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By Mark Bivens
How ’bout them school teachers? Here they are, wrapping up another school year and now getting ready for a vacation longer than most of us ‘Average Joe-types’ will ever be afforded. Yep. How ’bout them teachers? Lucky folks.
Teachers have it made. Don’t they? We don’t ask much of teachers. All they have to do is go to college, pay for their tuition, buy books and presto! Then comes the degree. They’re ready for a life of leisure. Aren’t they? Imagine being a teacher. Teachers come strolling into the classroom, have full control over the students, lay down the law, teach the kids a thing or two and then rake in the money. They don’t have to put up with students who bring a bad attitude or a lack of proper upbringing to the classroom. All the students are well-mannered. Misconduct? Please. Who ever heard of misconduct in a classroom? Profanity on campus? Watch your tongue! Teachers threatened? Not on your life. You think a student would even dream of bringing a weapon to school? What are you smoking? Offenses such as these in the 1960s would have been rare. But this isn’t 1960. Read the news. The system has gone awry. Society has gone awry. Crimes are committed on school grounds and never is a teacher treated as a role model, much less a hero, until they’ve been hurt, or killed trying to protect innocent students from violent students. Worse, some school boards treat offenders with “kid gloves” out of fear of repercussions — never mind the chance of getting the school district sued. The teachers too often stand alone. This isn’t to suggest that things were perfect when discipline was carried out more freely. In the 1970s, a student could be expelled from school for these offenses, among others: hair too long; not wearing socks or shirt not tucked in. The “hair rule” got me sent home for two days. My hair had to be cut in order to return to school. The ‘shirt tail’ episode was good enough to be sent home one day. I was called a “repeat offender.” I think I’d merely been suspected of other things they couldn’t pin on me. Another offense sent me packing for 10 days, but that event was too exaggerated by school officials to explain in adequate detail to defend myself. But so be it. Things were better then than now. How did we get from being kicked out of school for not wearing socks to students bringing weapons and drugs to school and being forced to spend what amounts to a “time out” in some cases? In Little Rock recently a student was spewing obscenities in the classroom, mostly directed at the teacher but intended for anyone in the line-of-fire. In past years that student would have taken a paddling at school and received another one at home when the parents found out. So what happened to this foul-mouthed Little Rock student? The parents hired an attorney. The attorney said profanity was a part of the student’s culture. The student is back in school. Lesson learned? Yes. Get the right attorney and you can get by with anything. As a child, fishing was part of my culture. Dad took me fishing all the time. One day my friend, Phil, talked me into skipping school and going fishing. The only thing caught was us. I’m glad I didn’t know about the “culture rule” that day. If I had used that excuse on Dad, I’d be sitting on a pillow as I write this column. But I didn’t use the “culture rule” or any other excuse. I got a royal beating at school from the principal and at home was on the wrong end of Dad’s belt. My school-skipping pal got more of the same. You better believe we talked bad about our parents and the principal — behind their backs, naturally. Students today aren’t tougher than students of the past. They are just like students of the past. They’ve learned what their boundaries are. Too bad, what they’ve learned is that there are very few boundaries. There’s never been a poll taken, not that it would do any good, but it would be a good bet teachers would appreciate the chance to establish some boundaries. And certainly, they’d probably appreciate being backed up when they are forced to take a stand. Those days, in too many schools, are days-gone-by. So for you teachers, you’re a special brand of people. Thank goodness. (Mark Bivens is the editor of the Malvern Daily Record)
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