How can we teach our kids to be responsible adults, when they are up against things like this?

NY Times: Its a Fork, It's a Spoon, It's a . . . Weapon?

Short version: Six year old joins cubscouts. Is issued a spork folding fork/spoon/knife combo to eat with. Is so proud of cubscouts, he brings his spork eating utensil to school to eat with. Gets suspended for 45-days for bringing a weapon to school.

Really, read the article. It's infuriating.

I, like many people on this board, rarely go anywhere without some sort of a blade on my person. Others carry tools that have much more potential for damage that blades (i.e. firearms). How can we teach our kids to be responsible, and to use sporks(!)/knives/tools responsibly? My kids want to emulate everything I do - they'll want to carry a knife when they're old enough (and right now, they're not), and it would make me proud if I raised them to be responsible enough to do so. But it seams like the administrators of the world don't want me to do so.

For the record, to head off the inevitable flame war, having never had a six year old in the house, I have no idea if they can be responsible enough to use a knife (I tend to doubt it). But a spork? Come on

From the looks of it, he didn't have a spork, but one of the folding blade knife/fork/spoon type pocketknives. That's what he's holding, and that's what the article talks about. A spork is a plastic utensil that has limited ability to cut with.

The tool the kid had, which was not a spork, unfortunately can inflict some damage, and would probably violate weapons policies at most public schools. For a six year old, a tool with a sharp metal blade should probably only be used and possessed under supervision and within proper context. As I recall we were never allowed to have knives at school when I was a kid, and that was in a pretty rural setting.

However, that does not validate the school's zero tolerance policy with regard to issuing an automatic suspension. In my day, if the teacher caught us with a pocketknife (which almost always meant we had it out at school instead of keeping it put away like we should've been), the teacher would just confiscate it and maybe we got it back at the end of the year, or maybe we got our parents to come get it if it was something special and took our beating when we got home and didn't see the knife for a year or so anyways because dad was pissed. In any case, a 45 day suspension for a 6 year old in this context is unwarranted and inappropriate. Such policies abrogate good sense and villify an otherwise decent kid.

I agree, Benjammin. Six years old is too young to carry without supervision, but the zero tolerance reaction without appeal seems draconian.

I was a scout leader throughout my kids' cub scout and boy scout years. We issued Totin' Chip cards ( Totin' Chip ) once the scout showed respect and proficency. They had to be carried and could be taken away for infractions.

I have one of those "Hobo Tools" and it's a knife, fork and spoon, and not a spork.

That being said, and though it seems like a ridiculous punishment, ultimately the parents should have known about the rule and been aware of where the tool was kept and whether it was being taken to school. Those school policies are usually well known, and not in any hidden rule book in the basement and the parents obviously knew about the tool.

I took my Cub Scout Pocket Knife to school (similar though much lighter rules) when I was a child. My parents were not too happy about it, and my father held onto my pocket knife for two weeks because I broke the rules. Luckily, I was caught by my parents and not by anyone at the school.

Being a responsible adult means following the rules. Maybe he will grow up to be a responsible adult because he was caught and punished. Or perhaps he'll be an irresponsible adult because his parents are trying to get him out of the consequences of his actions and he'll be one of those adults who refuses to take responsibility for anything.

I owe the forum an appology: When I read the article initially, I did it on a mobile device and did not see the "tool" in question. I assumed, from the verbal description of it, that it was a spork.

Now that I see what the tool actually was, I agree that the issue is not quite so cut and dry for the six-year old. That said, the punishment still seems draconian to me.

Continue as you were.

No worries, and no need to apologize. We caught it and I think we're all in agreement pretty much. The thread was a good one.

Agreed. No need to apologize, but good on you for the manners none the less!

Even though we know what it is now, the LMF spork is described as having knife-like functions. (Optimist copy writers.) With that bit of puffery, what started off as funky spoon/fork hybrid turns into oh-my-god-he's-got-a-knife-think-of-the-children!

There are days where I wonder about humanity.

+1 on benjammin's post. Sums up my thoughts on this story quite nicely.

From the article: "... school administrators argue that it is difficult to distinguish innocent pranks and mistakes from more serious threats, and that the policies must be strict to protect students."

It's only difficult for people who are stupid and lazy.

"The Christina school district attracted similar controversy in 2007 when it expelled a seventh-grade girl who had used a utility knife to cut windows out of a paper house for a class project."

The problem is that many kids are used to using tools as they are intended to be used, they use them all the time at home, but only at school are they considered a weapon.

Cut down on the excessive spending and the new $40,000 car, and HOME SCHOOL. There are plenty of resources and people who will help you.

Sue

I'm curious Sue, do you have any home or otherwise schooled kids?

