General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am old enough to remember when kids were allowed to actually bring guns to school [View all]The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)First time offenders - don't jail em. Get them into some therapy. Ask them questions, research the causes. Try to find something in common.
The right will say it is a lack of religion, others will say too many violent games, some drugs and alcohol being so readily available. I asked one person about this earlier on FB, she said kids are now in home where both parents work, we spend less time together as a family and more on our own and kids have less direction and more desires to have the best and newest things, etc.
There is no one answer - why are schools in small towns less likely to have the same issues ones in big towns do (or least much less of the same problems per student capita)?
If I had to pick one place to start it might be spend more time on positive things in schools - instead of focusing on drills and lockdowns and feeding them stories all the time about the negative things in society spend more celebrating the good. If a student does something simple and good, do something back. Kids get expelled/suspended all of the time over the dumbest of things, going to school is getting to be like going to a prison for part of the day. They learn to fear each other, the schools, and as noted before we sell fear to everyone of everyone else.
They are not treated like people but as a source of income for the school district/charter. They have lost individuality, all are expected to be like others - like robots on an assembly line. A friend of mine in education remarked to me one time that schools no longer look at each kid and their skills, which vary by child, but seem them as one borg like entity. Some kids are better at math, others art, etc - but we want them all to be exactly the same and work on passing a big test instead of actually letting the teachers call the shots, the ones who see them each day and know them.
They have become products with money attached to them are more a commodity than they are people.