The story:
North Carolina English teacher resigns after ‘covering mouth of boy, 11, with heavy duty TAPE to stop him talking in class’
First up, the flaw in the headline: the tape isn’t “heavy duty.” It’s not Gorilla Tape… it’s blue painters tape. Which means it’s not especially sticky. It’s masking tape with less tack, really easy to pull off.
But as to the issue: taping a talkative kids mouth shut. On the one hand, kids are supposed to shut he hell up in class. Constantly yammering on is not only bad for class discipline, it damages the other kids in class by impairing their ability to concentrate on the lesson. On the other hand, boys this age are full of energy (or at least they should be). This is not a “problem,” this is not “wrong,” this is basic biology. So physical punishment for something as relatively inoffensive as talking – as opposed to throwing things, fighting, stealing, assaults, etc. – may seem excessive.
What say y’all?
I do know one thing: teacher was a moron. How do I know this? She was a foreigner, here on a visa. She lost her job *and* her visa over this. Whatever plans she may have had for the future have been shot to hell. And this was an unforced error on her part. You don’t go to another land and screw with their kids if you want a better life. Unless you go to Britain. They seem to be cool with foreigners screwing with their kids. But the US/ We still, in general, care for our offspring. For the most part.
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Meme unrelated. But I just wanted to share it.
2 responses to “I’m of a couple minds here”
I went to a Catholic grade school (only a few nuns left, even in the mid-70s). In the third grade, Mrs. Weber taped a girl’s mouth for being an excessive chatterbox. Boy, was the classroom quiet after that! This was shortly before morning recess and it was winter in Wisconsin, so Pam wore the collar up on her snowsuit on the playground to hide her shame. It must have decreased her proclivity for talking in class, as there were no additional taping incidents.
I’m 55 and I still remember it well. It’s a shame more teachers don’t do that.
If there were any kind of fear of even moderate discipline in schools any more we wouldn’t need to hear about stupid situations like this.
Detention is non existent in schools, touchy-feely, ADD reinforcing therapy is the norm. And kids get dumber with 0.0% proficient in math in Baltimore schools, etc. ect.
There is zero trepidation about being held accountable for any poor behavior. In schools, in pop culture, in government.
So we go from zero to 60 on the stupidity charts as educators, repressed and neutered from dealing with these punks, melt down and go mental