A couple of articles from The Federalist Daily Briefing that are disturbing. Probably nothing new for those in law enforcement. The first article is more substantive.
What's Behind The Massive Spike in Violence Inside Public Schools Nationwide
Dallas Students Riot Amid Rising Violence in Public Schools Nationwide
It's possible these articles are hyperbolic and my kids being 46 y/o I'm a bit out of touch, but I'd be very interested in additional context.
My partner is a SPED teacher in a rough, large, low income high school east of Austin. She has seen a huge spike in violence in the school, mostly student on student but some staff and faculty have been targeted. She is also seeing an unprecedented wave of faculty retirements and just plain quitting mostly driven by this. She says this is the first time ever she has felt unsafe at work.
Ken
BBI: ...”you better not forget the safe word because shit's about to get weird”...
revchuck38: ...”mo' ammo is mo' betta' unless you're swimming or on fire.”
My Mom is a retired career teacher and my Sister has been a teacher for ~9 years or so. I talked to them about this exact thing not all that long ago.
My Mom retired 4 years ago, and she believes the lack of socialization has exacerbated a completely bogged down bureaucratic system for meaningful punishment. Any attempt to make the system 'better' simply adds more bureaucracy and pushes for 'everyone's punished or nobody's punished' sorts of solutions. The more egregious the offense, the more difficult it becomes to actually punish. At the school she retired from, it was easy to address the small infractions on the spot, but larger ones, especially criminal ones like theft or sexual harassment, became almost impossible to address at the school itself.
My Sister has a somewhat different take on it - she believes all these kids watched the world riot and go violently crazy on TV, even despite COVID lockdowns, and watched as TV talking heads and news media celebrated them and defended their actions as righteous. So now a whole shitload of kids in the 11-17y/o age group all think the world only listens and respects you if you immediately resort to violence, preferably as a large group to 'make a statement' or 'protest'. They largely can't differentiate between an organized and truly peaceful demonstration and a violent looting riot with some sign-holders. They're one and the same.
Mix that in with the lockdown effects and lack of socialization, and some kids' parents filling their heads with extremist views all through lockdown, and that only accelerates the whole problem.
I believe it's a mix of all these factors.
Kids watch TV/Youtube from 2016-2020 and it's about 80% poisonously biased against the elected President, and 20% sycophantically cheering on the elected President. Dispassionate, facts-only balanced discourse is basically nowhere to be found. An underlying base narrative of 'we don't like this guy but he's our President and we hope he does well and we still love our country' is 100% absent from basically any media product you can find for 4 years. Respect for the country, civics, law, etc. is massively undermined and openly criticized daily.
Kids see rioting and serious violence openly supported by the media almost routinely; so long as that violence is collective and a group effort for the 'right' reasons. The rule of law is either racist, wrong, or doesn't apply to you so long as you believe XYZ.
Kids get locked down in early 2020 and spend even more time in front of the screen. All the flapping and insanity about the election, the new President, Portland, etc goes full circle and the 80/20 coverage balance flips, and fact-based discourse remains basically impossible to find from major media organizations. Everything is about appealing to your values and generating outrage - not providing information or dispassionate/balanced/equitable 'middle ground' on issues.
Kids get back into school, only to be re-inserted into an over-worked, under-staffed, profoundly bureaucratic education system that is newly and hotly politicized with things like face mask requirements, and FBI investigations of parents that did nothing more serious than get angry at school boards. Politics and COVID are daily conversations that derail the educational process.
Meanwhile, serious offenses committed by students are easy to get away with because it takes so much work to process. The bureaucracy quite literally prevents effective punishment, while small offenses are easily dealt with on the spot. Kids conclude the schools' rules are bullshit and unjust because the enforcement is unbalanced, ineffective, and unjust, so they address that in the same way as they've watched it addressed and cheered on by TV anchors for the past 4 years - by taking it into their own hands and acting like animals.
The result is what we're seeing today. What's the fix? Starts with less screen time and better parenting, is made massively better by a media machine aimed at balance and truth instead of inflammatory toxicity and ad revenue, and ends with empowering school staff and administrators to make swift and effective on-the-spot decisions for punishment.
Sadly, we might as well wish for a Regiment of unicorn cavalry at this point.
I agree with everything in that excellent post. Pretty much aligns with what I see on campus, minus the riots, thankfully.Originally Posted by JRB
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
Part of the problem is the lack of consequences for juveniles in the criminal justice system. There is a nationwide move to keep kids out of jail. But the problem is they know this and know that they’re not going to get locked up for anything.Are juvenile detention facility in our county has 36 beds, we used to have a hard time getting juveniles locked up because they didn't have any beds available. Now we still can’t get kids locked up but it is not because of lack of bed space. Most of the time our juvenile detention facility only has two or three kids in the entire facility. So the Conversation we have had with lots of parents is “we will do a report and send the charges to the court, but we can’t take them to jail”. And “oh sorry” single mom whose 15 year old son just beat you up “we can’t take him to jail either better go in your bedroom and lock the door and call 911 if he gets violent again.”
