Detention

[Chris Parks]

My school did not need detention, they already had the answer with a strap or cane, it was a rare occasion it was used but it sure kept us in line. The kids are taught to think for themselves these days but if the thinking leads to problems there is no effective way the kid can be punished and I would not call detention punishment. As for not being allowed to attend school, bring it on would be my attitude. The kids that miss school should be forced to make up the time before the end of the year and the parents should have to ensure they do or suffer consequences. Simplistic, yes, but simple always seems to work.

[smidsy]

I'm not sure corporal punishment is the answer.
When a 6'2 student holding a wood chisel says to a teacher "if you don't shut the F up I'm going to jam this chisel in your neck" I really doubt that Mr 5'4 deputy is going to have much luck caning that kid.

The fact is that punishment as a whole has been watered down to the point where as a society we have no fear of punishment.
I've paid $130 a night for motels that are much worse than our prisons - that's when the magistrates actually enact a decent sentence.
It's not just kids but adults as well, - a guy in WA on 30+ (yes thirty) life driving bans because he knows the courts won't jail him and after 30, more life driving bans tend to lose their consequence.

The fact is that as a society we need to bring back fear, in adults as well as children.
If that means building more prisons so be it - but when we build more prisons leave out the tv's and DVD players, leave out the high end food and luxry items. The crims get the bare necessity to survive, those that aren't a security risk go on work groups to give back to society and jail is made as un fun and as frightening as possible.

[nihilism]

I've paid $130 a night for motels that are much worse than our prisons - that's when the magistrates actually enact a decent sentence.

I''d be asking for a refund.

(PS Iv''e worked in probably 50% of the prisons in WA and stayed and worked in many motels and hotels around Australia and in other countries and have yet to see a motel / hotel that even comes close to being worse than any of the prisons. So i''d put it to you that either the prisons are a lot different over there or you've never actually seen inside one yourself.)

[smidsy]

I'm actually an ex WA'er, and I have as a visitor seen the inside of Longmore.

[DaveTTC]

Corporal punishment doesn't each you where the line is. it teaches you that if you want to get someone to do something and you have a bigger stick you hit them. How you can still belive in it after telling us about some wrongful punishments is, to me, very weird. Looks like all you learnt was "the world is unjust".

Sorry but I disagree in this instance. Life is full of wrongfull arrests and punishments etc. do we stop all police work just because mistakes are made.

We live in the most permissive society I am aware of and have the greatest social problems ever. We brag of the headway made in certain areas and yet family communication, loyalty naff love are at an all time low. We think life is better but have just become desensitised.

I'm not against the cane anymore than I'm against other law enforcement. Just against abuse of power


Dave

The Turning Cowboy

[Ticky]

I have 4 kids ranging from 30 down to 15, so as a parent, I have been activly involved in primary & high schools for about 25years nostop. In that time I have met an awful lot of teachers, & a lot of awful teachers. I have a great deal of respect for good teachers, but they are very few & far between.
The reason for this in my opinion is a complete lack of life experiance. They started kindy at about 4, primary school at 5, highschool at 13 & uni/teachers colledge at 18 or 19. 4 years of that and into the work force, at school.

The only thing they know is life at school.

If you meet a really good teacher, chances are he/she has been out in the real world & actualy counted 2 groups of 2 things & discovered ... Hey! far out! it really is 4, just like the book says.

Corpral punishment at school, administered by teachers... I wouldn't trust the vast majority of them with a stick of playdoe around my kids. My kids, like most kids, arn't or weren't scared of their teachers, but they knew there would be hell to pay when they got home, & I didn't need to touch them to make them regret playing up at school.

I think there are 2 major problems with kids in society today.

Firstly, because of the economic situation these days, both parents have to work & kids are often not met at home by a loving parent that still has enough energy to say hi, make a snack & sit down & talk with them about their day. THIS IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE PARENTS, IT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS.

