Parenting 101
 

Lemme just get this straight... you say "You will act civilized and have manners or I will take you outside and beat the shit out of you!!" and then the kid behaves? What happens when the kid gets bigger than you? They get to teach you some manners?

That's his point.

One man's hell is another's heaven.

Some people don't think to put themselves in the shoes of others. Think of the humiliation and pain he caused this girl...when we speak of corporal punishment here, I think it's more along the lines of humiliation than infliction of pain (at least that's what I'M referring to). Pain is nothing, really...it passes. But humiliation is something different. Teenagers hate to be embarrassed, and a paddling, whether someone sees it or not, is embarrassing. It teaches a person how it feels to be on the receiving end, which is what this kid needs to learn.

Hell, my grandparents, my mom, my older relatives, got taken to the woodshed when they needed it. Among other things, it taught them respect for authority and rules.

There isn't anything wrong with corporal punishment. I'm not advocating abuse. I'm advocating teaching them how it feels in order to give them a little respect for how the person on the receiving end of THEIR behavior feels.


Sidhe

Public School Administrators are in a tough spot here. We live in a lawsuit happy society in which kids are guaranteed a free appropriate public education. If they have to send the kid to another setting, they have to pay a premium to get them placed. When they choose to do that, they can end up in litigation.

I think the core of the problem is the compulsory nature of public education and possibly the lack of choice. I don't buy the view that public education is there to keep kids off the street where they could get in trouble. Those kids are making schools dangerous for the other kids who are forced to be there and as an outcome ruining educational opportunity. Many parents want better discipline, maybe we should let them choose it. Parents need to be able to buy into a schools system to make it work. Whether it's International Baccalaureate, Catholic Schools, Waldorf Schools, or another alternative parents need to believe in the system or it will not work.

Teaching Interrupted

Re: Parenting 101
 

Ideally, you should teach kids by example, and this goes back on the parents. If the kids haven't been taught to be civilized by time they reach Jr. High, really about all you can do is call rank on them to preserve order in the classroom. When I was a librarian at Fort Lewis College, the football coach got the bright idea that the guys on the football team be required to spend one night a week at the library studying to keep their grades up. I guess brilliant thinking like that was what prevented him from ever becoming a regular faculty member. The football team would come in together as a group, pass around a bottle of Jim Beam among themselves and generally be as disruptive as possible, distracting the other kids who really were there to get some studying done. It was my ill luck to be librarian in charge on Thursday nights - the nights the team came in to "study." I gave them two warnings and then I called up the coach and let him have it. He came over to the library, pulled the team members aside in a seperate room and let THEM have it, up one side and down the other; telling them he didn't care if he had to scrub every single one of them from the team and play third string for the rest of the year. After that, all I had to do was say the magic word "coach," and butter wouldn't melt in those boys' mouths for the rest of the night.

In our high school, all of the coaches were teachers. If you didn't pass their classes, you didn't play. Period.

Of course, our school was unique in that it placed academics OVER sports.


Sidhe

Your school WAS unique. It infuriates me how we worship sports at the cost of learning. While coaches may be on the regular teaching staff in high schools, they generally are not in colleges and universities. The coaching department or sports department is just that and nothing else. Players are coddled thru college just so the school team can win games. At the end of the exercise the kids on the team may or may not end up with a diploma in a field they know nothing about and a bunch of sports related injuries that will haunt them the rest of their lives. I think the system really takes advantage of the athletes it uses.

Update


Unfortunately, they don't say how the kid was disciplined. Inquiring minds want to know. If they're not willing to say what they did, then how do we know they really did ANYTHING?



And yes, I know how the sports thing goes. I've known football players who were barely literate, yet were passed/graduated. Like they're gonna make the majors....riiiiiiight. It's just setting them up for a fall, and what are they going to have to fall back on? Probably, "You want fries with that?"


Sidhe

You got it! Supersize me, please. On this one I am in complete agreement with you, Sid! (will miracles never cease?;) )

Yeah, I felt the same way the first time I agreed with Radar....*grins*

Don't forget College Sports is business, big business. The athletes are employees of that business. Like most businesses, they don't give a shit what happens to ex-employees.:(

Absolutely.

Oh, well, yeah, cept for the part where the "employees" don't get paid. (Yeah, yeah, I know, they receive a college education for their trouble.)

Some do.;)

As an aside, and off the subject for a minute, am I the only one in the world who thinks that professional sports players shouldn't get paid millions for PLAYING a GAME? That just irks me. They PLAY for a living.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I realize that it's something people want, so they pay $30 a ticket to see it, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't change the irk factor for me.

Personally, I get just as much enjoyment out of seeing kids play as I do seeing professionals play. Baseball's baseball...football's football....doesn't much matter to me who's hitting or kicking the ball.

Must be a dick thing.....


(now back to our regularly scheduled thread)

Oh yeah? Ever hear of athletic scholarships? These often cover room and board with something left over as well. Sounds like pay to me.