My son got detention for next week for....

[tex-mex]

A parallel in real life:

So, your son graduates and is at a convention tied to work, which clearly publishes a code of conduct for the event. Co-worker and your son get in a fight on the street over a misunderstanding. Co-worker may have even instigated it. (unclear) Company takes away both mens' merit awards and bonuses for the year. Are you going to call the HR department and tell them how to run their company? You probably aren't*, but if you call the school now, you may set up that expectation in your son for this later incident.

 

Maybe the best use of this opportunity is to teach how one can't predict/control the consequences once they've done wrong, even if both parties were wrong or one was clearly more wrong.

 

 

*though anecdotally, I understand that people indeed are doing that nowadays. YIKES!

Yes, this is what thought crossed my mind -- when hubby and I were Resident Counselors in a college dorm -- we had one girl (out of 150 girls) who simply could not get along with everyone. She was very combative and lacking social skills. We suggested the idea of switching roomates or having everyone in the room agree on a set of rules to get along. Once the combative girl's parent heard -- she drove down to demand a meeting of us RCs and roomates. The parent refused to allow her daughter to compromise. Her daughter was right and everyone was W-R-O-N-G. Finally, at the heated point of the meeting (we were calm and trying to be reasonable) when we mentioned we would need to have a meeting with our supervisors as no compromise could be made. The parent yelled at us and took off with her daughter (in tow) saying she'd rather pull her out of the college. Wow. Talk about helicopter parenting. I really felt sorry for that young girl as she would never learn (on her own) how to resolve a simple argument. Sad. :confused:

[Danestress]

I agree with you.

 

I think calling the kid a "jerk" was appropriate.

 

However, I think a middle school aged kid can be expected to communicate with a parent and that the parent can call the school. Call Monday. He's not in the detention program yet, so if you have questions, ask. I don't think they need your permission to put him in detention, and I don't think they need to talk to you first before imposing that penalty.

 

But I do think that if this went down the way he reported, they were wrong to punish him.

 

I would call the police about the bloody nose. I wouldn't call the police about the arm punch, but I would call about a nose punch. It's an assault.

[Jenny Piaaree]

 

No child should ever have to "learn to deal" with criminality upon their person. In the real world, that simply is not tolerated. Why should it be whitewashed in public schools?

 

This comment makes me wonder if there is a lot of dissension here because we are not all discussing the same thing. Of course no child should have to deal with criminality upon their person. The school did, if I read the post correctly administer a much stiffer punishment (suspension) on the perpetrator. But as I understood it, the main question was whether or not the OP's ds should have received (or should serve) detention for his part in the altercation.

 

Bullying should not be tolerated in schools, and hopefully the school in question will be on top of it (no guarantees there, sadly). However, even though criminality is "simply not tolerated" in the real world, it nonetheless happens all the time. In a city near me a man out walking his dog was recently shot dead by some hood. The man's dog sniffed the other guy, who was angry about it. Instead of apologizing and/or walking away, the man "exchanged words" with this hood and paid for it with his life. Obviously this man was the innocent party, for all the good that does him.

 

I would rather teach my kids now to walk away, because there are crazy and ruthless people out there. Better a live dog than a dead lion. If serving a detention helps my kid to get that lesson drilled into his head, so much the better! What is twenty to forty minutes out of his life?

[Carol in Cal.]

You wouldn't know that by my DH. He is so not a one up kind of guy. Maybe that is part of the reason why I am confused. Maybe a lot of guys are like that? Then again we are comparing 12 year old boys to men here? Men still act like that? :confused:

 

I'm not completely certain, though. The times when I have seen hints of this, I was in no way a participant.

[rose_king]

Yes, yes, I know, it's not a Christian reponse, but it's my first reaction. Sorry. I wouldn't have had a problem with my kid hauling off and punching the little bastard back right on the kisser.

 

Amen sister!:iagree:

I was that mom that was at the school all the time. Very involved. I ran errands, ran copies, helped with every party. The teachers loved the help, but that was as far as your involvement should go. They did not want me to question how to turn a low A into a higher A next six weeks. My DC were doing well, why be dramatic about perfection? I just wanted to know what we needed to work on. One of my DD was laid back and picked on all the time. When I would question what was going on they would say she was just too sensitive. (Elem. here) I would ask what had happened and no one could tell me. DD would say the teacher was down the hall, or on her cell phone. The other DD doesn't take crap from anyone. She is easy going untill you got into her personal space. I have always told my DC that other people do not have the right to lay their hands on you. I have been called to the school for DD#2 taking up for herself. The only way I found that worked with the admin. was to call in Hubby. Hubby had known the Asst. Principal since school. He told the principal what he thought about the situation. He told him he needed to watch things more closely. The last thing he said was that he had a job, and better not have to take another morning off work to come back to this school. Wish I had thought to call him in earlier. Kids should feel safe in school because they should be watched after at all times. That is not the case. There are some wonderfull teachers there. Sadly there are teachers who could care less.

