In my parents' days, if they didn't do their homework, they wouldn't eat. But nowadays, if parents try that, the schools feed the kids for free and send "family officers" to the home. Add to it that anti-responsibility is reinforced at school - kids get trophies for coming in last place, infinite re-dos for not taking tests/ doing homework/ getting Fs...

The problem is systemic. The buck stops nowhere.

I think it was fifth or sixth grade when we were given checkbooks and there was a class system where "money" could be earned by... doing something (long-ass time ago). So we learned how to balance our checkbooks and at the end of the year, items like candy or decorations. I was going for one of those stained-glass dealios in the shape of a dolphin. It came down to me and one other girl bidding on this dolphin thing. Eventually, the teacher put her arms around my shoulders and told me that I might as well just let the animal lover have it. Yes, because that girl spent all of her time wearing t-shirts with animals on them and drawing pictures of animals, she is clearly more deserving of this item that we both have a chance to get. I would have figured that she had enough of that stuff at home already, so why shouldn't I have a chance at it?

Anyway, I guess the point is that teachers have always had their favorites, and when teachers have favorites other students suffer.

/not so cool story, sis

The My Little Pony Killer: I think it was fifth or sixth grade when we were given checkbooks and there was a class system where "money" could be earned by... doing something (long-ass time ago). So we learned how to balance our checkbooks and at the end of the year, items like candy or decorations. I was going for one of those stained-glass dealios in the shape of a dolphin. It came down to me and one other girl bidding on this dolphin thing. Eventually, the teacher put her arms around my shoulders and told me that I might as well just let the animal lover have it. Yes, because that girl spent all of her time wearing t-shirts with animals on them and drawing pictures of animals, she is clearly more deserving of this item that we both have a chance to get. I would have figured that she had enough of that stuff at home already, so why shouldn't I have a chance at it?

Anyway, I guess the point is that teachers have always had their favorites, and when teachers have favorites other students suffer.

/not so cool story, sis

Because it couldn't possibly have been that your teacher was trying to tell you that the other girl was literally insane for animals and was willing to go to any lengths to win that prize?

Based on the extremely limited amount of information you provided it honestly sounds like your teacher was saying "don't mess with that chick, she is crazy and will fark you up if you take things to their logical conclusion". Which, in my opinion, is a pretty good lesson to learn early in life.

reverendsaintjay: The My Little Pony Killer: I think it was fifth or sixth grade when we were given checkbooks and there was a class system where "money" could be earned by... doing something (long-ass time ago). So we learned how to balance our checkbooks and at the end of the year, items like candy or decorations. I was going for one of those stained-glass dealios in the shape of a dolphin. It came down to me and one other girl bidding on this dolphin thing. Eventually, the teacher put her arms around my shoulders and told me that I might as well just let the animal lover have it. Yes, because that girl spent all of her time wearing t-shirts with animals on them and drawing pictures of animals, she is clearly more deserving of this item that we both have a chance to get. I would have figured that she had enough of that stuff at home already, so why shouldn't I have a chance at it?

Anyway, I guess the point is that teachers have always had their favorites, and when teachers have favorites other students suffer.

/not so cool story, sis

Because it couldn't possibly have been that your teacher was trying to tell you that the other girl was literally insane for animals and was willing to go to any lengths to win that prize?

Based on the extremely limited amount of information you provided it honestly sounds like your teacher was saying "don't mess with that chick, she is crazy and will fark you up if you take things to their logical conclusion". Which, in my opinion, is a pretty good lesson to learn early in life.

Well, the lesson I got was don't bother to try for anything, somebody else will want it more. Which is a really shiatty lesson to teach someone who hasn't even made it past grade school yet.

Rev.K: When I was a kid, times were tough. If we didn't do our homework we were raped. If we didn't do it a second time, we were killed.

So I had to go home and explain to my parents why I was dead.

That's why this generation is hopeless.

At least you weren't rape raped.

Rev.K: When I was a kid, times were tough. If we didn't do our homework we were raped. If we didn't do it a second time, we were killed.

So I had to go home and explain to my parents why I was dead.

