Thread

Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?

148 points · 332 comments · obscurette

t1234s · 1790606891 · focus · HN ↗
Having been a student in the mid-late 90s in US public school I can say I witnessed this often. Public schools are storage facilities for delinquent kids with useless parents. These people are a waste of tax money to try and educate. After a certain amount of incidents they should be removed from the public school system and left with the parents to deal with. Instead the public school is forced to try and deal with these delinquents. They take time and resources away from the smarter youth who are trying to do the best they can in the public school system.
1. Invictus0 · 1790607368 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
  1. hilariously · 1790607786 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    sixothree · 1790608124 · focus · HN ↗
    It's always "someone over there is getting something they don't deserve". Every. Single. Time.
    mahboi · 1790608331 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, they are
    superb_dev · 1790608978 · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone deserves to eat. It’s unfortunate that we can’t all agree to this
    bsoqk · 1790610217 · focus · HN ↗
    Everybody deserves the right to work for their own upkeep. Nobody deserves to eat off somebody else's labour.
    skulk · 1790610696 · focus · HN ↗
    ah, hacker news. the place I go to see people saying disabled people should starve.
    swed420 · 1790617664 · focus · HN ↗
    You can also find that on plenty of other places on the internet.
    Not at all HN specific, nor wholly representative of it.
    sixothree · 1790609375 · focus · HN ↗
    Tell me. What do they not deserve to be getting?
    TitaRusell · 1790618054 · focus · HN ↗
    It's easier to kick down than kick up. Cowards.
    cindyllm · 1790621024 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    paimapi · 1790608953 · focus · HN ↗
    buddy will be so surprised to learn how many people on social programs like that hold down a job and are some of the nicest, sweetest people in the world who just got screwed over by circumstances
    in the same way people are delusional in thinking they're just temporarily embarrassed billionaires, they also don't realize how precarious their own financial positions are, and how they'll definitely want a safety net that helps them to survive if it happened to them
    ks2048 · 1790610425 · focus · HN ↗
    "live large on medicaid" is more funny than "live large on foodstamps". Just sitting back and enjoying getting a bunch of medical procedures?
    Toynbeeidea · 1790610789 · focus · HN ↗
    We're getting off-topic here, but while "unemoloyed" I worked part-time as a cashier at one of the local grocery stores. Now I can't see how people on food stamps live, but I CAN confirm what they buy. Mostly, its pretty reasonable. But "welfare queens" do, in fact, exist. They buy shrimp and steaks with those stamps. Weekly.
    I won't go into my theories as to causes or reasons or whatever. Just know that it IS a thing amongst a small subset of welfare recipients despite propoganda otherwise.
    hilariously · 1790612353 · focus · HN ↗
    I am glad you have an anecdote to counter everyone else's, but the thing we should be using is data, not anecdotes.
    The reality is that most places you get on the order of 200 bucks per person PER MONTH, so that's not going far on steaks and shrimp.
    Auditing and finding fraud is useful, but we also have to value it against the cost of auditing and fraud management in the first place, and the value is put up against honest people who have to a decent chunk of hours every month juggling government paperwork and websites to get the most meager of handouts.
    LastTrain · 1790625267 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t think anyone disputes that it can be abused, and sometimes is. It isn’t at a scale that it is killing you or America, and the remedy should reduce abuse without impacting those that need the help.
    KetoManx64 · 1790619495 · focus · HN ↗
    If you receive government benefits you get around $80k a year in benefits when you account for food, healthcare, rent benefits, etc.
    So yes, they are living larger than most part time or minimum wage employees. That's the problem.
  2. Toynbeeidea · 1790607840 · focus · HN ↗
    They'd have done that anyhow. By removing them, you improve the outcomes of everyone else.
    t1234s · 1790607890 · focus · HN ↗
    Bingo!
  3. rdtsc · 1790607876 · focus · HN ↗
    > and then what? they become adults that live large on food stamps and medicaid.
    And if they stay, they become adults who live large on food stamps and medicaid, and on top of that seriously hurt or permanently disable teachers, staff, or other students. It's as if letting them pummel teachers in the face will somehow result in them becoming upstanding citizens.