Edited February 22, 2010 by rose_king
add on

[dtb1999]

Irl, we don't get to punch people. Cut people off in traffic? Yep. But not assault of any level. You know, unless you're part of a sub-class of people. The poor, maybe. Illegal immigrants, maybe. A kid.

 

 

 

Are you serious? This was sarcasm, right? :confused:

[Tea 4 Three]

I was discussing this with my husband who is a middle school teacher. At his school (800+ students), the school resource officer would charge the other boy with assault and he would be prosecuted in the juvenile court system. There would be a minimum of 3-5 days of in school suspension (if not out of school suspension) for violence if this was a first offense, more if it was a repeat. They don't mess around with anything like that in our neck of the woods. Very low tolerance for violence of any kind.

 

Your son would just receive a reprimand for name calling, and be encouraged to seek adult assistance if feeling bullied.

 

You could always pursue prosecution, especially if this is a bullying situation.

[Mosaicmind]

I was discussing this with my husband who is a middle school teacher. At his school (800+ students), the school resource officer would charge the other boy with assault and he would be prosecuted in the juvenile court system. There would be a minimum of 3-5 days of in school suspension (if not out of school suspension) for violence if this was a first offense, more if it was a repeat. They don't mess around with anything like that in our neck of the woods. Very low tolerance for violence of any kind.

 

Your son would just receive a reprimand for name calling, and be encouraged to seek adult assistance if feeling bullied.

 

You could always pursue prosecution, especially if this is a bullying situation.

 

Dh has said the same thing. He wanted to know the kid so he could call the parents and tell them that next time we would be pressing charges. I am sorry but when you have dealt with this for as long as we have and with a system that seems to not really take it seriously you get tired of the run around very quickly.

 

At this point, I am waiting to see the detention letter from the school, which could come anytime between last Friday and Tuesday. Once I receive the letter I will write on it that my son will not be serving detention until I get a conference with the principal. I will be asking several very pertinent questions, but dh and I are still firm in our decision that he will not serve the detention. Despite what some posters believe I do not see this as a lesson that he should learn, not this way. I do believe that calling the kid a jerk may have or not have caused the kid to punch him, but regardless it was not cause for detention.

 

I guess I knew there were many more reasons I chose to homeschool than I thought.

[asta]

This comment makes me wonder if there is a lot of dissension here because we are not all discussing the same thing. Of course no child should have to deal with criminality upon their person. The school did, if I read the post correctly administer a much stiffer punishment (suspension) on the perpetrator. But as I understood it, the main question was whether or not the OP's ds should have received (or should serve) detention for his part in the altercation.

 

Bullying should not be tolerated in schools, and hopefully the school in question will be on top of it (no guarantees there, sadly). However, even though criminality is "simply not tolerated" in the real world, it nonetheless happens all the time. In a city near me a man out walking his dog was recently shot dead by some hood. The man's dog sniffed the other guy, who was angry about it. Instead of apologizing and/or walking away, the man "exchanged words" with this hood and paid for it with his life. Obviously this man was the innocent party, for all the good that does him.

 

I would rather teach my kids now to walk away, because there are crazy and ruthless people out there. Better a live dog than a dead lion. If serving a detention helps my kid to get that lesson drilled into his head, so much the better! What is twenty to forty minutes out of his life?

 

Correct.

 

a

[Luanne]

I absolutely disagree, Asta. School is not the real world. It is a purely artificial construct. One does not need to learn to negotiate with bullies in the real world. In the real world, if you hit me, I need know no more than how to dial the constabulary to come and deal with you. When adults fight, it is a criminal act, dealt with by proper authorities.

 

In school (not the real world) children are not afforded the real world solution of complaining to the authorities. School administrators are not authorities. They are no more than simple child-minders, whose "authority" consists of little more than the equivalent of a toddler's time-out or lecture. They are a joke, a sham, AND a shame. No child should ever have to "learn to deal" with criminality upon their person. In the real world, that simply is not tolerated. Why should it be whitewashed in public schools?

