quote: A Coral Gables Elementary School teacher and a volunteer aide were arrested this morning, following an investigation that several 6-year-old students were disciplined by taping them to chairs and the blackboard.
quote:All had their ankles taped together, their arms taped to their lap or their heads taped to the blackboard, police said. One said her mouth was taped shut.
I really should turn off the TV before I see anything else I don't want to know about.
Oh, and the Herald article doesn't mention it, but the TV news says that the aide was an ex-con. How did she get past the background check?
posted
People should have not let me watch the news when I was a cub. It would frustrate me constantly.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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My husband "accidently" saw a program about the holocaust when he was four. He shut down for weeks. No one knew what was wrong until he started having nightmares about "lots of people getting dumped into holes". His mom couldn't believe that program had upset him so much.
If news is so disturbing to us adults, we certainly should not let our kids watch it.
But heck, probably none of should be watching it.
Nothing makes me more hysterical and inconsolable than a child abuse story.
Posts: 264 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
What's interesting is that when I was in elementary school, 'corporal' punishment was still the norm. I had rulers broken on my hands. I was spanked with specially made paddling boards. (The ones with the holes in the middle of the paddle to reduce air resistance.) I was made to hold books up in the air.
I guess some part of me thinks (without having read the link) that just taping kids to a wall is kind of mild. If corporal punishment is not o.k., then obviously taping kids to chairs and whatnot is not o.k.. If it is o.k., then taping seems to be o.k. as a form of it, no?
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I started going to school after corporal punishment was dubbed "not okay" but I distinctly remember my mother ordering my teachers to "lay it on me" if I acted up. She probably would have been glad to see me taped to a desk, if she thought I deserved it.
Posts: 264 | Registered: Jan 2002
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This was not 1-inch masking tape. This was 3-inch packing tape. At least one kid was taped all over his head. According to the TV piece, several kids lost chunks of hair.
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posted
Watching the news and shows like Eyes on the Prize where they showed a man hanging from the tree and Emmet Till traumatized me and frustrated me a lot. Worse, was seeing the OJ Simpson murder scene again and again. I hate how the news seems to enjoy such stories. They seem to glorify in the violence and cruelty.
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posted
Unfortunately, I truly believe that when News puts on such stories and revels in them, they are catering to a large majority of Americans. People say those things are horrible, but they just can't seem to stop watching them. Hey, if people watch it, they're going to play it. Again and again.
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posted
I can see why the news picked up on it. This is such a bizzare story. Not that anyone is "used to it" but we are at least less surprised when we hear about child molestation. Tapping children down is just so werid you know it'll be on TV. Not sure I have a point here... I'm just kind of depressed by this and rambling. I'll stop.
posted
I never watch the local news (mostly because I don't watch much TV). I get most of my news from the radio, and the rest from here. Today, I left the TV on after the baseball game.
Stories so far (a sampling): Eustis High School football team investigated for sexual hazing. This case. Sunday school teacher/clown arrested for manufacturing and distributing child porn. Three people in Imokalee (one just 14) shot and killed someone to steal $1.10 with which to buy ice cream. Arrest in MIA airport hotel goes bad and leads to public shootout.
It'll be a long time before I watch the late night news again.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
It hurts knowing that no matter how much one wants to, one can't stop these things from happening. Real life heros can't hear crimes happening, can't see far off crimes, can't be everywhere lightning quick. So what can the real life heros do besides picking up the pieces after they've already been broken?
I suppose our greatest strength is that, as humanity, we really do care about each other. I just wish there was more I could do. Someday, perhaps I will be able to.
Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Oh, it's still on the books in my district, but nobody ever does it that I've heard of. And we also have specific rules about how it can be done, not just whatever physical abuse the teacher thinks is necessary.
-o-
Looking at it in the light of day, I can see that this wasn't even the worst story on the news last night. I think the reason this got to me so much is because I am a teacher.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:I really should turn off the TV before I see anything else I don't want to know about.
Hmmm, I don't know if you were really serious when you said this, but I suppose I should say a few of the following statements.
Ignoring problems don't make them go away.
Ignorance is bliss until the problems you've been ignoring hit you over the head with a big stick and say "Hi! How are you?".
If everyone ignored human rights violations there would be a whole lot more unhappy people today.
If people ignored what was happening in Kosovo in the 90's or in Hitler's Germany in the late 30's, early 40's then there would have been a whole lot more "ethnic cleansing" going on...
posted
You know what's even worse? I hear teachers every day mentioning such atrocities in a joking manner. I think I've done it myself. Especially after "one of those days" when the kids are little animals. It makes you wonder how these particular teachers got to the point where they actually crossed the line and did the deed. And it makes you wonder how they could continue it with the horror in their students' eyes. TAPE! Who'd even have thought of such a thing? And how could they get away with it long enough to tape an entire class?
