‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?

148 points · 332 comments · obscurette

  1. armchairhacker · · focus · HN ↗
    My understanding is that it’s normalized by administrators, and the public doesn’t think much about it. Another issue is that some schools have heavy police presence and prison-like rules.

    I think a solution to both is to expel students who, for example, assault other students or teachers. Other commenters are blaming parents, and sure we should incentivize and facilitate better parenting, but in the short term what is more successful at reducing violence is expelling violent students.

    1. myrmidon · · focus · HN ↗
      Disagree with this.

      You are just pushing the problem down the road if you have an increasing number of violent kids and expel them all from school-- how are they ever going to become productive members of society? You just end up with society either paying for them being in prison, subsidizing them (because uneducated and unmotivated labor is close to worthless) or paying to literally clean up their shit because you basically routed them into a "careeer" as homeless person.

      If parenting standards have slipped so much that violence in schools becomes a significant problem, you need to either fix this by getting the parents to do better or by having the education system itself patch those deficits; any other "simple solution" is just gonna result in immense costs to your whole society that compound for decades.

      1. bitfilped · · focus · HN ↗
        how are they ever going to become productive members of society?

        By learning, for likely the first time in their lives, that actions have consequences.

        1. myrmidon · · focus · HN ↗
          If the behavior of children was meaningfully driven by career consequences that are a whole lifetime in the future (from their point of view), then parents would have a very easy job.

          This is obviously not the case.

          Violent behavior obviously has to be sanctioned and hopefully corrected, but excluding children from education is not especially helpful there and has insanely costly side-effects.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.