  4. edot · 1790607948 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, not exactly. Have you ever seen the quality of life of someone on substantial government assistance? It’s not a life I’d want. No one lives on food stamps and Medicaid because they enjoy it.
    zdragnar · 1790608947 · focus · HN ↗
    I've had two people try to sell me their food stamps while I was buying groceries, something along the lines of "let me buy your groceries with my food stamps and you can give me 80% in cash". I presume they were getting money from selling drugs and didn't need the food stamps, hence willing to sell them, but I didn't actually ask.
    My partner was also a single mother who utilized wic and food stamps and food pantries until she was able to work full time again.
    When the system works, it works well. When it gets abused, there's less for the people who need it.
    > No one lives on food stamps and Medicaid because they enjoy it.
    Unfortunately, this is also not true. My best friend's mother stayed on benefits because she didn't want to work, and moved out of state because her assistance ran out. She was nominally capable of working, though she also abused drugs and was more comfortable using and getting benefits than getting clean and a job.
    philjohn · 1790609285 · focus · HN ↗
    It's more likely they wanted to buy something that isn't able to be purchased with food stamps. Probably alcohol. Or smokes. Something to let them journey to oblivion and blot out their reality.
    zdragnar · 1790609647 · focus · HN ↗
    Nah, I've seen people like that too, and that's not the guys I ran into. Were I to stereotype, they looked more like gangbangers than strung out druggies.
    hunterpayne · 1790635337 · focus · HN ↗
    They likely accepted the food stamps in exchange for...let's call it, recreational substances and this is how they turned it back into cash.
    WarmWash · 1790611394 · focus · HN ↗
    I guess you don't know about the Hasidic populations in NY and NJ.
    They basically have mastered exploiting government assistance. It's 9 parts enraging and 1 part deeply impressive.
  5. PorciiVorbesc · 1790609020 · focus · HN ↗
    >they become adults that live large on food stamps and medicaid
    That often happens regardless. You might as well spare the poor teacher from dealing with them so they can focus on kids that are still redeemable, because otherwise, if you force them, the teachers will just choose to leave the system entirely, only because you had misplaced empathy for the irredeemable bottom % of society, when you weren't the one actually having to deal with that problem you want fixed. It's easy to write cheques you don't have to cash but most people, just like you and me, have limits to the amount of abuse they will take at work, even for humanitarian jobs like nurses and teachers.
    LastTrain · 1790626539 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  6. Varelion · 1790609241 · focus · HN ↗
    [flagged]
    dang · 1790654161 · focus · HN ↗
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? Your account has unfortunately been doing a great deal of this. It's not what this site is for, and we ban such acccounts.
    If you'd please review <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in the intended spirit from now on, we'd appreciate it.
  7. havblue · 1790609704 · focus · HN ↗
    "and then what" is the common retort to when people suggest removing the problem students, it's practically a cliche now. Then what is the students are held accountable now and won't be able to harm the education of their classmates and continue to harass their teachers. Then what is we don't have to pad grades as much and lie so that we can meet a fake metric. Then what is we stop doubling down on an approach that doesn't work.
    Invictus0 · 1790621499 · focus · HN ↗
    believe me, im not in support of the delinquents. but they dont just go away. they stay in society. they vote and consume resources. if you dont get them to a point of self-sufficiency, they will happily become leeches on the rest of society anyway.
    havblue · 1790685971 · focus · HN ↗
    At my public high school there were the usual assortment of troubled students: chronic absenteeism, disrupting class, drugs, theft, and in one case, attempted arson. One of them vandalized my bike, even though I never reported it.
    In each case in the years ahead I caught wind that things went right for them after they found that their options were limited. One showed up at our graduation but wasn't able to walk with us. One sheepishly asked if he could attend the reunion even though he didn't graduate with everyone else. Another enlisted. I think they all felt responsible in the end. Point being there was always a network of second chance options of varying levels of strictness. Just letting them move forward would have been unfair to my classmates and my teachers who were hired to teach and not mold rough teenagers into mature adults. Alternatives were always there but now we err on the side of making sure they move forward because it jeopardizes the district's funding.
    LastTrain · 1790623217 · focus · HN ↗
    Held accountable how? Prison?
    GetTheFacts · 1790652164 · focus · HN ↗
    >"and then what" is the common retort to when people suggest removing the problem students, it's practically a cliche now. Then what is the students are held accountable now and won't be able to harm the education of their classmates and continue to harass their teachers. Then what is we don't have to pad grades as much and lie so that we can meet a fake metric. Then what is we stop doubling down on an approach that doesn't work.