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posted
The best thing about this article, it sends the message to people who don't know better that, hey, DONT DO THIS IDIOT!
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I had a teacher who duct taped kids now and then. Mostly he duct taped people's mouths, if I remember correctly. I despised that man.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Am I weird for thinking that taping kids to chairs is really, really mild and kind of funny? I mean, if it's against school policy, I can imagine giving the teacher a talking-to. But arresting them? For THIS? I mean seriously. I was once tied to my desk in high school for falling asleep in class, and I thought it was hilarious. Bragged about it the whole next day.
I think we've become WAY WAY too sensitive here.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Geoff, if it were just to the chairs, maybe. But this teacher used strong tape to attach heads to blackboards. Kids lost clumps of hair.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I think this is wrong, especially the age. I can imagine very few six year olds who would diserve to be humiliated to such a degree. Sure, I was made to stand BY the blackboard, or ON my chair, and I was a strong, hard-as-nails kid. If I had been taped to something you can be sure I would not be the same as I am now. Six year olds know what is bad and what is not, and being punished; sent out the room, sent to the office, made be stay after school, even forced to stand at the end of the classroom, are all sufficient to reprimand a very bad six year old.
However, most six year olds may talk to much, some may get angry or tantrumish, but not many are really truly bad enough to be humiliated in a way that to them, is weird, inventive crueltly.
It's like public torture instead of outright murder. In so many ways, it's worse, even though no murder is actually being comitted.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Geoff, the issue here was that these kids were taped with packing tape, and in some cases their heads were taped so thoroughly that they lost clumps of hair. And these are six-year-olds. And granted, in the scheme of things, there are a lot of worse things. As I noted earlier, this one just struck a chord in the middle of the night because I am a teacher and I was saddened to run into concrete video evidence that there are teachers who would treat kids this way. This also touched me because I've been working through a very difficult time with one of my kids lately, and questioning my own parenting skills, and I see this person who didn't try to work through things, or to develop child-control skills, or to get herself the heck out of contact with kids when she couldn't control her anger, but who hurt and humiliated kids instead, while I've been racking my brains out trying to find ways to teach my kid. And it's completely irrational, because rather than make me feel better about myself because at least I'm not abusive like these people, it saddens me that there are people out there who are this clueless in control of a classroom full of kids. I know it's rambling and irrational, but there you have it. (Things have been much better lately, btw, but I still have this whole thing on my mind, near the surface, and early childhood discipline has basically become a hot button for me.)
-o-
JonnyNotSoBravo, I noted in previous post that I do keep abreast of current events. I listen to the news on the radio, I follow it on the internet, and I get a lot of discussion of issues and current events here. I'm not the sort of person who hides my head in the sand, or wishes all was right with the world. When I commented about turning off the TV, my point was that the TV news is sensationalistic, compared to other sources of news. In less than a half hour, I got nothing but stories like this. There was no education here, no stopping problems before they hit me over the head. No discussion of issues. I'm not sure how knowing about any of the specific stories I mentioned in my prior post will help me prevent genocide.
I have worked for many years and in many different contexts to make the world a better place. I am not suggesting that we ignore human rights abuses. What I'm saying is that half-hour TV news shows often package such stories in a frankly destructive matter, because rather than raise awareness of issues, they feed pessimism. There's nobody arguing that ripping kids' hair out, sodomizing high school freshmen, distributing kiddie porn, or shooting at cops are good things, so we're not really learning things that will avoid future evils. All we're really getting here is a steady diet of hopelessness. The message in the news is "There is too much wrong in the world to fix, so lock the doors and hide in your home." I think this message would tend to make people more self-centered and less likely to do something to prevent ethnic cleansing on the other side of the world. This is what leads to the mentality "We've got plenty of our own problems to solve, so let those dirty foreigners kill themselves if that's what they want to do."
I think that ideally, all people should be aware of issues in the world, and should be engaged in discussions of what is right and what is wrong. I'm just not convinced that this is what the TV news was giving me last night.
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posted
I'm not sure what the big deal is... I mean, sure, they probably shouldn't have done it. But is it really THAT bad? It's not like they were being beaten which, as was pointed out, has been used commonly in the past. I would certainly not call just taping someone a form of child abuse. It might be a poor instructing tool, but not grounds for arresting someone. They weren't left there for hours or anything, right?
