If anyone hit my child, I would have them arrested.
Thanks to reader FLERP! for bringing this to our attention:
From Jeb Bush’s “Profiles in Character.”
“It’s not just our inner city streets that are in dire need of sense of shame. We have also lost our shame in our schools, too. Specifically, there is little shame in poor academic performance or classroom misconduct. We now see many students who do not care if the teacher yells at them or if their test results are less than stellar. In many of Florida’s largest school districts, there is little that the teacher can do to make students feel some sense of shame. In some school districts, such as Walton County, one of the oldest forms of shame, corporal punishment, is alive and well, and despite protests by some parents and Florida’s PTAs, the students have actually found that this doling out of shame is very effective. The students of these schools will tell you, as will anybody who experienced corporal punishment in school, that it is not the brief spanking that hurts, but the accompanying shame. A senior valedictorian of one high school in Walton County told a reporter ‘We feel ashamed when it happens to us, but when you’re in that classroom and you want to learn and somebody else won’t let you learn, well, they are dealt with.’ To date, Walton County has never experienced a shooting in any of its schools.”
So, this is how we solve urban problems: bring back a sense of shame (how?) and whip children. That requires no new taxes. Just a lot of hickory sticks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Does this mean he and his wife are unable to teach their children how to act and must leave it to teachers.
If so, a sad commentary.
“To date, Walton County has never experienced a shooting in any of its schools.”
Oh, God. If this is the Best and the Brightest, we are doomed. Does he still believe that school shootings are due to not enough kid-whacking?
“. . . are in dire need of sense of shame.”
Indeed, Mr. Bush, have you no sense of shame???
Ya think George HW or Barb ever spanked Dubya or Jeb?
I smell an edu-money making opportunity. I’ll even make custom paddles. Or if you prefer how about a switch, or a cane. Money back guarantee: If they break on a student’s arse, I’ll replace it free.
And you even have a ready-made cool name for your product, Duane, “The Swacker-Whacker”.
This topic appalls and disgusts me, but I couldn’t resist.
Love it!
(Growing up with a last name that was very conducive to all kinds of poetic shenanigans made me appreciate humor all the more. And even now spell check goes crazy: sacker, slacker, smacker, stacker, etc. . . . )
We liked the name Graham for our first born son, but I just couldn’t put him through it-being a Graham Swacker-say that fast. So he’s Jacob Graham Swacker.
Imagine the equal fun with my last name of “Flick”.
Worse, if spelled in caps it’s even more funny, especially if the L and I are written too close “FLICK”.
It’s always amusing when suddenly my students look at my name and realize what it looks like in caps. By the time that comes around they know me well enough to sorta pull me aside and ask me if I am aware about what my name looks like…
I tell them, yeah, I know about it. Since third grade.
Can hear his wife now…”Spank me, baby!”
Uh, Jeb, how about enacting policies that encourage pride and promote collaboration instead of shame? The Bush Baby adheres to the model of education that is something done to students instead of with them. Clueless…
I have a very, very, very, bad image in my mind right now and can’t get rid of it!
And another brilliant idea from a nationally recognized, educational thought leader:
BETTER LEARNING THROUGH:
SHAME
EMBARRASSMENT
RIDICULE
DISGRACE
DISHONOR
AND
HUMILIATION
This single thought should automatically disqualify him from everything human; including being leader of the free world. Are his children too old for foster care placement?
I just thank BARB AND GEORGE HW God they didn’t have any more boys!
Uh and maybe that is why his beloved daughter is a drug addict and has mental problems? Just saying…
Please leave the children out of it! We don’t choose our parents.
Jeb is so out of touch that he is pathetic. He has no energy, message or mission. It seems appropriate that he would support this antiquated approach to managing student behavior. Any school that engages in this type of behavior should be prepared to deal with all the potential lawsuits while the only lesson the students get is that authority equals corporal punishment. This is primitive thinking.
Once again I notice the weird separation between parents and children that I see so often in ed reform. “Some parents” objected, but all the children will tell you it’s great.