 

 

:iagree:

[asta]

Has anyone here every watched the movie "Fight Club"?

 

It is an interesting sociological study on why men fight.

 

(Oh, and on dissociative identity disorder, but that's not why I'm mentioning it.)

 

 

asta

[Tea 4 Three]

I think you are taking the right and balanced approach. We both completely disagreed with the other posters that he should serve the detention unless there are other circumstances involved that you are not aware of involving your son. To be honest we were really surprised at many of the responses. There is never a pecking order in which a person deserves abuse and to be physically harmed. That is beneath our human dignity! I would never try to teach my child that they have a particular place beneath (or above others) in a pecking order and to fall in line.

 

Given the information you have now (that he is guilty of nothing greater than name calling,) to make him serve the detention, I think, teaches him to not to challenge a situation that deserves a challenge. IMO, that is cowardly. This may teach him to stand up for himself (something he did not do in the first place when punched in the nose.)

 

BTW, I wanted to clarify, that the nose punch is what goes over the line, because there is obvious intent to cause physical damage. The punch (or slug) in the arm depends on intent, which among ms students is hard to interpret and can mean different things... (still inappropriate and not acceptable at my dh's school, as is namecalling.)

 

Best of luck navigating this situation.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Tea 4 Three
added a thought

[Mosaicmind]

True. Calling the other kid a jerk wasn't the best "self defense". He should have said nothing. At most he could have asked him to please leave him alone. If someone was threatening/harassing me I would get away from them, not egg them on by giving them a reason to bother me further. Of course it is no guarantee they won't still bother me, but again it probably wasn't the best way to deal with it unless he was planning to follow through on that comment by punching the kid back (not saying he should do that).

 

Has anyone here every watched the movie "Fight Club"?

 

It is an interesting sociological study on why men fight.

 

(Oh, and on dissociative identity disorder, but that's not why I'm mentioning it.)

 

 

asta

 

Are you making a reference to me? Why did you mention this if it has nothing to do with this discussion?

[Mosaicmind]

I think you are taking the right and balanced approach. We both completely disagreed with the other posters that he should serve the detention unless there are other circumstances involved that you are not aware of involving your son. To be honest we were really surprised at many of the responses. There is never a pecking order in which a person deserves abuse and to be physically harmed. That is beneath our human dignity! I would never try to teach my child that they have a particular place beneath (or above others) in a pecking order and to fall in line.

 

Given the information you have now (that he is guilty of nothing greater than name calling,) to make him serve the detention, I think, teaches him to not to challenge a situation that deserves a challenge. IMO, that is cowardly. This may teach him to stand up for himself (something he did not do in the first place when punched in the nose.)

 

BTW, I wanted to clarify, that the nose punch is what goes over the line, because there is obvious intent to cause physical damage. The punch (or slug) in the arm depends on intent, which among ms students is hard to interpret and can mean different things... (still inappropriate and not acceptable at my dh's school, as is namecalling.)

 

Best of luck navigating this situation.

 

I haven't really taken offense to any of the posters. I have been surprised at the wide variety of responses, but that just proves how different we all are. Imagine if we were all the same:confused:.

 

I appreciate your perspective since I believe it is your dh who works in a middle school.

[Mosaicmind]

Are you referring to something I said? I'm a little confused.

 

Nope, I highlighted what I was making a reference to.

[LisaNY]

I think it's a bit much to give a kid detention for calling someone who hit them a jerk. I also think that you should have been called. They advocated "using your words" when I was in middle school, you think they'd support that rather than punishing it. I definitely think it's a good idea and go talk to the school. If you and your husband want to pull your son out of school and go back to homeschooling, I think that's perfectly fine too. Especially if your son is on board.

 

Times have changed - drastically. Everything you say can and will be used against you.

[nono]

Wow. Talk about helicopter parenting. I really felt sorry for that young girl as she would never learn (on her own) how to resolve a simple argument. Sad. :confused:

 

Wow, that is an eye opener! I was actually thinking more from the child's point of view, not realy worried about the OP becoming a lifelong helecopter parent. If I were in the situation and decided to do some challenging of the discipline, I would do so NOT in front of my child. I wouldn't want to set up even a subtle expectation in my child that there would be "rescue" from parents from consequences. As a middle schooler, he's on the cusp of becoming a young man. Those rescues wouldn't be able to continue indefinitely. (well, I guess they can from the dorm story!)