I'd call this overly harsh, but not criminal by any means.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Sorry, Icky. I should have read the thread more carefully. I think it really depends on which news shows you watch. If the program was on local TV, then it may be important to watch those shows because someone you know may be involved or it may affect you in some way (other than just depressing you). Also, if you switch from Tv station to Tv station during the news hours/half hours you'll notice that they don't all report the same thing and not necessarily the same way. Every TV station puts their own spin on things as well, and you have to take that into account. I would say that newspaper is probably the best way to get your news because they don't reduce everything to soundbites and have a lot more content than the news on Radio and TV.
A lot of media - not just TV - is sensationalist. Every time there's a shark attack, the news explodes with shows about sharks. But the number of shark attacks per year has been steadily declining, and your odds of getting in a car accident, falling off a bike or having a heart attack are much better. All the shows about Elizabeth Smart or some other kids being abducted are big news now...but the number of kids being abducted per year is declining. Why is this so much more important to the news now than it was a few years ago? Everytime there's a fire the news reports it and puts it on TV. Why? Because fires increase ratings and make for "good" TV. You're going to be faced with "image" and "illusion" problems every time you subject yourselves to the media, but some of the skills we need to develop are how to think skeptically, get our news from multiple sources and put things in perspective.
Technically, none of us should probably watch TV. Many studies have shown it encourages passive viewing (which is another way of saying mindlessness) and lowers your brain activity more than reading or performing a task. Yet we still love it as our escape, our electronic babysitter and our common culture
Posts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I've been thinking about this all day . . . the need to be informed and not hide from reality versus the negative impact that some stories can have on us. And I think it's a topic worth exploring more. I'm curious to know where the line is, or if there is one at all. I remember when Slash (I think) posted a link to the story of that woman who had hit a pedestrian with her car and then left it in the garage, with him impaled in her windshield, and went inside to gut high and have sex with her boyfriend while this guy died in her garage, I had a similar reaction. It's one of about three or four times when a news story made me so sad that I really wished I had not known about it. (Another one that made me profoundly sad was that urban legend about the family that comes home and kills their dopg under the mistaken belief that it had harmed their kids. I really couldn't deal with that, and I wished I had not clicked on the thread.) I'm not sure if these stories had any educational value for me personally . . . I suppose it can be argued that they do for society. And yet, there isn't time in the day to read/show every news story, so clearly some choices are being made in what news we consume, whether it be by the newspaper publisher or the TV news department. So what should the basis be upon which these choices are made--are there some sorts of stories that are better off untold, or at least that should be buried in the newspaper? As a viewer/reader, is there a point at which it is not cowardly to decide you've had enough, that too much more would dehumanize you more than it would educate you?
I would really love to explore this topic some more, if anybody is interested.
posted
Baseball game ends . . . once again I find myself watching the TV news through inertia.
Teaser before the news comes back from commercials, I kid you not, VERY chipper voice, dirty swimming pool in picture: "A pair of two-year-old twins found this pool too tempting to resist! Details next!"
After commercials, we find out that the twins snuck out of the house and fell/jumped into the pool. The pool was half-full and very murky. One kid was saved, one died. They interviewed the neighbors, who go into a great deal of detail describing how they heard the mother/parents screaming in the backyard, how they went in and helped search, and how they had a hard time finding the kids in the muck. They describe how they found one right away but the other took a great deal longer, and how the boy, found second, was gray and not responding, and they could just tell he was not going to make it.
After all this, they mention, in about five seconds, that you can protect your kids by putting little fences around your pools. I guess that's the educational value here.
I had a hard time keeping my emotions in check.
Why do I watch the news?
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
i've said it before; i'll say it again (and again if i have to): this is why i try to avoid the news. where i'm at, the murder count for the year is approaching triple digits which it hasn't done for about ten years. i could go into the media/journalism part of it (i still haven't figured out why i got a degree in journalism), but i only have one point to make here. dan said:
quote: The best thing about this article, it sends the message to people who don't know better that, hey, DONT DO THIS IDIOT!
the article may be sending that message, but i can guarantee not enough people are getting it. just as one example, after how many school shootings, at what point are kids going to get the message and not bring guns to school? i can't figure out how people can watch the same mistake being made over and over and still run up and make the mistake themselves. i grew up in a small town, and i haven't been out of high school for that long, but i can't fathom metal detectors at entrances to high schools. anyway, i agree that taping the kids in such a manner was cruel and stupid. i truly hope that this message does get through, but for all you parents, keep a close tab on your kids' teachers just in case.
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