Thread

Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?

148 points · 332 comments · obscurette

Ambolia · 1790606557 · focus · HN ↗
That the whole article can be seen as a masterpiece of talking around the obvious while avoiding stepping on the mine. Obvious rules cannot be applied systematically because certain government metrics would look bad. Goodhart's law, any explicit metric will be immediately optimized. And this is people optimizing metrics as best as they can in play. I'll leave the obvious as an exercise for the reader.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
1. dash2 · 1790607028 · focus · HN ↗
  Why not just say what you mean? This sort of nudge nudge wink wink stuff is so weird.
  1. civilrightsamir · 1790607103 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. mahboi · 1790607362 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah I read that and gave up. It's also one of those "let me explain Smittywergermanjensen's Law to you"
  3. BowBun · 1790607388 · focus · HN ↗
    Vagueposting is a new term online for this kind of behavior - it stems from people getting absolutely destroyed online for various opinions, resulting in people not feeling safe to say what they really mean. Sometimes it's hateful opinions, sometimes it isn't. The end result is people will become unable to simply state their opinions and we won't be able to pick apart people with terrible ideas from the good ones, because no one wants to talk!
    mahboi · 1790607820 · focus · HN ↗
    This isn't Reddit, you aren't going to get softbanned by downvotes
    BigTTYGothGF · 1790610941 · focus · HN ↗
    > resulting in people not feeling safe to say what they really mean
    This is hacker news, most of us are anonymous. People say all sorts of vile things on here. Come on, Ambolia, have the courage of your convictions.
    chambers · 1790618613 · focus · HN ↗
    It's more effort than courage. Saying vile things takes no effort for many people. Saying a difficult truth takes more effort.
    In any case, his caution birthed a comment tree that's normally verboten.
  4. Ambolia · 1790607418 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not rocket science, certain kids showing up as getting impacted by punitive measures looks bad on certain government measures. So they stop getting punished. Problem solved!
    phoghed · 1790607609 · focus · HN ↗
    Which ones?
    Ambolia · 1790608015 · focus · HN ↗
    Does it matter which kids is it? Just remove the metrics, apply the punitive measures fairly, and let the dice fall where they may. Or don't and allow the safety of teachers and the quality of public education to keep degrading. We live in a harsh world and sometimes sacrifices have to be made for a higher cause.
    phoghed · 1790609235 · focus · HN ↗
    > We live in a harsh world and sometimes sacrifices have to be made for a higher cause.
    Maybe that’s what the people sacrificing the teachers believe too?
    From other anecdotes in the comments it seems like it’s not just teachers but other customer service professions too. Your hypothesis that you don’t want to go into detail on might be incorrect. Guess we’ll never know
    badgersnake · 1790609709 · focus · HN ↗
    Punitive measures only work if you believe you have something to lose, a lot of these kids don't. Sure, you can þunish them for their infraction, and you'll have justice, but it's not going to stop them from doing it again unless they feel like the lost out on something. And if you have nothing in the first place why do you care?
    And a punishment is also just attention from an adult, and that often feels like a win over being completely ignored the rest of the time.
    robocat · 1790624697 · focus · HN ↗
    > þunish
    Today I learned that the Icelandic keyboard has a dedicated key for typing þ
    badgersnake · 1790631012 · focus · HN ↗
    The British one doesn’t, so I’ve no idea how I did that.
    robocat · 1790790530 · focus · HN ↗
    Conpiracy theory: someone wants to track you. It looks like a typo but switching one letter in an uncommon word can make the word a unique enough fingerprint to track an account. Of course I'm assuming you're typing on a computer that has been compromised.
    Alternatively you have fat fingers and use Linux (is there a correlation?) and you hit AltGr+T. From Wikipedia about British keyboard:
    Using the AltGr key on Linux produces many other characters and symbols, e.g. ¹²³€½{[]}@łe¶ŧ←↓→øþæßðđŋħjĸł«»¢“”nµΩŁE®Ŧ¥↑ıØÞÆ§ÐªŊĦJ&Ł<>©‘’Nº×÷· (If reconfigured as a compose key, an even larger repertoire is available)
    It appears your brain has been compromised and needs an antivirus scam.
  5. cubefox · 1790607459 · focus · HN ↗
    Because he would immediately get massively downvoted and flagged.
  6. bpodgursky · 1790607469 · focus · HN ↗
    OK — Under-represented minorities would be expelled at higher rates than whites and asians, and the district would get sued for discrimination.
  7. klooney · 1790607536 · focus · HN ↗
    We're talking about schools in the US, which means we're talking about black and latino students. This trips the culture war wires, so people get wink winky.
    [deleted] · 1790607888 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  8. dolni · 1790607633 · focus · HN ↗
    Because some things are politically incorrect to say.
    If those things are left unsaid and everyone still understands what's being referred to (even generally) there can be some alignment on the issue.
    Some people with ideological axes to grind like to pick fights on particular points, even (perhaps especially) when it is not constructive.
  9. Mathnerd314 · 1790607893 · focus · HN ↗
    Suspension and expulsion rates are closely watched, as well as graduation rates. Changes in these numbers trigger federal investigations. Meanwhile, disciplinary actions in general are closely watched for DEI/civil rights considerations and there is a significant pressure to under-report them because it makes the school look better.
    frmersdog · 1791061081 · focus · HN ↗