 

I also think having the child write out a letter is a good suggestion in this thread. It would have him take some control of his defense. (And, if his Mom and Dad work behind the scene too, that's OK in my book, because then it isn't a rescue. It's an adult-to-adult conversation that perhaps, based on other things the OP has written throughout the thread, really needs to happen).

 

Anyway, good luck to the OP. I was a good kid in school. I had detention more than a few times, but I didn't go to public school. I even got detention for smiling too much. :tongue_smilie: So, comiing from my perspective, I just don't see detention as any big deal. Colors my answer for sure.

[chaik76]

A parallel in real life:

So, your son graduates and is at a convention tied to work, which clearly publishes a code of conduct for the event. Co-worker and your son get in a fight on the street over a misunderstanding. Co-worker may have even instigated it. (unclear) Company takes away both mens' merit awards and bonuses for the year. Are you going to call the HR department and tell them how to run their company? You probably aren't*, but if you call the school now, you may set up that expectation in your son for this later incident.

 

Maybe the best use of this opportunity is to teach how one can't predict/control the consequences once they've done wrong, even if both parties were wrong or one was clearly more wrong.

 

 

*though anecdotally, I understand that people indeed are doing that nowadays. YIKES!

Honestly? If someone punched me as an adult...I might call them a jerk. If someone punched me metaphorically I would call them on it...even in the workplace. It's important to ALWAYS stand up for yourself, no matter where you are.

 

And I certainly wouldn't expect a middle schooler to be able to function like an adult, nor should he. The college and work and home life worlds of adulthood are completely different than school. At no other time in life will you have so little control over what you can say and do and how you will be treated or corrected. Now...I'm certainly not against public/private schooling...my son has attended one...but I am against using school as a "testing" ground for kids to "grow up" or get used to "the real world".

[chaik76]

I had a couple of situations like this when I was in school. My mom simply told them, "oh, she won't be attending your detention. My authority trumps yours."

 

I didn't go to the detention and nothing ever happened to me because of it. My mother was certainly a force to be reckoned with, and she tolerated NO fools. :D

Love this! And my mom was exactly like this...as I now am with my kids!:D

[MBM]

I think it's important to keep in mind that a sixth grader is not on an even par with an adult. An adult has more power. At times I've allowed my kids to work things out with their teachers (homework, grading), but for more serious matters, I'll step in. Thankfully, I've only had to do this a few times in 20+ years.

[asta]

Has anyone here every watched the movie "Fight Club"?

 

It is an interesting sociological study on why men fight.

 

(Oh, and on dissociative identity disorder, but that's not why I'm mentioning it.)

 

 

asta

 

 

Are you making a reference to me? Why did you mention this if it has nothing to do with this discussion?

 

 

Oh good Lord. Have you seen the movie? The movie is about a guy who starts a fight club because he notices that there are all of these men in "his world" who have no outlet for their basal aggressive tendencies.

 

That is all.

 

I mentioned that the character had dissociative identity disorder as an ASIDE to clarify that I wasn't accusing anyone's child, husband, boyfriend or male other of having an Axis II psychological disorder like the character in the movie. Hence the words "but that's not why I'm mentioning it".

 

The point was that there was an example of "an interesting sociological study on why men fight" in film format in existence.

 

Jeez.

 

 

a

Edited February 22, 2010 by asta

[nono]

Honestly? If someone punched me as an adult...I might call them a jerk. If someone punched me metaphorically I would call them on it...even in the workplace. It's important to ALWAYS stand up for yourself, no matter where you are.

 

And I certainly wouldn't expect a middle schooler to be able to function like an adult, nor should he. The college and work and home life worlds of adulthood are completely different than school. At no other time in life will you have so little control over what you can say and do and how you will be treated or corrected. Now...I'm certainly not against public/private schooling...my son has attended one...but I am against using school as a "testing" ground for kids to "grow up" or get used to "the real world".

 

I'm not sure if your second paragraph is responding to my quoted post or not. But, if it is, you are reading way more into my post that what it said. :)

[crl]

What I find really disturbing in this situation is that the boy who did nothing has detention at school where there are no video games and tv while the child who should be punished gets a day off at home with his video games and tv present. How is this helping the child at fault?