That's why this generation is hopeless.

You only got raped and killed? I got flayed before I was raped and killed, I used to beg God to please just let it be raping and killing.

Was the rest of the class laughing AT her, or with her ?

Therefore, dumb move by the teacher.

oh no... a teacher that feels comfortable enough to joke around with the kids.. whatever shall we do!

In 10th grade, I remember an Algebra teacher tore a girl a new one because she didn't bother to even try to do the homework. Even made her cry. All this guy ever wanted was for us to try. If there were students that didn't get it, he never blamed them, he blamed himself for not helping them understand. He only got angry if you didn't try.

Don't mess with Epstein's mom.

Rev.K: When I was a kid, times were tough. If we didn't do our homework we were raped. If we didn't do it a second time, we were killed.

So I had to go home and explain to my parents why I was dead.

That's why this generation is hopeless.

Better than death by ru-ru.

Take the parent to school, where he/she stands in front of the class, forced to write "I will make sure my snowflake does their homework." 50 times on the black/white board.

Problem solved

The My Little Pony Killer: reverendsaintjay: The My Little Pony Killer: I think it was fifth or sixth grade when we were given checkbooks and there was a class system where "money" could be earned by... doing something (long-ass time ago). So we learned how to balance our checkbooks and at the end of the year, items like candy or decorations. I was going for one of those stained-glass dealios in the shape of a dolphin. It came down to me and one other girl bidding on this dolphin thing. Eventually, the teacher put her arms around my shoulders and told me that I might as well just let the animal lover have it. Yes, because that girl spent all of her time wearing t-shirts with animals on them and drawing pictures of animals, she is clearly more deserving of this item that we both have a chance to get. I would have figured that she had enough of that stuff at home already, so why shouldn't I have a chance at it?

Anyway, I guess the point is that teachers have always had their favorites, and when teachers have favorites other students suffer.

/not so cool story, sis

Because it couldn't possibly have been that your teacher was trying to tell you that the other girl was literally insane for animals and was willing to go to any lengths to win that prize?

Based on the extremely limited amount of information you provided it honestly sounds like your teacher was saying "don't mess with that chick, she is crazy and will fark you up if you take things to their logical conclusion". Which, in my opinion, is a pretty good lesson to learn early in life.

Well, the lesson I got was don't bother to try for anything, somebody else will want it more. Which is a really shiatty lesson to teach someone who hasn't even made it past grade school yet.

Seems like the lesson learned wasn't the lesson being taught, hard to blame the teacher for the fact that you were a cynical, self-centered little person who would take a tale like this about a two dollar dolphin window hanger to the grave...

Bah, I had an English teacher that graded with pass or fail on every assignment. He had two stamps "Good Job" or "Dumbass". He did mark the mistakes on the papers so you knew what you did wrong. He just wanted it to be very clear how your paper reflected on you.

Dick move by the teacher, but yeah, do your homework. We're not seeing the whole story. Was the kid a little shiat about the homework? Did the teacher reach out to the mom? How did the parent/teacher conferences go? Does the kid have a learning disability? Is she so smart the homework bores her?

Sometimes it aint that easy Subby. I know, my daughter would've won this award hands down for most of her school career. I guess the real difference is I would've told my "humiliated" little snowflake "well if it bothers you start doing your damn homework" had she come home crying to me about this.

The Smails Kid: Rev.K: When I was a kid, times were tough. If we didn't do our homework we were raped. If we didn't do it a second time, we were killed.

So I had to go home and explain to my parents why I was dead.

That's why this generation is hopeless.

Better than death by ru-ru.


RURUs!

I am getting sick of people using the term "bullying" for anyone who disagrees or challenges them. I am sure this was not the first, or even the second or third, time the teacher spoke to this child about not having her homework. So the teacher took more drastic measures to get their point across. That is not bullying or harassment, thats getting a kid to do their homework because its not going to get any easier from here. If the kid wants to do more than work at McDonalds for the rest of her life, she had better learn she has to meet some basic requirements and start learning some responsibility.

