AN, in many of these schools there is no “security,” especially at the elementary and middle school levels.
Back when I was in junior high (as a student), our upper-middle-class neighborhood had “aged out” of the local school system, so they bussed about 75% of our students from downtown L.A. There were major fights almost every single day, and I’m talking about very brutal fights.
The way the students would handle it is to shout “fight…fight…fight,” and all of the (downtown) students would rush to the scene and form concentric circles of students around the fights, linking arms so that the administrators couldn’t get to the fight, often numbering over 200+ students. There is no “calling security” in this type of setting. The fight plays out, usually until someone is knocked unconscious.
I remember my first day at that school after attending a very high-achieving, religious private school where we had absolutely no behavioral problems because those kids were expelled the first time they caused problems. Anyway, I walked into my first classroom, a history class, and the students were running and jumping around throwing wads of paper and blowing spit-wads at the teacher and each other. The poor teacher was standing at the front of the classroom yelling for everyone to sit down and settle down. Her hair was a mess, and she looked like she was ready to break down. I’ll never forget that day because it really woke me up and showed me a part of society that I was totally not used to.
While you might think that you can handle these students AND teach them in such a way that they will all pass standardized tests, I think you are being painfully naive. That’s not a slam against you, it’s just that I’ve seen it, both as a student and a teacher, and I’ve also heard many of the stories from teacher friends who’ve had to deal with these kinds of students.
When politicians talk about “failing schools,” these are the schools they are talking about. Again, the failures have NOTHING AT ALL to do with teachers’ unions or tenure. The problems are very complex and the subject is very politically dangerous for any politician to broach if they are willing to be honest. This is why it’s so easy to blame teachers and unions; they are the easy (and politically palatable) targets in a world where complex problems require complex solutions and an HONEST assessment of the problems, even when there will be severe sociopolitical ramifications. Throw in the fact that there is a long line of wealthy capitalists (many of whom control the mainstream media) just drooling over the possible demise of the unions so that they can sink their teeth into all of those freed-up public funds.
