Posted on 12/03/2007 2:44:21 PM PST by wintertime
In recent years, a slew of books have offered parents ample insight into the minds of young bullies.
But what if it's the teacher who screams, threatens, or uses biting sarcasm to humiliate a child in front of the class?
Teacher bullying gets little attention, say Stuart Twemlow, MD, a psychiatrist who directs the Peaceful Schools and Communities Project at the Menninger Clinic in Houston. But his new study, published in The International Journal of Social Psychiatry, hints that the problem may be more common than people believe.
In his anonymous survey of 116 teachers at seven elementary schools, more than 70% said they believed that bullying was isolated. But 45% admitted to having bullied a student. "I was surprised at how many teachers were willing to be honest," Twemlow says.
He defines teacher bullying as "using power to punish, manipulate, or disparage a student beyond what would be a reasonable disciplinary procedure." Twemlow, a former high school teacher, insists that he's not trying to denigrate a praiseworthy -- and often beleaguered -- profession. "This is not being done to victimize or criticize teachers. There are a few bad apples, but the vast majority of teachers go beyond the call of duty. They're very committed and altruistic."
Nevertheless, bullying is a risk, he says. When Twemlow quizzed subjects about bullying, "Some teachers reported being angry at being asked the question," he writes. "But more reflective teachers realized that bullying is a hazard of teaching."
(Excerpt) Read more at webmd.com ...
My child has been in the new school with a better teacher for 3 weeks now and the difference has been night and day
LOL! I was a hot, sweaty boy! And it was in Texas (Palo Pinto County).
Yes, but I can’t at the moment think of how else we’d do it. Do you have any practical suggestions about changing the public school system?
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I encourage every parent to very seriously consider homeschooling and make the sacrifices necessary to make it happen.
For those who must institutionalize their children, I would recommend private schooling.
Hopefully, government schooling will simply collapse like the Berlin Wall and disappear into the trash can of failed collectivist experiments.
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So...What would have been the response of a parent doing the same to their own child? What if a parent did the same to a neighbor’s child? Would the SS being knocking on the door and asking hard questions?
Isn’t it time that teachers and principals were held to the same standards as parents?
Teachers in article bring back terrible memories of the nuns in my elementary school. They slapped kids. Threw a kid at the blackboard which came crashing down. Put kids in the wastepaper basket while mocking them openly for a shirt sticking out of their pants. ...too many disturbing memories
My fourth grade teacher picked me up by my hair and told me to stop talking, then not so gently put me back in my seat. Guess what? I did not speak out of turn again.
Sounds like Mrs. Watkins in 6th grade English. Norman Walker put several baby possums in her desk drawer before class. The few of us who knew about sat there and tried very hard to keep straight faces when the teacher came in and sat down. When she opened the desk drawer take out her organizer, well... levitated is as good a description as any.
Sister Mary Charles Bronson
One that I remember to this day is when she had a little boy come up in front of the class and tell everyone how filthy his ears were.
Not kidding. This little kid grew up to become a Vietnam casualty.
One more: a little girl peed in her pants in gym class...and the phys ed teacher had her stand apart from everyone else.
There is a special place in hell for these scumbag teachers.
Get rid of unions.
Memories of first grade. The teacher brought a terrarium to school and asked the class what it was. I was was the only one who answered “terrarium” and was sent to the office for being a “smart-alec”.
I’m colorblind and once colored a dog green in 1st grade. The same teacher held it up and had the whole class laugh at me.
My Mom had some car troubles one week and I was late almost every day that week. The same teacher had the whole class pretend to look at their watches and chide me when I was late...in 1st grade. This from a woman who could not pronounce the three letter word “ask”.
I finally told my Mom about those incidents. I will never forget the look on that woman’s face when my Mom came into class with me and threatened to drag her out in the parking lot and beat the hell out of her.
I didn’t have any more problems after that.
“If children are treated like prisoners in buildings that look like minimum security prisons, if they are marched around like herds of sheep to the sound of Pavlov’s bell, if they are isolated in unnatural same-aged packs, is it any wonder that they form protection gangs ( cliques) and bully?”
Actually, I substitute taught in something like that environment, and in some circumstances, it is not as bad as you think.
This particular school had the reputation of the most troublesome in a large metro area. It really was a “minimum security educational experience”, but it was the opposite of what you might expect. The security was to keep dangerous adults out, and to protect the children in school. It had a squad of security people, a few of whom were armed, and whose main job it was to keep such adults off campus.
Students did not have lockers. They had one set of books for classroom use, and the other set they left at home. Thus no need for backpacks, and so few weapons.