Jeb Bush is standing in the parent role- apparently these children confide in him and their parents are wrong- they want to be hit with paddles.
I just think it’s weird how often it shows up- how they split “adults” from “children” as if these two groups are natural and inevitable adversaries and they’re always on the “child” side.
It seems that 19 states have laws that permit corporal punishment in schools.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934191.html
What the heck does school shootings have to do with corporal punishment or shaming? Did they not teach critical thinking wherever he went to school? BTW, Walton County is a small rural county in the NW Florida panhandle, not a model for the rest of the country.
The southern part of Walton County is dominated by seaside homes owned by educated people with money, but the rest of the county is poor and rural. I live in Santa Rosa County in northwest Florida. This is in conservative Florida. Santa Rosa recently banned corporal punishment. Parents were divided on this issue. The old right wing Christians seemed to believe, “Spare the rod; spoil the child.” The better educated, many of whom work in or for the military, were opposed to corporal punishment School administration decided to drop corporal punishment because outraged parents started a petition against it. The schools realized parents would be speaking to lawyers next if they kept this policy.
Since we started our campaign one and a half years ago, Four school districts have banned corporal punishment. Santa Rosa School District Florida was first on our list, Walton County was second, and both outlawed it last year. During our battle in Santa Rosa county I was even stopped from speaking at a local school board meeting by it’s wonderful (yes I am being sarcastic) Superintendent. Contact us, and we will give you the real story on just how we were able to get it stopped in Santa Rosa county. Before our victory there we told the local ACLU (who by the way offered us NO support) that we were going to get this ended in Santa Rosa county, to which hey replied to us “You, and what Army?”,,,J.C. McNulty,,,Floridians Against Corporal Punishment in Public School.
The 3rd Bush is borrowing from Singapore where kids are caned on stage in front of the entire student body and faculty. Caning is much more brutal than a hickory stick. A kid can get caned for just chewing gum.
Bush must think that because Singapore ranks very high on the PISA that this is what we must do in the U.S. to bring up test scores. Kids are also tracked in Singapore based on test score results. They are tracked into schools and tracked into classes. The higher a kid tests, the better schools they get into. The kids who are at the bottom of the test pyramid end up in vocational schools and not academic ones. There is very little individual choice in Singapore.
I do not think corporal physical punishment should be used in any of our public schools but I also can’t support a federal law to force every state and community to do this.
We have laws against illegal drug use that puts people in prison for decades.
We have a movement in the U.S. that wants legislation that will throw women in prison for having an abortion at any stage of a pregnancy. But in counties that have the toughest laws against abortions, the percentage of abortions don’t shrink, they just go underground while the deaths of women who had illegal and unsafe abortions skyrockets.
In some states in the U.S., already, women can go to prison if they take an over the counter pain killer while they are pregnant.
We have a movement in the U.S. to legislation the purchase of firearms that ignores the fact that there is a black market for firearms in every state that has tough firearm laws. When govenrment passes laws, the criminals move in and make money selling those illegal products illegally.
This is why prohibition failed in the U.S. That is why the U.S. has more people in prison than even Communist China, a country ruled by an authoritarian one-party state that has almost five times the population of the United States.
Both sides are turning to legislation to control behavior that they do not agree with. Instead, I think we must do a better job educating parents and communities to understand the damage that shaming children and beating them can cause.
I will not support top-down control of behavior. But I will support grassroots, bottom up efforts to educate people on these issues.
There’s been a lot of interesting research over the last several years about why incarceration rates are so high in the US. John Pfaff’s work (Fordham Law) has gotten the most press.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2009/02/reform_school.single.html
It was an interesting post.
I wrote one on the same issue but with a different perspective.
http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/2015/10/11/discovering-the-real-u-s-prison-pipeline/
The whole issue of discipline in schools is difficult and complex. A huge amount of resources, particularly in low income districts, are devoted to managing student behavior. Despite this, it’s the students with the most difficult social and emotional challenges who predominately set the tone in a classroom and in a school. Schools and teachers are not really designed or resourced to deal with the level of behavioral issues that confront them in many schools. In these situations it’s just about impossible to evaluate a teacher or a school based on student academic performance since so many other factors are in play.