[Mosaicmind]

Oh good Lord. Have you seen the movie? The movie is about a guy who starts a fight club because he notices that there are all of these men in "his world" who have no outlet for their basal aggressive tendencies.

 

That is all.

 

I mentioned that the character had dissociative identity disorder as an ASIDE to clarify that I wasn't accusing anyone's child, husband, boyfriend or male other of having an Axis II psychological disorder like the character in the movie. Hence the words "but that's not why I'm mentioning it".

 

The point was that there was an example of "an interesting sociological study on why men fight" in film format in existence.

 

Jeez.

 

 

a

 

I am sorry. This just hit me wrong last night. I have had to deal with this and just found out Saturday my dad was killed in a semi truck accident Saturday morning. So, it has not been a good weekend.

 

Plus just in case anyone was wondering I do have dissociative identity disorder and I was curious why you made that comment. I have no problem with people knowing that. I was just a little raw this weekend and everything was hitting me very personally.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Mosaicmind
wrong word

[Pink Fairy]

I am sorry. This just hit me wrong last night. I have had to deal with this and just found out Saturday my dad was killed in a semi truck accident Saturday morning. So, it has not been a good weekend.

 

Plus just in case anyone was wondering I do have dissociative identity disorder and I was curious why you made that comment. I have no problem with people knowing that. I was just a little raw this weekend and everything was hitting me very personally.

 

I'm sorry. :grouphug: Words never seem like enough at times like this, especially when things are going on behind the scenes. :crying:

[MBM]

I am sorry. This just hit me wrong last night. I have had to deal with this and just found out Saturday my dad was killed in a semi truck accident Saturday morning. So, it has not been a good weekend.

 

Plus just in case anyone was wondering I do have dissociative identity disorder and I was curious why you made that comment. I have no problem with people knowing that. I was just a little raw this weekend and everything was hitting me very personally.

 

Wow. I'm sorry to hear this, too. You sure have been put through the ringer. I hope the situation with the school pans out well for you.

:grouphug:

[chaik76]

I'm not sure if your second paragraph is responding to my quoted post or not. But, if it is, you are reading way more into my post that what it said. :)

Sorry...the second paragraph was more of an "in general" statement, rather than directed at you...I should have clarified better!

[Luanne]

What I find really disturbing in this situation is that the boy who did nothing has detention at school where there are no video games and tv while the child who should be punished gets a day off at home with his video games and tv present. How is this helping the child at fault?

 

 

This is EXACTLY what I was thinking!

[Tree House Academy]

As a kid who spent most of her time being suspended from high school for one reason or another, let me just say that suspension was like a free day off. Now, if this kid has parents that are going to beat the daylights out of him for getting suspended, then sure, maybe, it might be different for him. For me, it was "oh well, honey." So who cared. Not me!

 

Getting a 5 day detention is honestly a WORSE punishment, IMO, than a 1 day suspension. It seems your son got the punches AND the worse punishment to me. When that bully does his "day," he will be back with his buddies while your son is pulling time in a solitary confinement of sorts. That just sucks and I'd be pissed too, if I were you.

 

Of course, a lawsuit isn't really the answer...but I sure would tell the school what I thought and I would also pull him right out that day if I felt the desire and need!

[jujsky]

I am sorry. This just hit me wrong last night. I have had to deal with this and just found out Saturday my dad was killed in a semi truck accident Saturday morning. So, it has not been a good weekend.

 

Plus just in case anyone was wondering I do have dissociative identity disorder and I was curious why you made that comment. I have no problem with people knowing that. I was just a little raw this weekend and everything was hitting me very personally.

 

:grouphug: I'm so sorry about your dad! That's horrible. I hope you are able to heal from such a sudden, tragic loss.

[Mosaicmind]

:grouphug: I'm so sorry about your dad! That's horrible. I hope you are able to heal from such a sudden, tragic loss.

 

Thanks. Didn't mean to turn this thread in another direction, but I felt the need to apologize and wanted the poster to know why I was so sensitive.

[Aubrey]

Are you serious? This was sarcasm, right? :confused:

 

Well, yeah. That was actually my whole point--sarcastically hilighting the fact that students are being treated unjustly, as if they were a subclass of person. The way the law sometimes treats others who are in similar ways defenseless.

 

I'm wondering if you actually read my post. Perhaps you read just this one line out of context? I was quite explicitly in favor of defending the student in question.