That is not hounding the kid relentlessly, calling her slurs, making threats. That's pointing she is doing something wrong and needs to get it together.

I wonder if the teacher had tried to discuss this problem with the parent and was blown off. That parent doesn't have time to make her kid do her homework, but she does have time to call the news networks to be an attention whore. Now the kid will go to a new school having learned that all she has to do to get out of doing her homework is run and cry to mommy.

Hope you want fries with that mom.

Meh, she's female. All she has to do is what a lot of women do... slut it up to get what they want until they are old.

Mr. Coffee Nerves: TravisBickle62: Rev.K: When I was a kid, times were tough. If we didn't do our homework we were raped. If we didn't do it a second time, we were killed.

So I had to go home and explain to my parents why I was dead.

That's why this generation is hopeless.

You only got raped and killed? I got flayed before I was raped and killed, I used to beg God to please just let it be raping and killing.

Unimaginable luxury. Must have been nice to grow up pampered so.

We had one anus to share for the entire block, so you couldn't even count on getting raped. And if you got the anus but didn't have the colon, well, that was just tough luck for you. Working a 14-hour shift in the mine followed up by a 14-hour shift in the other mine would make you thankful. Next thing you'll tell me your pickaxe had an actual head and a handle.

You had a share of an anus? I used to ask Santa Claus for an anus every Christmas. I used to write "Dear Santa, I have been eating and crapping out of the same hole for 7 long years now, could you please give me an anus if only for a single hour"

Bathia_Mapes: Well, she would have hated what they did back when I was in high school (graduated in 1970). Students who chronically didn't hand in their homework and subsequently did poorly on quizzes & tests to the point that they got a D or F for the subject got handed a pink "flunk" card in class, a copy of which was also sent to the student's parents.

The way parents are these days, I wonder if teachers are allowed to flunk kids at that age.

I mean christ, I work in a University department and our chair gets a dozen, "How dare that faculty member flunk my child!" calls a semester. I can imagine how much more protective they are with kids that age.

As a teacher, homework's a bit of a tricky subject. Math homework, for instance, is pointless. If you taught the lesson well in class, they "got it", and the homework is just make-work to prove to you they did so, something you as the teacher should be establishing in class to begin with. If they didn't "get it", it's going to frustrate them and they probably won't figure it out on their own anyway.

My usual tactic is to give in-class assignments, to be handed in the next day, with time in class to work on them. If they finish them in class, hooray, no homework. If not, they'll get it done that night at home. Helps to give them a reason to actually DO the work in class, since nobody likes homework, and if they run into some issues during that work period, I'm on hand to help them out.

Then, of course, there's longer-term assignments like book reports, which are fine. I just dislike the idea of daily homework from an educational point of view. It doesn't serve any real benefit to their education. They're either struggling and it'll stress them out without helping, or they're not and it's makework that wastes their time.


All that said, I fully approve of what this teacher did. Assuming she'd already talked to the student and her mother about the issue beforehand and got nowhere.

To quote a great philosopher: Cry more n00bs!

Organization skill deficiencies can be caused by learning disabilities. I always did well on tests, but I couldn't, for the life of me, keep track of when homework was due. I'd forget books, think something was due 'next' Friday... When I had teachers who hassled me about it in front of class I just stopped paying attention in class. I had better luck with teachers who got my mom involved in a constructive way (for a while in middle school I had a notebook that the teacher would write assignments in and I'd take home to get signed by my mom regularly. That actually helped).

It can also be a sign of crazy things going on at home, anything from an abusive environment to a parent that just doesn't care about how their kids do as students. Some kids work after school.

Some people respond well to negative reinforcement. Some people don't. Most 8-year-olds don't respond well to humiliation.

KiplingKat872: The way parents are these days, I wonder if teachers are allowed to flunk kids at that age.

I mean christ, I work in a University department and our chair gets a dozen, "How dare that faculty member flunk my child!" calls a semester. I can imagine how much more protective they are with kids that age.

At University levels, the students are adults and responsible unto themselves.