What are reasonable expectations for students? How much sitting and paying attention is to much to expect from a child? What about all those students who come from homes without the supports that most of us take for granted?
Where do we draw the line between expecting a child to step up, and accommodating their individual needs.
Geb and Eva come from the “just say no” (Nancy Reagan) school of thought, which seems to believe that, whatever your compromised circumstances might be, if you can’t jump over your own knee caps… oh well.
“. . . it’s just about impossible to evaluate a teacher or a school based on student academic performance. . . ”
NO!, it’s not “just about impossible to evaluate a teacher or a school based on student academic performance.”
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to do so.
Jeb! has the right observations, but the wrong conclusions. I cannot see how shame does anything but make kids embarrassed.
Disrespect towards teachers (“sassing”?) should never be considered normal student behavior. If it occurs, it is an indication of a problem, either minor or major, individual or systemic. Dismissing aberrant behavior or making excuses for the students that act this way undermines education.
I’m amazed at the reactions on this blog to the S.C. SRO situation. Some seem to be either far removed from the reality of a classroom, or looking back through rose colored glasses. I’ve got more honored veterans in my family than I can almost count (and VERY proud of them). One thing they will tell you is that you never really know how you will react to conflict. You can be trained, think ahead, plan it out – but each situation is different and each person reacts differently. None of us know what our outcome would be as the teacher in the S.C. situation. Don’t fool yourself. I hope I would handle it well. But I recognize my own imperfections and human flaws. Maybe I was dead tired that day from being up all night with a sick child and didn’t recognize the warning signs from a student. Maybe I fought with my spouse in the morning and that was on my mind as the situation spiraled out of control in the classroom. Maybe I let just in a little too much personal feelings or saw the situation through a lens of race, ideology, and frustration that I didn’t help a student in time before things got worse. YEs, the SRO was over the line and out of control. But this twisted, perverse logic of blaming the teacher is destructive and highlights a reason many leave the profession. We are just tired of being blamed for things out of our control or demonized as the root cause of every situation and social ill. It is like blaming a doctor for a patient’s cancer.
We need to step back and recognize the reality that many families become believers in school choice and moving to “better” schools BECAUSE poor student behavior is allowed to flourish and affect others by a systematic undermining of the classroom. Every time we stop instruction and focus on the 10% that cause most of the problems, we negatively impact the education of the other 90% who DO value learning and WANT to succeed.
And no, I never “sassed” my teachers, no matter how much they deserved it. My own kids never have. My mom and dad did not. Neither did my siblings, aunt, uncle, cousins. Nobody suspended, no detentions for disrespect. It is something we all value. When you disrespect a teacher, you are disrespecting the entire profession.
But the teacher and the admin in SC *were* to blame. The girl put her phone away and apologized. Why did it need to be escalated at all? If it needed any further addressing, why couldn’t he simply have said, “let’s talk after class”? Why did he need an admin to handle basic classroom management for him? Why did the admin need a cop? Bottom line is that all three adults in this situation got into a pissing match with the girl over one minor infraction, which she quickly apologized for. The adults lost.
Great hindsight, but not productive. No, teachers are NOT to blame for student behaviors. The teacher did what teachers do every day, all day. Try to correct student behavior. If that doesn’t work, try other approaches or escalate.
Since we don’t know all the facts and it is not helpful to make them up to support a viewpoint or narrative, there is nothing to gain by blaming the teacher.
If you want to let emotions and mob rule destroy teachers without facts, procedure, or due process, by all means, get out the pitchforks and torches and let’s go after our educators with whatever ideological and personal gripe is on everybody’s agenda today.
It’s not just hindsight. Your excuse making for the teacher, administrator and SRO is so wrong. They were in the wrong-admit it. And I’m not sure what the hell bringing up the number of veterans in your family has to do with the price of tea in this china shop. Means absolutely nothing.