[KidsHappen]

Yes. If my coworker punches me in the lunchroom, I'm not going to go tell my boss. The boss won't call us both into the office and give us detention. I will call the police. It's assault. And the police aren't going to arrest me for calling the criminal who assaulted me a jerk.

 

But if your co-worker punches you and you call him a jerk, there is a very real possibility that he will punch you again or even worse.

[swellmomma]

As a kid who spent most of her time being suspended from high school for one reason or another, let me just say that suspension was like a free day off. Now, if this kid has parents that are going to beat the daylights out of him for getting suspended, then sure, maybe, it might be different for him. For me, it was "oh well, honey." So who cared. Not me!

 

Getting a 5 day detention is honestly a WORSE punishment, IMO, than a 1 day suspension. It seems your son got the punches AND the worse punishment to me. When that bully does his "day," he will be back with his buddies while your son is pulling time in a solitary confinement of sorts. That just sucks and I'd be pissed too, if I were you.

 

Of course, a lawsuit isn't really the answer...but I sure would tell the school what I thought and I would also pull him right out that day if I felt the desire and need!

 

 

Where did it say the OP's son was getting 5 days of detention? I read it to say that at some point this week he would have to serve 1 detention, from my experience those are around 30 minutes long. So that is why I said suck it up and serve teh detention for his part in the altercation. If it is in fact 5 days of detention that is different, but that is not what I understood the situation to be.

[Mom2absh]

:grouphug: I'm so sorry!

 

J

[Aubrey]

A parallel in real life:

So, your son graduates and is at a convention tied to work, which clearly publishes a code of conduct for the event. Co-worker and your son get in a fight on the street over a misunderstanding. Co-worker may have even instigated it. (unclear) Company takes away both mens' merit awards and bonuses for the year. Are you going to call the HR department and tell them how to run their company? You probably aren't*, but if you call the school now, you may set up that expectation in your son for this later incident.

 

Maybe the best use of this opportunity is to teach how one can't predict/control the consequences once they've done wrong, even if both parties were wrong or one was clearly more wrong.

 

 

*though anecdotally, I understand that people indeed are doing that nowadays. YIKES!

 

Another parallel to real life:

 

Your son graduates & has to wear shoes, get dressed, & eat. Are you going to go do those things for him? Because doing so for a child is the same as doing so for an adult, & therefore constitutes helicopter parenting.

 

[/sarcasm]

 

Coworkers rarely assault ea other in the street, though. In fact, outside of maybe a bar room brawl, I've never heard of anyone irl being *randomly* assaulted.

 

Bil was leaving a bar once, & a fight broke out between two guys outside the bar. One got punched so hard he got knocked into bil, just in time for the cops to walk up & arrest them all, including bil.

 

He spent the night in jail, unjustly--unless you count being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when he went before the judge later? The whole thing was dropped because it was unjust.

 

In this case, if the principal is like a judge, then the parallel to real life would be that the case would be dropped & the innocent party would go free.

 

Now if an admin wants to make an issue of one kid calling another *who punched him* a "jerk," then I'd expect to see similar punishment doled out to the other hundreds of kids who call ea other worse *every day.* In most schools? It's just not. The one I worked in, even the teachers often cussed like sailors--AT the kids.

 

Sending the kid who said, "jerk" to detention sounds like a CYB (behind!) kind of move, not the action of a principal who's checked into his job or cares.

[Aubrey]

But if your co-worker punches you and you call him a jerk, there is a very real possibility that he will punch you again or even worse.

 

Ok, so for personal safety, calling the kid a jerk might not have been the best choice, but for that matter, "Please don't hit me," is probably worse, right? And while I could see a talk being in order about what *would* have been a better choice of response, I don't see punishing someone for getting hit. Wasn't the bloody nose punishment enough?

 

Why is it that the decent people who are following the rules/laws have to learn an extra set of rules in order to slip past the bad guys more easily? What ever happened to justice & fighting for what is right? (Not nec in the sense of physical violence, just for clarification.)

[Jenny Piaaree]

I am sorry. This just hit me wrong last night. I have had to deal with this and just found out Saturday my dad was killed in a semi truck accident Saturday morning. So, it has not been a good weekend.

 

 

 

Mosaicmind, this is so terrible about your dad. I am so sorry. I cannot imagine what you must be feeling right now, and especially trying to deal with other family issues on top of it.

 

About your son, it sounds like you already know what you want to do and feel comfortable with that, so just go for it and move on. Who needs the additional stress. One way or the other, life will go on. It also sounds like you would really rather take him back home for school. So why not (unless he really wants to stay)? If we all didn't think homeschooling was great, we wouldn't be on this board!