& Secondly, right through school, kids are taught that winning is not important, you still get equal time on the court even if you don't go to practice, & if you don't try, you will still get a trophie at the end of the year. & then they go out into the real world where they discover that life is somewhat different to what they have been taught for the last 12 years & that winners are grinners & loosers, well, they are just loosers.

So, in my opinion, don't even consider the neanderthal idea of a cane, re-create a society where a blue coller worker can afford to support his family, have the kids met at home by a parent that has time & energy for them & start teaching them that life is not fair & failure is a real possability if they don't work toward success. This will produce the results us older members would like to see, because this is what we had when we went to school & it worked pretty well for most of us.


Steve

[Ticky]

I also had the misfortune to visit someone I knew in an SA prison, & it didn't strike me as being better than a $130 motel. The food sustained life, but that was about the best thing he had to say about it, it was serverly over crowded & too be honest, I would rather live in a Whirly in the middle of the dessert than have to go to jail.

I have never visited the LONGMORE hoiday resort you describe, but I'm sure the people who have had the misfortune to call the place home for a few years or more may view it in a slightly different light.

JMO

steve

[smidsy]

I don't think having a parent at home is an issue.
We were latch key kids, mum and dad both worked and didn't get home till near 6 whereas we were home by 3.30. Like all kids we played up some and certainly during our trail bike years the ranger spent a disproportionate amount of his time looking for us but we never did any major mischief or gave the cops reason to get involved.
I took a while to work my #### out, expelled in year ten and working in factories until my first degree in my mid 20's, my brother started an apprenticeship the day after leaving school and has never had a day out of work and little sis works in management.
In some ways being latch key kids was good because it taught us independance and responsability.

As for teaching and life experience, that is very much a double edge sword.
I came to teaching late doing my degree in my late 30's so yeah I have life experience, but I see the youngsters who have only had 3 or 4 years between school as a student and school as a teacher, what they lack in life experience they more than make up for in their ability to build rappoir and develop relationships with the kids much faster than the older teachers.

As for prison, I think the whole idea of prison as a punishment is wrong, I think prison should just be a form of segregation - someone cannot live in society so they are segregated.

Those that have done wrong but can live in society get to repay their debt to the community by community service - strict house arrest and 8 hours a day scrubbing graffiti, or clearing weeds or working on a civil construction project - hell they built the Kalgoorlie pipeline 110 years ago, surely now they have the technology to pipe the Ord River run off down to Perth, use community service labour on that to bring the cost down.

[smidsy]

Getting back to the original thread.
This reminds me of the guy who was pulled over for rolling through a stop sign and tried to argue with the cop that slowing down was the same as stopping.

After some argument the guy accepts the cops offer of a demonstration that slowing down is not the same as stopping.

The cop then proceeds to beat the guy with his Maglite and while doing so asks the driver if he should stop or just slow down.

[Ticky]

I don't think having a parent at home is an issue.
We were latch key kids, mum and dad both worked and didn't get home till near 6 whereas we were home by 3.30.

the ranger spent a disproportionate amount of his time looking for us

.

I took a while to work my #### out, expelled in year ten

Hmmmmm.... I see your point.

I now see the error of my ways.

Please come to SA & teach, I still have one kid in school.... Oh! And bring your Playdoe with you.

[AlexS]

I have 4 kids ranging from 30 down to 15, so as a parent, I have been activly involved in primary & high schools for about 25years nostop. In that time I have met an awful lot of teachers, & a lot of awful teachers. I have a great deal of respect for good teachers, but they are very few & far between.
The reason for this in my opinion is a complete lack of life experiance. They started kindy at about 4, primary school at 5, highschool at 13 & uni/teachers colledge at 18 or 19. 4 years of that and into the work force, at school.

The only thing they know is life at school.

If you meet a really good teacher, chances are he/she has been out in the real world & actualy counted 2 groups of 2 things & discovered ... Hey! far out! it really is 4, just like the book says.

