In failing high schools students must share blame.

[virgogal]

A great article written by a student at one of Boston's troubled schools.



http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/30/in_failing_high_schools_students_must_share_blame/

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Schools need more paddling. Less walking across my yard.

Christ, is this guy a senior in high school or a senior in the Springfield Retirement Castle?

[Codeine]

3. "Starin' at my sandals?"

That's a paddlin'.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

8. Paddlin the school canoe-oh you better believe that's a paddlin'!

[FBaggins]

2. It always amazes me that anyone assumes that they DON'T share blame.

They do... and the punishment fits the "crime" pretty well.

[dmallind]

4. Of course they should

And the parents. And the teachers. And the administrators. And the politicians.

But that said, shouldn't it be more important to work on whose responsibility it is to get them to improve and how they will do that?

[stray cat]

5. Better to blame the students then the school or faculty

but it is also blaming the victims - the students are the losers

[Igel]

9. I have no problem blaming the victim sometimes.

It provides a kind of clarity to remove sympathy from logic. Otherwise you lead yourself into too many conundrums and fallacies.

Sometimes victims are the results of their own self-victimization. Sometimes they strive mightly to be victims in their ignorance, and resist attempt to be taught how to stop victimizing themselves. But when that happens, the person who simply failed to get through to the idiot shouldn't beat himself up saying that *he's* the victimizer. Let the dead bury the dead, as long as it doesn't lead to a huge typhoid outbreak.

In this case, the students *could* stop being victims, but it's a big task for a small person, overcoming the years of mis-training and mis-education and neglect that they've suffered. Even if the only person they have to save is themselves, it's a tall order.

It's a big task for the teacher, too, overcoming years of mis-training and mis-education and neglect that the students have suffered. And they don't get to save just one person--they have what? 6 classes of 25-35 students to save, each year?

We excuse the kids. But we turn on the teachers and ask why they're not perfect. And all the while, we can't bear to ask, Who exactly did the mis-training and mis-education and neglecting? Can't ask that. It's political suicide to raise the question, and in a political system where the politicians, businessmen, and everybody else can't see beyond next minute asking such a long-term question is just painful.

Because while the kids victimize themselves, their primary victimizers are their parents, the people with real power to do good or bad in the kids' lives.

Yet if you say that to most such parents, the response is eerily like yours: Since the parents are also victims, they say, that's blaming the victims. So in our sympathy-induced foolishness we have to conclude that the powerful are weak and beyond reproach. Although, to be fair, many parents have rendered themselves powerless.

All that's left to blame are the non-victims, but they have very little power. And in our foolishness, we say that the weak are powerful and solely in for reproach. And when the relatively powerless fail, we blame them even more.

Then we all genuflect before this situation and say it is very wisdom. That victims cannot self-victimize. That victims cannot also victimize others.

[HockeyMom]

6. That is very true

At some point in time it has to become the resposibility of the "child". Definitely, by the time they are in HS. I say this as the mother of 2 daughters; one who was labed gifted and nearly flunked out of school, and another who was special needs and graduated with a B average without any services she was entitled to.

Same school, same teachers, same parents, two DIFFERENT individuals.

[City Lights]

7. Indeed. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. nt