As they might say on “Prairie Home Companion,” “It was an interesting week in Education”

Several events, I believe, are all tied to just a few basic problems that we have in education.

1. Locally several of our middle school students have figured out, using the internet, how to make flame throwers and to then use them in school buses and in middle schools.

2. The teenage suicide rates attributed to bullying in school and on the internet continues to show that there are many children who are clearly quite cruel, and the internet has given them a new tool. Schools have denied any responsibility for this, and parents have not been mentioned as having any responsibility.

3. In Wake Forest, North Carolina school officials have had to abandon busing for racial balance as they cannot maintain order on school buses. Wake Forest County is one most educated counties in North Carolina!

4. Watching my two 5 year old granddaughters, who both have very engaged parents, behavior demonstrated that youngster’s will, if left to their own devices, become quite cruel, and if left unsupervised with proper tools would cause major body damage to each other.

What I believe I have learned from this is that kids need supervision if they are to behave in what used to be thought of as acceptable behavior. In addition the options to acquire more inappropriate behaviors are infinitely better than in the past.

The results of this are readily seen in our newspapers and our courts where we seem to have decided that any real enforcement of our laws, in the case of our children, is just “Too harsh.” The kids caught with flamethrowers were “required” to attend a safety program offered by the Fire Department! It was not clear that they had to maintain a straight face while attending this. After attending this they were back in school where they could tell their friends about how little this might affect their lives.

As the state law allows for expulsions in the case of either danger to the pupil, or danger to others, I might suggest a more lifestyle altering punishment. Why not with-hold their attendance until they have mastered the chemistry and physics of combustion to the level required of a firefighter? Would this be some hard work? Probably so, would this keep them out of the classroom for an extended time, probably so. Would they be better students upon their return if they had to pass the firefighter’s exam on these topics? I think so. Would the rest of the students in the middle schools be safer and more understanding of the consequences of bad behavior? You betcha!

What are the solutions to this erosion of behaviors? Let’s start with schools. Schools should be less tolerant of bad behavior instead of being “More compassionate.” I think so. Bad behavior simply should not be tolerated in schools. Would this require some “Professional Training” of school teachers who have, in recent years, been asked to be “tolerant” of kids who behave poorly? This training could be quite short. “Simply we will not tolerate bad behavior and will expel those who exhibit it.” Should you, as a teacher, be observed tolerating this behavior it will become part of your performance evaluation. “Compassion” for this based upon the external forces affecting the child are not to be reasons for moderation!

The other part of this equation is the adults that are involved with children when they are not in school. We have become a society that doesn’t place the responsibility for the behavior upon the parents! What would happen if the parents of these kids who are flame throwers, behave badly on buses, tolerate their children’s inappropriate behavior on the internet be held responsible for their children’s actions? Who is getting these kids the computers and paying the internet charges? Why aren’t these parents being held responsible for this? If they were, I am sure that they would be supervising the use of their children’s computers much more closely.

The question remains. Who is responsible for the upbringing of our children? Currently I believe the answer is “Nobody!” If this is the case the behavior of jungle animals comes to mind.