ONTD Political

Fixed. And sorry about the slow reply. I posted this and then went to bed after being up all night.

Yeah. I could see it if he was deliberately scaring other kids, or if the teachers had announced to the whole school that they were either starting a new rule about playing at guns being not allowed, or that the students needed to start paying attention to the rule that was already there because they weren't going to let it go anymore.

Because it seems to me that a lot of punitive interactions with children involve yelling at them or punishing them for things they weren't aware of doing wrong, rather than explaining it to the child at the first instance and correcting the behavior first. And this is often deeply distressing to the child, even tainting their enjoyment of activities they were engaged in at the periphery of their mistake; in the other direction, it could lead to the child becoming disdainful of authority because zie sees it as wrong, unjust, or unreasonable, which can have complications down the line.

They really ought to make sure the kid knows rather than surprising him with such heavy-duty, you-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself, potential furious-parents-as-well type punishments.

(I also would prefer to see the teachers hang back and watch a bit more of the interaction, TBH. If he was indeed playing with friends, they might have been "shooting" back at him, and to see and punish one rulebreaker while the others get away with it even though they were just doing the same thing gives the impression that punishment is unfair and rules are a matter of not getting caught. (And, as someone who was punished multiple times for retaliating against a bully whose original actions the teacher "didn't see," more teacher awareness of the context surrounding any one kid's actions would be helpful in other situations too.

Edited at 2013-01-03 08:21 pm (UTC)

I find it hard to believe that if the school gave out suspensions just for that, even if they only decided to do that after Sandy Hook, that it took so many days for them to suspend a kid for it... I dunno. I guess I want to assume there must be something more to it, because if it was during normal play it seems rather odd. Unless the school had made a big thing about telling everyone in class that any kind of toy guns or pretending to shoot other kids even for play wasn't okay. Like, I can still see a teacher possibly over-reacting, but I don't know... they'd have to be really knew. Or, the school would take back the suspension straight away after a phone-call.

Back when I was in HS. One student was caught making out a list of student names (this was just before Columbine). He claimed it was a list for those to participate in paintball. There were many on the list that had no interest in paintball or had been spoken to about it. Because of that, the guys that regularly formed paintball teams in the warmer months were no longer allowed to mention paintball or talk to other students about teams for paintball while in school.

I don't know what happened to the student, but I don't think his punishment was much at all if anything.

/csb

My school HS only got more jumpy after Columbine.

Well, there's something to be said for making sure the kid is aware of the rules the first time. Blindsiding a kid with punishment for a rule he didn't know he was breaking isn't the best way to instill respect for and trust in authority as fair and just and rational.

That said, you're also right about the problems of the "what hasn't been forbidden is okay" concept as applied to small children who can't always understand the consequences, and often aren't taught to consider the effects even if they're knowledgeable enough about what they're playing with.

I remember reading once about a summer camp program that had replaced "don't do X" rules with "consider Y" rules. I.e. instead of "don't kick/hit/slap/knock over/slam into other kids" they had "be kind/considerate," and in the orientation kids were encouraged to ask "is this kind?" before doing an action, and if the answer was no, don't do it. This covered not only the obvious suspects like hitting or kicking, but also the obscure stuff like putting worms in someone's bed that a list of Don'ts wouldn't have thought to cover. Another rule was about being respectful/aware of nature, which covered things like damaging plants or trees and also remembering information about poison ivy and bees and suchlike.

That sort of rule, unlike "don't do X," calls the child to engage with the rules and consider their actions and become aware of the effects and properties of the stuff they interact with. That means the child is actively thinking about the rules, with being good as an interesting, engaging goal that provides a sense of accomplishment in continuing to figure out. (Whereas with the current system, too often it's misbehavior without "technically" breaking the rules that provides that engagement, challenge, and sense of accomplishment.)

And the sort of accidental rulebreaking that might be the case here can be corrected by suggesting to the child how X behavior could fail to be Virtue Y. That way, the child who has made a mistake will most likely perceive the correction as the introduction of a new fact ("pretending to shoot people can scare them") leading to a new conclusion about acceptable behavior ("scaring people is not kind. therefore pretending to shoot people can be unkind. cool, I didn't know that.") rather than leading the child to a sort of resentful shame ("I didn't know that was wrong! Nobody told me, why am I being punished? Teachers are MEAN." or "Why didn't anybody tell me? I don't want to be bad!")

Of course you do need a few explicit Don'ts to make sure they don't miss some, but a list of expectations about what qualities good behavior should emulate ought to eliminate the inference that those are the only things that are forbidden.

I know the comment is about this one incident, but still, the intent can't be key when it comes to punishing a kid.

Totally true. In this case it's the degree of punishment that's the problem, though - I could see taking the kid aside and talking through why it's not allowed, but even detention would be going way overboard here.

And tbh I'm betting the kid saw Avengers or something and decided fake-gunning would either be fun or a good problem-solving technique. Obviously a discussion still has to happen, but it's not fair to suspend a six- or seven-year-old for playing at something he's seen presented as fun/heroic a million times (not that I think you're arguing in favor of the suspension, but I just wanted to point out that intent/awareness can be taken into account in terms of punishment severity for a kiddo this age)

Gotta admit I don't know it real well either; I was homeschooled from third grade on. Based on my experience suspension just seems too extreme for a first grader - the kid who regularly picked fights with me smashed my glasses and gave me two black eyes and we both just went to the principal's office for a lecture. But bear in mind this was over fifteen years ago and I'm not sure whether this is a public or private school.

in my experience, even if he was harassing another student, at that age it would be a time out during 'free choice' time or a missed recess or something like that rather than a suspension.

I 100% get where the school's coming from too, but holy overreaction, Batman. It's funny (aggravatingly funny) that we're willing to suspend first graders for emulating movie/tv/comic book heroes and not to examine that normalization of gun violence you mentioned.

Of course I think the parents are overreacting too because come on, during the time when I was in public school I would've been thrilled to have an extra day off lol. They should fight for new policies at the school but lawyering up is just... what

I remember receiving threats to run me over on the way home from school (I walked; most of my classmates drove). My teachers informed me that they were "obviously" joking.

Sometimes it seems like they come down harder on the innocent play while actual bullying gets shrugged off as the play it isn't (especially ironic when the bullying gets called play to exempt it from the punishment that play gets when it strays across certain lines). It's as though, bullylike themselves, the authorities are focusing on the easy victims while letting the actually harmful stuff go because it would require more effort to challenge.

Yeah exactly... when I was in elementary school ~16 years ago we had this same policy. Mimic guns at all (pointing fingers, bringing nerf guns to school, etc) and you were suspended.

What are they protecting themselves from when they enforce these kinds of rules?

Yeah, I think it's more appropriate if it's emphasized to the kids, and also if they're at an age where they can remember that kind of rule. First graders do legitimately forget stuff sometimes so a serious talk would be more effective than a suspension tbh

I also really have a problem with... idk how to put this. I guess punishing kids under twelve-ish for behavior that's commonly modeled in media and by the adults around them? Then those adults don't have to take a hard look at their own behavior because the kids take the fall, and that's not fair.

Succinct. I like it. :)

i noticed that, too. there's tons of details missing. it would also be helpful for them to say a little bit about the process of parents trying to get a suspension repealed or how things between the parents and school admin have gotten to this point, because personally i'm sitting here tilting my head like, "wait we got lawyers involved here?"

That's good, but he really shouldn't have been suspended to begin with for playing with his friends.