The question I have is, where the hell was the parent? The 6yo should have been supervised and informed of the right and wrong places to take the knife. And the child should be taking nothing to school that the parent doesn't know about.

Also, while it is easy to blame the school/teacher/administration you have to remember that they are downstream of hundreds of children that come at them like a dam break. Kids from diverse backgrounds, often with learning disabilities, or discipline issues. The teachers can't handle each and every one of them like the bundle of joy their parents see. If little Johnny innocently pulls out a knife and little Sue stumbles into it and gets so much as a scratch your talking multi-million dollar lawsuit. Schools are run on a shoestring and any case can sink their budget. So the rules are written in simple bright lines. It also limits claims of favoritism, racism, special treatment.

If it can be mistaken for a weapon or even moderately controversial or dangerous it is forbidden. I bet the 45 day suspension is the proscribed penalty. More a punishment for the parent than child. Forty-five days was probably selected to keep it beyond the easy, no pain, reach of a parent who might otherwise try to take it in stride, avoid having to make provisions for daycare, by taking a few days off. A kid being kicked for three days or a week is a vacation. A kid having to be put into daycare so mommy can go to work is a wake up call.

I also give you odds that there is a fairly lenient appeals process. The 45 days is a threat to get the parent to get involved and engaged. The usual way it works is the 45 days suspension becomes a week or less if the parent meets with the school counselor, agrees to parenting classes, and consents to monthly in-person meeting for a year to make sure the kid maintains course in the right direction.

These zero tolerance policies seem to be leaving US children's educational standards well behind other countries in the world league tables.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3zjbnHphxE

From MSNBC.Com
"However, on Tuesday night the school board made a hasty change to its code of conduct. The seven-member board voted unanimously to reduce the punishment for kindergartners and first-graders who bring weapons to school or commit other violent offenses to a suspension ranging from three to five days. "

Full article here.

"I'm curious Sue, do you have any home or otherwise schooled kids?"

I shudder at the thought of ever having children. I've made it a point to never let myself get in that position. (Ask some of the long-timers here if my having children seems like a good idea.. I KNOW what the answers will be.)

I started school in 1955, the same year Rudolf Flesch's book Why Johnny Can't Read came out. I spent twelve years in the public school system, the last half wondering why it seemed to totally insane.

When I read John Taylor Gatto's book Dumbing Us Down several years ago, I was shocked at all the parallels between the what I had seen/experienced, and his explanation of the why of it. All through this book I was thinking, "Yes! I remember them doing that!" and "YES! I always wondered why they did that!" and so forth.

We have been one of the richest and most influential countries of the world for a good, long time now, yet we have the poorest educational system in the industrialized world. Rock bottom, dead last. But I guess that ignorant people are easier to control than educated ones. And it seems to be working just fine, doesn't it?

Sue

I have the time and money available so home school and private school are options but I also have the option of utilizing some of the best public school systems in the nation. When my first child was approaching school age I had several very candid conversations with people I trust for advice on this particular subject. One of these councilors is a family member that recently retired after a number of years as the Dean of the doctoral education program at a well regarded private university. His years prior to that were spent as a teacher, coach, principal and as a distinguished professor of education in the doctoral program at the same university. His advice was to utilize the public school system in my area. If I weren't in one of the small elite public school systems in the area I suspect his advice may have been different.

Now, with that said, I will admit that the options and tools available to home schoolers have changed significantly since my oldest started school. Home schooling would give my public school option a much better run for it's money today.

IMO any of these options could be the right decision based on the particulars of public and private education in your area and the particular needs and desires of the children involved. I have seen HUGE train wrecks with kids in public, private and home school. The key to all of these is constant, thoughtful parental involvement regardless of which option you choose.

Another question, does anyone know where the authors Sue mentioned went to school?

Per Wikipedia:

Rudolf Flesch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Flesch

"He was raised in Austria and finished university there..."

John Taylor Gatto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

"In his youth he attended public schools throughout the Pittsburgh Metro Area including Swissvale, Monongahela, and Uniontown as well as a Catholic boarding school in Latrobe... He was named New York City Teacher of the year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991... One professor of education has called his books 'scathing' and 'one-sided and hyperbolic, [but] not inaccurate.'"

Interesting that both the writers in question attended and apparently received good enough educations at public schools to write books condemning public education.

I'm reminded of talk show host Dennis Prager, who at one time reminded his listeners how educated he was at least once per show who after being released from his job at the major talk radio station in Los Angeles in later years became one of the more vociferous "anti-intellectual" proponents I've ever heard on the radio.

I'm also reminded of a local Los Angeles writer and editor who only after they were fired by the Los Angeles Times came out condemning the paper for it's editorial positions. Apparently while she was taking their money all was well.

