Adult safety at school
May. 28th, 2019 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterI recently wrote about the Amber Alert system, arguing that while children certainly deserve to live in a safe environment, there has got to be a better way of accomplishing this. But while children may indeed be at risk of being harmed by the significant adults in their lives, sometimes it's a two-way street. School-aged kids are more violent than they were a decade or two ago, to the point that some teachers and other school staff are resorting to Kevlar vests and shin-guards to protect themselves!
How did it all come to this? Is society going to hell in a hand basket? Is it the fault of liberalized divorce laws, "illegitimate" kids and "broken homes"? Should we bring back dress codes and detentions? What about The Strap, The Ruler, and all the other torturous weapons of corporal punishment of yesteryear?
There are no easy answers. But I think a lot of the problem is that we have moved from an isolationist or segregationist model to an integrationist one. Neither is good or bad in itself - it's just that it's unrealistic to suppose we can have a one-size-fits-all model under which all kids can thrive.
Here's how the segregated model worked. When I was at school in the 1960s, it was the era of the Cold War and the "space race". There was an "accelerated" program whereby kids completed grades one through four in three years and it seems to me at least half the kids in our school were doing that. There were also a few decelerated, remedial or "opportunity" classes for those who were progressing more slowly. Then there were "enrichment" or "gifted" programs in subsequent grades and for grades seven and eight (in some schools, grades six through eight), we rotated classes through the day with subject teachers and home-room teachers and for these grades students were "streamed" into A-stream, B-stream or C-stream classes. High school was a little different again and we actually got to pick from a few options (though there were rather more compulsory courses in those days than there are now). There was an accelerated program here too, although it wasn't as prevalent as the ones at the elementary level.
And that was just the kids who were basically "normal" as we would have said in those days. If you were physically, mentally or behaviourally aberrant in some way, you likely wouldn't attend a regular public school at all - you would go to some sort of special school, either as a day-student commuting from your own home or in some kind of a residential setting. Anyway, the point I'm making is that the old system grouped together those kids who were expected to progress through the curriculum at a similar rate for whatever reason: past achievements, scores on standardized tests, diligence or even just the capacity to sit in a classroom and obey the teacher's instructions.
To be sure, there was probably some damage done by labelling and categorizing some kids at too early an age, or making unwarranted assumptions about them or being oblivious to their particular learning style.
But now we have a kind of integrational mania. We seem to have this notion that every child should enter a particular grade at a particular age. In Ontario at least, it seems few kids are being held either held back a grade or bumped up a grade, regardless of whether they have mastered their grade-level material. Even kids who have highly intensive educational, intellectual and emotional needs are being integrated into regular classrooms. It puts a huge strain on the teachers, aides, social workers and other school staff, not to mention the majority of other students - the fairly-neurotypical-kids of taxpaying parents who surely are just as deserving of an effective and stimulating educational environment. And that's before we even get into the financial considerations, whether they are borne privately by individual families or collectively by the system as a whole.
I'd like to think we live in a more enlightened age. And I do certainly see the value of kids retaining strong ties to their families and their communities. On the other hand, we shouldn't toss out what was good about the "good old days". We should preserve a range of options within our educational system. Because kids are not all the same.
How did it all come to this? Is society going to hell in a hand basket? Is it the fault of liberalized divorce laws, "illegitimate" kids and "broken homes"? Should we bring back dress codes and detentions? What about The Strap, The Ruler, and all the other torturous weapons of corporal punishment of yesteryear?
There are no easy answers. But I think a lot of the problem is that we have moved from an isolationist or segregationist model to an integrationist one. Neither is good or bad in itself - it's just that it's unrealistic to suppose we can have a one-size-fits-all model under which all kids can thrive.
Here's how the segregated model worked. When I was at school in the 1960s, it was the era of the Cold War and the "space race". There was an "accelerated" program whereby kids completed grades one through four in three years and it seems to me at least half the kids in our school were doing that. There were also a few decelerated, remedial or "opportunity" classes for those who were progressing more slowly. Then there were "enrichment" or "gifted" programs in subsequent grades and for grades seven and eight (in some schools, grades six through eight), we rotated classes through the day with subject teachers and home-room teachers and for these grades students were "streamed" into A-stream, B-stream or C-stream classes. High school was a little different again and we actually got to pick from a few options (though there were rather more compulsory courses in those days than there are now). There was an accelerated program here too, although it wasn't as prevalent as the ones at the elementary level.
And that was just the kids who were basically "normal" as we would have said in those days. If you were physically, mentally or behaviourally aberrant in some way, you likely wouldn't attend a regular public school at all - you would go to some sort of special school, either as a day-student commuting from your own home or in some kind of a residential setting. Anyway, the point I'm making is that the old system grouped together those kids who were expected to progress through the curriculum at a similar rate for whatever reason: past achievements, scores on standardized tests, diligence or even just the capacity to sit in a classroom and obey the teacher's instructions.
To be sure, there was probably some damage done by labelling and categorizing some kids at too early an age, or making unwarranted assumptions about them or being oblivious to their particular learning style.
But now we have a kind of integrational mania. We seem to have this notion that every child should enter a particular grade at a particular age. In Ontario at least, it seems few kids are being held either held back a grade or bumped up a grade, regardless of whether they have mastered their grade-level material. Even kids who have highly intensive educational, intellectual and emotional needs are being integrated into regular classrooms. It puts a huge strain on the teachers, aides, social workers and other school staff, not to mention the majority of other students - the fairly-neurotypical-kids of taxpaying parents who surely are just as deserving of an effective and stimulating educational environment. And that's before we even get into the financial considerations, whether they are borne privately by individual families or collectively by the system as a whole.
I'd like to think we live in a more enlightened age. And I do certainly see the value of kids retaining strong ties to their families and their communities. On the other hand, we shouldn't toss out what was good about the "good old days". We should preserve a range of options within our educational system. Because kids are not all the same.
