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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!akgub!cylixd!charli
From: charli@cylixd.UUCP (Charli Phillips)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: corporal punishment in schools
Message-ID: <262@cylixd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 18:00:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: cylixd.262
Posted: Mon Sep  9 18:00:34 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Sep-85 05:06:15 EDT
References: <2149T3B@psuvm> <658@rduxb.UUCP> <1214@teddy.UUCP> <241@cylixd.UUCP> <591@oliveb.UUCP>
Reply-To: charli@cylixd.UUCP (Charli Phillips)
Organization: RCA Cylix Communications , Memphis, TN
Lines: 42
Summary: 

I hate long, point-by-point follow-ups, so I'll try to summarize.

In article <241@cylixd.UUCP> I said that I had found when I was a
substitute teacher that "not taking any crap" was not sufficient to
control some of the students.  Some of them didn't care what I 
thought.  I therefore feel that a teachers (especially substitutes) need
*something* to back up their authority.  (Note:  That something is not
necessarily corporal punishment.)

Dave Long took issue with what I said.  He concluded that:

	- I may have had "cretinous students" or
	- I may have been "behaving like a Prussian Drill Instructor"

He then seems to assume that the latter is true.  (In fact, both were
true, although I would prefer not to call the kids cretins.  They were
generally troubled, troublesome kids who didn't want to be in school,
but who were by law prohibited from dropping out.  Many had drug problems,
family problems, legal problems.  It was light-years away from David's
school where the kids are trying to get into "Stanford, UC Berkeley,
UC Davis, Harvard, UCSD, UCLA, etc."  These kids were far more likely to
get into jail.)

He also stated:

>    I would bet that your students learned a *lot* less than
>they would have with other substitutes.  It is difficult to learn when faced
>with substitutes who behave like Iranian religious fanatics.
>

However, I was told by a number of the students who *did* want to be
in school that I was the only substitute they'd ever had who got 
anything done in class at all.  (Some of them told me they learned more
when I was there than they did under their regular teacher, who was
unable to control the class.)  Granted, I opened class with a lecture
that made it sound like I was Attilla the Hun.  But it worked.   

I will grant that these tactics are not always appropriate.  I did not
use them myself in all cases.  But just being firm won't always work,
either.

		charli