun who tried to escape INTO East Germany 4- At the high school level at least, most of the kids could take me. Yes, even the girls.
So this is one teacher who wants to pass on the whole corporal punishment offer. Thanks but no thanks.
And how do I get a personal pest but not, say, a personal groupie or raker of leaves, something I could really use?
Of course, that’s par for the course anymore.
So, in your personal Crusade for… what was it exactly are you bìŧçhìņg about now?… you couldn’t see a joke when it walked up to you and smacked you in the face.
Either that or you don’t know what a smiley is – you know, one of those 🙂 things that I put in my post.
Bill said And how do I get a personal pest but not, say, a personal groupie or raker of leaves, something I could really use?
LOL. I hope you know that I’m just messing with you. :0)
LOL. I hope you know that I’m just messing with you. :0)
Yeah, yeah, we cool. I just bought Les Yeux Sans Visage on DVD so I’m pretty much in love with all of mankind right now.
Bill said So this is one teacher who wants to pass on the whole corporal punishment offer. Thanks but no thanks.
I should clarify. I think Principals should be the one’s to give spankings, if any are given. This would make a visit to the Principals office more scary to kids than a joke as it currently is.
Novafan
At about age 9 or 10 I once did something bad at school (I have no idea now what it was) and received some corporal punishment in the form of being spanked with a shoe of some sort (The Slipper, it was called). My main feeling afterwards was “is that it?” The actual punishment was brief and not very painful. The worst part about it was the embarassment of being punished at all. Other than that I considered I would rather have this than some of the more tedious punishments like detention or writing lines. They went on for ages…
“This brings up the question of whether or not schools should be allowed to discipline children in other ways, such as spankings. I think that if spankings were still performed in schools, that there wouldn’t be a lot of the problems that schools now face. Of course it wouldn’t solve all of the problems, but it would be a deterrant to some.”
Good idea, but these kids are too young to appreciate the consequences of such a serious punishment. Tell you what, I’m going to volunteer to institute this new form of discipline where I think it will do the most good in American education: College co-eds.
This whole thread made my head hurt. This is what happens when you start down a bad road and try to make it better with patchwork solutions.
I’m sure this will fan the flames, but….this is why people want school choice. Why the public school system should not have a monopoly on education or, yet, not exist at all.
This girl apparently is good at cartwheels. Really good. The principal’s problem seems to be that if other students emulate her without the skills, they’ll get hurt. The folks in the thread who compare this to the football or basketball teams have it dead on. Why should any student, possessed of skills, be discouraged or punished for displaying them when they don’t hurt anybody??
I figured this one out years ago when I was a good student academically, but not athletically. The trophies on display in the halls went to the strong kids, not the smart ones. They got sent home on awards night with a pat on the back and a kick in the ášš cause the durable award went to the locker room bully. Our lesson: “yeah, yeah, report cards are just spiffy, but better run that gridiron like a champ.”
Now, this circumstance shows us the reverse. If this girl had, say a talent for designing guns. I mean of course, on paper, drawing blueprints, that sort of thing. Anybody want to bet she’d still be in a sling with Mr. Principal? What if another child built one of her designs? What if she did? The school can’t be endorsing this type of violent creation…heavens, no.
In all three examples, as well as some others posted to the thread, creativity, creation and achievment, the things our schools are by their very mission desgined to instill, are verboten by an arbitrary standard handed down by the bias of one or a few administrators. Not a fan of handsprings? Call them dangerous and punish them, while endorsing hockey. Don’t like hockey, but love the balance beam….by all means scratch the hockey games. This bias can be applied to more cerebral pastimes , of course.
The main problem here is while if it was my backyard or yours, or ABC Inc.’s school, we’d simply say “well, they set the rules. Stop the backflips.” But, see, this is the State. If we don’t like what a private group does, we pack our bags and head for the one we do like, or like better, but not with the state. In this case, public schools. The principal pulls a stunt like telling a student to curb her natural abilities, we get big conflict, like we got.