Grade school kids are not. As a teacher, it's your job to educate the students in your class to a certain basic level. If there's an issue, like an undiagnosed learning disability or the like, it's your job to notice that there's an issue and get the student on the right path to getting it handled appropriately (I'm not pro-drugs, either, but if they need special conditions, they need the IEP written up to make it official and to last for more than just your class). Kids being unruly or whatever is absolutely your problem; classroom management is a core teaching skill. Of course there will be the crazy nutbar kids who try and sneak a knife into school to stab someone (to paraphrase an experience a few years ago), but those are the kids you expel. The kid yelling at you to shut up, or making raspberries whenever you turn your back, those are kid's you're failing to manage properly.

50% of a grade school teacher's job is motivating and managing their students. And the vast majority are manageable. If a teacher's finding 3-4 kids a class that give them trouble, they're doing something wrong and just trying to teach to the "good kids". Which is just as poor form as the phys ed teacher who tells the "nerds" to just sit on the bench while the jocks run laps.

My high school math classes bored the ever-living fark out of me, so I would almost never do the homework, as I would ace every single test. During the parent/teacher deals, I always got "he knows what's going on in the class, in fact, he's the smartest kid I've got, but I'm going to have to fail him because he won't do the homework."

Basically telling me that if I wanted to get a good grade, showing proficiency was not enough, I also had to waste my night doing the same crap I just did in class.

She was a biatch, anyway.

Meh. She is Latina she will be pregnant before she turns 10 anyway.

FTFA: But Christina Valdez says handing her eight-year-old daughter Cassandra Garcia the certificate, which is signed by her teacher beside a smiley face, is humiliating.

Ummmm... yeah, that's probably because it was SUPPOSED to be humiliating, dumbass. If the worst thing that happens to your kid is that they get humiliated then they're doing pretty good.

University of Arizona College of Education psychologist Sheri Bauman backed up Ms Valdez's comments saying handing out such an award could be counter-productive, especially for such a young child.

Could be... which means it also could NOT be. The problem here isn't that the kid can't learn from this, bad experiences are the ones we learn from the best, the problem is that the kid's mother is going to make sure she either doesn't learn from it or learns the wrong lesson because she's such a bad mother her kid is not doing her homework so much she's getting sarcastic awards. I didn't have the farking CHOICE if I was going to do my homework or not, it wasn't even a question and it wasn't up to me. My parents made damn sure I did my homework before I was allowed to do anything else. It wasn't something special they did... that's the farking MINIMUM of your responsibility as a parent.

Bathia_Mapes: Well, she would have hated what they did back when I was in high school (graduated in 1970). Students who chronically didn't hand in their homework and subsequently did poorly on quizzes & tests to the point that they got a D or F for the subject got handed a pink "flunk" card in class, a copy of which was also sent to the student's parents.

I was the one who annoyed everyone in chemistry class by not doing any homework or took notes, yet aced all tests and labs. Passed the course with a B.

The teacher knew the kid was lying when claiming a spaghetti bolognaise spill. I really hope that does not exist, for it sounds nasty. If it does, you are not going to convince me to try it.

Mr. Coffee Nerves: Writing? If only we had such a golden chariot to take us to feasts as you must have. We had one eyeball for the whole town and it was blind. Not that it mattered when you had to do simultaneous 24-hour shifts in the mine where the only time there was a light was when the owner lit his cigar off of the exposed neck bones we used as shovels.

Why would you care about light, if there was only one eye and it was blind?


Kids these days... can't even get their stories consistent.

titwrench: Meh. She is Latina she will be pregnant before she turns 10 anyway.

Pregnant, and with her very own sharpie drawer

Krieghund: Ms Valdez now says she will not be taking her daughter back to the school next year.

Mission accomplished.

So the logical reaction is to uproot the child, separate her from all her friends, and either move to a new home or drive her every day to another school that's farther away. Unless school districts work differently now, where you live determines where you go to school, and attending an out-of-district school often requires a tuition.

