Dying To Learn

My 15 y/o tells us in a recent conversation that drugs are all in her school hallways. On The last day of school last season there was a big brawl planned for after school between 2 large groups of Bloods and Crips, so I was told after it all happened. Earlier this week my 11 y/o daughter ( a middle school student) tells us that an English teacher was sent home with his belongings and was crying as he left the campus. On the evening news that evening he was one of the lead stories. He was accused of touching a student in an inappropriate sexual fashion. Just this evening my kids come home from the High School homecoming game and tell us that there was gunfire at the game and Police all over the place.What is going on?

I am almost scared to send my kids to the bus stop anymore. I am not real comfortable with them going to Friday Night Football games to be honest. As the old timers say, "this world is headed to hell in a hand basket."

Again I drift back to my belief that lack of discipline in schools and the home is the root of these problems. I was a child of corporal punishment in school, from elementary on. From the beginnings of kindergarten we became very aware of the fact, that if we were disrespectful, or acted out violently or in a profane or inappropriate manner consequences were inevitable. Most children grew to respect the authority of our teachers. We might not have liked a lot of them through the years, but we respected them the way a child should respect an adult authority figure. If we didn't, our hands were on the wall and a paddle was hitting our ass in the hallway. I received a number of them from elementary through Jr High. I deserved them all and more. I was never physically harmed. (Yeah my ass stung for a few minutes afterwards) and the class may have giggled when I came back in from the hallway paddle lick. But 9 times out of 10 I never received a paddling for the same thing twice.As we evolve into a nation of Dr. Phil, time out, parents and guardians, our youth are growing up with terrible respect issues. It is so bad in our county school system now that counselors and school security officers are using tasers on High School students.

So we can't paddle them or whip them when they are young. Then they reach high school and have no sense of respect and think they can do what they want to do. How would you like your son or daughter to come home and tell you that a teacher just shot him or her with a taser gun sending 50,000 volts of electricity through their body.Don't paddle them and teach them the boundaries of authority when they are young? Just let them grow up to be unruly and we'll tase them with police tasers. I think a paddle is a little less lethal than a 50,000 volt taser gun.

I also believe we need to quit sending a DARE officer in to teach them about drugs and send in a German Sheppard drug dog in to sniff out and corner every thug in the school system who is bringing drugs to our schools. I think the memory of a dog ripping a drug filled backpack off of a high school drug dealer and watching him lead to prison in handcuffs will have much more impact on our kids than some officer passing a pipe around for them to look at.

Tell the school psychologists to explain how we have come to this?