Students Protest! Demanding More Discipline!

What do we want? No violence! When do we want it? NOW!

How bad is it in the nation's schools? It is this bad:

Totem Middle School students protest lax rules

Everett WA:Totem Middle Schoolers call discipline weak, unfair. About 200 students walked out of classes on Wednesday, saying they often feel unsafe and want harsher penalties for drugs and fighting.

Tap... Tap.... Tap.... Tap.... sigh...

OK. Let's review.

After decades of "improvement" ... after decades of pumping more and more money into "fixing" the schools ... after decades of giving the Teachers Unions pretty much anything their little hearts desire ... after decades of catering to the least little desire for self-esteem... after decades of requiring less and less actual achievement ... after

decades of shoveling hundreds of millions into the maws of "educational consultants" that yielded new! and improved! teaching methods that have led to steadily declining test scores and literacy levels.... after all that, it has come to this.

Schools that are so bad, so decayed, and so violent that the students themselves are staging protests and demonstrations DEMANDING MORE RULES!

If you have ever dealt with a teenager, you know that if they come to you and say, "Gee, Dad, could you please, please give me more rules?" that something is not right with the universe.

You know that you should either take them immediately to have their head examined and perhaps institutionalized, or that you need to take stock of how you are running your house.

Perhaps those crack whores servicing customers on the couch in the front room could be asked take it to the nearest alley. Maybe you might want to dismantle the meth lab in your shower before it blows the whole trailer park into the next state. Could it be your late night spontaneous facial piercings with a Makita cordless drill aren't such a good idea? Reflect that Heather having six silver leather daddies in residence might not be the best thing since the solar powered Love Swing.

You know, the modification of the little things that might be denting your child's lifestyle.

Transfer that situation over to a school of hundreds of teenagers and I think you can say that the adults you've been paying to take care of your kids have failed in their duties. And when the kids themselves say it, you'd better listen.

Posted by Vanderleun at March 7, 2008 3:09 PM