Ticky, I agree with your whole post, but especially this part. When I was at school, many male teachers had had other jobs, often trades, then been through the war and had come into teaching afterwards. They brought a wealth of experience outside their teaching skills and teacher training to the job. (Also, former bomber navigators can set interesting maths problems for teenaged boys, and no one tells them that maths will never be any use to them.) In the case of my own kids, again, I found the best teachers to be those who have some life experience outside the education system, and they also have the wherewithal to manage an unruly class without resorting to corporal punishment.
One of the mature age students I was at uni with was a woman with 2 kids, who'd left school at 15, had only ever worked as a barmaid or waitress and was generally considered to be least likely to graduate. Well, she did graduate with honours (maths/science) and worked in a brewery development lab for a few years, before swapping to teaching. She quickly achieved success as a science teacher, developing programs for kids from families with alcohol problems and also methods of maths teaching. A large part of her success (i.e. imparting knowledge to students) is dude to her life experience.

[Ticky]

Thank you Alex,

The best teacher I ever had was Roger Evens, Maths / Science.

The best grades I ever got were in Roger's Maths & Science classes. My younger cousin was struggling with a particular area of Maths, I think it was
Algebra.
He just didn't get it at all. So Roger started to talk to him & dicovered that he had an interest in building electronic boards. Then Roger ask him what the value of a ... Say, red blue green resistor is, & my cousin told him, & Roger explained that the maths was just like replacing the values for colours on a resistor.

My cousin went on to be a software writer, back in the days of Dos & "C" etc.

Had Roger Evens not been able to think beyond the cirriculum, my cousin would have failed that particular branch of maths, & his life could be very different.

Steve

[smidsy]

Back when I was 19 I was friends with this chick who had to spend a year re-sitting her TEE to get in to teaching - the score she got would have got her in to law, but teaching was so popular the cut off was artifically inflated.
Now teaching has one of the lowest entrance scores of all the uni courses.

It's not only the lack of discipline of the kids but society has severely devalued teaching as a profession - when I teach I pay nearly 30% tax because of my HECS debt, a mate of mine who can barely read or write makes more money and pays less tax as a traffic controller.

[doug3030]

The reason for this in my opinion is a complete lack of life experiance. They started kindy at about 4, primary school at 5, highschool at 13 & uni/teachers colledge at 18 or 19. 4 years of that and into the work force, at school.

The only thing they know is life at school.

If you meet a really good teacher, chances are he/she has been out in the real world

I loved your whole post Ticky, especially the bit i quoted above. There are so many of them that have never left school. I used to have arguments with some of the teachers when my kids were at school (and - come to think of it - when I was at school too) and invariably it was the ones who had never left school that were the problems.

My oldest child started school in a largeish school -3 classes to a year-level - which had a headmaster in his 20's.He was hopeless, but whenever anyone challenged him as to whether he had the experience to be running a large school at that age, the inquirer would be advised "I have a degree in education administration". Now that he has the degree he is getting the experience, but at the detriment of hundreds of students' educations.

Doug

[tea lady]

Sorry but I disagree in this instance. Life is full of wrongfull arrests and punishments etc. do we stop all police work just because mistakes are made. The stories you told were of injustice. Police work was not even done, but punishment handed out. I guess caning one and all is faster. But not exactly instructive. One book I read gave this as an example. Do you teach brain surgery by hitting the doctor till he does the right thing? You gotta tell them what the right thing is in the first place.

We live in the most permissive society I am aware of and have the greatest social problems ever. We brag of the headway made in certain areas and yet family communication, loyalty naff love are at an all time low. We think life is better but have just become desensitised.

I'm not against the cane anymore than I'm against other law enforcement. Just against abuse of power


Dave

The Turning Cowboy

The social problems might just have been better hidden before. Hit them until they shut up. Belief that there is "the greatest social problems ever" might have more to do with watching to much tabloid journalism.