In personality, there were many “normal” students, but there were also both students who felt utterly defeated by their circumstances and desperately needed motivation, and a third group with burning ambition and determination to succeed.
Of course, most of the problems were found in the “defeated” group. In a short time, I steered many of these toward joining the military, and was honest that it was their best chance of ever having a chance. Even those migrating towards gangs realized that it was a dead end and that they would probably be dead before the age of 25, so I didn’t have to use a hard sell.
As a substitute, I was popular with teachers because I looked and acted fearsome. This quickly ended student efforts to pull fast ones, which they did, but left me room to slack off a bit and relax the room when things permitted.
In one class, after the students were at work, I noticed a table with two grossly obese boys at it, too large to fit in ordinary desks, and looking sullen and hostile. I made it a point to approach the angrier of the two, and used a line something like which they had probably heard many times before.
“I used to know a guy who looked like you in high school.”
Typically, such an opener would be used to sneer at them for being obese, and to offer up some obviously stale advice. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I followed up by telling him the true story of the man.
“He and his brother opened a pizza place, which became a chain. They sold it ten years later and made a few million.”
Once that had sunk in, both boys looked utterly perplexed.
For the first time in years, somebody had indirectly suggested that something good might happen to them, that they were not total losers because they were obese. That they still had potential.
Days later, that teacher sought me out and asked what had happened, because both boys had suddenly become interested in school again and were no longer perpetually sulking and angry.
Things like that can happen in “bad” schools, and a lot more often than that much of a difference can be made in a “good” school.
Perhaps you went to school when I did, in the fifties and sixties. I graduated high school in 1970. In the first grade, the teacher would spank kids in front of the class. In later grade school years, it was not unusual for a teacher to slap a kid’s hand with a ruler or hit them with an eraser. In junior high, teachers would grab a kid who was chewing gum in the hallway and shove his or her head into a garbage can until the gum was spit out.
In high school I was president of a school club and the first day I went to have my faculty sponsor sign an announcement, I caught him before classes started but as he started to sign the paper, he saw a kid walk up to his locker and drop his school books on the floor to work the combination. My sponsor charged up to the young man, slammed him against the locker and kneed him, all for dropping his books. I was in terror that my pen wouldn’t work and I would get the same treatment. He would grab the desks of students who weren’t paying enough attention and turn it on its side with the student still trapped in it. Everyone was afraid of him, especially the principal. (BTW, this particular faculty member was a Japanese POW and he didn’t come back entirely intact.)
Nevertheless, if a kid complained during those days, the parent was likely to support the teacher and add a little postscript to the kid’s backside.
We should be careful about bullying by both teachers and students, and students who bully others while the teacher looks the other way. I can tell you from various accounts that this is what happened to Michael Moore, and may be responsible for why he became the monster that now takes on ever increasing levels of power. Bullying begets bullies.
As far as school classroom smells, I believe it. We were once in a practice room in school that smelled absolutely horrid. I ran down to a teacher’s room, one who always was fully stocked with room fresheners. She gave me one labelled Potpourri, but it just made the smell even worse!
I needed throwing off of those bleachers....it was good for me.
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If this would be uncomfortable for me, wouldn’t it be uncomfortable for children as well? Why are we doing this to them?
I needed throwing off of those bleachers....it was good for me.
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But,,,the question was: “And what would happen if social workers knew that a parent had done that?”
If a parent would have had the Child Protection Workers knocking on the door, why don’t we hear of them knocking on the doors of principals and teachers?
I suspect it is because that down on the Animal Farm government workers live in the farmer’s house and parents live in the barn.
“But,,,,shouldn’t we look at the system and recognize that it is abnormal to institutionalize children the way we do in prison-like settings?
Yes, but I can’t at the moment think of how else we’d do it. Do you have any practical suggestions about changing the public school system?”
When I was visiting Denmark in 1973, a Danish man told me that at the age of 12, the kids were tested and then put into either an academic track or a vocational track. Some people in the US would strongly dislike such a system because it doesn’t seem to promote equality, but I have taught kids who have absolutely no interest in academics. School really does become like a prison for them. Schools in the US ignore the 50% or so of kids who will either not go to college or else drop out of college. Secondary education focuses on college prep. courses and ignores the huge number of kids who will later take very necessary jobs like garbage collector or cashier.
I think that vocational training (in auto mechanics, construction work, being a beautitian, etc.) could reduce the drop out rate and maybe even discourage young people from joining gangs because they get to do something productive with themselves. It’s also a lot better than our current system of having many young people flounder for a direction when they are young.
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