I agree that the kid should've done her homework, and yes the parents should've been more involved. That said, public humiliation? Nope. Nah-ah. I'd lose my shiat too. There's just no excuse for belittling someone publically. you give them a failing grade or get put on a program. You do not humiliate them in front of 25 of their classmates.

lostinjersey: I agree that the kid should've done her homework, and yes the parents should've been more involved. That said, public humiliation? Nope. Nah-ah. I'd lose my shiat too. There's just no excuse for belittling someone publically. you give them a failing grade or get put on a program. You do not humiliate them in front of 25 of their classmates.

Here's yor dunce cap.

Bathia_Mapes: KiplingKat872: Bathia_Mapes: Well, she would have hated what they did back when I was in high school (graduated in 1970). Students who chronically didn't hand in their homework and subsequently did poorly on quizzes & tests to the point that they got a D or F for the subject got handed a pink "flunk" card in class, a copy of which was also sent to the student's parents.

The way parents are these days, I wonder if teachers are allowed to flunk kids at that age.

I mean christ, I work in a University department and our chair gets a dozen, "How dare that faculty member flunk my child!" calls a semester. I can imagine how much more protective they are with kids that age.

Maybe schools need to adopt & reinforce the attitude that was used in my high school by the teachers, which was basically, "I didn't flunk you. You flunked yourself".

IMHO, a third grader isn't too young to start learning about personal responsibility.

No they aren't. I had chores when I was eight years old. I had to do homework.

Hell, 200 hundred years ago, eight year olds were naval midshipmen and powder boys. 120 years ago they were holding down jobs in factories. I'm not saying that it is right to put children in harm's way, but an eight year old is certainly capable of learning some basic responsibility. The rest of her class has.

Toddicusrex: In 10th grade, I remember an Algebra teacher tore a girl a new one because she didn't bother to even try to do the homework. Even made her cry. All this guy ever wanted was for us to try. If there were students that didn't get it, he never blamed them, he blamed himself for not helping them understand. He only got angry if you didn't try.

Coach Sparks....... Albertville High FTW. Great guy , he was....

Curious: Ms Valdez now says she will not be taking her daughter back to the school next year.

i doubt either the teacher or the school will miss her.

How charter schools cull their ranks.

Huh. My son in a special school and we've had NOTHING but problems w/the admin this year. It is his last year there, and we're all thankful. I can't tell you how many rip roaring fights my wife has had w/the admin. I read this article to her, and she thought it was funny as shiat. Ok.....scriptwriter? you have our respective dialogues reversed.

And now the daughter has been humiliated in front of global audience. Good work, mom.

Mr. Coffee Nerves: TravisBickle62: Mr. Coffee Nerves: TravisBickle62: Rev.K: When I was a kid, times were tough. If we didn't do our homework we were raped. If we didn't do it a second time, we were killed.

So I had to go home and explain to my parents why I was dead.

That's why this generation is hopeless.

You only got raped and killed? I got flayed before I was raped and killed, I used to beg God to please just let it be raping and killing.

Unimaginable luxury. Must have been nice to grow up pampered so.

We had one anus to share for the entire block, so you couldn't even count on getting raped. And if you got the anus but didn't have the colon, well, that was just tough luck for you. Working a 14-hour shift in the mine followed up by a 14-hour shift in the other mine would make you thankful. Next thing you'll tell me your pickaxe had an actual head and a handle.

You had a share of an anus? I used to ask Santa Claus for an anus every Christmas. I used to write "Dear Santa, I have been eating and crapping out of the same hole for 7 long years now, could you please give me an anus if only for a single hour"

Writing? If only we had such a golden chariot to take us to feasts as you must have. We had one eyeball for the whole town and it was blind. Not that it mattered when you had to do simultaneous 24-hour shifts in the mine where the only time there was a light was when the owner lit his cigar off of the exposed neck bones we used as shovels.

Fire? What sort of gods-blessed civilization did you have? Our little dirt pile had only one rock to go around the whole town to make sure the thistle bears didn't get on the hill, because then everybody got raped. Not that it mattered when you were flayed to the bone around your neck to light cigars and people used your nose as a pickaxe in the mines. Though, I do miss those 36-hour shifts, best hard-working days of my primordial life.