For some time now, I’ve been thinking about blogging on the topic of discipline in our school system. This past week, however, I figured it was time to do just that.

 

Understand, what motivated me is the recent situation involving Washington Irving Middle School Assistant Principal Brian Scott Hage. Hage, according to media reports, stands accused of injuring a student at WIMS on March 25.

 

Let me preface this blog by stating that I have no idea what took place between Hage and a student at WIMS other than through conversation with some around the situation. I am not privy to the video law enforcement reviewed that led to an actual arrest. For me to say whether Hage went too far or did what was acceptable would be speculation at best and an endorsement of one of the party’s sides at worst. In this particular case, the legal system will have to handle the situation and, hopefully, won’t bend to the whim of either political correctness or negative/positive public outcry.

 

With all of that out of the way, when will someone have the intestinal fortitude to step up and realize that the way discipline is handled in the classroom and educational setting is coming up short. To be brutally honest, it’s failing. I’m not just talking here in Harrison County. I’m talking throughout West Virginia and most parts of the country.

 

Somewhere over the course of the last few decades, teachers haven’t lost control of their classrooms as much as it’s been taken away from them. No longer is it the norm for a student to go home and have a bad grade or one that doesn’t meet a parent or guardian’s standard and for that child to be told to work harder. No longer is it the norm for a student to be disciplined at school and for an equal or perhaps more severe form of discipline to be branded in the household.

 

Instead, those bad grades are the fault of the educator. The misbehavior certainly couldn’t be done by the student because, as I’ve heard hundreds of times, “my child wouldn’t do that.”

 

Back in my day, and as I’m sure many others out there will attest to, discipline came in the form of paddling. It was the great equalizer for balancing the situation. Today, the great equalizer is a lawsuit or the mere threat of one in just about any situation, or perhaps the dreaded “I’m going to go to the media” threat. The difference is that today’s equalizers usurp the authority of the educator. Even worse, even an educator vindicated through the legal system or proven to have done nothing wrong may be able to get their job back, but it's a whole helluva lot harder to get their reputation back.

 

Can anyone tell me with a  straight face that we haven’t largely handicapped our educators from controlling a classroom and administrators from controlling their school that may have unruly students in it with political correctness that’s run amok? We have. I know that. You know it. And those disagreeing with me if I held them down and pumped them full of truth serum they’d say the same.

 

For those making the rules and making the decisions as it relates to handling unruly students, how does one do it in an acceptable manner? If a student throws something at you, do you just tell them to stop? If a student throws a punch, do you simply say, "thank you, may I have another?" What's the answer because there are extreme situations that I'm gathering happens daily in schools across our area, the state and the nation. I can tell you as an absolute truth that putting a kid that's enraged on timeout is not going to work. The problem is that those who make these rules have no answers to the questions. They simply hope for the best and, if things get out of hand, it's almost always the educator's fault. While teachers may come up short sometimes in bad situations, I'm betting in the vast majority, the problem is on the student side, not that of the educator.

 

To this day, I can still remember the complete control that my past educators had, and I come from the last generation that – to the best of my knowledge – received  the now socially outlawed form of punishment known as paddling. Maybe it's still allowed, but I've not heard about It since my freshman year of school, back in junior high, and I can still remember so many of my very favorite educators utilizing the thick piece of wood – and more often than not just the possibility of using that piece of wood – to keep law and order amongst rowdy youth.

 

Paddling, however, wasn’t necessary to keep control. I don’t recall a soul getting their backside smacked during my three years at Liberty High School where Principal Wilson Currey stood guard. At the same time, I also don’t remember a single situation  where a student was able to disrupt a classroom setting and not face the wrath of Mr. Currey. He had control and he had control largely because the parents of the students that went there and the community that Liberty represented backed him and, most important, respected him. Foolishness was simply not tolerated.

 

That’s still the case today in some situations. Certainly, I think we’re largely blessed here in Bridgeport to have schools where the community largely backs its educators. But throughout this land, what’s taking place in Bridgeport is no longer the rule, it’s the exception. If anyone thinks a Bridgeport educator/administrator can or hasn't been the victim of a student attack, you're kidding yourself.

 

We’ve taken control of the classroom from the teachers and put it squarely in the hands of political correctness. When that happens, the teachers don’t necessarily lose, it just makes the most critical of jobs that much more difficult. The real losers are the ones political correctness seeks to protect – our students.

 

Students go into the real world too many times believing that there aren't ramifications for their actions. And isn't using a controlled educational environment the tool that should prepare students for a very harsh real world? Instead of that, too often we're  setting up failure and we've done that because those who know how to educate in a controlled environment too many times have had that control taken away.