"Interesting that both the writers in question attended and apparently received good enough educations at public schools to write books condemning public education."

Flesch was educated in Europe... no comparison. By the time a French or German kid is six years old, you can hand him/her a book of any kind and they can read it. They won't know what all the words mean, but they CAN read it. Not so here.

Some parents actually think a poor school is doing a good job, when it was really the parents who did the basic work without even thinking about it. My mother taught me how to read and my numbers up to 20 or so before I started school.

Ask some American kids how to spell these similar-looking words: recipe, receipt, receive, receptive, recipient. The longtime current method of teaching reading is one word at a time. Most of the time, when kids see a word like one in the list above, they're really just guessing.

Literacy in America at the time of the American Revolution was estimated to be about 90%. I believe Gatto gave an approximation of literacy in the 1880s as in the 93-97% range (when the public school system idea was put into operation). Some studies done in 1997 indicated that 21-23% of Americans were functionally illiterate.

One time I googled 'illiteracy and crime' and found that I wasn't alone in my suspicions that the two are closely related.

'Illiteracy and crime are closely related. The Department of Justice states, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure." Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level.' [italics are not mine] http://www.begintoread.com/research/literacystatistics.html

I also read somewhere that kids who haven't gotten a handle on reading by the time they are 13 will probably never be functionally literate, even with special tutoring. There are parents who are so busy with their own lives, they never notice that what their kid is 'reading' has really been memorized by hearing the other kids in school read the same things over and over. Illiterate people often have very good memories, adapting what they can do to partially make up for what they can't do.

It's past sad, it's past pathetic, it's CRIMINAL. But they've been getting away with it for about 120 years.

Most illiterate cities in America (over 50,000 pop.): http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7291294

Sue, Public School Enemy #1

Jim, one of the main arguments that people come up with (as a reason not to homeschool, because they don't want to admit they're lazy or scared of a new idea) is that they say public school is for 'socializing' their children. Rather than socializing, I hear more about bullying, peer pressure to get involved with drugs and crime, etc. I am amazed that some parents seem to be so lazy that they want to leave SOCIALIZATION to the schools, too!

How do you feel about this, since you're actually doing it?

You say your wife was a school teacher... are you familiar with retired teacher/counselor Linda Schrock Taylor, who taught school and then went home and homeschooled her son? Now THAT is one in the eye for the public schools! (Linda Schrock Taylor archives: http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor-arch.html)

My congratulations and support for making the time and effort to homeschool.

Sue

Some hopefully common sense thoughts on the current problems about teaching children today.

i) Schooling success is a function of class size. The smaller the class the greater the success (to a point)

ii) Home schooling is of course just primarily just an exercise in one or two children class sizes. Greater time and care can be afforded to each individual child.

iii) Larger class sizes are subject to disruption. I was a disruptive influence in class when I was at secondary school for various reasons to the point I was removed from the class. An example was when I completed 2 weeks mathematics work on surds and indices in a single afternoon. Some will struggle to keep up and some will be left twiddling their thumbs. One size does not fit all.

iv) A maximum class size of no more than 15 and an optimum of around 8-10 is best. Teachers don't even then really have to try. One of the best school teachers in Engineering Science in Scotland (he had the highest examination pass rates) used to always disappear off to the teachers common room for a coffee and cigarette almost every lesson for about 20 minutes after setting a tough problem.

v) Word recognition versus phonetics. This is an easy one for the main stream English teacher who doesn't know any better. Ask them what the word analogy means then teach them to program a microprocessor firstly in binary machine code then in Assembler. They will soon get the point.

vi) One of the downsides to home schooling is actually the teacher or to be more precise the lack of very specific hardcore expertise in specific subjects esp Maths, physics and chemistry etc. When in primary school (aged about 11 to 12) my father was given some course work arithmetic where he had to point out to the qualified primary 'English' teacher the mistakes of the incorrect marking where my correct answers were being marked down.

vii) Discipline. Hire more male teachers than female ones. Female teachers will either themselves get bullied by the school children or overcompensate in disciplinary matters when there is no need. Jean Brodie was a f ascist.

And finally, always remember that a poor university education is not always a barrier for not achieving success just as long as you know how to spell potatoe or know that the Canadian National Igloo doesn't exist. I am always amazed that ill qualified politicians, who no nothing about teaching on both sides of the fence always seem to have an agenda with regard to education. Most teachers know how to teach, just let them get on with it (in those smaller class sizes of course) without all the administrative and political nonsense they have to deal with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwDknTtkVdc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usK3eA9tezA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w84BDXVL7UI

I always remember looking forward to go to my public school but then again it was just like the film Gregory's Girl (yes I had hair like that as well ).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEol7v7cA7Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG545vIYkQA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrfLHS_Ylxs&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr6BzQ2Q2uI&feature=channel

Thank you, Jim!

