The 225 students at Pennridge High School in Pennsylvania who joined the national walkout on March 14 were told to sit detention on a Saturday. The first group of 46 did. They sat on the floor, arms linked, with names of the 17 victims at MSD in Parkland, Florida, inscribed on placards.
There is a video on Twitter of their protest.
These kids are great! They will be voters soon. Can’t wait!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gotta like that kind of student attitude!
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I never understood detention. A completely idiotic punishment.
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It depends upon what kind of detention. In school detention can be a good solution to a student who needs to be removed from a classroom for whatever reason. After school detention can serve as a time for students to get work completed if the detention is handled correctly by the teacher (which means having a supportive knowledgeable administrator).
Why do you say it is “a completely idiotic punishment”?
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If a student damaged school property, then a meaningful punishment is to fix it if possible, like painting over graffiti. Or maybe just wash the restrooms or clean the territory. Sitting a whole day in a room doing nothing is stupid and unproductive. I am talking about after school detention. Short in-school detention is not as bad.
First you are not allowed to spank them, then in high school there are real cops on premises with guns and handcuffs.
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Gruff, are you a teacher or parent?
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I’m fairly familiar with both in-school and after school/Saturday detentions, having proctored the “off” time and as a teacher in the in-school suspension room.
If, and it’s a pretty big if, the programs are run correctly, including having the student apologize to the teacher and class for any in-class disturbance (for other non-class related offenses the student should still have to apologize in some fashion). Yes, they can be a big babysitting chore if not set up properly. But handled properly they can be an effective strategy, obviously one of many discipline options that should be used before either in-school suspension or “off” time detentions.
As far as spanking-to hell with that abuse. And there are very few instances where the SRO/law enforcement should become involved, certainly not for “routine” discipline issues.
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To give you an example of a wrong use of suspension. My class was next to a door facing south where snakes liked to warm up in the spring. The door was the best way to get to the outdoor classroom over at a lake on a conservation area. One day I had my windows open and a class was heading out to that classroom when I heard a “thunk” and the three girls next to the window instantly jumped onto their seats. Yep, a male student had picked up a two foot long garter snake and dropped it in the open window.
Well, the administration wanted to suspend the student for three days (true adminimal behavior at its finest). I told them that the punishment was way overboard and the student should do an after school detention where he would research and write a couple of page paper on Eastern Garter snakes. I’m glad I was able to convince the administrator to do so.
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Ok, research and write a couple of papers is not as pointless as just sitting there.
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I hope it isn’t long before they are old enough to vote. America desperately needs them.
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“What do you want? I have bourbon, bourbon and bourbon.” – “I’ll have bourbon.”
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Now that’s the way to give it to the Man! Love it!
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Good to see some of that some of that Quaker ethic is still alive and well in Pennsylvania.
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The students are standing strong!
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Really inspiring..a reason for hope.
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Also of interest tomorrow: from Politico
House Democrats host a Capitol Hill forum at 2 p.m. Tuesday on school safety and violence prevention featuring House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others. It will be live-streamed.
Likely to be more interesting
Tuesday, 6 pm Harvard’s Institute of Politics will feature six Marjory Stoneman Douglas students:
Ryan Deitsch, Matt Deitsch, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky and Alex Wind.
The conversation will focus on how they are changing the debate over gun control. It will also be live-streamed.
I could not get the livestream links, but they are at Politico today.
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Hooray! Soon these HS students VOTE.
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Bravo to these students, they behaved with class, style and aplomb. They deserve praise for their advocacy, not punishment.
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A quote from a student;
“It was disappointing that our school teaches us to be like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., people who stood up for what they believed in. And they weren’t going to let us do the same,” she said Sunday.
Hmmm…..sounds like “critical thinking” to me!!!
