I don't support vandalism--and yes, writing on furniture that doesn't belong to you constitutes a form of vandalism--but neither do I support arresting a junior high student for writing on a desk with erasable marker. Some after-school desk scrubbing, and not just the desk she wrote on, should do the trick nicely.
It's bad enough that school officials thought this necessary, but even worse that police actually put her in cuffs and hauled her off.
5 comments:
Common sense is no longer common in many public schools.
I suspect that there was a little more than "just writing on desks"
I suspect that it started with graffiti,then escalated to something that would warrant the response(s) taken.
But I wasn't there so I'll withhold further comment...
Why should it be? It's neither rewarded nor encouraged. Exercising common sense courts no small risk since the exercise of common sense entails the acceptance of responsibility for ones decisions and actions.
If there's no overt, external reward for the sort of initiative the exercise of common sense entails but there are distinct and real dangers, then why do it?
What kills me, is people will read something like that and will assume that all school are run that stupidly. In my school, the most that would have happened would be the kid would have been given a paper towel, some cleaner, and cleaned the desk. And then we would have moved on with actual teaching. I seriously doubt any teacher in the building would have bothered to even tell an administrator about it.
*heh* Sounds like you handle desk-writing the same way I do...
If I see suspicious behavior during class (or I suspect them for ANY reason) I let 'em know that if their desks are not SPOTLESS at the end of the period, they're going to be cleaning all my desks during lunch. At the beginning of the year, I end up with a few 'volunteers' cleaning desks. By about October, though, word has spread, and my desks are usually safe until the following August.
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