Punishment is an inseparable component of the entire school “reform” movement, whether one is talking about punishing individual students in schools (eg, Success Academy), punishing teachers (with shaming and/or firing based on VAM), punishing entire communities with school closure or even punishing entire states by withholding funds and/or withdrawing NCLB waivers.
It’s as if people like Bush, Coleman, Gates, Obama, Duncan etc stepped right out of a Dickens novel and proceeded to apply the preferred approach of the day to education.
It’s actually very bizarre.
“Reformer Rules”
Punish the kids
Punish the schools
Punish the ‘hoods
Punishment rules!
Tame the kids
Blame the schools
Shame the ‘hoods
Reformer rules!
See, two wins: better behavior AND money saved!
I would disagree,[ rarely if ever has this been done before], but with the paddling issue as it was presented here I do.
I fear that many students believe they can do anything they wish and that there are no repercussions for that behavior. Children need to know that there ARE limits and that sometimes poor choices result in painful consequences. Too many adults believe that whatever they do, it will not make a difference. NOT a good choice for society.
It is ABSOLUTELY true that paddling kids does not solve all or even many problems and that indeed students often come from horrific circumstances. Poor teaching will not be solved by paddling. Still, my experience was that in SOME instances it is an effective way to deal with problems and I never saw that it hurt self image etc. when it was explained why this was done, that the child understood why and that it was NOT done in anger. Actually self image was something that was a major goal of my teaching. [Many, maybe most of you will disagree but I found it helpful even though it did not solve ALL problems.]
In my 5th or 6th grade class two boys were disruptive all semester. Talking to them, sending them to the office, nothing worked. Finally the principal supplied a paddle, watched while I gave a couple of swats to their posteriors. Had I been able to do that at the beginning of the year the class would have learned maybe twice as much. The discipline in the school was abominable even though we had many excellent teachers. Everyone it seemed struggled with discipline. The whole school suffered.
When the boys came in for the paddling I told them that I did not want to do this but they would not change their behavior that the whole class suffered because of their behavior and this was the consequence of that. I had told them over and over again and that they paid no attention. I asked them if they understood what I was telling them and that I never wanted to have to do this again. They understood even though they undoubtedly did not wish to submit to it. From then on they behaved.. More, better teaching for the whole class ensued.
Sounds like the two disruptors were egging each other on. Couldn’t they have been put in separate classes, or was this not an option?
When I taught in an Elementary school (that had corporal punishment) I was told by the Principal I would have to learn to paddle. Once he even summoned me to his office to act as the “witness” to which I absolutely refused and turned and walked right out of his office. I would NOT and will not be a part of any such ritual. Sorry but when an educator has to use a weapon in order to teach he/she has failed- YOU failed. You simply instilled fear into the boys and you taught violence as a solution.
My parents didn’t spank often, and I only remember the couple of occasions when I felt the spankings were unjustified. I don’t remember the spanking we got when we bent the gear shift in the new car. My mother really didn’t have to resort to whacking us. She had a look that would have turned Medusa to stone. I don’t think they had corporal punishment in the schools; they didn’t need it since punishment at home was typically more than enough to curb any impulse to draw the ire of a teacher. I was warned by a friend when I attended her catechism class that the nun had a ruler. Every society seems to develop effective ways of chastising those who run amok of the rules. I don’t condone the disruption caused by some students, but we do need to do a better job of paying attention to the root causes of the rage and managing misbehavior humanely.
Too many parents no longer know how to raise children with discipline. 40 years ago there was a short note in Readers Digest. The comment was based in the child rearing philosophy of dr Benjamin Spock. “We spared the rod, and wound up with the Beat Generation.”
My first experience with US schools when I moved here was the sight of fully armed officers in a high school cafeterias, followed a day later by watching a sixth grader being carried out by FOUR officers.
It seems parents gave given up on raising their children, teaching them respect for authority.
When parents blame teachers for their failing courses, yell at them in the presence of the student, what do you expect to happen??
I did not go into education to shame children. I don’t send my child to school to be shamed. Respect is garnered through relationship building not exerting power and control through beatings. Building children up, giving them confidence in themselves and helping them to see their value is what schools are for.
