There has been a rise of police officers being hired on school campuses in Texas school districts. They have been ticketing children with a Class C ticket and a trip to the courtroom for offenses such as misbehaving on a bus, disrupting class, profanity, starting fights, and other things of such nature. Some school districts, such as the Dallas/Fort Worth area, will ticket children as young as six for bad behavior while others areas will have an age restriction such as the offender has to be ten years or older to receive a ticket in the Houston area. This causes thousands of cases to flood the court system. Not only does the child get ticketed, in some cases, the parents or the guardian of the child will receive one and a trip to the courtroom as well. Over the course of five years this method has issued over 1,000 tickets to elementary school students, and in 2006-2007 more than 4,000 tickets has been issued to students in Dallas ISD alone. The tickets can cost a family up to $500 depending on the offense.
So I ask you, do you think this is fair? Do you think this will cause parents to finally straighten up their act and actually discipline their kids? Do you think that there should be a uniform age limit to give a student a ticket? Do you think that this method should be thrown out, modified, or kept the way it is?
In my opinion, I agree with this method because of a few things. One, teachers are not babysitters. Parents have a misconception that teachers will help raise their child as if it where their own and "babysit" them. That is not their job parents. Their job is to teach them math, science, and other things to function in modern society. Disciplining them is not in their job description nor is behavior modification, and I'm not saying that teachers will not punish a student for misconduct. Manners, proper behavior, morals, and other personality traits of such nature really starts at the home not in the classroom, and if the student is displaying some kind of bad behavior you might want to look at the home environment first.
The other is as a former high school student (graduated about 3 years ago), I know how destructive high school students can truly be. Recently graduated high school students will probably know what I am talking about. When you get into college, start acting your age, and grow up, you start to shake your head at many things that happened in high school you once upon a time thought were funny or cool. When you look back as an adult you kind of realize that some of the stuff was down right stupid. Example, when I was in high school some one took, and I kid you not, crap from the toilet and smeared it all over the walls of the boys restroom. They drew sexual drawings and wrote profanity all over the place. It took several days to clean it up and to get rid of the smell. As a high school student, I thought it was a bit funny, but now I realized how disgusting, stupid, and unoriginal that act was. This kind of behavior makes one ask, "Why? What's the point?" while they shake their head in disbelief. I truly believe that this kind of disciplinary action should be focused more on high schools students above everyone else because of incidents like these. This is the time when students will act out the most.
The only criticism that I can think of for this is that this will not make parents step up as parents. Many parents these days are content on just letting the TV and video games raise their kids and will not touch parenting with a 10 ft pole, or approx. a 3 meter poll for you European people who are reading this. Lazy parents will not change their behavior not matter what. They will just pay the fine, give the child a slap on the wrist, and the child will run off and either do it again or do something worse. People like this make me lose some of my faith in humanity. The other issue I have is that I don't believe that young children should be ticketed. They are just doing what kids do, so why are you punishing them for it? I think the uniform age limit should 10 or 11.
So what do you guys think? Please keep it civil.
Edit: Yes, I realize that this post in the wrong section. I know that this should be off-topic, but it wasn't until I posted this thread up that I saw my mistake. So please forgive for this. I know I "done goofed."
So I ask you, do you think this is fair? Do you think this will cause parents to finally straighten up their act and actually discipline their kids? Do you think that there should be a uniform age limit to give a student a ticket? Do you think that this method should be thrown out, modified, or kept the way it is?
In my opinion, I agree with this method because of a few things. One, teachers are not babysitters. Parents have a misconception that teachers will help raise their child as if it where their own and "babysit" them. That is not their job parents. Their job is to teach them math, science, and other things to function in modern society. Disciplining them is not in their job description nor is behavior modification, and I'm not saying that teachers will not punish a student for misconduct. Manners, proper behavior, morals, and other personality traits of such nature really starts at the home not in the classroom, and if the student is displaying some kind of bad behavior you might want to look at the home environment first.
The other is as a former high school student (graduated about 3 years ago), I know how destructive high school students can truly be. Recently graduated high school students will probably know what I am talking about. When you get into college, start acting your age, and grow up, you start to shake your head at many things that happened in high school you once upon a time thought were funny or cool. When you look back as an adult you kind of realize that some of the stuff was down right stupid. Example, when I was in high school some one took, and I kid you not, crap from the toilet and smeared it all over the walls of the boys restroom. They drew sexual drawings and wrote profanity all over the place. It took several days to clean it up and to get rid of the smell. As a high school student, I thought it was a bit funny, but now I realized how disgusting, stupid, and unoriginal that act was. This kind of behavior makes one ask, "Why? What's the point?" while they shake their head in disbelief. I truly believe that this kind of disciplinary action should be focused more on high schools students above everyone else because of incidents like these. This is the time when students will act out the most.
The only criticism that I can think of for this is that this will not make parents step up as parents. Many parents these days are content on just letting the TV and video games raise their kids and will not touch parenting with a 10 ft pole, or approx. a 3 meter poll for you European people who are reading this. Lazy parents will not change their behavior not matter what. They will just pay the fine, give the child a slap on the wrist, and the child will run off and either do it again or do something worse. People like this make me lose some of my faith in humanity. The other issue I have is that I don't believe that young children should be ticketed. They are just doing what kids do, so why are you punishing them for it? I think the uniform age limit should 10 or 11.
So what do you guys think? Please keep it civil.
Edit: Yes, I realize that this post in the wrong section. I know that this should be off-topic, but it wasn't until I posted this thread up that I saw my mistake. So please forgive for this. I know I "done goofed."