I have to rant for a minute. Two incidents recently have got me questioning what goes on in our schools lately.
The first was with our pastor. He goes to eat lunch with his middle school aged child every week. One of her friends who had visited their house multiple times began swearing at his daughter repeatedly at school. On one of his visits, he sat down with the girl and asked her not to swear anymore and that he would have a conversation with her father. Well, the girl got mad and went and told the principal. A few days later then principal called our pastor and his wife into his office and told him he could not ask anyone to quit swearing and he may be asked to quit eating lunch with his daughter. Like, what the…why is it a pastor can not tell a middle schooler not to swear? It should have been the girl’s parents sat down in that office and given a talkin to for swearing AND disrespecting an elder and pastor to boot.
Tonight I just found out that one of Scott’s best childhood friends who is a police officer that works as a school resource officer was asked to leave the school. He walked in on a high school kid writing on the bathroom wall and tried to convince him to leave. The kid started yelling, telling him to F off and then swung at Scott’s friend who then took him to the ground and handcuffed him. The kid’s friends then come in and start to try to fight Scott’s friend and then he gets his Tazor out threatening to taze them. The principal walks in and tries to blame it all on him and asks for him to be reassigned. OK, exactly what is he supposed to do with a bunch of high school kids trying to beat him up and why is it that they have a resource officer if they don’t want him to handle situations in the way he was trained?
These were at different schools but it sure seems like parents and authority figures have a lot less pull with principals than the students do these days. Am I overreacting? Are these isolated incidents? I don’t have kids in school so I don’t know what it’s like since about 10 years ago.
Both of those incidences are crazy. However, in the first case – with the pastor – I think the best bet would have been for the pastor to go to the principal to report the abusive teen rather than approach the teen directly. This way the principal could call the unruly teen into his office and do his job rather than have a teen come into his office and complain about the pastor. It’s also dicey in that you never know what the teen will say – they may later accuse a parent of harrassment and who knows what else.
Probably true in most cases. I guess since she was more of a family friend he thought he could handle it personally. But believe me, working with our youth group, I know all about things that teenagers will make up when they want to.