Tag Archives: Non-Judgementalism

Public school punishes student for punching bully

According Wikipedia, “Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) is a public high school in Huntington Beach, California. Built in 1906, it is part of the Huntington Beach Union High School District. HBHS is a California Distinguished School. Huntington Beach High School is also the home of the Academy for the Performing Arts.”

Consider this article from the UK Daily Mail.

It says:

A California teenager has been hailed as a hero after he rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully.

Shocking footage of the attack, filmed by a bystander, shows the ‘visually impaired’ student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

The assault only ends when the high school intervenes by knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch.

A California teenager has been hailed as a hero after he rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully.

Shocking footage of the attack, filmed by a bystander, shows the ‘visually impaired’ student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

The assault only ends when the high school intervenes by knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch.

Now why is this happening? Why is it that the use of force to resolve conflicts between good and evil are frowned upon in public schools?

I think there are two reasons. One, schools tend to frown on objective morality, and try to teach kids that everyone constructs their own moral view is as valid as anyone else’s. In practice this means that might makes right, since there is no objective morality to appeal to in a relativistic system. The school doesn’t want to step in and take a side here, because they don’t believe that anyone is right or wrong. Second, there is a war against boys in the public schools. Teachers and administrators teach that the natural inclinations of boys to punish evil with force are bad. And they escalate that from the stomp-the-bully level to the anti-police level to the anti-war level. There is no good use of force ever, ever, ever, if you ask these teachers and administrators.

Why is there this emphasis on compassion over moral standards, and this war against male nature in the schools?

ABC News reports that there is a huge disparity between the numbers of male and female teachers.

Excerpt:

For the past 20 years, the numbers of male teachers in elementary and middle school grades have stagnated at about 16 to 18 percent, according to MenTeach, an organization whose mission is to increase the number of males working with young children.

There were no statistics for grades K-3, but in 2011, the most recent year for which there are data, only slightly more than 2 percent of kindergarten and preschool teachers were male.

“The gap and discrepancy between girls’ performance and boys’ performance is growing ever more marked,” said Massachusetts psychologist Michael Thompson, co-author of the groundbreaking 2000 book “Raising Cain,” which argues that society shortchanges boys.

“There are lots of explanations for it,” he said. “One is the nature of the elementary classroom. It’s more feminized and it does turn boys off, perhaps because they are in trouble more or because the teaching style is more geared to girls’ brains.

Some students go through public schools and never see a male teacher.

Men and women are different when it comes to moral judgments, and the use of force against evil, either in self-defense or in war. Men are traditionally more likely to see the use of force against evil as morally praiseworthy. Since there are few male teachers in the schools, naturally this sort of broad condemnation of all violence and all war as wrong is much more accepted – and taught to children. Either in the classroom, or through suspensions and other punishments. And the suspensions and other punishments are for things as small as drawing anything military, or chewing your sandwich into the shape of a gun, or… punching a bully who is attacking a blind kid.

When we as a nation wonder why people walk past others in distress instead of doing something, we should not underestimate the messages that children receive in public schools. The moral courage to oppose evil is beaten out of children in public schools, because they are being taught by those who see no moral value to self-defense against evil or any kind of use of force against evil. My advice is to not send your kids to public schools, especially boys.

An excellent resource to read about discrimination against boys and traditional boy behaviors is “The War Against Boys”, 2nd edition, by moderate feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.

Should parents be more permissive with misbehaving children?

Below are some stories from Australia about the trend towards more permissive parenting.

An article from the Australian Courier-Mail on permissiveness at school.

Excerpt:

Brock Duchnicz will start year 5 at a new school this year unable to spell simple words like at, in or on.

In two years he has missed 63 days – almost 13 weeks – of school for offences such as swearing, class disruption and pushing chairs over.

His mother Sarndra said EQ’s policy of blocking her son from the classroom was not working.

Ms Duchnicz said teachers were not equipped to deal with children like Brock and called on the Government to introduce specialised behaviour management training for all teachers.

“I feel as though these kids are just pushed to the back of the classroom in the too hard basket,” she said.

“There are so many more children coming up the line like this and if they (teachers) are not equipped they need more understanding and time put into them.”

[…]Brock was recently diagnosed with ADHD but Ms Duchnicz stopped his Ritalin medication because it had no effect. She plans to have him reassessed.

Why does everything have to be the fault of society, or the fault of chemical imbalances? Why can’t people just be careful about making sure that their spouse is committed to raising the children to have certain moral values?

An article from Australian Herald Sun about discipline.

Excerpt:

A Melbourne expert says naughty corners and time out in bedrooms are inappropriate because they shame and humiliate.

The same goes for smacking, which education and parenting consultant Kathy Walker says makes children feel resentful.

[…]”Labels such as ‘bad’ or ‘naughty’ shame and humiliate children,” she said. “Even when this strategy is framed as a request for children to ‘sit and think about what they have done and then apologise’, it is inappropriate. A child’s bedroom should be a safe happy place of relaxation.”

Instead Ms Walker, who thinks smacking is unnecessary and ineffective, advocates “chilling out” where a child sits quietly “away from the scene of the crime” to calm down.

She said some parents spent too much time and energy forcing young children to say please, thank you and sorry, when their own behaviour was more important.

Why is it that so many people so uncomfortable with moral standards, moral judgments, and rewards and punishments? Can we expect to produce moral children when we banish morality from their development and focus on self-esteem and tolerance of bad behavior?

An article from the Australian Herald Sun on bullying.

Excerpt:

BULLIES would escape punishment under a new Victorian plan to reduce schoolyard intimidation.

Teachers have backed the idea but parents have raised concerns, saying bullies should face the consequences of their actions.

The Swedish-devised “method of shared concern” aims to “empower” bullies to change their behaviour.

[…]Rather than being accused, suspected bullies are merely spoken to and encouraged to think of ways to help a bullied student cope.

The hope is that an aggressor will be turned into a sympathetic ally.

“The approach is solution-focused,” a new government-commissioned report says.

“The emphasis is about bringing about desirable changes in participants rather than finding who’s to blame and applying sanctions.”

Victorian Education Union president Mary Bluett said the no-blame plan was in general a good “initial approach”, but the burden would rest on school staff.

It demonstrated why all schools needed trained counsellors, she said.

Why should adopt a policy based on “hope”? The article cites no research. Why believe that this permissive policy is good for children?

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