You explained what I have seen and thought. In my case, anyway, every single home schooled young person I have met was friendly, polite, able to understand words and concepts beyond their public school counterparts, and were a joy to be around.

Most parents seem to invest about four scheduled hours a day for home schooling, but also take advantage of opportunities that come up during each day, like having the children figure out how to add fifty percent to recipe ingredients, how to come up with a complete diet for their chickens out of individual materials, ask them to design small structures, keep track of pets' veterinary history, and make a point of taking them to businesses (pre-arranged) where an employee (or owner) will take them on a tour and explain how it works.

Many people point out that many parents aren't educated enough to home school, but the desire to do so can be a great incentive. There are all kinds of sources available to parents so they can provide a complete education.

I took a friend's cat to her vet's office for an appointment, and met a young woman with Down's Syndrome, her mother, and the young woman's young daughter. She proudly explained that she and her mother were going to home school her (apparently normal) daughter. I was very surprised, and glanced at her mother, who smiled and nodded. I was overwhelmed with the idea that this young woman had both the courage and the will to even try to do this, even with the help of her mother, when it's simply too scary for most American parents.

I also read somewhere that private colleges especially, are quietly hiring home schooled teachers.

Thank you for all your information.

Sue

Am Fear Liath Mor:

You have many valid points. However, here in the U.S., no matter how good a teacher may be, he/she is not ALLOWED to teach by any method other than what their school board dictates. The attitude that children and sheep are pretty much the same is dominant here.

Disruptive children are NOT removed from classes for any appreciable time, they are allowed to continue and interfere with the child who wants to learn.

Many studies have been done on the best methods to teach reading. Phonetics (usually phonics here) came out as best in every single study, with no exceptions. The American Public School system decried the studies as faulty (ALL of them!) and continued to teach word recognition. And they were allowed to do so. Which fact alone tells me that there are other issues that matter more, and education itself is not really a consideration.

The only (very rare) exceptions are usually in smaller towns when the parents band together and DEMAND that phonics be taught as the only way.

"... lack of very specific hardcore expertise in specific subjects esp Maths, physics and chemistry etc."

I cannot find a list of classes offered in my county, but I am quite certain that the number of math and science classes offered isn't exactly extensive, if they offer them at all. Our school system is ineffective at even teaching the basics.

Discipline doesn't exist here, in virtually any place or any form, not just the schools.

"Most teachers know how to teach, just let them get on with it ... without all the administrative and political nonsense they have to deal with."

I can tell you for an absolute fact that THAT isn't going to happen without a major revolution of irate parents, and THAT isn't going to happen, either.

The U.S. has the most expensive educational system, and the poorest. I guess throwing money at a problem really doesn't fix it.

Sue

Sue:

It isn't as easy as that. In the US certain things get tossed into 'education' that just don't show up in other nations. The cost of busing, including keeping, administering and maintaining a large fleet of buses and drivers, doesn't show up on many other nations education's costs. Many European nations rely on their municipal mass transit systems to move the children to and from school.

School buildings in some other nations are not administered under education but rather they are listed and funded under local government as municipal buildings.

The US system has mandated that all children, regardless of potential costs, be given an education. Whereas some other nation simply neglect these children, and some European nations, maintain special schools and tutorial systems. In both cases the related costs are much less or, often, don't show up as general education funding.

In the US middle and upper middle class families pulled their children from public schools as a response to integration in the 60s. Because of this the average income of families sending their children to public schools has drop. In LA county approximately a third of all children in public schools come from homes below the poverty line. They tend to be poorer, many not speaking english, often intellectually neglected in early life, often emotionally neglected or abused.

While teachers in the US, and the teachers union, are often blamed for rising education costs the reality is that US teachers tend to make much less, and be a lower SE status, than in other developed western nations and teacher to student ratios tend to be much smaller in the US than in other developed nations.

We demand much from public education in the US than other nations. Much of this demand has little to do with any actual classroom teaching. At the same time the public system has been drained of many of the children who are easiest to teach. Children who start school with good academic skills, coming from families that are inclined to be engaged and support their children's education, children who are emotionally well adjusted and least likely to be disruptive have left many districts.

I meant to add a link to an interesting article about education and how it has changed from the structure before 1800 to what we have now. How what it meant to be a teacher or student changed.

http://www.adlit.org/article/5981

To those interested in education and teaching kids the Adlit site has a lot of resources. So spend some time finding out what they have to offer.

http://www.adlit.org/