I haven’t forgotten about you folks who said “well, the girl wasn’t punished for backflips, she was punished cause she wouldn’t listen to the teacher.” What’s next? telling the sighted kids to wear blindfolds because of the visually-impared student? At a certain point, one fellow was right in the thread, officals lose all their authority when their rules display obvious bias, in this case, literally, a child could spot it.
What’s that you say? The law does this to all of us at one point or another? We all have to put up with nonsensical rules, like the girl should have, or we go to the slammer? True, but as one can see, our prison population us way way up, and our society is increasingly polarized on this issue of when its a good idea to ban behaviors which affect little outside of ourselves, and which in turn, frequently cause ourselves to learn the best new ways to do things.
In short, there’s no moral high ground to stand on with the story of the girl’s suspension. Students should listen to teachers, and teachers should not be so shortsighted as to stifle student talents. Barring a utopia, it’d be nice if this girl could easily have said “Mr. Principal, if you don’t like me using my natural ability to do handsrpings in school, that’s okay, my parents and I will start transferring me to a new school tonight, but Mr. Prinicpal, if you do this to too many students who utilize their talents in ways you don’t like, you may need to find yourself a new job.”
Kevin Ryan
Oryan makes some great points. To me, school DISCIPLINE is a separate matter. What frightens me is the growing MINDSET that kids are made of glass, that lauding meritorious achievements might make other kids “feel bad”, not realizing that they may have a special gift that will make them “feel good”, which will be repressed as well.
This is a sad and scary way to think, I think.
From gymnast’s view
Re “Cartwheel compromise best,’ (Your View, Nov. 21):
The reason I refused to stop (doing cartwheels) was because I was not given a designated area even though my parents had asked for it. Also, the school never made it an issue at the beginning of the year. There are many sports out there and you can get hurt by playing all of them, but they did not allow my sport.
My dad helped me because there are many people in the past who made great changes such as Luther and Galileo and Rosa Parks that stood up to stubborn unfairness. If you do not go against something that is wrong how do you expect to fix your problems?
It is a good thing my dad will home-school me because education these days is not as good as it should be. I will not miss my friends because we have one another’s phone numbers and we can see each other any time. Also my dad says that anyone not using the schools should not have to pay for them.
Deirdre Faegre
West Covina
When I was in school, all those short years ago, as I remember it, especially at lunch, the ones who were supposed to be in charge of us stood at the front of the cafeteria, usually facing away from those they were meant to supervise. Granted, if the girl wasn’t supposed to exert herself in this manner, and it hadn’t been the first time, how long had this been going on before all this took place?
Also, as far as the glassification of the kidfolk of America, my 3 year old keeps freaking out his preschool teacher because, (GASP) he throws himself around and jumps and runs and play-fights! And our downstairs neighbor throws a big fat hissy if my 40-pound kid walks from his bedroom to our living room because it (shudder) gives her stress! The kids ain’t the only ones that are getting overprotected.
Posted by Jerome Maida
“But the basic issue is the same one raised four decades ago by Kurt Vonnegut in “Harrison Bergeron”, a short story set in the America of 2081, about a 14-year-old genus and star athlete. TO KEEP OTHERS FROM FEELING INFERIOR, the Handicapper general weighs him down with 300-pound weights and makes him wear earphones that blast noise, so he cannot take “unfair advantage” of his brain.
*******
Another story that explores the same themes as “Harrison Bergeron” but concentrates more on how such a society like Bergeron’s can come into being is C.S, Lewis’s short story “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”, the ‘sequel’ to his novella “The Screwtape Letters” (both stories star the demon Screwtape and are set in Hëll but otherwise they are seperate stories. Both are published under the titile ‘The Screwtape Letters’). Lewis approaches the topic from the opposite direction but comes to some of the same conclusions as Vonnegut does about what a society like that does to people’s lives and souls. Forget the fact that this book can be found in the Religious Books section of the bookstore; ‘Toast’ is a good companion piece to ‘Bergeron’.
Chris
A little late for this thread, but I just came across this article and couldn’t help but remember this discussion.