    And when do we actually make the determination that a particular student is a "problem" and remove them from the company of schools and other students? First grade? Fourth? Seventh?
    And once we do identify these incorrigibles at age six or ten or thirteen, what do we do with them?
    Some form of incarceration? Put them in a "labor pool" so they can pay for their accommodations and not burden the rest of us? Summary execution?
    Please do elucidate.
  8. ds_opseeker · 1790610263 · focus · HN ↗
    So if we are going to pick on people who live off of a government-sponsored subsidy, can I ask if the home interest mortgage deduction also counts as a government-sponsored subsidy?
    and if not, why not? is it because people who have a house are good people and deserve it, while CHILDREN who are born to the wrong parents are bad people and don't?
  9. iAMkenough · 1790611488 · focus · HN ↗
    let’s adopt laws that force women to give birth without support services to properly raise a child.
    while we’re at it, let’s take public money away from public schools and give it to private schools with no audit requirements.
    that will solve the issue, right?
  10. dang · 1790654145 · focus · HN ↗
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? Your account has unfortunately been doing a great deal of this. It's not what this site is for, and we ban such acccounts.
    If you'd please review <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in the intended spirit from now on, we'd appreciate it.
    Invictus0 · 1790698983 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, will fix
2. [deleted] · 1790607370 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
3. [deleted] · 1790608342 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
4. gamblor956 · 1790611001 · focus · HN ↗
  Having been a student in the late 90s in US public school, I can say I did not witness this at all, and my high school had several thousand students.
  However, my district also had a school specifically for troublemakers (with fences and extra security and all of that) so the other schools wouldn't have to deal with them.
  1. robocat · 1790623791 · focus · HN ↗
    I wonder what the troublemakers learnt?
    Although for self-selected friends my personal saying is that "All the smartest left school at 15". My other friends are academically educted which doesn't smarten up anyone.
5. palmotea · 1790611073 · focus · HN ↗
  > Public schools are storage facilities for delinquent kids with useless parents. These people are a waste of tax money to try and educate. After a certain amount of incidents they should be removed from the public school system and left with the parents to deal with... They take time and resources away from the smarter youth...
  You seem to have a severe deficit of compassion. Also a deficit of strategic thinking.
  Some significant fraction of those "delinquent kids" are that way due to some generational cycle of poor treatment and/or bad circumstances. If, as you advocate, little attempt is made to break those cycles, you'll just leave the problem to fester and get worse.
  Also you're advocating punishing kids for being the victim of their own circumstances, which is just heartless.
  The correct response to this situation is focus on finding better ways of helping those kids.
  1. cucumber3732842 · 1790611737 · focus · HN ↗
    >The correct response to this situation is focus on finding better ways of helping those kids.
    With who's resources and at the expense of what other things could be done with those resources. Money is fungible. A dollar spent warehousing problem kids is a dollar spent not helping the decent kids become good and the good kids become great. Education is a numbers game.
    palmotea · 1790613239 · focus · HN ↗
    > With who's resources and at the expense of what other things could be done with those resources. Money is fungible. A dollar spent warehousing problem kids is a dollar spent not helping the decent kids become good and the good kids become great. Education is a numbers game.
    FYI, you're not a decent person, you're a problem person. You lack compassion.
    If someone beats you and leaves you for dead in a ditch, when the paramedics find you, what should they say? It pretty obvious: "a dollar spent helping this guy could be used to help someone better, leave him for dead."
    underlipton · 1791060891 · focus · HN ↗
    >With who's resources and at the expense of what other things could be done with those resources.
    You seem to be under the mistaken impression that capital is apportioned with regard to virtue. Anything but. Thus, we shouldn't decide how that capital is used based on whether or not someone "deserves" it, but by whether or not it's better for society. I'd prefer "delinquents" under supervision, versus LARPing The Warriors.
    OR
    Elon Musk is a trillionaire, we're spending hundreds of billions to build data daycares; appealing to sanity in capital distribution was out the window years ago.
  2. wolvesechoes · 1790666284 · focus · HN ↗
    The fact that your comment is downvoted and the parent is not tells everything I need to know about "people" attending this website.
  3. t1234s · 1790686123 · focus · HN ↗
    People following your logic is why we still have these problems in public school.
6. [deleted] · 1790666217 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.