Schools and discipline... outside the school grounds

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If the School board is responsible for the safety of the students on the bus, then they should have the authority to protect them. The punk deserves what he gets. He should have been suspended and arrested. Try him for reckless endangerment. Try the punk as a nadult. He wants to interfere with education, then he forfeits that right. His life is ruined. Let him work to reclaim it.

 

Why should them try him as an adult? Give me one reason that doesn't include ruining his life, for fun.

 

I see this more as an issue of responsibilities than of locations. The kid has already gone through the justice system, and I don't see why there should be additional "formal" punishment applied. However, I think my views have already been summed up quite nicely by TGS:

If the event happened at a time and place where the school district had responsibilities and/or a duty of care, then I believe their actions are justified. I think the plaintiff is concerned more about his kid's college and monetary opportunities than any concept of natural justice.

@ Carcaroth: Completely agree with you on the whole issue of respect and kids being raised with a measure of discipline and courtesy. Unfortunately, it seems that common courtesy and decency are things you can only expect if you have a battery of lawyers at your disposal - and they'd better be meticulous in their approach.

 

Well, when I was younger (oh man, I sound like Splunge ) there were certain things a teacher could do and certain things that they couldn't. For example, if a teacher (or principal) asked to search your bag (while on school property) then a student by all rights could refuse, in which case a police officer could be brought in to do so (all of this hinging on reasonable assumption). If a teacher (or principal) wanted to search your locker, they could do so without your permission, since it is the school's property (of course, they ask first, and then if you refuse they will cut off the lock).

Around here, though, the bus system is kept seperate from the school district. It is run by another government pronch called Laidlaw. So if that had happened here, then the school couldn't do anything, and Laidlaw could only suspend the kid from the bus and possibly sue for damages.

But if in the area this happened the buses are the property of the school district, then by all means, throw the book at him for defacing public property and endangering students who are still under the care of the school.

(Just a little off topic for those who are still a little unclear, a standard potato gun is a large plastic tube about as big around as a potato, with a cap at the back end, and an ignitor button. A potatoe is jammed down the pipe, and hairspray [or another flammable spray] is sprayed in the back end. The cap is closed, the ignitor is pushed and BAM, potato-ala-Wright Brothers. )

 

Well, they should be able to take protective measures, but punishment in the strict sense should always be reviewed by a magistrate, or be limited to cases where the juvenile offender agrees to undergo the school punishment and skip on the police and magistrates. Either that or when they have a videotaping security camera and the offence and the punishment is mentioned in the school's rules.

It's not like the magistrate is a professional judge and in the traditional system teachers and especially school authorities are construed as a sort of magistrate. But there's a difference between a modern judge of the peace and a feudal lord. I don't like it when they act like the latter.

Examples include deciding which kid's testimony is to be believed and which is to be discarded, involving other kids in the process of deciding or delivering punishment, punishing the most probable offender because there has been an offence and someone most be punished, and so on.

When they pulled the "you did that because more students say you did than that you didn't" trick on me, I always threatened them with slander lawsuit, and I always had student rights printed out somewhere in reach. But students don't typically know their rights. Teachers don't typically know student rights, either, but they still want to play judge on you. They don't know a damn about examining proof or defence rights, let alone drawing a line between an offence and something they don't like.

I went through disciplinary talks and lowering the conduct mark for sticking to my version (i.e. the teacher asked me to do a task) even after a teacher decided to contradict me (i.e. say that she gave it to someone else). I said, have it your way, no problem, give it to her, but you asked me to do that. Et voila, enter the world discipline. The woman didn't even think that she could mark it for two people.

Yet another example would be that teacher who decided if you were guilty by majority vote of the class. Doesn't matter people who voted you did that weren't even there. When you pointed that out, she would lecture you on how anti-social you were and that you were supposed to be part of the class and not above it.

When they didn't have enough evidence, they would pressure on you to own to the offence. One way or another. Typically you admit and we get over it kind of ways. Of course, if they decided you were guilty, they increased your punishment for opposing, so I saw totally innocent kids play all guilty and apologetic because of fear or for pragmatic reasons.

Searches did occur, although they never happened to me except one woman demanding me to stick my pockets out, which I refused and had it my way. Whole class search because someone's missing something is a barbaric custom. They had another method, even more barbaric but not including a search: they ordered the whole class to keep repeating an exhausting physical exercise until someone admitted to the act. Either that or a punitive test outside of the normal rules for a test, that everyone was supposed to fail. The marks wouldn't be given if someone admitted doing the wrong thing.

Well, here is here. I live in the capital city. In the country, such things still happen and they are more of a general rule than an exception. Still, I don't think they move so far as personal searches. But I did some research on strip searches elsewhere and I found examples of it happening in schools. In the US, students have the right to refuse that (don't know about other countries, maybe somewhere else they don't have such a right), but they don't typically know and aren't informed of their rights by the teachers - who probably don't know, either. Plus, I can imagine a school punishing a student for refusing to allow a strip search for lack of cooperation with school authority or whatever "ethical" or "civic" crap that comes to their mind. In Alabama, they ordered a group of girls to come out of the bathroom with panties on their ankles because another girl was missing $7. Apart from sheer brutality and humiliation, didn't those idiots realise that all money looks the same and all kids carry some cash?

All in all, I think the situation needs to be formalised and things need to be written down and actually read. I'm not dead against teachers having magistrate rights. But in that case, they should receive special training (exam included), be bound by procedural regulations, they should be forced to write a protocol, and observe your defence rights. Plus there should always a recourse to higher authority suspending the execution of your punishment. Needless to say, all offences would have to be writted down and all punishments possible alike. Appart from the above, I really, really think that taking an IQ test should be compulsory for all teacher candidates. Just look on those who search kids' pockets, backpacks or even persons for missing money. Heck, if we are at it, I think it's not just IQ, but some character problem or personality issue must be involved (after all, the person has completed some studies and obtained some degree, so he/she can't really be legally retarded), so a thorough psychological examination would be welcome. Another problem is, it's hard to make lofty demands in state-owned schools if you're paying them three times less than uneducated people receive in some jobs.

 

I got the impression that he was guilty and they had the evidence on him. They had him dead to rights. If found guilty in a fair trial, then he deserves what he gets.

As for trying him as an adult, I think that reckless endangerment is serious enough to warrant that kind of deterent.