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I am concerned about the views of the students who did NOT walk out… nationally, from all I’ve read, they appear to outnumber the ones who DID walk out…. and they, too, will be voters. A lot of my generation protested the Viet Nam War and yet once we became voters we ended up supporting people who engaged us in endless conflicts… or maybe we ended up staying out of the voting booths…
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wgersen: You brought up some good points. The war in Vietnam is not the only problem that exists. The US is now militarily involved in 76 countries. People do not understand the consequences of continuing conflicts.
I listened two days ago to The Emergency Global Call for Peace. It was around an hour long and was listened to by 27,000 people around the world. There was a place to click to receive the message in different languages.
I believe the horrors of death and destruction by the US military is an even larger scale than most people envision. I just read a NYT article written by an Iraqi who has left his country. He says the US military has wrecked the country and that at least a million people have been killed. He said that the military invasion was a crime and that it caused the country to divide into sectarianism. The middle class has left, leaving no one to be a leader.
The Iraqi who spoke on this Global Call for Peace stated that 400,000 Iraqi’s have been killed. He also said the country has been decimated and that everyone he knew has left.
The speakers in this global call included two from S. Korea, a MoveOn lady who says that MoveOn is going international, the Iraqi and Bernie Sanders. One S. Korean lady said that during the Korean war 80% of the cities in N. Korea were decimated. That is why N. Korean holds such contempt for the Western world.
My wish is that all this killing would stop and that the trillions the US spends on its military would go towards helping others. 40% of the world doesn’t have a decent home and many don’t have decent clean drinking water. Yet, we have trillions to spend on wars that kill and destroy.
The US can do better than this. The proliferation of guns and killing that take place within our country is only the tip of the problem. We are a violent society.
……….
From The New York Times:
Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country
Let’s stop calling the invasion of Iraq a “blunder” and call it what it is: a crime.
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“I believe the horrors of death and destruction by the US military is an even larger scale than most people envision.”
There is no doubt that what you state is the case. Damn near everyone has no clue.
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Duane: The US provides 57% of the military hardware for the world. So, even if our military isn’t directly involved, the US still is. There is no limit to the amount of guns and death that occur due to the US’s ‘best intentions’. Corporations are benefitting and money drives a lot of politics.
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“we ended up supporting people who engaged us in endless conflicts… or maybe we ended up staying out of the voting booths…”
We?? You got fleas wgerson? Some of us did neither of those two things.
Don’t try to assuage your own conscience by pawning off the blame on everyone else. To do so is below you.
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Unless one is actively protesting one is implicitly supporting.
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Can’t agree with that position at all. I have been fighting against the data driven decision making since before the turn of the century. I no way, shape or fashion could that be construed as “implicitly supporting” the edudeforms. You statement is a rationo-logically false statement at face value.
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Now, you are referring to GAGA* Good German adminimals and teachers who implement the malpractices, then I might agree.
*Go Along to Get Along
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Here’s another killing at a school. This type of atrocity doesn’t happen in other countries because they don’t have the same number of guns. I just posted on a site and got a response back:
James Norrie: Students, who have recently been demoted in societal terms, as being “irresponsible, to the point of not being allowed to purchase guns” (See: proposed bans on gun purchases by those under 21), are suddenly such great subject matter experts and policy directors that we have to abide by their terms? Their narrow worldview can’t dictate to me or the other 100 million gun owners in this country what I can and can’t do. I absolutely will listen to the Parkland survivors when they speak of pain and suffering. With empathy and care. But their experience does not Outweigh the thousands of actual experts who say that guns are not the problem…
……………………………….
Shooting At Maryland High School Leaves At Least 2 Injured
March 20, 20189:26 AM ET
Deputies and federal agents converge on Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Md. Authorities have said the situation was “contained.”
Alex Brandon/AP
Updated 11 a.m. ET
A shooting at Great Mills High School in St. Mary’s County, Md., has resulted in two people being injured, according to the local sheriff’s department. The suspected shooter has also been transported to a hospital.
A spokesperson for the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office says the two victims injured have been transported to local hospitals. Cpl. Julie Yingling told NPR that their conditions were not immediately clear and that authorities were not yet able to release information about the suspect…
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