The US Department of Education has a partial solution to the problem of “discipline” and self-control.
USDE just awarded $2 million to a program called “Skills for Success,” to “improve academic achievement and attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism and exclusionary discipline by programs that focus on so-called ‘non-cognitive skills.’”
The first year award (perhaps renewable for three) is for “high needs students in grades 5-8 “high needs schools.” Interventions must include “tools and approaches” to promote “growth mindsets, resilience, and self-control, among other attributes.”
Here are some definitions. “High-need students means students who are at risk of educational failure or otherwise in need of special assistance and support, such as students who are living in poverty, who attend High minority Schools, who are far below grade level, who have left school before receiving a Regular High School Diploma, who are at risk of not graduating with a diploma on time, who are homeless, who are in foster care, who have been incarcerated, who have disabilities, or who are English learners.”
You can read more like this at the Federal Register on December 10, 2014 (79 FR 73425).
The concept of a “growth mindset” cited in this grant comes from Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck who, in addition to being a scholar with many peer reviewed articles, has a best-selling book on the “growth mindset,” also a Mindset website, also a full array of instructional materials, games, and professional development programs available for purchase.
Some of Dweck’s resources are marketed under the brand name “Brainology.” Dweck is noted for one liners such as this: “You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way.” She compares the brain to a muscle that gets stronger with repeated practice of the right kind, just like you see in great athletes. She has a popular TED talk.
Dr. Dweck participates in the PERTS lab at Stanford (Project for Education Research That Scales) aided by funds from the Raikes Foundation. There is evidence that participants in PERTS were among others who lobbied for the grant program that emerged as “Skills for Success.”
This federal grant program may also be the result of extensive lobbying by scholars organized at Chicago-based CASEL—Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. That organization promotes SEL learning, reviews tests for SEL, and maintains a scorecard for states that have SEL standards set up by grade bands for direct instruction and for integration into the regular curriculum.
Illinois has such standards for K-12. Almost all states have some version for preschool. The first cohort of students to have completed the Illinois SEL programs based on standards written in 2004 will graduate from high school around 2017, 2018. If the three goals of the program have been realized, and ten learning strands addressed, and ninety benchmarks met—then students will demonstrate social-emotional “competence.”
Social emotional competence means: Students will have developed “self-awareness and self-management skills to achieve school and life success” (Goal 1); they will “use social-awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships” (Goal 2); and they will “demonstrate decision-making skills and responsible behaviors in personal, school, and community contexts” (Goal 3).
SEL is big. In some quarters it is being sold as if a panacea, and also as a means to reduce the need for school counselors and school social workers. SEL concepts are being used in measures of “school climate.” The USDE grant favors online SEL tools and approaches.
Angela Duckworth and her associates at the Duckworth Lab, University of Pennsylvania, continue to work on the concept of “grit” with some excellent cautions on trying to measure grit and other personal attributes.
Joining this new movement, perhaps spawned by the exclusive focus on academic learning and test scores as the be-all of “success” in life, is the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence with support from the “Born This Way Foundation.” They are calling their initiative the “Emotion Revolution.”
The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence offers a Mood Meter mobile app that purports to tell you “exactly how you feel and build emotional intelligence that lasts,” also a group of Mood RULER schools. RULER stands for Recognizing emotions in self and others, Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions, Labeling emotions accurately, Expressing emotions appropriately, and Regulating Emotions Effectively. .
In any case, I have some uneasiness about this convergence of “solutions” to problems ranging from motivation to learn, to excessive absences, to teen pregnancy, and substance abuse, and “success” in school and life. I worry about the invisible moral principles and allusions to “success” as if these are settled matters. I worry about children being asked to “accurately” describe their emotions in K-2 Illinois standards, the whole idea of “standards,” and “objectives” for social emotional learning. I worry about the absolute faith that properly taught “skill sets” and “mindsets” and self-management techniques will be a boon to students and teachers and in schools, especially if these concepts are recast as grade-level benchmarks.
