Schools are out of control

New attack at horror HS

Top senior jumped at Brooklyn's troubled Lafayette

By JOE WILLIAMS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The top senior at Lafayette High School was jumped and beaten in a racially motivated attack this week amid growing signs that the Brooklyn school is out of control.
Siukwo Cheng, whose 96.86 grade point average makes him the likely valedictorian next spring, was knocked unconscious for several minutes in the gang attack Thursday.

"I was blacked out," the 18-year-old student said last night. "When I came to, people from the school were asking me, 'Do you understand English? Are you all right?'"

The high-achieving teen said he was leaving school in the afternoon when he was jumped by a group of five or six black teenagers, most of whom are believed to be students at the school.

Taunting him with racial slurs, the thugs kicked him and repeatedly punched Cheng's head.

He was treated at Coney Island Hospital, but one Lafayette teacher, concerned that Cheng was still dizzy last night, was going to take him for more tests.

"Something has got to change at this school," the teacher said.

Despite his injuries, Cheng - who has his sights set on Columbia or Cornell universities - said he still plans to retake the SAT today to try for a perfect 800 score in math.

The assault is the latest sign of chaos at the 3,200-student high school, where another A student said she was driven out by a bully and her unsympathetic principal this week.

"All of the good kids are leaving," Cheng said.

Lafayette was one of seven high schools citywide that got an infusion of extra security agents last month because of repeated complaints from teachers that the building is unsafe.

Teachers threatened to walk off the job, saying troublemaking students ruled the hallways, fought and even set bulletin boards afire.

Just this week, A student Krystle Collado transferred from Lafayette after she said the principal and assistant principal harangued her about a poem on school violence that was highlighted in the Daily News.

Harassment denied

Students "pay with punches, bloody noses, and empty pockets / Pay with their time, their lowered grades and emptied lockers / All because a school refused to do something sooner," wrote Krystle, 16.

An Education Department spokeswoman denied that Principal Alan Siegel harassed Krystle.

Lafayette's Asian students in particular have complained for several years about racial tensions that sometimes led to violence. Complaints were so frequent that former Chancellor Harold Levy convened a task force to study the issue.

The school is being investigated by the Justice Department for possible civil rights abuses. Three years ago, Chinese students accused administrators of forcing them to graduate early even though they were only juniors.

Siegel could not be reached for comment last night. A spokesman for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein declined to comment.


I live three blocks from that school and am very familiar with it since both my sons graduated from there. Years ago.

If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they
are capable of becoming."( Goethe)

That is something I believe.

au: a simplistic response of cutting out the infection or blister or boil? Really, are you so impoverished mentally and spiritually that you can feel no kindness and empathy for the real issues some students live with? And, can you not see any options to punishment? Maybe you did not have such a great education if you cannot think past simplistic suggestions. It is embarrassing that so many folks continue to believe "it is not OUR problem" and always want to blame and exorcize "the guilty". Salem witch hunts are not so far from our society, even now.

ul - that is exactly how i feel about it. thanks for the quote.

I just wonder how much per year per child public education actually costs. I know this is not practical, but just to brainstorm, I've often wondered why we couldn't go back to a system whereby teachers actually were assiged to each family and children were educated at home. We'd employ more teachers, and have less costs on buildings and all that. I suppose tests could be administered to assure some sort of standards. I know some homes are not quiet or orderly enough to allow for that, and then there is always the fear of a teacher getting . . . um . . . too close. I have two cousins who were children of missionaries. Their mother had to teach them and claimed that they received a better education in less time than they would have in class.

Also, in college, I took my tuition and divided it by each hour actually spent in the classroom and came up with only $7 per instructional hour. They accomplished a lot and I was in school for only about 15 total hours per week. I think a lot of time is wasted in public schools. Eight hours a day and what do they accomplish?

I'm not talking home schooling as much as a host of traveling teachers.

cobalt

After seeing one of the best school systems in the country go down the drain
I can feel no sympathy and kindness for that which destroyed it. My liberal tendencies have long since been replaced with the absolute belief that the only hope is to cut out the rot. No matter what it takes. I should note since you brought it up my education from kindergarten through college was in the public school system. I don't buy the excuse that these children come from poor and broken homes.
You want to know poor I started school in 1934 in case you don't know that was the time of the great depression. The poor today would have been considered well to do in those days of no social programs, food stamps and the rest. I can guarantee that excuse would not have washed in those days and as far as I am concerned does not wash today.
Sorry if I got wound up but I am tired of hearing the liberal excuse for everything. Place the blame where it lies.

au1929: Who said anything about poor. I did see "impoverished mentally and spiritually." And my comment about hunger really had nothing to do with poverty. I was born a rich, hungry child." My parents, dripping with jewelry, rarely cooked.

I think the problem is too many kids in too small a place. But then, I live on fifty acres. I really need my space. How much space per person is considered acceptable?