    >Hiding DEI/civil rights issues because you might actually be forced to fix them, and pay for the fix.
    Sounds racist. And exactly the way people want it.
  10. linksnapzz · 1790608119 · focus · HN ↗
    "...so weird".
    "weird" is two years ago. Time to update your firmware.
  11. bluefirebrand · 1790608211 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably because what this poster seems to be implying is a sort of inconvenient or unpopular truth. The kinds of things that there's no point actually saying out loud no matter how true they are, because they just make people angry and being explicit about it just paints a sort of target on you instead of actually driving anything towards a solution
    We already have a lot of studies and statistics about problems with education, but the narrative about education problems seem to focus on the wrong things, things that the studies and statistics don't really support.
  12. vlyan · 1790608758 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    [deleted] · 1790608985 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    mahboi · 1790609160 · focus · HN ↗
    What's the metric optimized here, minimize black students expelled?
    DaSHacka · 1790612508 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, or rather "minimize frivolous civil rights lawsuits", which would come as a downstream of having skewed racial expulsion rates.
    mahboi · 1790618308 · focus · HN ↗
    If it's really this, seems there needs to be some state or federal pushback against these lawsuits. Cause idk about schools, but it's gotten out of hand elsewhere. We've already seen the SCOTUS ruling against DEI very quickly having a positive impact on universities and even corps.
    criagsbkbk · 1790616787 · focus · HN ↗
    To some degree it's a concern for "problematic" statistical outcomes, but it's also anti-bias training, both explicit and implicit, giving individual decision makers hesitancy when dulling out punishments.
    mahboi · 1790651205 · focus · HN ↗
    Wonder if "problematic" and bias training are still a thing or if that went away 2 years ago. Did notice we stopped getting those trainings at work.
    zdragnar · 1790609409 · focus · HN ↗
    I am reminded of a former boss's niece who was a kindergarten teacher in a rural, very white district. No physical abuse, but she was very surprised the first time a kid started cussing her out.
    It's not a race issue so much as a poverty and cultural issue. Any racial correlation is a proxy for those two things.
    phoghed · 1790609492 · focus · HN ↗
    Have to be careful forming your world view based on worldstar TikTok, you might be getting Chinese psy-opped
    DaSHacka · 1790612564 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, as opposed to other media where you wouldn't be?
    mahboi · 1790615416 · focus · HN ↗
    Wouldn't be Chinese I guess
    phoghed · 1790620844 · focus · HN ↗
    Sundar, Elon, and Zuck have my best interests in mind and at the forefront of their goals. Xi wants nothing more than the downfall of my glorious Western values. He’ll stop at nothing, even stooping so low as to violate the Anthropic terms of service.
    hasviolence · 1790611165 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Don_t_Make_the_Black_Kids_Angry.html?id=GIf0rQEACAAJ" rel="nofollow">https://books.google.com/books/about/Don_t_Make_the_Black_Ki...
    palmotea · 1790611309 · focus · HN ↗
    > CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
    Yeah, no.
    zug_zug · 1790614723 · focus · HN ↗
    So what?
    Let's take aside the charged component of this and just suppose hypothetically that 100% of the assaulting students belonged to some subgroup. So what?
    They may be 100% black, or 100% male, or something, but it's not like you can reasonably just say "So no males at our school." Regardless of whether you can find a subgroup who this belongs to with a very low specificity, you still need policies that tackle the behavior itself rather than trying to find some really weak predictor.
    criagsbkbk · 1790616090 · focus · HN ↗
    I'll bite. The importance is this: if you do not acknowledge a disproportion of a certain group committing the offenses, then you cannot enforce punishments without them seeming inequitable. If 90% of the suspensions of students come from a certain protected group, if you refuse to believe they are 90% of the offenders, we must roll back the policies because they are clearly bias.
    mahboi · 1790617956 · focus · HN ↗
    Or the simpler way is to not acknowledge what group is committing offenses and not care what group is receiving punishment. People rightfully get suspicious when it's about groups.
    casefields · 1790614828 · focus · HN ↗
    As if that wasn't bad enough, Trump revoked the Obama/Biden which didn't allow schools punish black students unless they punished an equal amount of whites:
    <a href="https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/education-department-tells-schools-race-cant-factor-into-student-discipline/2026/08" rel="nofollow">https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/education-department-...
    nitwit005 · 1790619259 · focus · HN ↗
    Saying you're too lazy to actually check if these videos are genuinely all black students, but someone could do it, and you know the answer even without checking somehow, isn't exactly convincing.
    There just aren't enough blacks in the US for them to completely dominate any crime. To be at your imagined rate of 90% of instances being black, when only 13 or 14% of the population, would require a ridiculously high rate compared to every other group.
  13. cucumber3732842 · 1790612096 · focus · HN ↗
    Because these things are for unfortunate reasons of historical happenstance, correlated with race. And if you let race into the discussion the evil people who peddled all this bad metrics and bad policy can use it to sow division and get everyone arguing with each other while they quietly dodge blame.

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