Violent school bullies

I am of a generation that didn’t know or see or understand violence until I was in my early teens. I didn’t watch much television, mum and dad got along, we didn’t have computer games, and we played and fought with our friends face to face rather than bully each other through a machine.  I played inside, then I got kicked out of the house to play in the backyard.  I was fortunate to have a carefree childhood, being a child; growing up at just the right pace.

When I was in high school, I remember watching an after school fight, for the simple reason that it was on my way to the bus stop. What I saw sickened me, and I was relieved when my PE teacher turned up and dragged the two protesting morons off to the principal’s office to, presumably, give them a kick up the backside. And I can ensure you that not one kid left standing in that dirt car park was anything but completely terrified of our furious teacher. And no-one considered suing the school or putting the episode on You Tube. How quickly things change.

The stories I hear through personal accounts and through the media of school bullying these days breaks my heart and makes me angry. It’s easy to place the blame solely with the parents for the behaviour of these borderline sociopaths, but helicopter parents are only part of the problem.

I big part of the issue with school kids these days is that education unions don’t let teachers use discipline in the classroom.  I’m not talking about corporal punishment; I’m talking about telling them to be quiet.  Teachers can get a rap over their knuckles in some schools for asking their students to be quiet and listen!  The geniuses in charge think teaching young people how to behave in a socially acceptable way is politically incorrect; they should just be allowed to be themselves.  Unfortunately, the consequences of this idiocy means the good kids have to suffer, the teachers have to suffer, and the rest of society has to suffer when these thugs leave school.  

I don’t know anyone from my generation who is worse off from having being disciplined when they were young.  Smacking is distinct from child abuse, and any parent who doesn't know that can take quite a bit of the credit for their kid's anti-social behaviour.  Every teenager in history has rebelled against their parents; the kids in the fifties did it through the quaint use of rock and roll.  For the most part, kids need to be moulded into decent human beings, and that requires some discipline from those who have been through it before and have come out the other end.

The progressive movement has ruined education and childhood. Their idea that non-punitive discipline leads to healthy, balanced children is plain wrong. Lack of any discipline is too permissive and leads to unruly children. The evidence can be found running around terrorising other kids and teachers in every public school playground in Australia.  

And helicopter parents, who don't let their kids learn from their own mistakes, are part of the problem; because these kids never have a chance to learn that their actions have consequences until they are arrested on a charge of assault and battery that may ruin their lives.   While many of these kids should to be placed in remand centres (a place to store young criminals before they graduate to adult prisons), a lack of any common sense in the criminal justice system means the judge will likely let the kid off, and then he's our problem.