Speaking about weeding about the bad apples . . . Don't most systems have a high-security school for troublemakers?

au - my experience has taught me that children from well-to-do families are at as much risk if not more than poor children. Their parents are no more attentive to their needs, and perhaps even less likely to take notice of them.

au,
I am not an American and I don't really know what ýou mean with an Liberal in America . There are too many definitions, each country has its own.
In my opinion the future of every country is in the children.
If we teach them ( we= society) brutality we will earn what we have sown.
Times have changed. I was in a class with 48 children- that was not a big deal. We were easy children compared to children from today. But we have had a lot more freedom- places to play and to go, seldom TV, parents who had some more time for the family.
In my work expirience I have to spend much more time on being a caretaker and educator than teaching math.
What are you going to do?
Can you participate to change things in your community?
People like you with a solid background, morals and tolerance are needed badly.

dupre
<"Who said anything about poor. I did see "impoverished mentally and spiritually." And my comment about hunger really had nothing to do with poverty. I was born a rich, hungry child." My parents, dripping with jewelry, rarely cooked.">
Rich or poor that of course is part of the problem. Parents who don't care or take little interest in their children. Is the school system supposed to make up for their failing? Better still can they? The answer, I will be generous, and say 9 out of ten times they can't. Should the many be made to suffer because of the few? Many of the families that I know send their children to parochial schools at a considerable cost and at great financial hardship Are they religious? NO. The want their children to be safe and receive a good education. One that they are paying for through taxation and cannot avail themselves of.

au: I hadn't really noticed before now that you have the '1929' appended. So, "golden oldie" that you are, you will perhaps appreciate this news story today:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_721587.html?menu=news.quirkies.eccentricsNovel Punishment for Disruptive Student

I am interested that your opinions are not "educated" at least as far as understanding what the realities are of public education from inside "the system". I, like Ul, am a teacher for over 30 years. I have much experience in work with abused and damaged children, alternative school placements, and special education. It seems a shame that blaming the victim is considered a viable point of view.

If it were not for strong efforts by teachers of the disadvantaged students, there is so little chance of ameliorating the problems and improving lives that may be wasted. We should not try to help? Teachers are fools to believe that there is hope and that there is worth and dignity in all our students? To help one child improve their lot in life and to have some positive growth and progress - well, to me it is better to try to work with a hundred, even if it IS only one child that improved. What is the alternative really, shall we just euthanize them?

au: I went to a private school. It was horrible! Those people were hateful. I was yelled at every day by some teacher or another.

An English teacher--FEMALE--would line up the 7th grade BOYS outside the 7th grade girls room and paddle them, one swat for each Word Wealth word they'd missed on our Friday test. I don't believe in spanking--at school--in PUBLIC--for UNDER ACADEMIC achievement---by the OPPOSITE SEX!

This same teacher would put her ugly, swollen, bitter face just inches from some of the girls to see if they were wearing makeup (we weren't allowed, of course). I never wore any, but she would check me out every day anyway. I guess she hated stupid boys and pretty girls!

The rector has self-published two books. I found incoherent exerpts from one online. Seems he is promoting a return to slavery because it was OK'd in the Bible.

One of the male teachers was arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for child pornography.

The school didn't have films or projectors or EVEN A LIBRARY! Lots of kids were on drugs. It was the only place in the world where I was ever offered any!

I still have nightmares about that place, twenty-five years later!

Of course, there was no multiculturalism. How real and/or helpful is that?

I left in ninth grade for public schools where I was never in any trouble and I graduated a year early.

cobalt
OK if discipline or as I insensitively put it getting rid of the cancer that pervades in some of our schools is not the answer what is. Why should we allow a few to disrupt the education of many

I think littlek's point is that the proper way to handle the bully or disprupter is to find out why this student is doing what he is doing. To get at the root of his problem, and to help resolve this misbehavior. If you have a handicapped student, the proper thing to do is to normalize their education as much as possible, not evict them from school to get rid of the problem. c.i.

cicerone imposter

We are talking about 15 to 18 years olds in high school. Many of whom are gang members not 6 year olds.
This is not misbehavior, it is robbery, assault ,beatings, stabbings.
I do not think they understand the problem.

Well-said, c.i.

I also have experience with "impossible" kids who flourished with attention and thoughtful interaction. From where I stood, listening to their stories of what they had to put up with from teachers, the "rot" was clearly the teachers, not the students.

As a teacher, constrained at every turn, forced into teaching from an outdated, boring curriculum, administration and bureaucracy was clearly the source of the "rot."

As an administrator, scrounging for funds, barely able to afford textbooks, spending my weekend assembling furniture from IKEA, the "rot" was clearly from the short-sighted public that refused to provide proper funding while simultaneously bemoaning the state of education.

And on it goes... there are problems, to be sure. But the kids I worked with would have only spiralled down, who knows how far, if the justifiable rage they had (yes, justifiable) at their teachers was exacerbated by physical attacks. They were not "rot." This is far too complex of a problem to single out one aspect and "get rid of it". All of the interwoven strands have to be teased out and dealt with individually, with an eye to the big picture. Dealing with one aspect will change another; each aspect can't be dealt with in a vaccuum. And many people do not have the patience for that kind of careful, thoughtful, open-minded response.

Becoming an autodidact is surely the best way to go.

au, The 15 to 18 year olds are going to become adults very soon. They are the ones that need to get the proper attention, before they become adult criminals. They need saving, more so, for the sake of our total society. If we don't save them now, we will pay for it later. I'd rather see them become law abiding, contributors to our society, and not become a burden. It costs upwards of $30,000 every year to house criminals in our prison system. c.i.

Wouldn't criminal behavior be handled by the juvenile authorities?

dupre
It's catch me if you can and than a slap on the wrists. The papers were full of stories about the goings on in schools and how students were afraid to report anyone. There is general agreement that schools are not safe havens for students. That in itself is a hell of an indictment