Formerly known as xpd54.
The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions or policies of my employer.
www.gunsnobbery.wordpress.com
Its a problem indicative of society in general and what we've seen over the last few years with riots when certain groups don't get their way or just to get their way. There is NO ACCOUNTABILITY.
My wife worked in public schools for 17 years. The last 7 or so in an early childhood setting, 2-4 year olds. Essentially a county/state run and funded preschool in a rural and high needs low income area in the meth area.
She'd have kids in this age group flipping her off, turning over tables and chairs, and telling her "F you b$%$&". They didn't pickup this language and behavior from Paw Patrol but at home.
The consequences for their behavior were typically a trip to the principal's office not for punishment but to color. I.e. no consequence.
If you grow up feeling entitled, with no consequences for socially unacceptable behavior, and with your reputation or image as your only asset of value, you get what you get.
Any form of physical discipline at school is far beyond the pale. Simple, non-physical, behavioral discipline is absent. "Work hard. Be nice." has been thrown out as being actually racist. Physical violence that would land a person in jail if it occurred outside the school setting is either ignored or the perpetrators are themselves swaddled and coddled. If the necessary attributes for success are not firmly inculcated at home, there are no remaining mechanisms for their introduction at school.
The ones who don't want to learn, won't, whether an environment is nice or mean. The ones who do want to learn are the ones who are harmed by the inmates running the asylum. The gap in performance between whatever social-economic-ethnic-bean-counting of people grows.
Per the PF Code of Conduct, I have a commercial interest in the StreakTM product as sold by Ammo, Inc.
Maby im way off here. But the first thing that came to mind is the shrinking middle class. It seems like a greater percentage of the population is falling near and below the poverty level than ever before. More poor people tends to mean more crime and just shitty behavior in general. Just from my experience, there are two high schools in the area I grew up in. One very expensive private school and one public. Guess what school had more issues with violence? Its obviously not THE answer to the question but I think its definitely a contributing factor.
Come, mother, come! For terror is thy name, death is in thy breath, and every shaking step destroys a world for e'er. Thou 'time', the all-destroyer! Come, O mother, come!
I graduated high school in 1993. Back then in my (first) high school we had at least two if not three separate incidents all in the same year (all involving students I should say). I think two of them resulted in deaths, but the first two were both off campus. The third one, some kid shot another kid right in the middle of campus. Naturally that third one was the ONLY one that made the news.
I recall complaining about the shootings/stabbings/other violence only to be told to shut up and quit making excuses not to go to school. In one incident my best friend at the time intervened when some others were bullying a much smaller kid. He stopped them, but a few days later he got over 130 stitches in the back of his head over it. The guy he stopped brought a piece of metal pipe to school and jumped him in the hall with a few friends. I just happened to not be at school that day, but when and where it happened was exactly where we used to walk to class together after lunch. I would have been right in the middle of it had I been in school that day.
It wasn't until it was in two inch tall front page print that my complaints were taken seriously. Eventually I got pulled out of that school and sent to live with some very close family friends in another state where such problems did not exist. I was 'the new kid' during my senior year of high school and to be honest I wish I had moved well before that.
I really do have very strong opinions about this topic in general. I don't have any kids but I still hate public education with a passion.
There are a lot of factors leading up to violence and it happens for a variety of reasons. One kid that was killed during that school year was the son of a wealthy doctor in my town. It can happen to anyone. He wasn't some innocent victim either. No one is immune.
Some of it is gang related, other is related to current culture, and a lot of it is related to mental health. We are seeing a lot of the latter these days. The ability to get online and broadcast yourself (in all kinds of circumstances) creates another dimension to all of this. Basically there isn't one way to define every incident. They happen for different reasons.
I could probably write a book about this stuff but I will leave it there for now.
Yep, unlimited access to devices and social media has significantly altered they way adolescents interact. It results in superficial relationships and lack of effective coping mechanisms.
Since more and more they rarely have to practice making actual friends, the relationships they do have are meaningless and they know it. They know their peers don’t actually care about them and that is damaging at that age because we naturally seek approval from peers at that time. The device use also hinders effective coping mechanisms and when faced with significant stress, they do what they know how and what feels good temporarily, more screen time. They can’t properly deal and we get what we are seeing now. All this gets exacerbated as we are embark on a world where your online persona is becoming more valuable than your life in reality and they’re being actively funneled in that direction as tech giants seize more and more control of daily life.
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