CASEL already has a rating system for tests of SEL, and a scorecard that implies all states should have grade-level SEL standards. You can be sure the testing industry will expand their offerings of student and teacher surveys and parent and community surveys, and systems of rubrics with scores, and color-coded data-dashboards for daily use and guides for making data-driven judgments—all with the aura of being evidence-based markers of “skills for success.”
The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence offers a Mood Meter mobile app that purports to tell you “exactly how you feel and build emotional intelligence that lasts’
yes, indeed. An app is what we need.
“The Mood Meter”
An app is what we need
To tell us how we feel
Control our fervor speed
And keep on even keel
To keep us from the harm
That comes from ups and downs
With very loud alarm
And vids of dancing clowns
That shocks us when we stray
From straight and narrow path
And keeps us off the way
From certain psychopath
Who could possibly have more expertise in emotional intelligence than someone from Yale who makes apps.
Probably damn near everyone.
Does the Yale Mood Meter app report when subject’s mood is “I feel like smashing this device”?
The Jebster is a cementhead.
And what does our apopemptic upper-class twit of the year, Arne, say about this? Or our incoming decepticon, John, who is building his flying ivory tower in the sky?
Thankfully, The Walton County School District banned corporal punishment in 2014. Since our campaign started one and half years ago, FOUR school districts finally outlawed these acts of violence (Walton school district is one of them).,,,J. C. McNulty,,,Floridians Against Corporal Punishment in Public School (facebook.com/Stoppaddling)
The answer is to meet the needs of the individual child. I teach high school now for 18 years, I had a group of girls that just ruined a class with their behavior. I tried everything in my bag of tricks to deal with the behavior. I’m a certified teacher in emotional and behavior disorders and trained in behavior analysis and was having little success. The other student’s approached me to ask if the disruptive students could be removed. I knew then I had to respond. I got little support for the disruptive students who I knew needed clinical support for the abuses they had experienced as children. The answer was write them up! I refused to do that because I felt it wasn’t fair to write a student up for behavoir that stemmed from being a victim. Just so you know the topic I was teaching at the time was child abuse and neglect. This was a highly sensitive topic for these students and they were just reacting defensively. So pay attention to the students and find ways to build them up not take them down. I found appropriate places for those students to experience success while we cover the uncomfortable topic.
This. When you understand behavior as communication, it becomes obvious it’s not about “disrespect” or “disruption”. It’s about what the kid needs. Thanks for your comment.
So what did you do?
Jeb’s comments were published in a book that is now 10 yrs old, & as noted above, corporal punishment is no longer allowed at the school he cites. However, his anachronistic remarks fit right in with the throwback deform era that has reigned in public schooling for the last 15 yrs. Regimentation of curriculum and pedagogy and testing. Shaming of teachers. Punishment of teachers and schools via test scores. And, at many city charters, regimentation of curriculum, testing, teaching and student behavior, with violations sanctioned via shaming.
Shaming is apparently today’s PC alternative to corporal punishment, and is widely heaped on teachers and parents as well as kids. Let us hope that the adults in the equation begin to stand up and throw it off in greater numbers. Teachers: hold your unions’ feet to the fire. And strike. Parents: make your displeasure known to your school admin. And Opt Out.
Just send them all to Eva Moskowitz. She knows how to deal with urban natives. Just ask her. She has all the answers. Start young, treat them like prisoners, but call the scholars – rhymes with dollar$. Knock the individuality and disobedience right out of them. That’s the Moskowitz way.
“The Prison to Prison Pipeline”
The Prison to Prison Pipe
Omits the school from line
And Eva’s major gripe
Is that “The Hole ain’t mine”
“…call the scholars – rhymes with dollar$.”
Love it!
The Kipp Charter School in Buffalo regularly used corporal punishment and once this policy became public, the outcry led to its demise.
But which is worse, a swift swat to the rear or the constant inner turmoil caused by the stress of CC policies with an emphasis on unreasonable assessments?
Constant “rigor” vs a momentary discomfort? You choose!
I see no reason to choose either. They are both bad policy.
I have a better suggestion, children are the product of their home why shame them? Why not shame the parents for the poor job they are doing raising children.