9 and 10 year-olds charged with felony for drawings

I have been silent throughout the discussion simply because I want to know more. If they indeed go to trial, I would expect details to be leaked.

msolga

I've worked a lot with pupils from schools for special education, a couple of my friends are special education teachers, and I lectured 'Practical work for Social Workers' - which included the work at special education schools - at university. :wink:


Children under 14 can't be prosecuted here at all, btw.


And Andrew already mentioned enough about "drawings" :wink:

Walter

I doubt that children of that age could be charged in Oz, either. Though I'm not a legal expert.

For a time last year I worked in a small school that catered for secondary students who'd been expelled, suspended or simply could not function in a standard school. I have the greatest admiration for the teachers who worked with those kids. It's certainly very demanding work & requires enormous stamina & commitment.

You know that before you take over that profession. And I haven't heard of a single teacher, whoc doesn't like his/her job there.

But of course, you have to be professionally up-to-date.
This means, IMHO, that calling the police for such or with 9/10 years old boys shows a bit of .... well, at least 'declaration of bankruptcy'.

Yes, they are incredibly engrossed in their work, agreed. I found it more daunting, being in a temporary position, filling in for an absent member. Very challenging!

Yes. I didn't once see the police at the place I worked at. Mind you, there were a lot of touch & go moments, but the staff were so adept at their jobs, they resolved things so well ... I was totally in awe of some of them. Dealing with the students' families ... whatever was required.

I find this very disturbing. We assume there is more to the story, and there may be, but even so this was not the appropriate action for 9-10 year old kids.

We assume there is more to the story, but what if there isn't? We've heard stories since Columbine of kids being expelled for the T-shirt they were wearing. I'm not familiar with it, but someone mentioned earlier that some older kids got in trouble for building a snow fort. We've also sadly read stories of a 1st grader shooting a classmate.

I don't think we can really assume either way given the overaction of some school administrators, and under reaction of others.

In the meantime, these children should have, by law, been in the least restrictive environment. If the least restrictive environment was a specific school for students with special needs when this occurred, then another evaluation needed to be done to further assess the next least restrictive environment. I highly doubt that such an evaluation would have suggested jail or prison!

I don't have clue what kind of home environment these boys have had, but I know from the articles limited information that the school system, by law, just failed them.

There are options between their current school setting and jail. Not to be overly cynical, but the state / school system has to pay for those options, even if it involves the appropriate setting being an out of state facility. Perhaps this is a trend we'll see more of as education budgets get more difficult to stretch. (Just a thought, not an accusation.)

Actually Slappy there is more to that story about the snow fort building. The high school students were 18 and they were repeatedly asked to stop and leave the area as the authorities felt the tunnels were unsafe and could come crashing down on them. After repeated attempts to get the kids off school grounds, the students said racial slurs and refused to leave. The police then arrested them. The public works people then had to spend time searching all the tunnels to ensure there were no more kids there before collapsing all the tunnel so one would get hurt.

Perhaps having them in court was a bit strong, but I can understand them being brought to the police station for parents to have to pick them up.

Convicting them might be inappropriate, depending on the unknown history and the extent of the bullying.

Arresting them sounds very appropriate to me. Kids suffer horrible bullying these days compared to anything I grew up with. I recommend everyone see the movie (or popular children's play), "Bang, bang, you're dead". This is the film Bowling for Columbine should have been.

When I was a kid, there was a program called "scared straight". I don't know, but they may have needed your parent's permission. Anyway, cops would come to the school, or your house and arrest you at any age from like 5 on up... take you to jail and even lock you up for a little while. Then they'd have some scary prisoner dude talk to you through the bars… and tell you what a terrible life being an outlaw has been.

I don't know if you can measure the effect of that kind of a program or not... but it seems like a damn good idea to me. Were it up to me, the school's would divide all the kids up based on behavior, not scholastic ability.

I'm afraid, msolga, that they do now in the good old USA. This kind of overreaction is becoming only too common.

Yes, "Bullying" is THE hot topic in schools here today.

Give me your lunch money or I'll draw stick figures of you having sex with Ms. Calculate, our math teacher.

Special ed kids with behavior problems (quite a few) give the whole program a bad name. OCCOM Bill's right. Those with behavior issues should be kept in a more restrictive environment, but they're not. They're contributing disproportionately to the problems in public education today.

BTW ... most private/parochial schools ship their special ed kids off to the public schools ... don't want THOSE kids with issues interfering with QUALITY education, dontchaknow.

Whooda - i'm taking that as sarcasm.

Yeah, throw 9 and 10 year olds who draw stick figures with knives in jail and see what you have when they are 16.

Squinney: No, I already said I think somebody overeacted on this particular situation. I probably didn't make myself clear on the "more restrictive environment" situation. If there are special-ed kids with severe or, okay, borderline behavior issues, these kids should be in self-contained classrooms. That's where they are in my school (finally) but they are in the general population during class changes and lunchtime. Want to guess what they do then?


I say finally because they had previously been part of a unit in an actual psychiatric hospital. The school bused them there and paid for their instruction. The hospital closed, so they were all dumped into our regular classrooms the next year. Because of privacy issues, the teachers were not even informed of their former status. We got to figure it out for ourselves.

Okay, so severe behavior issues are just that -- severe & extreme -- but there's a large group of kids with behaviors not quite so bad, but pretty damned disruptive in a classroom. Do they deserve to interrupt the education of the rest of the world just because the regular classroom happens to be a less restrictive environment? If you haven't guessed, I have major issues with that part of the law.

But -- no, I'm not advocating The Big House for 3rd graders just quite yet.

Another kid charged with a felony involves pepper spray in school. Don't know the details. Here in Texas the prisons are so full they don't know where to put them all. Probably have to buy Idaho and store them there.

Another one!
Is this handcuffing thing becoming a trend ?
AN 11 YEAR OLD 5TH GRADER!

I have a ten year old daughter that is happy-go-lucky, somewhat meek, never get's in trouble and is an honor student. If a bully targeted her, (bullies do target the quiet, non-aggresive kids), and she was beaten, I'd call the police too. Especially if that's what it would take to have the bully removed from school.

But handcuffs, paula?

I don't think bullying should be tolerated, either, but handcuffing 11 year olds is rather off.