Posted on 07/16/2012 5:48:37 AM PDT by wintertime
School buses serve as a setting for as much as 10% of all bullying incidents in the country, according to the data collected by the U.S. Department of Education. The reality, however, could be much worse, since as many as two-thirds of all bullying incidents that take place in the U.S. schools are never reported. A recent article on Slate.com explained that limited space and lack of adequate supervision make school bus bullying notoriously hard to control and reduce.
Jeremy Stahl, writing at Slate.com, said that he polled his colleagues about their own and their kids’ experiences and many recalled incidents that took place on a school bus as the worst cases of bullying they had ever experienced. One even said that school bus harassment was so prevalent at his school that his mother, a teacher, arranged for him to carpool at the beginning and the end of the day to protect him from the abuse.
The research backs up these anecdotes. A 2005 study from the Journal of School Violence reported that two incidents of bullying occurred for every bus ride they monitored. According to a 2007 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, middle school students are most likely to be bullied on a bus. This is also the same age that students are also most likely to be injured by bullying. What is it about buses that make them such an ideal venue for this kind of behavior?
(Excerpt) Read more at educationnews.org ...
there are no consequences for bad behavior on the bus. this encourages bad behavior. the driver cannot stop the bus and oust the offender, they cannot kick the kid off the bus, even for a few days. and whenever something goes wrong it’s always the drivers fault. and he has no rights to discipline the kids, adn the kids know it.
In response to your first #5, there are ways to prevent the crushing and dragging injuries. I drove a school bus in NC back in the 70’s (when high school students were still allowed to be bus drivers). I remember the training. The most dangerous part of driving the bus was the pasenger stop. They taught us that there was 14 steps to a passenger stop. One step in particular was, “Count and recount.” If they are getting on the bus, you count the kids before you open the door, then recount them as they get on. Or if getting off, count them as they leave, then again as they walk away from the bus stop. DO NOT MOVE THE BUS UNTIL YOUR COUNTS MATCH!!!
I got a chipped tooth when another kid yanked me forward by my coat, and my mouth hit the back of the seat in front of me.
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And your parents didn’t sue....
It falls back onto the parents.
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Precisely.
LOL! Imagine if our parents had sued back then every time we got hurt. We'd all be rich!
OMW, when I think of all of the times I got hurt. I was a little tomboy. Loved to get dressed up and look pretty on Sunday, but my summers were full of climbing trees, roller skating and riding my bike. I learned quite a bit about the laws of physics with some of my dumb tricks.
Most of the time, I avoided letting my mother know about some of the stupid stunts I tried, e.g., trying to ride my bike down the concrete steps at the library. Mom and Dad would not have complained that the library had not posted a sign over the steps warning of the dangers of riding a bicycle there; I would have been asked what I was thinking to try such a crazy thing.
I raised my children the same way. Kids need to run and play. They will fall down and get hurt on occasion, but that is part of the learning process.
Today’s parents — well, not all but far too many — are idiots.
Sorry for hijacking this thread, BTW.
The bus driver has enough to do without worrying about **14** steps. Fourteen steps? Wow! That’s a perfect prescription for crushed and dragged children.
In the dragging injuries and deaths. The child leaves the bus, and since he is not seen, the driver assumes that he has fully exited and left the vicinity of the bus.
Then there is the occasional crushing that happens when the bus backs up and the child is behind the bus.
There should be bus monitors on all buses to see that the children enter and exit the bus safely, and fully cross the street. Where humans are involved there will always be accidents. The goal should be to reduce these accidents to as low as possible.
Only in the bizarro world of the government defender are **FACTS** called bullying/ What is this? Orwellian “Newspeak”?
Facts=bullying?
Bullying = Facts?
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This ping list is for the “other” articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
Unless you live in a rural area where the school is miles away, there is no reason to bus kids to school. In the cities and even out in most suburbs, schools are usually within easy walking distance. I would say three miles should be the threshold and I think I'm being generous.
Hell, I walk my dog for an hour each morning before work (about four miles) so it's not like I'm asking kids to do something I don't already do myself. During those morning walks, I see all kinds of nutty stuff. Overprotective parents who literally drive their kids to the bus stop which might only be a few houses down the street. There they sit with idling engines, waiting for the bus, while their kid sits in the passenger seat texting on their iPhones and wearing flip-flops and shorts (even though it might be thirty degrees outside).
I say, make the kids walk! I'm surprised the crunchy-granola liberals don't get on board here. All those idling cars and diesel-burning buses clogging up our roadways. Make the planet greener and cure the childhood obesity problem all in one fell swoop - make the kids WALK to school!
Amen, brother testify. I have been telling wintertime that for several years now.
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