 

:grouphug:

[Pamela H in Texas]

...

[PineFarmMom]

Dh has said the same thing. He wanted to know the kid so he could call the parents and tell them that next time we would be pressing charges. I am sorry but when you have dealt with this for as long as we have and with a system that seems to not really take it seriously you get tired of the run around very quickly.

 

At this point, I am waiting to see the detention letter from the school, which could come anytime between last Friday and Tuesday. Once I receive the letter I will write on it that my son will not be serving detention until I get a conference with the principal. I will be asking several very pertinent questions, but dh and I are still firm in our decision that he will not serve the detention. Despite what some posters believe I do not see this as a lesson that he should learn, not this way. I do believe that calling the kid a jerk may have or not have caused the kid to punch him, but regardless it was not cause for detention.

 

I guess I knew there were many more reasons I chose to homeschool than I thought.

 

I agree with you and your dh!!

[dtb1999]

Well, yeah. That was actually my whole point--sarcastically hilighting the fact that students are being treated unjustly, as if they were a subclass of person. The way the law sometimes treats others who are in similar ways defenseless.

 

I'm wondering if you actually read my post. Perhaps you read just this one line out of context? I was quite explicitly in favor of defending the student in question.

 

 

:o I read that part out of context. My mistake. Sometimes sarcasm is lost by me.

[cathmom]

I absolutely disagree, Asta. School is not the real world. It is a purely artificial construct. One does not need to learn to negotiate with bullies in the real world. In the real world, if you hit me, I need know no more than how to dial the constabulary to come and deal with you. When adults fight, it is a criminal act, dealt with by proper authorities.

 

In school (not the real world) children are not afforded the real world solution of complaining to the authorities. School administrators are not authorities. They are no more than simple child-minders, whose "authority" consists of little more than the equivalent of a toddler's time-out or lecture. They are a joke, a sham, AND a shame. No child should ever have to "learn to deal" with criminality upon their person. In the real world, that simply is not tolerated. Why should it be whitewashed in public schools?

 

 

Yes. If my coworker punches me in the lunchroom, I'm not going to go tell my boss. The boss won't call us both into the office and give us detention. I will call the police. It's assault. And the police aren't going to arrest me for calling the criminal who assaulted me a jerk.

 

In the situation I alluded to before, another boy was holding my son against a brick wall and shaking him so that his head repeatedly hit the wall. My son punched him to get free, and apparently some adult saw this happen and both boys were taken to the principal's office. they were both in first grade. Both were suspended until the following Monday.

 

The whole thing was completely mishandled. The principal did not speak to my son - I had to explain to him that he was suspended and what that meant! It was also, IMO, completely inappropriate to suspend first graders! We asked who had seen the incident and were refused that information. we asked how our son should have handled it, and were told that he "should have gotten an adult." When we said, "How could he when he was being held against a wall?" there was no reply.

 

In this country, we have the right to defend ourselves. We realized that at school, our son did not have this right. We realized that dropping him off at school was like dropping him off in Cuba. Shortly after this incident we decided to homeschool. This was not the only reason, but this certainly brought all the things we had been seeing at the school to a head and forced us to make a decision.

 

Mosaicmind, I am very sorry about your dad! :grouphug:

[KidsHappen]

Lisa,

 

BTW, I do agree that you should have gotten a phone call about the bloody nose. THAT is a lot different. Getting a phone call because your son messed up and got a detention would be a ridiculous reason for them to call (and they'd be calling parents all day); but the nurse should have called you about the nose.

 

:iagree: I agree. If my dd goes to the nurse for any reason they call even if she doesn't come home.

[Mosaicmind]

After further discussion with the principal I found out that my son was sitting with a group of boys that we name calling back and forth with this boy. They all agree this boy started the name calling, but Nathan did not participate in it. Principal even said that Nathan apparently was not apart of the name calling, but because he was sitting at the table he was guilty by association. He would still be required to serve the detention, which he served this morning.

 

Nathan left out the part of everyone calling names back and forth and I said since he didn't tell me the "whole" story despite he not being part of the name calling he would serve the detention. I felt that he was not completely honest with me and needed to be in the future. It did appear suspicious to me that he was the only one of the six boys that got hit in the nose and didn't even call the kid a name. I honestly don't know what to think.